Fallout X: Back after those messages

[factotum]

Thinking I'll do Nuka place first then Gulch then Kiddie then Safari, but not 100% sure order yet.

Hope you brought power armour or a hazmat suit if you intend to do Kiddie Kingdom, place is a pain for rads...

[Balmas]

Right. Let's start with the 'fix Bethesda's problems' mods for now.

Gonna add to this list, if that's alright. Schneekey has a good start.

* I'll note that NVSE has a new fork as of a few years ago. The original team lost interest in developing it, and now is being developed by a new team. Most recent release is xNVSE6, I believe.
* Johnny Guitar NVSE requires xNVSE6, and patches a few bugs that aren't caught by the other major bugfixes.
* LStewieAl's tweaks toes the line between Vanilla, Vanilla+, and full mods, if that makes sense. It's a list of like 150 optional changes that you can toggle on or off--some of them are bugfixes which you definitely want, some are optimizations that you might want, and some of them are rejigging of game calculations that you probably don't. This mod is pretty good at giving you only the vanilla and optimization things.
* FNV Mod Limit Fix is technically something you don't need at this point in your modding career, but it does no harm and it's helpful when you start branching out later. Due to a bug in the way the game loads plugins, there's a soft cap of 140 plugins before the game starts crashing, which means if you have a full load order you need to start merging plugins to make things work. This just removes the soft cap and enables you to safely load the full 512 plugins the game is technically capable of.

[Catullus64]

Hello, Fallout-knowers. I'm interested in playing the classic Fallout CRPGs - should I start with Fallout 1 or Fallout 2? I ask because these kinds of games often see massive improvements in polish and quality of life between their earliest installments.

Is Fallout 2's story a direct sequel to Fallout, or can they be played independently of one another and still be more or less understood?

[GloatingSwine]

Hello, Fallout-knowers. I'm interested in playing the classic Fallout CRPGs - should I start with Fallout 1 or Fallout 2? I ask because these kinds of games often see massive improvements in polish and quality of life between their earliest installments.

Is Fallout 2's story a direct sequel to Fallout, or can they be played independently of one another and still be more or less understood?

It's not a very direct sequel, but events and actions you take in the first game shaped the world of the second. (You play as a grandchild of the first game's protagonist).

[LibraryOgre]

It's not a very direct sequel, but events and actions you take in the first game shaped the world of the second. (You play as a grandchild of the first game's protagonist).

To add to this... the events shaped the world, but it's not like Mass Effect, where your actions from the first game are a direct influence on the game... you don't load your old save to make changes to the game as played.

I find FO1 to be fun to play on its own merits, but FO2 made some improvements. I also find FO2 to be a much more open game, which can also add to some confusion, IMO.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, for each of the possible Fallout 1 ending variations basically the one that most people were most likely to do was the canon one for Fallout 2, if it was relevant.

[Bavarian itP]

From The Nearly Ultimate Fallout Guide:

The main thing you will find in FO1 is there is less of everything. Of course, it should come as no surprise that the first game in the series would be smaller than the sequel. Less equipment choices, less quests, a smaller world map, less perks, less NPC control (but also less bugs). Having cut your teeth on FO2, you may sometimes feel a little restricted in FO1. Still, the gameplay and story are just as strong, and except for a few control (interface) issues that were improved for FO2, you are going to love FO1 just as much. One aspect in which FO1 is not smaller than FO2 is in it's overall level of kickass-ness.
”— Gimp00

It's probably better to start with 1, which is great and more straight-lined to get an introduction to the world and the interface, and then to move on to 2 and enjoy the bigger gameworld and the interface improvements.

[LibraryOgre]

From The Nearly Ultimate Fallout Guide:


It's probably better to start with 1, which is great and more straight-lined to get an introduction to the world and the interface, and then to move on to 2 and enjoy the bigger gameworld and the interface improvements.

Hard agree. Going to 1 after playing 2 will feel constrained; going from 1 to 2 feels liberating.

[Triaxx]

I tried 1 first never got anywhere and went on to 2. Never could get back into 1. Which is a shame to me.

