Fallout: New Vegas, And DLC... Options

[CanRay]

After the gnashing of teeth over what happened with Fallout 3's DLC, I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised about New Vegas and what they're doing.

Dead Money was annoying and scary and really, really creepy, and somehow combined horror and a heist movie in one! Honest Hearts seems surprisingly thought provoking (Or I'm just shallow, I'm not sure.), and from what I've played through seems to touch on the idea of what is family, what is tribe, and what is redemption and the hatred inside of mankind.

Just wondering what other folks here are thinking...

[Stahlseele]

Damn, i will have to reinstall F³NV and try and get me those DLC's . . completely forgot about them <.<;,
Ah well, it will have to wait till june . . have to redo the complete computer i'm afraid <.<
and seeing how i will only work the last 3 days of june, i think i'll have some time to do this and play the DLC's before i hit up the Duke.

[CanRay]

Just a warning, you'll need a Level 20 character before hitting the DLCs. Especially Dead Money.

[Tiralee]

I agree - the build of your character will REALLY affect how much fun you have, I tend to play sniper/sneaky people so going hand-to-hand with regenerating gas-masked freaks with Perception 10 really wasn't a cakewalk.

That being said, it WAS a spooky and eventually fun experience, drunkenly reeling from combat to combat and popping uppers to stay awake and alert...oh, and the game was great too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

If you're a bruiser-type, you're going to Pwn HARD with the various bare-knuckled (and Bear-knuckled) fun you can get to. Same for melee.

Again - if you've got high Repair (thank frag I did) you're also going to make it by repairing the POS weapons you find into things that make a keening noise due to the soul's now trapped within the blood-stained blades of your cosmic spear.

-A lot of the Lore and guff lying about was downright creepy as hell, you really felt it was a cursed town and you were trying hard to get out before it stained your fragile psyche any further. And then you got into the Hotel. God. That place...

Been waiting for the next DLC's. Hope they are as good.

-Tir.
Kinda wished the automatic rifle was able to shoot a lot straighter, makes for a decent sniper rife and the 20-round mag w/ handloads would make it a first-choice weapon.

[CanRay]

They reduced the spread of automatic weapons in the latest patch. Might be a better weapon now, but still not as accurate as a hunting rifle. Nor is it supposed to be.

I'm traipsing around Zion right now, and it's a pretty place.

Pretty deadly!

[CanRay]

Finished one ending. It's very... Interesting. A lot of thought provoking things in it (At least to my mind), and one character that I can't help but feel sorry for.

Going to have to explore it more in depth.

[X-Kalibur]

Finished one ending. It's very... Interesting. A lot of thought provoking things in it (At least to my mind), and one character that I can't help but feel sorry for.

Going to have to explore it more in depth.

The side story for the survivalist is amazing.

[CanRay]

The side story for the survivalist is amazing.

Yeah, I finally got the whole story about him.

Unluckiest bastard in video game history. Which is a pretty damned high bar! Still, left one hell of a legacy. And a damn nice rifle. I guess he was deployed in Quebec, too.

[Doc Chase]

The side story for the survivalist is amazing.

I'm still sniffing out his whole story. The Vault 22 tie-in was incredible. I got 3/6 caches, and notes from the day the bombs fell, the Spanish refugees, Vault 22, the rise and fall of the girl, and then the last stuff around his 60th. I'm going to have to figure out which caves have what.

I've gone through both endings now, and I'm getting the sense that no matter what you do, the people of Zion suffer for it in one way or another. It's a DLC that doesn't give you the 'happy ending' that Dead Money was capable of. I'll have to run through the Babylon ending one more time and do a few things differently so I can make sure. Not impressed by the .45 pistol, unfortunately, but I'm running a Melee/Energy build with Overload. I swap between the Superheated Cosmic and the Embrace of She on a regular basis. Depends on who I want to maul the crap out of.

Honest Hearts is beautiful (and there's rain!), but I found it to be short. I want to know where the White Legs got all those Thompsons.

I am also infinitely amused by Sneering Imperialist. Looking forward to Old World Blues.

