My current Overload build actually went Legion, just to see how it worked.

Caesar brings civilization. It isn't pleasant at first, not by a long shot - but he eliminates group distinctions to pay homage to the whole. Women are property and men are warriors, but business is fair and honest. Even so, the game itself calls the Legion the darkest of greys, as Ron Perlman said that even though I strove for good things, I sided with the Legion. Very clear deliniations there. All of the companions are the same way; only Cass and Raul will go into the camp without bitching about it IIRC. Boone starts shooting the moment you step foot on shore and Arcade doesn't stop bitching.

Regarding the slavery issue - Every society does have it ingame. The NCR has sharecroppers (planting their livelihood in irradiated ground near Vault 34) and conscripted troops, the Legion obviously has their slaves, and even House's casino families had indentured servants in Gomorrah who ended up sating particular tastes. If you lost at the tables, your ass belonged to the casino until you paid off the debt.

Actually, no. Ghouls are target practice for the Legion (You see a Ghoul in Legion armor? No. They might allow Super Mutants, if for nothing more than a respect of strength.), and it's outright stated in the Legion Camp that Homosexuality, if found, is punishable by Death. The only Homosexual Legionnaire we hear about is a Pedo, BTW. (Considering that he's the only Homosexual I can think of that's been branded as "EVILZ" Obsidian did pretty good on that angle. Bisexuals, on the other hand. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) ).

People assume the Homosexuality thing due to the military being all-male (We only see the army and supply train, as someone pointed out), and probably NCR Propaganda based on old writings about Rome.

Actually, thinking a bit more of it, I wouldn't actually blame the Followers Of The Apocalypse for spreading that rumor of the Legion being "Depraved Bisexuals" (Female Breeding Slaves, after all!) to try and further distance themselves from Caesar.


The Super Mutants are pretty much the only group that's trying to do something to end slavery (In this case, the Nightkin's addiction to StealthBoy Radiation), which makes me like Marcus that much more. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

But, even the DLC deals with Slavery in it's own ways. It's a bit issue in Fallout, after all.

Dead Money dealt with internal slavery to one's own greed (Dead Domino, Elijah, Dog), or a overly dedicated goal (Christine, God, and Elijah.).

Honest Hearts deals with slavery to Tradition (All the Tribal Groups, even the Mormons!), and you could even extend that to Joshua Graham's slavery to his own violent nature. I get the feeling that he got a taste for killing in the Legion and loved it a little too much. He himself confesses that it was a slippery slope he fell down. "Translation became training, training became commanding, commanding became leadership", or something similar.

Not exactly sure if those connections are intentional, but...

Well, wait for the next two DLCs, and we'll see.

Actually, faction fame is not really well-implimented in Vegas, which is a pity as if I've a reputation as a stone-cold avatar of death, I don't want kids running up to me and offering to show me their cubbyhouse, or whatever.

I want people to look up and pale, for mothers to gather children and bring them inside, protesting, "But what if they kills someone, momma? I wanna SEE!" " Stuff like that, where the various houses want to either hire you, or assassinate you, Yojimbo-style.

Instead all I get is the powdergangers taking potshots at me with 9mm pistols and a 10% discount on all the half-eaten yucca fruit I can buy at Goodsprings.

At least in the DC area, the Vault Dweller from 101 became a sort of legendary figure, something that did things that no one in the right mind would do. Yeah, I didn't get a discount, but I got 3 Dogs talking about me, and that stuff you can't buy for caps.
(Unless of course you killed 3 Dogs for his glasses and cap, then you got some REALLY passive-agressive messages from the technician.)

-Tir

ps: Please, tell me they're using a decent engine this time, something with cover and collision mechanics that don't mean I fall through the ground forever. And no more faces that track like the clowns in sideshow alley and more voice actors. And vehicles, and animals I can ride, hunt and butcher. It's post-apolyptica people, let's get our collective Lord Humongous on!

Surprised I haven't sent this before, but here's my take on what changes The Lone Wanderer made in my version of the game.

Vehicles are hard to do. I mean, we've had, what, ONE working vehicle in the entire series? And, let's face it, you'd look like an idiot riding a Brahmin into battle. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Fallout New Vegas uses the exact same engine as Fallout 3.

That said, there's some pretty well-done graphics upgrades done by modders. Improved world maps, body and face models, etc.:
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/

Be warned, there's some pretty disturbing graphics mods out there too.



-k

Actually Marcus did as much to turn me away from the legion as anyone, well him and Arcade.