[factotum]

I would start with 1. The interface and graphics are pretty much identical (the two games only came out a year apart, after all) and while 2 is definitely the superior game in terms of content, the gameplay is extremely similar, so you could almost treat it as one super-long game with a mysterious time jump in the middle. The only slightly annoying thing about 1 is the Sword of Damocles of the time limit on the water chip quest hanging over your head at the start, but fortunately said time limit is not too onerous and you'd have to be pretty unlucky to fail it. Doing so is an instant game over, though.

[Winthur]

Yeah, for each of the possible Fallout 1 ending variations basically the one that most people were most likely to do was the canon one for Fallout 2, if it was relevant.

Not quite - the Followers of the Apocalypse ending, which is considered canon, isn't available in original Fallout 1 due to a bug.

I would start with FO1. It's a really short game compared to most RPGs and you can 100% it (do all quests and content) with some metaknowledge in like 8 hours, with a blind playthrough not being much longer. The worldbuilding is a bit more mature if that's your thing, with Fallout 2 occasionally being cited as... having a little bit too much fun with itself? Also, I believe (but don't quote me on that) that most of Fallout 2's UI improvements like a slightly more user friendly bartering window are included in the Fallout Fixt patch for FO1.

I think Fallout 1 is also a safe bet because while both games are amazing, Fallout 2 drags a little on occasion in the mid-game, with a bunch of quest designs showing that they've pushed this game out in a year (New Reno and Broken Hills really like their fetch quests). Fallout 1 is generally a tight, focused experience.

I don't know anyone who has ever actually managed to fail the initial 150 day time limit considering how generous it is, and you can extend it by an additional 100 days, plus Fallout Fixt actually lets you, if I remember correctly, turn off all time limits if you so desire. I consider the 150 day limit an illusion of an actual time limit, more to give you a sense of purpose and urgency rather than actually being restrictive.

I vouch the idea that Fallout 1->2 will feel liberating: Fallout 2 gives you more interesting Big Guns, Unarmed and Melee Weapons in particular, rebalances the skill system a little bit, adds more perks and so on. For the most part, it is still the same silly game with Strength and Charisma being virtually useless, Agility, Intelligence and Luck being the best, Gifted being overpowered, Speech being excellent and Throwing being a meme.

[factotum]

I would start with FO1. It's a really short game compared to most RPGs and you can 100% it (do all quests and content) with some metaknowledge in like 8 hours, with a blind playthrough not being much longer.

I think 8 hours is a pretty massive underestimate unless you're actually speedrunning the game--given when the game came out I would have been horrendously disappointed if I only got 8 hours gameplay out of it! I would put it more like 20-30 hours for a reasonable first playthrough.

[Winthur]

I think 8 hours is a pretty massive underestimate unless you're actually speedrunning the game--given when the game came out I would have been horrendously disappointed if I only got 8 hours gameplay out of it! I would put it more like 20-30 hours for a reasonable first playthrough.

Hence I mentioned a completionist playthrough with metaknowledge - I just did a streamed let's play of the game for a friend who likes the series but can't get into the older games, taking additional time to read every holodisk and piece of dialogue out loud, doing every single quest, and the game was over in three 3-4 hour sessions. An actual speedrun of this game completes it in 5 minutes. A Max Quests speedrun was actually completed in under an hour.

20-30 for a blind first playthrough is much more likely, though, yes.

[Rynjin]

So I've been replaying a HEAVILY modded Fallout 4 and rewatching the old TFS Plays of the same game.

And I think I finally remember the perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with Fallout 4: Easy City Downs. The place with the raiders who are running a robot racetrack.

In any other game, you'd walk up to this place and have a few options. You could talk with the people here, bet on the races, maybe get up to shenanigans. You'd expect something similar in the Combat Zone, now I think of it.

Instead, you enter aggro range and everybody and everything in there starts trying to kill you. FOr absolutely no ****ing discernible reason whatsoever.

Just such massive wasted potential in even the smaller parts of this game.

[Triaxx]

Combat Zone was supposed to be like that, but ended up cut content for no good reason.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Okay, trying to get a new install of New Vegas working, and having some issues, probably with load order. Getting the old issue of MCM only showing Project Nevada stuff. However, I've got MCM below all the PNV stuff in the load order, so it *should* be overwriting. Is it UIO that is screwing up? Also, DarnUI just completely bolloxed the resolution of the UI pieces, which I'm pretty sure is another load order issue but I can't sort it out.

