Fallout: New Vegas

[kali o.]

Currently playing with Veronica, since I wanted to get into those bunkers. Awfully funny watching her beat the shit out of enemies with her power fist, but she can't soak up a lot of damage. Currently in Vault 3, and she tends to run into a group of enemies a lot and gets herself killed before I can start shotgunning/headshotting them.

Spoiler: show

I actually liked getting into the Bunkers without Veronica more. The sequence is pretty awesome and actually pretty tough to play out favorably for the BoS -- since as a good guy you probably won't kill the NCR guy (but maybe there is a sneaky/diplomatic method) and as a bad guy you are probably ready to skull fuck some BoS for the slave collar they stick on you.

[SineSwiper]

Bunker stuff...

Spoiler: show

I've read that you can convince the NCR guy to leave, but you can't mention BoS. Otherwise, the BoS will storm the location immediately. (Seems like they have the place bugged.)

However, I've never seen this NCR guy, so I guess I have to trigger a quest to get him to appear. I was half-tempted to crack open the lock, but I had no idea what would happen, and I didn't have the lockpick skill yet. That's when I explored around and find Veronica, who mentioned she was in a bunker, and figured she could let me in.

[Shrinweck]

The NCR ranger is only around if you start the quest which only begins if you don't have Veronica with you when you first get there. Also there's no lockpicking required to get into the bunker, even without Veronica. There are other bunkers around the actual bunker, but lockpicking into those doesn't get you anywhere. There's ammo if you kind of crouch and jump around but the ones you lockpick your way into are all collapsed ruins.

[Flip]

I miss Cass as a companion. I have the dumb dog right now and he gets lit on fire everytime i shoot since he is melee. I'm using an incinerator i grabbed from killing a nightkin and it kicked but when i was able to light enemies on fire and have Cass pick them off with ehr shotgun. I need another ranged companion.

[SineSwiper]

The NCR ranger is only around if you start the quest which only begins if you don't have Veronica with you when you first get there. Also there's no lockpicking required to get into the bunker, even without Veronica. There are other bunkers around the actual bunker, but lockpicking into those doesn't get you anywhere. There's ammo if you kind of crouch and jump around but the ones you lockpick your way into are all collapsed ruins.

Yeah, I've found that out one by one. All of them go to collapsed ruins, except for the right bunker. But, that one had a lockpick of 100, so it seems like you can lockpick your way in.

[Shrinweck]

You can but you don't have to and going in there uninvited is probably a great way to get shot by the Brotherhood. Killing everyone in the bunker isn't as hard as you'd think though haha.

[Flip]

Finished the game. (Spoilers on my choices)

Spoiler: show

It took me around 25 hours, which surprised me in both how many hours i put in and how much there was still left to do, if i wanted. I dont think ive sank this amount of time into a game in a while. I was only level 19 before i decided to finish up as Mr. Houses lackey. For this first play through, i let me myself choose what i thought would be right and i honestly think House has the best vision for New Vegas. The legion seems crazy and the NCR a bunch of military bullies... I was tempted to do the route that put vegas under my control, but i believed in Mr. House, haha. My character had his energy weapons up to 100 while speech and science were 80 (i used magezines for the extra 20 if needed. 20 because of some perk i picked that would give me double magezine bonuses). Lockpick was pretty high, too.

All in all i liked my build and the ending to the route i chose. Although, i was never able to find really cool energy weapons... I never found a sniper equivalent and i bought a bunch of laser gatling mods, but never ended up finding the laser gatling... In the end i was using a heavy incinerator and a laser rifle with scope and +damage mods. Even still, things are frigging tough to kill in this game. If not for companions and/or the securibots at the end, i wouldnt have been able to do crap.

I did make appropriate saves so that i can load up and choose a different ending path, but i think instead i'll make a melee or explosives character and start from the beginning. This, again, will be the first game i'll replay in a long time, too! Good stuff.

[Shrinweck]

Top tier energy weapons are tough to find and if you only played to level 19 you wouldn't have seen much of them. The best place I've found to find them is the

Spoiler: show

Brotherhood of Steel bunker, either by making friends or slaughtering them and looting their corpses. There's also a unique one at the REPCONN HQ that either requires some exploration or 100 science or lockpick to get at. There's also a really powerful energy weapon in the armory of Vault 34. If you play wacky wasteland there's some alien event at a specific location where you can get an alien blaster of some kind and I hear that shit is great.

There is no real equivalent to something as powerful as, say, the sniper rifle, though :(

[kali o.]

There is no real equivalent to something as powerful as, say, the sniper rifle, though

Sure there is. Don't take the ww perk and go to the same spot you'd find the blaster. You'll find a custom gauss rifle (YCS). Or get high enough level and just get a regular gauss rifle.

I've played a number of characters now -- I always run straight to an uber weapon right at level 1ish. Rat then Gobi for guns (or That Gun for one handed). Oh Baby for melee. Pushy for unarmed. Blaster or YCS or whatever that named plasma is in the REPCONN building.

I'd like to do a playthough with just boxing wraps and spears...might be a nice change.

[Shrinweck]

Oh, right, the gauss rifle. That slow firing annoying thing. Can't stand it. Funnily enough my favorite weapon in Fallout 2.

My favorite gun to go for as quickly as possible is That Machine from the Contreras Fort McCarran line. It's much more sniping with those iron sights than the gobe scope.

Edit: Just got Pushy on my new unarmed character... Jesus lakelurks at level 12 got me to take med-x for the first time. I guess that's what I get for only wearing light armor for the 10% movement perk.

The game is a million times more fun for me since the patch got released for the PC today. The directx fix saved my ass. The game would become impossibly choppy if there were 5+ enemies on screen.

[SineSwiper]

For once, I've been ditching Energy Weapons in favor of Guns and Explosives (though I'm using the latter less and less). I wanted to play an evil Unarmed/Melee character, but I ended up playing the good guy again, since there's a lot of good story with playing good. I'd like to play multiple characters, but I just can't do it with this game. I'm already about 40-50 hours in, and not even halfway through the story. I'm still exploring vaults and doing quests.

[Shrinweck]

Thought I'd leave the fact that the original Fallout is free at GOG.com for the next couple days. Because of the nature of how they provide content, it basically belongs to you for the foreseeable future once you add it to your account, for as long as GOG.com exists. Or longer, if you hold onto the exe.

[SineSwiper]

Funny, my dad is still having a blast with this game. He started a new character already. He was avoiding the Vaults (he likes the outside stuff), but that's my favorite part. I thought the Vaults were kinda lacking in this game, but Vault 11 is definitely the best one in NV.

[Shrinweck]

I liked exploring the vaults a lot, as well and agree that they were unfortunately one of the weaker points in the game. Agree that 11 is the best but 19 and 21 had really great concepts, too

Spoiler: show

I really liked their concepts of testing the manipulation of human aggression and while 21 was basically a waste of time to physically explore, the history involved seemed really neat. Well, what there was of the history.

. The actual exploration of all the vaults was kind of lacking as they rarely did anything even remotely interesting with the gameplay involving them. Hell, the only vault that wasn't just clearing the place, reading some stuff, and using a couple computers to change something was Vault 34 and the only addition there was radiation.

I'm looking forward to Wasteland 2 and definitely shot nXile/Obsidian $30 for a future copy of it in (hopefully) October 2013 via their Kickstartr page.