Marcus points out that the legion follows Ceasar not necessarily Ceasar's ideas, as soon as he dies it's all going to fall apart.

During the final battle you can point out to the Lanious that once the legion takes the dam and New Vegas they'll have all the same problems NCR currently suffers from, overextension.

I also don't believe the sharecroopers are a good slave analog as talkign tot hem their life doesn't seem that bad. A closer example would be the caravaneers contracts that Crimson Caravan runs.

Further I think ceasar is more then just a darker shade of gray, he might have high ideals but in reality those are just his ideals. All his means to an end only matter if that end comes to fruition. Hell the man supresses medical technology so he cna hold an autodoc out for his most favored.

Finally there is the little issue of the legion only being successful as long as they can throw raw fantatics at their problems. If they see an interuption in meat the to the grinder they empire will fall apart quickly. Frankly i'm always amazed in the gamethey are shown as given the NCR such a hard time, the NCR has access to modern battlefield weaponry, the legion arms most of it's guys with machetes.

It's all Grey-and-Grey Morality (No TV Tropes link to protect the innocent.).

As for NCR having modern equipment, they are overextended in that, and suffer from a major logistics problem that was around until NATO/Warsaw Pact happened: Non-Standardization. Even the "Service Rifle" isn't in service with every soldier! Some have Caravan Shotguns, for **** sakes! Not exactly effective weapons for a major conflict. In addition, they're overextended in supplies of, well, everything. They stopped issuing armour to new troopers, in fact. And food is starting to become an issue, with even their primary staging area unable to get supplies of meat for the troops, and their forward base being out of everything (If you don't believe me, go to Camp Forlone Hope and check out what the Quartermaster has in his tent. Check the crates, the ammo boxes, everything...). I put this down to a combination of graft, problems with the logistics train (See Mojave Outpost, and their back-up of caravans), and topping out their production capabilities.

And the Legion does have firearms, just not the most "modern" equipment. Simple to use, "Grunt Dumb" type, Bolt-Action at best (Although they did bring out the A-Game stuff for the Second Battle Of Hoover Dam.). The "Guys with Machetes" are their front-line soldiers. AKA: Bullet sponges designated to use up the enemy supplies and energy while their more experienced soldiers come in with better gear (Both armour and weapons.). Quantity is a quality all it's own, in a way, and this uses quantity and quality in measured ways.

Another major issue is the cultural differences between the NCR and the Legion, the most important part being: Morale. Talk to NCR Troops, and all they want to do is go home, or only joined the military for College Money to be used at Vault City, or because the farm failed and someone had to go so there'd be one less mouth to feed. Talk to the Legionaries, and they'll talk smack to you because of their superiority complexes, and not one complaint about the food or supplies. Of course, we've also got a difference in standards of living going on, with NCR having come from a fairly recovered community built up of cities and towns, while the Legion is made up of former Tribals who were lucky to eat every day and could barely figure out how to make their old Break-Open Shotguns work (If they even had that much. Most didn't.). Hell, one of the Tribes described that was taken over by the Legion survived only because of Cyberdogs that trained their hunting dogs.

In the end, everyone who tries to take control of the Mojave (Including The Courier, if you so choose) suffers from the same problem, feeling they can tackle any issue that comes their way, just like Big Dick Johnson. Cass points this out best, despite her NCR leanings.

I guess what was telling for me is the NCR is loosing a slow simmering conflict outside of their borders due to graft, mismanagement, internal conflict, and good old fashioned incompetence. The legion by comparison is succeeding because it's leadership is competent and has started using more subtle tactics. But their the shark, as soon as they stop annexing new lands, as soon as they stop bringing in new recruits young enough for indoctrination they are done. The NCR by comparison could go all pear shaped in the Mohave and only really loose power generation and access to the strip.

All the legions succeses in the game that I saw basically came through the actions of their spies, searchlight, the infiltrator in Mccaran, using the fiends as a spoiler force etc.

To be honest NCR and vegas aligned factions seemed to do more damage to the NCR's cause then the legion ever did, and even then the legion is starting to show the cracks, their no female warriors policy is going to put them at a disadvantage in the long run, their lack of med tech will lead to horrific and preventable casualties after and stand up fight. Further their higher echelon troops seem to have their doubts in ceasars vision. Their lack of education will cause them to regress further and further. All these combine to suggest for me that Ceasar has incorrectly chosen a model based around long term gains that will not lead to long term sustainability. Heck even talking to Ceasar i seriously got the impression that he hadn't thought his place of using New Vegas as his Rome all the way through. The very vice that makes vegas workable and attractive is going to be caustic to everything that makes the legion "work".