I'm using MO2 because I'm running Linux, so I can't use FOMM without jumping through way too many hoops. It's method of injection is... silly, but I have to live with it. This may be part of the problem.

[GloatingSwine]

So I've been replaying a HEAVILY modded Fallout 4 and rewatching the old TFS Plays of the same game.

And I think I finally remember the perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with Fallout 4: Easy City Downs. The place with the raiders who are running a robot racetrack.

It says something when mods add more Fallouty content than the main game.

I play with Sim Settlements 2 installed, and it has a fully voiced questline which feels like it respects the Fallout universe more than anything in Bethesda's part. (Get it installed, set your first recruitment beacon up at somewhere like Starlight Drive-in and get a new game in your game).

[veti]

So, I just finished playing through Dead Money, for the second time ever. (Except I now realise, first time I was in Hardcore mode, which made it unnecessarily painful.) This time I went to the Sierra Madre at level 8, before reaching New Vegas itself.

I couldn't do it. Not without cheating. I found myself consoling in ammo and stimpacks by the dozen. I tried just running away from the ghost people, but ended up running into traps instead - to say nothing of more ghost people, dead ends filled with toxic gas, and similar hazards. So I cheated. Kinda fitting for the DLC, anyway.

I know it's not one of the more popular DLCs, but I enjoyed it. The story of Dean, Vera and Sinclair is beautifully developed - it feels intimate and, strangely, believable. Christine and Elijah, likewise, are developed well. As for Dog - last time I got through the whole thing without ever invoking God, and succeeded in getting a happy ending for them - this time I had God most of the time, but had to put him down in the end. The puzzles in the Madre building were excellent: challenging, but beautifully understated and built organically into the setting.

I feel the setting, atmosphere and storylines shift this DLC from "post-apocalyptic" firmly into the genre of "horror". The story of the villa and the Ghost People cement that much, and the tragic story of the Madre itself reinforces it. There's no comic relief here, no humour to leaven the bleakness - the only NPCs who talk coherently at all, at least until near the end, are both monsters. I'm sad that I didn't get to see Christine again after the ending, but - no way I was going back into that mess. The only way I could manage to escape the Vault, in the end, was to go the long way round retracing my steps, which meant I only got a couple of gold bars out - but by then I'd cheerfully have forfeited all the loot in the place for the satisfaction of shafting Elijah, so I'm actually quite well satisfied with that.

Even with the cheating, I'm not going to pretend I did it with no deaths. Sometimes it seems the only way to find safe spots to stand is by trial and error, and you can't afford error. It would be nice for the game to give me a few more clues about the direction and location of speakers and radios. But even so, this DLC has risen markedly up my personal esteem rankings - overtaking Honest Hearts and possibly even Old World Blues, which is next on my hit list.

[Grim Portent]

I loved Dead Money, probably my favorite DLC for NV. Maybe my favorite part of the Fallout franchise even.

It's basically the only place where I felt genuinely challenged in a fun way. Even when using a character who'd been built up to ridiculous levels the gear limits, traps everywhere, the gas, the ghosts being a little tricky to kill, it all built up to something that was pleasantly difficult for almost any build I threw at it.

Plus the story is interesting, Dean Domino is the kind of guy you love to hate, Dog/God and Christine are both tragic, and Elijah is weirdly sympathetic to me given how little I actually like any of the NV factions.

[Triaxx]

For having such a tremendously powerful energy weapon, a melee or unarmed focused build tears through the DLC with almost offensive ease. Stealthy melee is even easier since thrown weapons in VATS count as melee and so do the bonus melee damage. Plus Sneak Attack. Ghost People pop like overripe fruit as you hurl spears.

[factotum]

The moment in Dead Money where you're in Vera's room in the casino and you can hear her last message to Sinclair repeating over and over again was genuinely creepy, and I don't normally get creeped out by games. Overall, the atmosphere is fantastic in the whole DLC, it definitely deserves more love than it normally gets.