[CanRay]

The White Legs got their "Thunder Guns" from an armory they raided that was full of WWII-Vintage firearms. Joshua talks about it as an aside when he speaks about the "Tribes being denoted by their weapons". (The Dead Horse and their clubs, the Sorrows and Yao Guai Gauntlets, Mormons and the Colt .45 Automatic.).

Finding all the caches are hard, but do-able. Having the Perk that shows all the places you can explore helps. A lot. I always get it before or after Grim Reaper Sprint.

A bit short, but it's a DLC. I never expect them to be long. They're not like the Add-Ons of the old days which came on a separate disk after all.

Looking forward to the last two as well, and hoping for more, which has been hinted at, but neither confirmed nor denied. (Honestly, I'm more hoping that Fallout 4 will come out with an engine that doesn't have more bugs than Chicago!).

[Stahlseele]

Oooh Burn! Nice one too! *snickers*
And why do the Mormons get the best stuff again?

[CanRay]

John Browning, the guy who designed the Colt M1911 and it's modifications in the M1911A1, was a Mormon. Actually, he practically designed modern firearms in total, having just not lived long enough to see the first of the "Wonder Nines" bear his name. (The Browning M1935, AKA: The Browning Hi-Power. The 9mm Pistol in New Vegas Vanilla. Also, still in use by a number of modern military units since it's acceptance from WWII, which was the move away from Revolvers for a number of countries.). He also developed the modern machine gun (Including the M2-HB which is still in use today as the standard Heavy Machine Gun of NATO), and a few civilian designs including a fairly reliable semi-automatic shotgun.

Their strong family values (Not the religious nutbar type, but the origin of the term) and other such factors actually has them as a positive view of "Tribals" in the Fallout universe. They wear "Modern" clothing and use firearms, but are a "Tribe" nonetheless.

Still... 200+ years after atomic bombs, they still knock on your ****ing door and preach at you. You just have to be a lot more polite to them, as they go around heavily armed, and have a very strong economy for the Fallout Universe.

...

Well, Honest Hearts will tell you more about that story.

[X-Kalibur]

The White Legs got their "Thunder Guns" from an armory they raided that was full of WWII-Vintage firearms. Joshua talks about it as an aside when he speaks about the "Tribes being denoted by their weapons". (The Dead Horse and their clubs, the Sorrows and Yao Guai Gauntlets, Mormons and the Colt .45 Automatic.).

Finding all the caches are hard, but do-able. Having the Perk that shows all the places you can explore helps. A lot. I always get it before or after Grim Reaper Sprint.

A bit short, but it's a DLC. I never expect them to be long. They're not like the Add-Ons of the old days which came on a separate disk after all.

Looking forward to the last two as well, and hoping for more, which has been hinted at, but neither confirmed nor denied. (Honestly, I'm more hoping that Fallout 4 will come out with an engine that doesn't have more bugs than Chicago!).

Any cave that has the handprints on it will have a computer and a survivalist cache in it. The exception to this is 1 cache just outside of Angel Cave, up top after where you meet Graham, there is a single bag near a wall with a hand painted over it. Finding the survivalist himself (or what was of him, after all, he lived almost 200 years ago) can be more tricky. I found him entirely on accident, at a location that doesn't have a map marker (or even compass pip) until you stumble over it. So, in total. 6 caches, 5 are in caves with computers, final note is in a bag next to his body that is not counted as one of the caches.

[CanRay]

Oh, and I like how the Canadian-Connection is finally touched on despite being fobbed over since... Um... The Intro to Fallout 1. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I can also guess within a few Provinces where he was stationed.

[CanRay]

Oh, Doc Chase, the Fallout Wiki updated with the info I half-remembered.

The White Legs got their "Storm Drums" (Thompson M1s, or variants thereof due to being able to accept 50-round Drum Magazines) from Spanish Fork. They probably got the manuals early enough after the war to remember how to read, and were able to maintain them afterwards from oral tradition. Possibly making the motions or cleaning and maintaining them have a religious purpose. As for ammo... Well, the Mormons probably made the mistake of having the same ammo type they liked.

As well, it's likely New Canaan had it's own production facilities for building firearms (Certainly .45 Automatics of various types, and ammo thereof), and likely made their own version of the "Storm Drums" from captured versions of them from failed raids on their caravans/missionary movements. Which, in turn, brought back new Thompsons for the White Legs to steal. Not exactly a big stretch to make.