Also at some point I want to make a really evil cannibal so i can pick up that perk for eating all the faction heads just because it seems like a good challenge.

Uh, looks like I missed out a BIG portion of my last missive-

Various industry scuttlebutt indicates that a lot of the core people who did F3 will do the next Fallout - Vegas basically riding on the coattails of F3 and the enormous goodwill/lore of the Fallout franchise.

-Then my rant of, "Please, improve this!"

And if you've played Oblivion, you'll remember horses? I could get down with driving a motor cycle all over (using fission battries or flamer fuel for juice) with a raider mask and bumper sword...


-Tir

Tiralee i'm a little confused on your actual position:

I feel New Vegas is a marked improvement over F3 and I felt fallout 3 was excellent. Towns and communities actually feel like they have people in them where as in F3 you basically had megaton and well, that was pretty much it for gatherings of people outside the citidel and tenpenny tower. (oh and underworld but are those really people? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ).

While Mr. New Vegas doesn't directly sing your praises like Three-dog did that makes sense in that you never meet Mr.NV personally and are one person out of many in the Majave, but you know when you hear those radio announcements he's talking about yoru actions even thoiugh their obscured. In short in F3 your a mega celebrity except almost no one seems to comment on that fact outside of the radio, in New Vegas your faction standing can cause NPC's to treat you differently, that I thought was an improvement.

Fallout 3 showed how Fallout could be brought to a modern audience, using a modern (If dated) engine. The Lone Wanderer (And Dad) was a catalyst that changed what was centuries of stagnation, and got a lot of publicity for it. The Capital Wasteland is a massive dustbowl of heavy radiation (Being Washington, DC, it got pasted hard by nukes of all types!) and heavy pollution (Look at all the "Safety Barrels" that are around leaking!), thus making barely scraping by and surviving was a hard-won thing.

Fallout: New Vegas showed how to incorporate the parts of the original Fallouts into the game and get people back into the feeling of the West Coast Fallout, as well as improvements that brought even more people into the fold by looking at the Modification Community and taking what they felt were the best parts of the changes they made in the time they had available. The Courier, while still a force for change, is hardly the only one that's happened within working memory, forget living memory, and is less noteworthy due to that (Although his actions certainly are, and are commented on by Mr. New Vegas.). Finally, the Mojave Wasteland, while still dangerous and harsh (It is a desert after all), does not have the issues of radiation and heavy pollution that California or Washington had.

It's Mutefruit and Maize, people, you can't really compare the two in a lot of ways.

And now I wait a month for the next DLC. I think I found where it's going to be...

Sorry, while ranting, a lot of coherency is lost:)

F3 had a better atmosphere. The story, although sometime railroady (What, why doesn't the radiation-immune supermutant want to go in the hole and save us all?) was filled with colour and drive and energy. You put time into it, and you got more out of it, be it story, odd easter eggs, creepy scares, whatever.

F Vegas has some really nice additions to the F3 format (Weapon addons, Ammo, making cool stuff!)...but it's flatter, less of an adventure and more of a "wander over here and let's see how long you live, if you could be assed". There's less "drive", as it were.
For example, Pimm (I think that's the town) is taken over by powdergangers, killed the law and is keeping the NCR out by dint of harsh language and the occasional explosive device(!).

Your character walks in with (if you're lucky) a 9 or 10mm pistol and a varmit rifle, some crap armour castoffs and the element of surprise. If you'd played F3, you can be sure to be walking out of Pimm with the gratitude of the populace, more loot than you can carry and some seriously upgraded offensive capabilities, in ~ 30 minutes if you're doing it sneaky.

A patrol of 4 NCR soldiers could have clean out that pesthole in 5 minutes, tops. But they're "under orders" to stay tight and wait for backup?! Lazy situational setup, relying on contrived problems to prevent logical conclusions, that screams "can't make a story flow, gotta make it interesting or they'll flock back to modern halo warfare".

In the DC ruins, they WERE ruins.
Vegas and it's surrounds weren't hit much, there's viable farmland and community...so they're all farming placeholder crops and bitching about the Fiends? Apart from House (Who's his own worst enemy in this.) The NCR could have liberated Vegas without much effort (the other "Houses" need to eat, after all) and cordoned off House without much effort, considering.