[veti]

I love the way the three corners of that triangle - Dean, Vera, Sinclair - are presented at such sharply contrasting levels of contact. Dean is there in person, you get to speak to him at length. Vera is a few holograms and voice records, plus some third-party references, but even that is enough to convey quite an intimate portrait. Sinclair - well, he's just words on a screen, we neither hear his voice nor see his face at all, yet we hear so much about him from various others that he seems as real as any of them.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I find Dead Money to be the most annoying and least relevant DLC of those available in New Vegas. The entire 'difficulty' is artificial. It is simply a matter of an insta-gib mechanic that requires rote memorization to obviate (in knowing where the speakers are). The first time, you die simply because you don't know where it is. Once you figure it out, avoidance is trivial. Same thing with the Ghost People. Once you talk to Dog and explore his dialogue tree and learn how to permanently kill them, they cease to be a credible threat.

The intro is completely silly, as in it mechanically just doesn't function within the context of the actual game itself. Between actual gas masks and rebreathers to simply having cybernetic immunity to poison (if you went through Big MT before going to the BoS Bunker), the introductory scene just doesn't work. It suffers from the same problem The Pitt DLC from FO3 does. How does a dude in full BoS Paladin T61 Power Armor get taken down by random dudes with metal pipes? But even worse because there are several mechanical hard counters to the introductory sequence. Like, how can it work when you are literally immune to poison?

Jacking your gear for the DLC is arbitrary and not even particularly challenging since it hands you one of the most powerful weapons in the entire game to you right out of the gate and also provides you the single most defensive light armor in the entire game. The 'difficulty' is simply 'where is the speaker, can it be shot or do you need to take the long way around until you find the terminal to shut it down for a Skyrim-esque shortcut'. It is unimaginative, boring, tedious, and arbitrary.

The only reason to even bother going there is if you want the Holorifle. Otherwise, the entire DLC could be skipped, and the game would be better for having skipped it. And even then, that's a long and boring slog to claim your prize and returning back to the Mojave with it.

[veti]

I find Dead Money to be the most annoying and least relevant DLC of those available in New Vegas.

What should it be relevant to? It introduces you to (and gives you closure on) two characters who are known players in the recent history of the Mojave, and drops heavy foreshadowing about another.

The entire 'difficulty' is artificial. It is simply a matter of an insta-gib mechanic that requires rote memorization to obviate (in knowing where the speakers are). The first time, you die simply because you don't know where it is. Once you figure it out, avoidance is trivial.

Yep, once you're dead it's easy not to die again...

The trick would be not to die once. I haven't done it, but I don't doubt it's possible for a more skilful and level-headed player than me.

Same thing with the Ghost People. Once you talk to Dog and explore his dialogue tree and learn how to permanently kill them, they cease to be a credible threat.

If you're a melee fighter, maybe. If you're an energy weapon user, then the Holorifle is nice - until it runs out of ammo, which will happen long before you get to the casino, unless you have some other way through. If you're an old-fashioned gunslinger... you may find, as I did, that it takes a full six shots from the police revolver to put a ghost person down, if you can successfully put them all into the same limb. (If you crit, of course, it's easier, but you can't rely on that. Their perception is pretty good, they often appear in groups, and a revolver isn't particularly pinpoint accurate at any range above about 15 metres.)

The intro is completely silly, as in it mechanically just doesn't function within the context of the actual game itself. Between actual gas masks and rebreathers to simply having cybernetic immunity to poison (if you went through Big MT before going to the BoS Bunker), the introductory scene just doesn't work.

Consider who you're up against. Elijah is a tech wizard with upwards of 50 years of scholarship under his belt, who has himself been to the Big MT, where he probably bullied the Think Tank into telling him everything about everything before getting the same upgrades as you got, and probably others (such as one that enables him to walk right through force fields) himself. He's been studying this kind of stuff since before your parents were born. If you were to search the whole world for someone capable of circumventing all your immunities, you couldn't pick a better candidate.

Otherwise, the entire DLC could be skipped, and the game would be better for having skipped it. And even then, that's a long and boring slog to claim your prize and returning back to the Mojave with it.

Truly, it's a polarising thing. People who don't like it, really don't like it. That's okay, it'd be a dull old world if we were all the same.

[Anteros]

I will say that I find the idea of being immune to all poisons a bit silly anyway. The fact that someone could find a way to circumvent that modification is the least unrealistic thing about that DLC.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

If you're a melee fighter, maybe. If you're an energy weapon user, then the Holorifle is nice - until it runs out of ammo, which will happen long before you get to the casino, unless you have some other way through. If you're an old-fashioned gunslinger... you may find, as I did, that it takes a full six shots from the police revolver to put a ghost person down, if you can successfully put them all into the same limb. (If you crit, of course, it's easier, but you can't rely on that. Their perception is pretty good, they often appear in groups, and a revolver isn't particularly pinpoint accurate at any range above about 15 metres.)