Unlike 200-year old assault rifles still somehow working in the Capital Wasteland without any form of overt manufacturing capabilities.

Oh, BTW: Salt Lake City had Vault 70 near it, whose only downside was a lack of Jumpsuits (Big deal, climate controlled vault! After a generation or two, any nudity taboo would be only a minor issue.). This was probably where the Mormons came from, and how they were able to survive with such "high" technology and educational capabilities intact. They were probably happy to find scavenged clothing again, too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

And, of course, new doors to knock on, asking if the people inside had heard the word of Jesus Christ, and if they would like to talk about Him? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Tiralee]

Enjoying Honest hearts, untill I was jumped by one of those annoying "you've transitioned into a new zone, we'll populate it now" things which was 2 x giant green gecko ~ 2 metres away and me with a sniper rifle slung. Felt like a damn cheap death, frankly.

Would LOVE it if some of the creatures roaming the damn countryside would be viewable from those excellent sniper vantages scattered around the place, but NOooooo, gotta conserve memory somehow....(Gripes)

The .45's are nice. Handload the crap out of them and you can tear pretty much anything apart in 6 rounds or less. My survival is crap, so I don't think I'll be making many nice new shiny foods/gear (what's with the belts, anyhow? Trade items?) this time around.

Ignoring the story for the most part (very railroady) and slaughtering anything that looks like it's of use.
Earning cash hand over fist, I brought along the BIG guns thinking this would be another cock-punch happy DLC like the Madre, but I could have gone in naked and still been over-equipped within the first 2 minutes)

The Survivalist....yeah. That's a bloody downer of a story. Only found 3 caches, and the pen where people were kept, and the plants from Vault 22 and the electrified door (nice generator that can run THAT long - fission heat-pump, maybe?) but am finding my usual "sneaky, unlock, snipe and hack" build a trifle sophisticated for this entire area.

Hmm, I also seem to be killing off more whitelegs than is good for one of the plot points (if I read the choices here properly) but next time, I'm not bringing along the .50 cal.
A silenced .308 and marksmens carbine are fine for pretty much everything, a riot shotgun if things are dicking you off.

Btw: Who made the Jet-addict their personal mule while charging him for the privilage?

-Tir:)

[CanRay]

Hunting Shotgun is my baby. Especially with the mods, harder hitting and there's a few in-game for repairs. I like the spread when dealing with those stinging SOB

With all the .308 Ammo however, I wish I had done Dead Money first, and gotten the Automatic Rifle for some heavy duty hitting.

The items you get at the end are very, very nice, however. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[crash2029]

I've been using the suppressed .45 with hand-loads as my standard sidearm for awhile now. Not many things take more than a couple shots to go down. And when they do, that's when the Thompson comes out to play...

[CanRay]

Just checked out a bit of the next DLC, and I'm thinking to myself: "Hey, did these guys contact Mongoose Publishing and get permission to use The Computer and Alpha Complex?" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[LurkerOutThere]

I started a new character to take through honest hearts and the dead money DLC after i wasn't happy with what I had to do to the brotherhood on behalf of Mr. House. I really never get tired of playing through the game, just certian part are tedious.

One of these days i'll make a character who can actually work for/with the legion. I got close last playthrough even did a few quests and had a nice chat with Caesar and started to come around to his view.....then I talked to one of the camp slaves, went out and got my guns and killed everyone in camp wearing stupid shoulder pads except the kids. I decided that as long as we agree as might as the only successful argument for our belief system I can advance the cause of justice over a knee deep carpet of legionnaire corpses.

[CanRay]

Yeah, it's really hard to get along with the Legion and their ideals and so on. But they do actually secure and protect their people, which the NCR haven't been able to do (Not to mention the "Taxes"), Mr. House might just write off as the cost of doing business (Not to mention his taxes), and Anarchy... Well, I don't even need to go there. We play Shadowrun, we know how things are run in the Barrens (But, hey, NO TAXES! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

"Civis Romanus Sum" on the side of a caravan brahmin means you don't have to allot half the carry weight/mass to ammo just for protection on the road.