When you went walking through DC, you were alert, aware that something might jump out, or some trap would cripple your leg when a Supermutant gang could lope around a corner after taking out a Brotherhood Patrol.
In Vegas, unless you've killed everyone who has crossed your path (interesting idea, I might try that.) you've invariably got someone to help, be it NCR vs Legion, or some combo of the two when a radscorp decides it doesn't like Yucca that much after all.

The additional partners you pick up are weird bunch of screwups, but apart from the humans, the Dog, the Ghoul and the Supermutant, although engaging and often hilarious, seemed very....same. Having a Mr Handy or Robobrain would have mixed things up a big way. Hell, being able to make/buy your own robot protector makes sense, considering the levels of preservation in a lot of the Robocon facilities.

Distracted again.

Ok: Madre was a spooky survival horrorfest. Yes, the Pitt, Point Lookout, even Mothership Zeta had some fine scares, but trying to find your way though a corrosive fog while insane gasmasked figures hunted you with spears without the monster swag of loot you'd collected made it a fun game. I would like to say that the writing for Dead Money was good to excellent. Lots of darkness and dispair - a perfect mix for this rotten, corrosive town. You have a goal - get out alive with all you can, and the immediacy of that goal means you're focused on that outcome.

Once I'd shot Benny (like a punk) and massacred his buddies, acting as wage-slave to house didn't really grip me as an urgent goal.

IF the legion started to do more than creep about...
IF the NCR had to pull back and not patrol more of the desert, giving it a lawless feel, hell yes I'd load up and come back with a dripping bag of ears.

It felt too safe, considering the "ever-present threat" hanging over the NCR's heads.

After you'd travelled the desert more than once, all that was left to fight were the remainders of the Vipers (they were a nasty shock first time around) various wildlife (god DAMN those Cazadors) and boredom as you wandered beige and more beige.

After I'd blown the living crap out of DC (again) and was rolling in my looted power-armour, there were still threats that made DC Nasty. Hell, finding all the Ultra-mutants is a painful quest by itself.

After level 35, the Mojave felt like a sandbox, not a deathhole:)

Anyhow, it looks like the new run in the big empty will be a pile of hurt (Redoing Honest hearts naked first though:P)

-Happy hunting

-Tir

Your takes are interested but I had a very different experience. After the claustrophobic and railroady nature of F3, for example needing to go through the subway for the 50th time when there's only a 5 foot tall rubble barrier I very much appreciated the open and wide nature. Considering i beat a behemoth to death with a nail bat, while naked, to prove to someone it could be done I'm not sure I agree with F3 being more threatening. Where it was more difficult it did so through bullcrap means, stumbling over albino scorpions and other rediculous HP critters where wild dogs previously spawned, that's not fun or really that challenging, that's just punishing you for being high level.

Don't get me wrong, i don't mind having to run from giant rad scorpions and ghoul reavers in the early game but by the end game I should be going toe to toe with these guys in most cases.

The reason the NCR doesn't ride into Primm is two fold, there's nothing in it for them and they are more concerned about the NCRF (there's another faction I have yet to side with, I just can't bring myself to stab the folks in good springs in the back for a bunch of jerks like the powder gangers even if I am evil, I have standards.)

I also don't know how accurate your comment about needing someone to help is, in both games by the teen levels I can fight my way through most except overwhelming numbers or deathclaws and cazadores. That feels about how it should be, in both games the NPC's arn't much help but that's good.

Also i felt that the F3 companions had a lot more flavor to them, I wished Rauls dialog hadn't been scaled back, there seemed to be a lot of potential there, additionally it might have been a nice counterpoint as he was the only companion with a positive view of the legion.

Also have you beaten hardcore mode yet? It seems like what your looking for, I did it once (my first pro-ncr playthrough) it offered a refreshing challenge, not so much of one that i'd play through with it every time, but definitely made some things interesting. TO me hardcore mode and it's forced water and food rationing is what made the deadliness of the Mojave really come to the fore. YMMV of course.

Yeah, I will also agree that Tiralee has a point. Yes, F3 was railroaded plot-wise - but NV just had four railroads. It wasn't an 'open' plot still. NV also had a railroaded map - start from the SE, go E, go N, go W ... In F3 it was a mixed bag and it FELT like a mixed bag because of it. F3 turned on the tension. Everything was dark and cramped, there was an immediate threat, and you could really change the world. You turn a city into a crater! Compare to NV where I ... got a robot to wear a cowboy hat?

I enjoy NV more for the replay value because, hey, four railroads! But on the first playthrough, F3 had me better.

