I continue to be impressed by New Vegas. It's so much better than Fallout 3...it feels like the real 'spritual' Fallout 3 in many ways for me. I feel like I'm having a much bigger impact on the world around me, too. I actually run into people who know of the things I've done earlier in the game that are absolutely unrelated to the main quest, for one. In the first (real-time) hours of the game I cleared a prison after it rioted against the NCR and the prisoners took over. Yesterday night I meet an NCR ranger who's talking about how he's tracking down members of the same group, and how 'fortunately, the NCR cleared out the prison some time ago. Wish I could have been there to see it.' Sweet. Or at a gang that specialised in making drugs and was shipping mostly to a bunch of drugged-up psychos called 'the Fiends' for profit, I heard someone say 'X is going crazy trying to find a new contact in the Fiends after Y'. With Y being their local leader which I had put out of his misery a little earlier.

I've actually been able to talk a few people around purely on my affiliation with certain powerful groups. As I've said 4515 times already i'm thick as thieves with the NCR, and sometimes I can just tell people that I'd ask my friends of the NCR to investigate their activities or convince people to treat me well. I've seen dialogue options based on high stats, (INT, STR, etc.) low stats (!), high skills (science etc), reputation with certain groups or in certain areas...it's quite intricate.

Actually semi-accidentally found the hidden bunker base of the Brotherhood of Steel yesterday, and it was amazing. I got in without being shot on sight, but only after being treated like suspicious scum and having to prove my worth first. They were all like "wtf are you doing here?!", which is a STARK contrast with the Brotherhood of Fallout 3 but so much more like Fallout 1 and 2. The Brotherhood of Steel in the original Fallouts was never a dog-gooder bring-water-to-the-wastes power like in Fallout 3...it was a reclusive, egotistical organisation with an unhealthy fascination for modern technology. They don't care much for everything around them and typically don't venture out much. So this well-hidden base made perfect sense. Their reaction upon seeing me did too. And no one in the game just TOLD me where they were. I found some rumours and went on those, but it's not like some slackjawed peasant told me "uuuh yeah the Brotherhood is that way" which, honestly, would have been BS.

What I like about the game is that it often asks you to hand over your weapons or even your gear when entering certain places like casinos or HQ's. You can refuse, of course, but that'll get you barred from entering or even killed (some places, like the Silver Rush, have 4-5 armed to the teeth security guards in combat armor - you don't want to fuck with that, even at level 30). It makes perfect sense from a game world perspective and makes you feel less at ease, since you're weak as a kitten without your gear. Me and Derf actually discussed a situation where we both realised 'yeah, going in there unarmed was really dumb'. We both kind of expected a trap, we just didn't expect that the game would actually put us in that position of being unarmed in a room full of enemies, ie draw on our relative complacency with game systems.

Mobs feels much better balanced as well. I'm playing on Hard, and some creatures like Deathclaws are EXTREMELY tough. I can barely put a scratch on an adult deathclaw, and can just about bring one down in a fight with me + Boone. A legendary deathclaw or a brood mother will pretty much one-hit me, and I have 10 Endurance and strong combat armor. This is good, as it makes them the feared beings they are. A huge creature 5 times my size with claws the size of a snow shovel is obviously not to be messed with. When you see a pack of deathclaws, you back off, cause 2-3 at a time will eat you up. Raiders and normal gangbangers otoh are easy by now. Boone can pick most of them off in 2 shots with his sniper rifle; I need 3 shots with a laser rifle.

Man I could keep talking. So much cool stuff. I've been put in a situation twice now where I didn't really know what to do. Making those hard calls, that's the stuff. Oh and I've been banned from all three casinos on the strip for winning too much. At first they just came over and gave me gifts for my lucky streaks and even expensive armor or a high-roller VIP suite as I was winning big, then they just cut me off as I was bleeding them dry. 9 Luck ftw baby!

I gotta finish up some work here so I'll keep it short, but I just wanted to say that I finished my first playthrough. I decided to side with the NCR in the end (SURPRISE) and . That's not a major spoiler or anything btw, but if you've never even started the game you may want to remain unawares of what is under it.

I enjoyed the game immensely. As an RPG, it's superb, without a doubt. The combat mechanics are still clunky as shit though, and you may need to stock up heavily on mods to get rid of some annoyances or to expand the game into complete awesomeness. The GUI fix me and Derf used is an obvious candidate, and I just found a mod that allows you to expand the radio station song archives with 60 classic songs - sweet. The stations have a nice offer, but they get old after a while.

