Fallout: New Vegas - Impressions and stuff

[ROTC1983]

Is the Collector's edition worth it?

[Turtle]

Okay, so I've been going through with a Good Natured, the trait that makes you more accurate but a slower shot, Speech, Science, and Energy Weapons based character (Int and Cha at 8 starting) and early on I'm kinda regretting it.

Because the way the new Damage Resistance (reduction?) works, a lot of the fast firing, accurate, but lower damage laser weapons just aren't cutting it at times, doing piddly amounts of damage to people who look like they're in basic leather, even with headshots, but then ends up shredding certain enemies other times. Thankfully, now I have two companions with me that take up the slack, and I've gotten myself a plasma pistol. I'm thinking next time I go with firearms first and max out guns, then put points into energy weapons.

Also, anyone noticing a distinctly more linear progression? It's basically clockwise around the map to avoid the deathclaws on your way into new vegas. I suppose there's plenty more things to do after you hit the strip though. Right now I'm trying to get into Vegas as soon as possible to get access to better gear, then come back to mop up other quest areas.

Oh and Felicia Day's character is pretty awesome. However, I'm not sure how to advance the story for the companion characters in general, but man am I glad to see companions back in Fallout. I somehow managed to get another companion's story rolling just a tiny bit forward, I guess it may be more situational.

edit: Oh and a useful tip, those Ammo Boxes of various types you can buy under the Misc section of stores have a weird way to handling them to actually make use of them. You have to right click to drop them, then pick it up off the ground. Usually these boxes contain the "Bulk" ammo type, which is cheaper, but less powerful, but also causes less wear.

[The Grue]

I haven't seen anything weird with it yet.

Whenever you run into something, it puts a Valut Boy head with swirly eyes up in the upper left screen and plays some weird music.  I have run into two things so far:

Spoiler for Hiden:

One is a fridge with a skeleton and fedora hat in it...reference to Indiana Jones 4.  The other, I had to look up, and is a reference to some failed game people on Something Awful were creating called Zybourne clock.  It is up on a hill and has 5 ace playing cards and 4 orange balls.

[CeeKay]

I haven't seen anything weird with it yet.

Whenever you run into something, it puts a Valut Boy head with swirly eyes up in the upper left screen and plays some weird music.  I have run into two things so far:

Spoiler for Hiden:

One is a fridge with a skeleton and fedora hat in it...reference to Indiana Jones 4.  The other, I had to look up, and is a reference to some failed game people on Something Awful were creating called Zybourne clock.  It is up on a hill and has 5 ace playing cards and 4 orange balls.

I found the second one, but didn't notice anything popping up.  perhaps it was because I was busy killing Geckos.

[Silky]

I had a couple of lockups in 2 hours of play last night; that doesn't bode well for me going forward.  I am also getting weird artifacts popping in and out of the game.  My main became invisible except for her head during a fight with the Powder gang.  All of my drivers are updated to the latest level.  It's fun when it doesn't crash or otherwise break immersion.  If anyone has similar hardware you may want to wait a bit for a patch.

Clevo W870CU/Sager NP8760
Intel i7 640M
Nvidia 460M 1.5 G
8 GB RAM
Windows 7

[CeeKay]

I haven't had any issues yet, but I'm not very far as I'm trying to finish up Darkstar One before getting to engrossed (of course Fable 3 is due out in 6 days so it could be awhile).  I'm running on a:

i7 [email protected] GHZ
Windows 7
6 GB RAM
ATI 5870x2


I haven't even noticed the funky face shadows Oblivion/Fallout 3 had (where the shadows edges tended to creep around); I think I need to reinstall them and see if it's different now that I have ATI cards.

[CeeKay]

you know, I'm wondering if the strategy guide lists what you get for hardcore mode.  I've already been forgetting about the required eating/sleeping/drinking bit- I sold off all my food and water last night without even thinking about it.

[Chaz]

You guys make me feel bad that I cancelled my preorder for the PC CE last week.  I wound up deciding that the extras weren't worth the extra cash to me.  I instead used the $20 in gift certificates to pick up the regular edition last night for $30.

[Knightshade Dragon]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but it's the stuff of nightmares.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKIkw3LIoQ

Seriously...that's quite the bug right off the bat!