I like New Vegas for that: There's only Grey. It's just that some are darker, some are lighter, but nothing is white or black.

[X-Kalibur]

You have to remember that we are only ever presented with the Legion portion of Caesar's empire. He wants to take Vegas and turn it into his "Rome" at which point who knows how things will change? We consider the NCR to be "good" because it most closely resembles current society... also the society that got the world in Fallout nuked. We see the independent path as good for similar reasons, that ideal of uniting people for their differences to hold off both sides and be "free". But Caesar gets the bad rap as being the "bad guy" and the darkest shade of grey mostly because of slavery and inequality to women. Yet the Roman empire was one of the most, if not the most, successful empire in history until internal turmoil and politics rotted it.

And really, while we might not see it as such, I can very easily see a fallout character being enticed to a society where might makes right and the strong and smart (in combination more so than seperately) are rewarded. It is also a totally vice free society, there are no drugs, no alcohol, we don't even see any signs of cigarettes. They do not discriminate against ghouls or homosexuals, and they keep their lands safer than the NCR when you hear people speak about Arizona before and after the Legion swept through them.

All in all, I think every side is a very equal shade of grey from a totally neutral standpoint and removing as much of my current day bias.

[Tanegar]

But Caesar gets the bad rap as being the "bad guy" and the darkest shade of grey mostly because of slavery and inequality to women. Yet the Roman empire was one of the most, if not the most, successful empire in history until internal turmoil and politics rotted it.

Being successful doesn't mean anything, as far as whether or not you're a decent human being. The Nazis (to invoke Godwin's Law) were extremely successful, until they started making extraordinarily stupid strategic decisions like picking a fight with Russia. Slavery and misogyny are pretty strong arguments for painting Caesar a darker shade of gray, no matter how successful he might be.

[X-Kalibur]

Being successful doesn't mean anything, as far as whether or not you're a decent human being. The Nazis (to invoke Godwin's Law) were extremely successful, until they started making extraordinarily stupid strategic decisions like picking a fight with Russia. Slavery and misogyny are pretty strong arguments for painting Caesar a darker shade of gray, no matter how successful he might be.

I feel you're taking a rather narrow-minded view of it all. The NCR has slavery as well, they simply choose to not view at such. Binding people with oppressive taxes and a near level of indentured servitude, which can be worse than slavery really. Slavery has been used in societies for a very long time, even the "magnificient" USA used slaves and near slavery levels of indentured servitude (and still does, by the way). You're talking about a situation where being successful is the only testament you have. Given how terrible the wasteland is, a society like Rome would potentially be better as their results really do speak for themselves. Whereas the NCR has already spread itself to thin and is rotting from the core of politicians.

[Doc Chase]

The White Legs got their "Thunder Guns" from an armory they raided that was full of WWII-Vintage firearms. Joshua talks about it as an aside when he speaks about the "Tribes being denoted by their weapons". (The Dead Horse and their clubs, the Sorrows and Yao Guai Gauntlets, Mormons and the Colt .45 Automatic.).

Ahaaah. I'll have to take some extra time on my next run-through of the DLC. I'm not worried about anything that roams Zion. They should be worried about me.

Finding all the caches are hard, but do-able. Having the Perk that shows all the places you can explore helps. A lot. I always get it before or after Grim Reaper Sprint.

A bit short, but it's a DLC. I never expect them to be long. They're not like the Add-Ons of the old days which came on a separate disk after all.

You mean Explorer? I have it, but for some reason it's not working in Zion. Maybe I'll try a fresh build that skews towards .45's and see how it compares. Occasionally shocking to see a White Legs with an AMR - but that means cheap guns for me!

Looking forward to the last two as well, and hoping for more, which has been hinted at, but neither confirmed nor denied. (Honestly, I'm more hoping that Fallout 4 will come out with an engine that doesn't have more bugs than Chicago!).

I'm pretty sure it ends with Lonesome Highway - and you get to find the Courier that left you to pick up the fated package, find out what he means to you, and see if he really is a Frumentarii.

And yes, a non-buggy Fallout 4 would be fantastic. Wonder where they'll set it up.