Also, there are mods out that de-nerf energy weapons. i've been using energy weapons and believe me when i say that even at a 100% skill and with mint condition monster weapons like Gattling Lasers you do SHIT damage against armored targets. It's quite disheartening.

There are actually mods out to up the amount of people walking around in the cities, but they apparently tend to eat CPU for breakfast - so might want to be careful with those.

Anyway, great game, with multiple endings. The funny thing was that I didn't even have much of a choice at the end anymore, since I had gone so much in the direction of the NCR during the game that for example the Legion wouldn't have anything to do with me anymore. And other means to finish the game were beyond my measly combat abilities, so...I actually talked my way out of the final battle. I'm pretty sure it's possible to play through the entire game without killing anyone, which is just awesome. Oh and you get a really cool epilogue ending, where the story of every place/town/character after the game is told by important persons of that spot or by the character him- or herself.

Three thumbs up! I'm gonna start over with a dumb as SHIT brute character with a penchant for murder. Hit me up if you need mod advice.

Put together your mod list, if you would. I'll probably make another modding page for it like I did for Oblivion. Plus when I finally do get around to buying the game, I won't have to work too hard looking for the mods I like.

Will do. I'm running my current (second) game with like 10 mods installed, although they're mostly still small fixes/files (I'm not sure I want to go with the bigger game-changing ones before they're tested and played a bit more).

Might als consider things like NV Mod Manager (once it has a more solid build) to take care of things like load order.

Ok, mods! I've taken them from here mostly, these guys are taking efforts to make sure mods don't conflict etc

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/new ... 10510.html

(if you're playing hardcore) http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36041 Animals carry meat
http://www.mediafire.com/?j16rhachlam28h8 Deathclaw animal companion! You need to feed it with meat etc.
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=36691 Increases FPS and reduces stutter - essential
Again for hardcore http://www.mediafire.com/?d9rdyb95wlw65gc gives you a canteen that can be refilled with water from water sources
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35240 essential - makes energy weapons less pointless in the late game
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=37420 compilation of community fixes/patches
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34945 gives you a hidden bunker with storage space and work benches near the starting village, handy as a homebase
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35957 improves sneaking. Makes it easier for highly skilled characters and less so for low-skilled ones. Basically it balances the skill out better.
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=37083 this is fun as hell - gives you a hoverboard that runs on fission batteries
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36823 allows mercy killing of crucified NPC's
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36689 sets world map markers for the Strip. Makes life so much easier!
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=35998 very cool mod which enhances the weather and its effects
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34886 essential. Passive critters mod. Makes some wasteland critters less OMGWTFBBQ aggressive. Saves you a lot of trouble from small critters chasing you down halfway the earth, and allows you to circle around some that shouldn't be super aggressive in the first place
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37029 essential: expands the offer of songs on NV radio greatly, and what's more it does so with songs that are referenced in the game (evey large and small quest name refers to a 50-60's song) . Absolutely essential if you don't want to get bored out of your skull by the same songs after a while. Get the 60-pack, of course.
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=37485 explosives enchancement. Allows you to work back and forth between explosives types at workbenches
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=37344 fixes merchants not restocking. Pretty essential (make sure you don't get the NVSE file but the regular one)
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... ied-ui-nv/ essential. Updates the GUI which is so very necessary. I wouldn't even start a game without it if I were you.

If you're absolutely sure your PC is a BEAST, you can also take these three mods that add population to certain areas

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=35369 (casinos)
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=35197 (military outposts)
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=36432 (wasteland)

So, as promised to Satis (who has NV now), I uploaded some of the bigger mods and ones I thought he should use too to his ftp server. Only a few remarks:

- install the FOMM exe first - it's the NV Mod Manager which will make installing them easy as goblin pie, but most importantly: it'll allow you to arrange your load order to minimize mod conflicts
- for that, use the text I included "Duskwolf's Load order list" or something. That will tell you which ones should follow which if you have problems. It's been tested extensively
- the radio mod is in a seperate folder since it has a peculiar install: you need to install all three 'mods', but in order to use the full 60 songs pack you only should activate the main file of the last one.
- Better Game Performance can either cause problems or improve the game. If you're already running smoothly it's prolly not worth it.
- The other mods tend to be small and pretty self-explanatory. Here are links to their homepages regardless!

http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35957
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=37083
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=35998
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36689
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=37485
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=38679
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/ ... p?id=37060

And a few have no specific page, but they're minor (adding certain item etc). Upload will take a while (2 hours), since some files are rather large.