[CeeKay]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but it's the stuff of nightmares.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKIkw3LIoQ

Seriously...that's quite the bug right off the bat!

damn.. I didn't realize you could catch acid trips and put them on youtube 

[Silky]

I think I need to reinstall them and see if it's different now that I have ATI cards.

From reading various forums it appears the problems are with the latest Fermi based NVIDIA cards (460, 470, etc).  I don't know if Obsidian or NVIDIA needs to patch something in but I hope for a quick resolution. 

[Reemul]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but it's the stuff of nightmares.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKIkw3LIoQ

Seriously...that's quite the bug right off the bat!

Hehe scared the crap out of my wife when she saw it.

[Gratch]

Played for a couple hours, only run into one bug (completely unresponsive AI on a baddie.  He just stood there while I filled him full of bullets).  Haven't had any crashes, but the frame rate is wildly inconsistent.  My rig (AMD Phenom X6 @ 2.6, 8GB RAM, GF GTS 250 1GB, Win 7 64) defaulted to the highest "ultra" settings.  Frame rate will be silky smooth half the time, then suddenly drop to single digits for no apparent reason.  Going to bump down some of the settings a bit and see if that helps at all.

Game is MOTS from FO3, for better and worse.  Many of the same annoyances, such as bullets flying from random directions, and I can't for the life of me figure out who is shooting at me and from where.  I know a higher perception stat will help that as I get further into the game, but it's annoying as hell right now.  Quest markers and journal entries also seem to be very wonky.  Talked to a guy who told me to see the commander by the tent, but there's no map marker for it, nor does anything about it appear in the journal.  Strange.

[Turtle]

Yeah, I noticed that weirdness with quests too.

For some reason, they use the Misc Notes section of pipboy for a lot of things including a lot of things that should be in the quest section with map markers.

[Gratch]

Scratch that...just a lockup and a random CTD in the space of 20 minutes.  Also saw a one NPC get stuck on environment object, and another that was stuck in a wall.  Need a can of Raid for these bugs.

[Glycerine]

Played for a couple hours, only run into one bug (completely unresponsive AI on a baddie.  He just stood there while I filled him full of bullets).  Haven't had any crashes, but the frame rate is wildly inconsistent.  My rig (AMD Phenom X6 @ 2.6, 8GB RAM, GF GTS 250 1GB, Win 7 64) defaulted to the highest "ultra" settings.  Frame rate will be silky smooth half the time, then suddenly drop to single digits for no apparent reason.  Going to bump down some of the settings a bit and see if that helps at all.

I was having the same problem during one particular fight where lots of people were involved.  The frame rate had been smooth, then as soon as the fighting started it dropped like a rock.  I ended up turning off anti aliasing, which has helped reduce the stutter I was getting while moving the mouse to look hard in one direction or another.  I don't have a save from before, so I'm not sure if it would have helped or not.

Good impressions overall, after about 3-4 hours.  No crashes, one issue with crafting where I had to exit and go back in, other than it's been a pretty smooth ride so far.  Went with pretty much the same character type as before; bumped up Perception, Agility, Intelligence, & Luck to start.  I can't remember what traits I took; Good Natured was one, not sure about the other.  I tagged Guns, Security, and Science skills to start.  The first couple levels I focused on bumping up Repair, since it was so useful in the last game.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Just finished off the Powder Gang, with Ringo surviving to hand over a nice reward.  The only person I didn't manage to convince to help was Easy Pete, didn't have the explosives skill to convince him I could use it.  Apparently my explanation of "What's so hard?  You just light it and throw!" didn't instill any confidence.  Luckily they weren't difficult at all, save for the massive drop in frame rate I mentioned above.  Every time they'd get close, it would drop like a stone.  I'm amazed I made it through, as aiming was almost impossible.

[CeeKay]

Yeah, I couldn't get Pete to help with the Power Rangers- uh, Powder Gangers either. That robot said he'd help but didn't show up either. I kept looking for a magazine to help raise my explosives but had no luck; it seems like there were ones around to help with other skills needed to get everyone together, just none for Pete.

Some of the bugs I've read about are surprising in the fact that it makes it look like Bethesda didn't do any QA. The quests not showing up right, people are having trouble with quicksaves disappearing on exit and the graphical issues for nvidia are just a few.  You'd think after Alpha Protocl the publisher would be more intensive with the QA part.