With Vigilant Recycler, keeping the Holorifle fed becomes fairly trivial so long as you place your shots. Ghost People are a one-shot-one-kill enemy with even a modest investment in Energy Weapons skill. It's got a scope, so you can play 'stealth sniper, tech edition' extremely effectively.

It is something that AWOP-DM explicitly worked very hard to resolve in AWOP areas added in Dead Money. The Ghost People in the AWOP areas are *MUCH* more dangerous, and are an actually credible and serious threat.

Also, the only things you have to spend your microfusion cells on are the Ghost People. For everything else, pick up one of the hundreds of Police Revolvers and use it to shoot out radios/speakers/explosives. So you don't actually need to use it all that much. For being touted as such a threat, there are actually very few enemies which exist in the Sierra Madre and surrounding area. Also, the 'unlock token' for buying MF Cells from the vending machines is in the police station, which renders ammo scarcity entirely obsolete.

Consider who you're up against. Elijah is a tech wizard with upwards of 50 years of scholarship under his belt, who has himself been to the Big MT, where he probably bullied the Think Tank into telling him everything about everything before getting the same upgrades as you got, and probably others (such as one that enables him to walk right through force fields) himself. He's been studying this kind of stuff since before your parents were born. If you were to search the whole world for someone capable of circumventing all your immunities, you couldn't pick a better candidate.

Except... not? He's a classic Mad Scientist, sure, but he's not really all that *good* at being one. Let's go over his achievements, shall we?

First off, he manages to hack into the databases at HELIOS-ONE and figures out that ARCHIMEDES might be able to be used as a weapon. However, he isn't able to figure out how, and because he's a stubborn little zealot with a very warped worldview, he decides to sacrifice a non-trivial number of his already small supply of highly trained power armor wearing soldiers instead of give it up. He still fails at this as the NCR zerg rush his position. Mind you, the Courier, with zero investment in Science, can divert power to the weapon system trivially, so it really isn't that difficult. The big problem is that he didn't have the Euclid C-Finder to trigger it, but from the notes in the terminals at HELIOS, there's a way to manually target from the terminals. So he's able to hack pre-war systems, but he doesn't really know what to actually *do* with them.

At Big MT, he's very much ham-handed in his approach. When you enter the prison camp, you immediately see what his plan was. His primary focus was on the slave collars, which you see semi-functional within Dead Money (although still not fully functional, as the slave collars in Big MT don't randomly explode in the presence of radio signals, given that there's still a radio going on in the camp itself). He also tinkered with a couple of energy weapons, Elija's LAER and the experimental Big Gun found in his backup hideout. He also hacks the train subroutines and it is implied that he also hacked the memory core to remove what he was talking to them about from their memory, although that could've simply been part of Dr. Mobius's equally ham-handed approach at preventing the Think Tank from realizing that there's a world outside Big MT.

At no point does he show even the least bit of competence at trying to bypass cybernetic filtration of toxic substances. Nor does he have any demonstrated capability to mitigate or nullify the effects of a gas mask or rebreather. Competence in one field of science does not equate to competence in all of them. Elijah was mostly a competent hacker who thought he knew more than he actually did, and frequently others around him paid the cost for his incompetence. Hence why the BoS sent Christine after him.

And honestly, that's probably the only redeeming factor I see in Elijah's story arc, such as it is and what there is of it. He's not a hyper-competent super-genius. He's an egotistical fool who thinks he knows more than he actually does, playing around with things he thinks he comprehends when he truly doesn't, and his defeat comes directly not at the hands of the Courier, but his own incompetence (depending on how you play out the final scene in Dead Money, and trap him within his own heart's desire). It's... I wouldn't use the term 'endearing', but amusing certainly. You're not watching a master-level Xanatos villain who knows exactly what he is doing, you're seeing a Starscream villain bumbling around and screwing things up. Watching him nerd-rage at you from a terminal is at least worth a bowl of popcorn, even if the rest of the DLC can go perform a biological impossibility upon itself.