Uploaded all the files bitch!

thanks foxy oxy.

The spoilery type content is at the bottom in red, so satis can choose to ignore that if he wants. I know he's playing this right now.

So i re-installed this game with a shitload of mods and during my 2 week break i've poured 28 hours into it.

The stimulus for replaying this was mainly the headshot mod that Rinox suggested to me some time ago, and that, as you know is my main gripe about the game. It's meant to be an action RPG but it certainly doesn't feel that way. Anyway, the headshot mod works for the most part, and it was actually pretty fun running around as a low level noobie with a 9mm pistol, just capping enemies at point blank range, instantly killing them. It made combat that more exciting because of course, headshots are that more lethal to you too. It's all about using cover, storming up real close and then hitting VATS for that 95% headshot.

Anyway, i'm quite far along now. I'm level 20 and perhaps half way into the main quest. What i'm trying to say this is that the game MAY be worthy of a 3rd WITH mods. Maybe. Depends how the game pans out. I enjoy some aspects, but find others a grind. And I must say there are also some glaring flaws that cannot really be overlooked.

I will somewhat concede to Rinox that the dialog isn't TOTALLY bad. The colouration of script and voice is well done, but what I feel made it bad was the inanimation or delivery. I guess the expectation now is for that new facial recognition system to define how we actually receive dialogue. Anything less is like speaking to a brick.

Another positive i'll award is the sheer amount of content. There's loads of stuff and places. Perhaps enough to run the playing time into 80 hours or so.

But another pretty heavy flaw I see is that the quests, reputation, karma and dialogue are not combined to form one game. They do have some tiny area of influence over eachother, but they still feel like disconnected minigames. 75% of the stuff you do has no consequence to anything other than what you just did. Dialogue options and quests should be heavily influenced by reputation and karma.




I'll post the list of mods im running sometime, along with the screenshots of my character and shit.

I edited Derf's post to add a spoiler tag. Red text my buttocks!

I've been playing this game quite a bit and am enjoying it. It's very much like Fallout 3, though the western tone is definitely there. Mods are a must... some I don't really know how to use (canteen mod?), but the font size one is indispensable and pretty much inexcusable that it's not there by default. Also, the textures are pretty low-res for a modern game.. I could really use a massive texture overhaul mod. It's not like my gtx-465 is struggling at all, even with everything turned to max at 1920x1200.

However, despite these caveats, I'm very much enjoying the game. In fact, I'm already plotting my second run through. This time around I went goody-goody, allying with the NCR and the towns people to take out gang members and the Caesar's Legion folks. I have a really high int, fairly low strength, and high perception... I'll post real stats later. Next time, I'm going with 1 int, super high strength, and will be a total bastard.

I'm attaching a screenshot of my poor body after standing up to some rather cruel people in a city. For those far enough along, this would be a town that was massacred for its impurity. I decide to avenge the people (though I ended up executing everyone that was crucified... we can't always be good). I barely survived that encounter.

lol@ Satis bruised and battered body.

I'm actually playing a character like you're planning right now, a brute with no brain who becomes like a Cave Troll for Caesar's Legion. Glad to hear you're enjoying it btw, it's like a F3 on steroids for me (better writing, world, more purpose, more canon). And Derf is pretty magnanimous to reconsider adding the third jade orb to his initial rating. Derfmeister, I think you may like the Brotherhood of Steel better than the NCR as your "homeboys", judging from what you wrote. Might want to pay them a visit...

I love the black mountain radio or whatever. It's pretty awesome. On the other hand, it seems like the same 5 songs play over and over again, despite the mod, so I'm getting a bit annoyed. I also picked up a perk for blowing two guys up with frag mines.

so, anyway, here are my stats and crap. I was gonna post that in my last post, but my computer went stupid and a hard drive disappeared. It's back now, and I backed up all my crap. Stupid hard drives.

Yeah, i'll check out the BoS, good shout Ox.

Satis, you're going with high luck? Lol, i dont know what that drives, but do you notice any good luck?

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