And yes jersoc, we know obsidian sucks.

[Gratch]

While the first couple hours were good, but the last hour has been a complete mess:

-  Right in the middle of a firefight, I suddenly jumped into 3rd person view for no apparent reason, and none of the controls responded.  Couldn't move, couldn't bring up Pipboy, couldn't shoot, nada.  The game wasn't locked (I was still taking a plethora of bullets to the face), but I couldn't do anything.

-  Had VATS problems twice.  Once, it entered VATS mode but wouldn't let me choose anything.  The second time, it took about 30 seconds before any of the targeting options became available.

-  Two baddies in a room, I filled one full of holes, and the other one (who was about 2 feet away) just stood their and looked at me.

-  Got stuck on a chair and had to restart because I couldn't move.

-  Putting on a Powder Ganger outfit causes about half the baddies to ignore me, while the other half still shoot me on sight.

-  Completed a quest step and immediately saved.  CTD about 10 minutes later, and when I rebooted, the quest was gone and the NPC (who had previously run away once I had talked to him) was suddenly back.  Had to talk to him again to get the quest a second time.

-  I get good karma for killing a Powder Ganger, but bad karma for taking the coffee mug off their desk?  WTF?     (doubt that's a bug...just a strange game mechanic)

Might wait to play this one any more until it gets a patch...it's frustratingly bad as is.

[Sarkus]

So far I've had the game crash once, but recovering from that was pretty easy.   I'm ignoring autosaves and quicksaves, though, and just doing regular saves periodically.  I turned off the Steam cloud save system per various suggestions and after that my saves started numbering from an earlier point, but seem fine otherwise.  No wonkiness in the game or anything, though I do see some framerate issues.  But that was to be expected given my high resolution and decent at best video card.

I'm finally starting to get some nice gear.  And even though I'm not on hardcore mode, the levelling is a lot slower and things like stimpaks provide less of a boost so it feels like a harder game by default.

[CeeKay]

first patch is out.  it's about 250 megs.

Contents of Update:
This update fixes quest and scripting issues

[MonkeyFinger]

I'm running on a:

i7 [email protected] GHZ
Windows 7
6 GB RAM
ATI 5870x2

Holy crap, how do you keep that puppy cool? 

[CeeKay]

I'm running on a:

i7 [email protected] GHZ
Windows 7
6 GB RAM
ATI 5870x2

Holy crap, how do you keep that puppy cool? 

lee-khwa-heed kny-troha-gen

[frost]

While the first couple hours were good, but the last hour has been a complete mess:


-  Putting on a Powder Ganger outfit causes about half the baddies to ignore me, while the other half still shoot me on sight.

-  Completed a quest step and immediately saved.  CTD about 10 minutes later, and when I rebooted, the quest was gone and the NPC (who had previously run away once I had talked to him) was suddenly back.  Had to talk to him again to get the quest a second time.

I think it tells you that when you wear a disguise like the power ganger outfit, you'll fool some people but won't fool certain others like security guards for their gang, which probably explains that situation.  The quick save is a known bug.  I've found that quick saves work ok, but don't exit out of your game without doing a full regular save.  I suppose if you're having crashing issues, just do regular saves until a patch fixes the problems.

[ROTC1983]

I think I need to reinstall them and see if it's different now that I have ATI cards.

From reading various forums it appears the problems are with the latest Fermi based NVIDIA cards (460, 470, etc).  I don't know if Obsidian or NVIDIA needs to patch something in but I hope for a quick resolution. 

Yup, I have issues with my 460GTX...ugh

[MonkeyFinger]

I think I need to reinstall them and see if it's different now that I have ATI cards.

From reading various forums it appears the problems are with the latest Fermi based NVIDIA cards (460, 470, etc).  I don't know if Obsidian or NVIDIA needs to patch something in but I hope for a quick resolution. 

Yup, I have issues with my 460GTX...ugh

Farg, my PC LE shows up tomorrow and I have a new rig with two 460GTX cards in SLI waiting for it. 

[Turtle]

This might actually be one of the few Obsidian games that gets patched up to full stability.

[ROTC1983]

This might actually be one of the few Obsidian games that gets patched up to full stability.

Whoa, whoa...stop the presses   I really hope they iron out the rough edges!