Dean Domino is actually a more competent villain for Dead Money than Elijah. He's got an actual plan, gets it to mostly work, dupes the Courier into actively helping him out despite not having any leverage, convinces Christine (you know, the BoS hyper-scary sniper-assassin whom he shoved into an Auto-Doc and made her at least temporarily mute) to also help, despite being directly responsible for her current condition, and generally IS close to approaching Xanatos (or at least Lex Luthor) levels of competence.

Truly, it's a polarising thing. People who don't like it, really don't like it. That's okay, it'd be a dull old world if we were all the same.

Agreed. Everyone has their own opinion. I have mine, you have yours, and we can freely agree to disagree. I propose points to show support for my side, you show points to support yours, and both are equally valid positions to hold. Besides, it would be boring if everyone agreed. There wouldn't be any reasoned debate, such as this discourse, if that were the case.

I think what gets me the most about Dead Money is that you're on a Plot Railroad the whole way through. Deviation from the Intended Path is not deemed acceptable. In an open-world game where the whole point is to go off exploring, the DLC actively punishes and prevents you from doing so. For that matter, the alleged tone of disempowerment is completely in dissonance with the general Shonen Anime Power Fantasy of Fallout New Vegas as a whole. It's like playing a side-scrolling action game and suddenly find a SHUMP section you have to get through.

The devs, I feel, were so focused on what you can't do that they neglected to see what you could have done under similar circumstances. For example, let's talk about the collars. If you want to implement the idea that radio signals interfere with Elijah's collars, instead of making it a dead-man switch of 'oops, my best asset just got his head exploded because he walked too close to a random radio', implement it into the actual plot. While in the presence of an active radio, Elijah can't snoop on you. So when Dean makes his pitch, you stop him, turn on the radio, and go 'okay, now that the radio is playing, he can't hear. Now, please continue discussing how to screw the old man over'. So you have to be careful which conversations you have where, because anything you say when you aren't in a radio signal's area is something that Elijah knows about. This turns the radios from a 'groundhog's day this until you figure it out' cheapshot to a refuge where you can plot your revenge on the smarmy bastard. And only by making sure Elijah doesn't overhear your conversations can your trap actually trigger properly, otherwise you end up in a combat scenario where you get into a shootout with him. It would have made for a more engaging plot.

But, like, that's just my opinion. I fully agree that this DLC is the most polarizing, those who enjoy it really enjoy it. Those who dislike it, *really* dislike it. However, even though I felt the DLC is poorly written and even worse executed tripe, I am still glad that others CAN find a measure of enjoyment out of it. The only way I can generally suffer through the DLC is to MST3K it. But I'm glad there are others who can actually enjoy the DLC.

[Rynjin]

It IS kind of hilarious that Elijah's grand modification to standard slave collars (which ALREADY explode based on distance parameters mind you) is to make them malfunction, and that's it, basically.

Dude doesn't even have a proper handle on how remote controls work as he futzes around with known and already highly refined tech to make it work (poorly).

He is the absolute peak of the Brotherhood's unfounded arrogance that only they should be the gatekeepers of technology.

[Mechalich]

One of the things I found frustrating about Dead Money is that there's nothing good in the Vault. The gold only provides caps, which your character does not need considering how stupidly abundant cap sources are and how little of worth is available to actually purchase in the game (ammo and repair kits, pretty much), and you can hardly carry any of it anyway.

When Dead Money was released the big reason to go there was the additional skill books, but that stopped mattering as additional DLC were released, which devalued it significantly.

[factotum]

One of the things I found frustrating about Dead Money is that there's nothing good in the Vault.

From what I recall, the thing in the Vault that's supposed to be good--and what Father Elijah is after--is *information*, not gold. He wants to use the technology of the Sierra Madre to take his revenge on the BoS. The problem is, due to the trap Sinclair left on it, attempting to access that information leaves you trapped in there for eternity. So, sure, from the player's perspective there's nothing materially good in the vault, but trapping Elijah in there never gets old!

[GloatingSwine]

One of the things I found frustrating about Dead Money is that there's nothing good in the Vault.

I mean yeah, that's the point.

The vault represents an obsession with the old world, something which is in general presented negatively in New Vegas and something which it reinforces repeatedly, look forward and Begin Again.