I'll also agree I don't like just upping creatures to punish me for a higher level. I at least felt like F3 was a real mixed bag. You had to be on your toes because the creatures were not necessarily 'appropriate'. In NV, this area 'had a lot of high-level monsters', this one 'had mostly low level ones, except for that one who lives on the mountain' and so on. It's predictable.

What I would LOVE would be to mix the openness of NV, the mixed bag of F3, and the size and quicker travel of GTA:San Andreas. I can't believe it would be that hard to program.

*shrug* As i said i found the idea that "don't go over there, that stuff will kill you" entirely appropriate for the fallout verse brought to an open world game and felt it closer to the feel of the original few fallouts. Hell wandering off the road on the way to Nipton could get you in serious trouble very quickly even if you didn't head up towards quarry junction. I loved those little touches. I'm not saying F3 doesn't have better merit I just feel that FNV is the better game all around, as well it should be.

Plus i think we can all agree that if thus far is any indication the FNV DLC's are worlds better. Broken Steel was the only DLC that didn't make me want my money back.

I guess my biggest complaint about the F3 creature spawns is most of the time they were more annoying then dangerous, sure in the early game if you run into a Yao Guai unprepared your probably dead but after that it mostly comes down to can you chop through the Ghoul Reaver/Mutant Overlord/Albino Radscorpion's rediculous amount of hitpoitns before they can put you down. By comparison all those times when mole rats and other vermin came after me was just a snooze fest.

Also F mirelurks bane of any melee character.

I have bias, having lived in Vegas and Reno. I'm a west-coast boy at heart and I vastly preferred the wide open nature of NV - as well as the inherent irony in a place that's a wasteland even before the war is the one that takes minimal damage from nuclear fallout.

The placement of foes in NV was smart. If you were near a radioactive crater in the wilderness, you'd find radscorpions and ghouls. If it was a radioactive city, more ghouls and fewer scorps. If it was a hardened facility, centaurs and supermuties. If it was a quarry, Deathclaws. It all made geographic sense, and you knew what you could expect when you were walking in. The one bad placement I saw was the giant rads and cazadors just north of Goodsprings. You had a pretty good chance of eating Radscorp venom if you tried to walk to the Yangtze Memorial (although I could grab a few decent levels plinking at the edge of my rendering range with my scoped Varmint and some AP ammo).

The NCR's reluctance to enter Primm made sense to me. You had a squad of five or six guys against about a dozen armed convicts who had hostages. If they're operating on anything close to a U.S. military doctrine, they'd only move in if they outnumbered at least 2:1, 3:1 is preferred.

One of those guys is responsible for the shorting of the medical supplies to the Mojave outpost, even. That tends to be the flavor of NCR quests out and about - scrounge supplies for several outposts. Negotiate a meat and spices trade with the Crimson Caravan so McCarran stops eating beans. Get supplies and dogtags to Forlorn Hope. Stop the hemhorraging of meds at same. Stop the hemhorraging of weapons at McCarran. So on, so forth.

As for the Big Empty, I'm assuming we're rolling up 95 towards Indian Springs and a few well-known Top Secret areas in that area. I'm also pretty sure that the Boomers at Nellis also trekked north along 95, to Hawthorne and the munitions depot there.

Ah The Boomers! I loved them! A "Tribal" group that didn't even know they were Tribal!

That, and they loves them their guns and explosions! ... What? I grew up in a mining town in Northern Ontario, this should come as no surprise to people that I connect with that group the best.

Also, their "HOLY SON OF A CRAP!" moment if you complete their major quest.

The thing that I loved most is that the most modern military aircraft that wasn't a tiltrotor was a fragging B-29.

"For every 38.2 savages we killed, we lost one of our own! We needed a home. We needed Nellis."

Just went to show us that there can be sophisticated tribals. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

They had Pip-Boys. Helps with the math. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

The Canaanites also consider themselves "Tribals", and they're Mormons with Colt .45 Automatics! I also wouldn't count them as being down and out, even after what Salt-The-Wounds did.

Just goes to show it's more a frame of mind than "Civilization".

I like the look of the .45, but it doesn't have the stopping power that I like.

Then again, I'm used to one-shotting with a .308 or 12-gauge magnum round.

"A pistol is the weapon you use to get to the long arm you should never have been away from in the first place.", if I recall correctly.