[Silky]

I think I need to reinstall them and see if it's different now that I have ATI cards.

From reading various forums it appears the problems are with the latest Fermi based NVIDIA cards (460, 470, etc).  I don't know if Obsidian or NVIDIA needs to patch something in but I hope for a quick resolution. 

Yup, I have issues with my 460GTX...ugh

Farg, my PC LE shows up tomorrow and I have a new rig with two 460GTX cards in SLI waiting for it. 

Disabling HDR stopped the strobing problem I was having.  If anyone finds any other tips or tricks to use with these cards please share.

[Blackadar]

I decided to bite the bullet and picked this up yesterday. I just got done with the first town and toyed around with killing a gang close by, but I won't keep that save...I'll revert to the one when I left town.

1. Ok, it's Oblivion/Fallout again. Same engine, same textures, same decay, etc. So don't expect anything different. As such, it feels like an expansion rather than a new game. It's been probably two years since I've played FO3 and the gameworld felt instantly familiar. I'm hoping that changes a bit as I explore. Usually the strength of an Obsidian game is in the world itself, so I'm figuring it will feel significantly different.

2. Not sure everything should have decayed as much since (OMG, huge spoiler ahead if you've not read anything at all about the game and since I'm a shitbag I don't care) that area wasn't nuked much. For example, the roads show the same level of decay. I'm not quite sure why the roads would be as broken as the ones in DC. It's a small thing and maybe it's the way things would have normally deteriorated. But in an arid climate that suffered only "light" damage, it just doesn't look quite right to me.

3. I like the sky better and seeing a bit of neon is a welcome relief. The occasional bright color is great after the drab FO3 world. That'll help me want stay in the game world a bit more.

4. Gosh, it's good to kill geckos again. I imagine every little one as the GEICO gecko...it makes killing them even more fun.

5. Karma system seems to be a bit odd. I was killing guys who gave me positive karma, but looting their base gave me negative karma points. That doesn't make any sense to me at all and it makes me feel like I'm following some very arbitrary rules in role-playing a good guy (it's a stretch, I know).

6. Had only one bug, but it was a total lockup of the game running from the first town. Not happy about that. Haven't tried to reload since I stopped playing there and went to bed.

7. Seems to be a lot of stuff packed into the game - I wonder if it's too much. In FO3, you could wander for a while before you'd come across something important. In the very, very early part of this game, you can see 3 or 4 potentially interesting destinations just from the first town. I'm hoping that gets toned down a bit, especially since the West would have more wide-open spaces and therefore things should be further apart and not closer together.

8. I liked the intro sequence. Felt almost Ultima-ish to me with the questions. Nicely done...and I didn't get the 360 degree head rotation bug either.

I'm playing a very intelligent (10 INT) character with good gun, medical, repair, dialog and science skills. I also picked up the lady-killer trait for more dialog options. That should keep most of the conversation paths open. I also picked up Good Natured and Wild Wasteland. I'm not playing in hardcore mode yet. I figure I'll save that for play-through #2 if the game is good - and by playing an evil brute, that should offer a completely different experience. That is, if it's worth playing twice.

[Gratch]

2. Not sure everything should have decayed as much since (OMG, huge spoiler ahead if you've not read anything at all about the game and since I'm a shitbag I don't care) that area wasn't nuked much. For example, the roads show the same level of decay. I'm not quite sure why the roads would be as broken as the ones in DC. It's a small thing and maybe it's the way things would have normally deteriorated. But in an arid climate that suffered only "light" damage, it just doesn't look quite right to me.

I thought about this as well.  Makes sense for the nuked area in the original game, but not nearly as much here.

[vizionblind]

don't know if this has been posted yet, but it helps big time apparently...

FROM IGN POSTER

All I can say is wow.

I was running pretty smooth most of the time but there were times when I would go from 60 FPS to 30 and bounce around in between.

Lowest I got was one area that was always at 25 FPS...Well fellas after this fix that 25 FPS section is stuck on 60!

First download this file:

d3d9.dll

Just place that file in your C: ---> Program Files (86) ---> Steam ---> SteamApps ---> Common ---> Fallout New Vegas Folder.

Start the game and if it worked it will go through your hardware/video settings again. (BTW they may not be accurate) so just put everything on High/Ultra and enjoy!



