New Vegas

I feel like I just keep talking about Fallout, but that's what I've been up to so what are you going to do? I decided to advance the main story a little bit last night, so it was time to head into Legion territory and have a chat with Caesar.

From encounters with his men, you might assume he's an asshole. But when you meet him, you realize he's a GIANT asshole.

On the bright side, he caught Benny for me so I was finally able to put a bullet in that two-timing rat fink's skull. Even so, I absolutely intend to come back later and kill every member of the Legion I can find at Fortification Hill, up to and including Caesar. I'll probably bring Boone with me for that, I imagine he'll enjoy it.

I was a little disappointed that the game didn't give me the option of tearing apart Caesar's philosophical arguments. I've got a 9 Intellect, you'd think that would be sufficient to tell him that no, I fully understand the concepts of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and also he's a self-aggrandizing fascist hypocrite. Yes Caesar, please explain to me how the NCR is falling apart because it was a cult of personality centered around President Tandi, and how what you're creating is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT NO REALLY. I'm all ears.

What's that, game? You want me to shoot every Legionary in the head? Well, it'll be tough, but I guess somebody's got to do it.

Apart from the Legion being entirely awful though, I'm liking how it's not entirely clear who's best to ally with for the main storyline. The NCR are solid guys, but they're expanding far too fast. Backing Mr. House means an independent New Vegas which seems like a good option, but he's got that whole smarmy Andrew Ryan vibe going. Or I could try to replace House and take over Vegas myself; tempting but I worry that outside forces might think that House's death means they could try and take the city.  No matter what though, Caesar's gonna die.

I've gotten in the habit of putting together a blog post in my head / as bits and pieces in the morning and then cleaning it up and posting it at lunch. Mostly that's worked pretty well, but then comes a day like yesterday where I'm in meetings all day with barely time to grab lunch between. Combined with not feeling like I have any one thing to say a lot about I ended up skipping the day. Hey, I never promised daily updates after August after all.

Currently I'm mostly keeping to a 6 day a week schedule with Sunday as a day off. I've missed a day this week and last, but that still leaves 5 days of posts, which I feel pretty good about it. I've considered moving my book reviews to Fridays and just doing weekdays, but the more I think about it shooting for 6 days a week and accepting 5 when life interferes with a day is something I can probably maintain.

You know what also interferes with a post? A frickin' power outage. I went home for lunch and intended to finish up this post with a few screenshots. Not five minutes after I walked in the door, I heard a bang in the distance and the power went out. It's still out now, so I guess I'll use images from the Internet for now and consider replacing them with my own this evening. Assuming I have power then.

Fallout: New Vegas continues to monopolize my gaming time. It's interesting how Obsidian retuned things to make the game more difficult. Fallout 3, once you understood the game, really wasn't a difficult game at all. Encounters at higher levels mostly were just big bags of hit points that took forever to wear down while Dogmeat tanked for me. Part of this was due to how quickly you would find high quality weapons and armor. I'm level 12 in New Vegas and I've only recently gotten hold of some reinforced leather armor; by this point in Fallout 3 I had a unique set of combat armor.

New Vegas also has made perks more valuable by reducing how often you get them. In Fallout 3 you get one every level so you can get all the really important ones and still have room to pick up a bunch of extras. New Vegas gives you one every other level, so you have to pick and choose. The very best perks were also rebalanced to not be so overpowering (looking at you Grim Reaper's Sprint). In Fallout 3 I would have picked up Intense Training multiple times by level 12; in New Vegas I just chose it for the first time to bump my Luck to 6.

I've still yet to run into any Brotherhood of Steel, but I did meet my first representative of the Followers of the Apocalypse last night when I took on the job of getting an old solar power plant up and running. It's good to see the Followers still around and holding to their ideals of restoring knowledge and technology for the good of all. It means there's at least one faction I can wholeheartedly support.

I chose not to use the plant to power a space based laser cannon. Maybe next playthrough.

I've been a fan of the Fallout series pretty much from the beginning. I defeated the Master back in the day, took down President Richardson and the Enclave, and restored water to the Capital Wasteland. Despite my initial reservations about the change from isometric to first-person gameplay, Fallout 3 became one of my evergreen games that I tend to go back to over and over. So it's kind of strange that I've not played Fallout: New Vegas until now.

Part of the reason, I think, is my tendency to want to do things in order. It's the same thing that kept me from ever playing Oblivion because I hadn't played the previous two Elder Scrolls games. In this case there were still things in Fallout 3 I hadn't done, particularly in the north part of the Capital Wasteland, and DLC that I haven't touched at all. Despite that I decided that, especially with Fallout 4 on the way, it was time to head back west and see what the Vegas area is like.

Fallout: Now with giant dinosaurs.

In a lot of ways the changes from Fallout 3 to New Vegas remind me of the move from Fallout to Fallout 2. For example New Vegas uses a combination karma and reputation system much like Fallout 2 did. Now I have to consider my relationship with multiple settlements and factions in addition to my overall good or evil level. So far I've met the Powder Gangers (they hate me so much now), NCR (we're pals), and the Legion (oh my god these guys are awful). I know the Brotherhood of Steel is active in the area as well, and it doesn't sound like they and the NCR get on too well. It also sounds like they're the old school insular jackasses I remember from the old days rather than the happy shiny DC Brotherhood.

I am trusting this robot less and less as the game proceeds.

Increased complexity seems to be a recurring thing in New Vegas. Multiple types of ammo for each weapon instead of just one each, masses of crafting recipes for food, equipment and more instead of just a few weapon schematics. It was a little overwhelming at first. I still haven't really made use of any special ammunition, though I imagine it'll be pretty useful against stronger and heavily armored foes.

I'm also definitely beginning to get the feeling that this is the true sequel to the previous Fallout games. I've begun encountering nightkin super mutants, and have heard references to the Master from the original game. I'm pretty sure I've met the daughter of one of my companions from Fallout 2 as well. She certainly drinks like him.

Overall, about ten or so hours in I'm greatly enjoying New Vegas. Now if you'll excuse me there are some ghouls who want my help flying to the moon. I just want them to not be here, so I am on board with this plan.