I like the fully-modded .45 SMG, however (Which seems to be a combination of the Thompson M1928 and M1A1.). A lot better than the 10mm SMG, that's for sure. Especially considering that I have the Handloader Perk and over a thousand rounds of 10mm to strip and a whole lot of empty .45 Brass to fill with Wildcat loads. Jury Rig Perk helps, too. Get some cheap service rifles, and...

I will say, again, that the repair/reload/campfire was the best update to the F3 idea.

Actually making weapon fixits saves Soooooo much on "Oh, this Rifle you found will cost 3500 caps to fix from 90%" repair person angst.

But, seriously, none of you could picture yourselves with a repair skill of 75+, fixing up one of the motorcycles parked in front of the Goodsprings Tavern and riding into the setting sun down the I90, wearing motorcycle leathers, cycle helmet and a pump-action shotgun?
...or for the majority of my characters, a set of sexy sleepwear, the Sniper's beret and an auto-grenade launcher.
The Authority Glasses come standard.


Again: Yes, F3 had some HORRIBLE railroads, those knee-high piles of impassable gravel, I hated them as well.
Frankly, if they could have managed it, I'd have loved destructable terrain, but that's only minorly implimented in Red Faction2 (What? No mining-mole team deathmatch?! WEEEEAK) and frankly, some of those buildings in DC looked like they were a couple of BB round away from total collapse.
FVegas...hmm, destructable terrain woudn't have been that important (apart from the occasional vault) but it'd make Honest Hearts.....messy.

Hmm, I agree that the whole Vegas story seems to be about tribes, and how they align/grow/die. For F3, it was father/offspring and legacy. F3 felt, well, heroic. (But seriously, "Dad, you numbnut?! Look, theres' like 10 of them - I kill more Enclave powerarmor troopers then that before breakfast, while naked! Just let me pop some of my stash...<HULKOUT GO>")

Out of interest, did the Great Khans seem a bit, well, wussy to you guys? I realise that they'd been pushed out of the prime living spaces by whitey, sorry, the NCR, but surely they could see the writing on the wall when it came to the Legion and their persuit of power. No tribe maintained a culture when it was adopted or enveloped by the Legion...made me feel a little better after wasting Pappa Kahn. He was a good man who let his hatred get in the way of the good of the tribe he led.

...while I arrive and then disappear at will, to wander the wasteland like a tornado of lead and caps and stimpacks. (Morrowind was played similarly:))

I liked the guys at Ellis - they were a little bonkers, but sensible about things. That, plus all the launcher grenades I could buy, helped a ton.
And their leader was one of the more sensible characters you'd come across, including The King and the good doctor at the Mission.

Horribly disappointed by the Brotherhood fo Steel chapterhouse here - they came across as a bunch of inbred "higher-than-thou" hicks with no sense of the big picture. And if you tried to improve their leadership(for the betterment of all), he won't play nice when the House comes to town. What'shername's story, the brotherhood scribe, was a big-ass downer. At least the sniper and the Supermutant were able to be satisfied with their lives, eventually.

Also out of interest, who jumped when he made the innkeepr's head pop like a watermelon while you were trying to hold her attention? Pity the bugger won't accept my .50 cal with matchgrade rounds.

-Tir

Yeah, but the BoS West Coast is the originators, and that's exactly how they were in the first two games. Yes, they came out to deal with The Master and The Enclave, but only in small forces, and let the Player handle most of the heavy lifting, not declaring all-out war like the East Coast BoS. (This is why most people who were introduced to Fallout in 3 think the Outcasts are right bastards. Thing is, they're following their original orders and their code of ethics they grew up with! Elder Lyons was a major liberal for the BoS!).

Still no big news on the Mid-West BoS or Texas BoS, unfortunately.

Hopefully, with the new engine we'll likely see in Fallout 4 (Or Fallout: New York. Or Fallout: UK. Or whatever.), we'll get vehicles again like The Chosen One had. I really, really, really wants me a Highwayman again!

Also, legacy is how I felt how Fallout 3 was aiming at, and is what I'm trying to do with my own bit of fan fiction that I already linked here.

How important are vehicles with fast travel. I'm definitely a subpar programmer but i've messed around with 3D modeling and level editing especially in the oblivion/fallout engine to know that vehicles would almost need a complete rework. I agree i'd like to see some vehicles up and runneing, after all their nuclear fueled, but actually owning one is kinda secondary to me.

With Quick-Travel, vehicles are all but useless in F³/FNV . .
In F2, you did not quick travel but clicked on location and traveled there by foot/vehicle. Else, no random encounters.