Here is some additional info from an old friend who used to visit this board...We will call him Mr. L

What the d3d9.dll is doing is forcing the game to forget about DX10/11 and just strictly focus on dx9

The only possible problem (and I have only seen 2 mention it) is if you are stuck in a infinite splash screen loop, to just use your own d3d9.dll instead of the one provided on the bethesda page. Again this is rare as just about everyone has said this has worked for them.

[CeeKay]

2. Not sure everything should have decayed as much since (OMG, huge spoiler ahead if you've not read anything at all about the game and since I'm a shitbag I don't care) that area wasn't nuked much. For example, the roads show the same level of decay. I'm not quite sure why the roads would be as broken as the ones in DC. It's a small thing and maybe it's the way things would have normally deteriorated. But in an arid climate that suffered only "light" damage, it just doesn't look quite right to me.

I thought about this as well.  Makes sense for the nuked area in the original game, but not nearly as much here.

I really hadn't though much about the roads, they just seemed like poorly maintained ones that no one has worked on for 200 years or so.

[CeeKay]

I did notice they changed the hacking game a bit.  IIRC in FO3 whenever you selected a word it got blanked out, so if you had a bunch of chances you wouldn't accidentally pick the same word because after a certain point they fell off the list of words picked that was on the right hand of the screen.  now it keeps the word on the hacking screen.  it's a small annoyance but it's odd that they would make a change like that.

[hepcat]

don't know if this has been posted yet, but it helps big time apparently...

FROM IGN POSTER

All I can say is wow.

I was running pretty smooth most of the time but there were times when I would go from 60 FPS to 30 and bounce around in between.

Lowest I got was one area that was always at 25 FPS...Well fellas after this fix that 25 FPS section is stuck on 60!

d3d9.dll instead of the one provided on the bethesda page. Again this is rare as just about everyone has said this has worked for them.

does Fallout New Vegas even use Directx 10 or 11? 

[CeeKay]

does Fallout New Vegas even use Directx 10 or 11? 

not that I've heard of.

[hepcat]

so i may get a boost in frame rates and still not lose any graphical enhancement by bypassing the dx10 wrapper and forcing it to use the dx9?

sign me up!  it's not like i'm getting horrible rates now, but it does dip when there's npc's involved.

[The Grue]

I did notice they changed the hacking game a bit.  IIRC in FO3 whenever you selected a word it got blanked out, so if you had a bunch of chances you wouldn't accidentally pick the same word because after a certain point they fell off the list of words picked that was on the right hand of the screen.  now it keeps the word on the hacking screen.  it's a small annoyance but it's odd that they would make a change like that.

Pretty sure they kept the words up there in Fallout 3 as well (in fact, just to be sure, I looked for a video on YouTube of hacking in F3 and they do keep it there).  They write the words you have chosen over on the right side of the screen, so it doesn't matter that they don't remove them.

[CeeKay]

I did notice they changed the hacking game a bit.  IIRC in FO3 whenever you selected a word it got blanked out, so if you had a bunch of chances you wouldn't accidentally pick the same word because after a certain point they fell off the list of words picked that was on the right hand of the screen.  now it keeps the word on the hacking screen.  it's a small annoyance but it's odd that they would make a change like that.

Pretty sure they kept the words up there in Fallout 3 as well (in fact, just to be sure, I looked for a video on YouTube of hacking in F3 and they do keep it there).  They write the words you have chosen over on the right side of the screen, so it doesn't matter that they don't remove them.

huh, I could have sworn they blanked out the word.  guess I was misremembering.

[Soulchilde]

5. Karma system seems to be a bit odd. I was killing guys who gave me positive karma, but looting their base gave me negative karma points. That doesn't make any sense to me at all and it makes me feel like I'm following some very arbitrary rules in role-playing a good guy (it's a stretch, I know).

This one has me very annoyed especially if I am infamous with that faction.  I shouldn't be dinged with negative karma if I am looting their base

[Daehawk]

Just made my guy and stepped outside the doc's home.

Thoughts:

Fallout 3 and now New Vefas have the butt ugliest character designs I've seen. Yuck. I hope a mod is made soon so i can tweak my looks.

It's a new Fallout game. I'm glad to be back.

EDIT: OMG!! Why can't I remap certain keys? I'd like my mouse thumb to be reload and my middle mouse to be USE. Come on!!