Spoiler Warning S5E7: You May Already Be a Winner

By Shamus Posted Thursday Apr 14, 2011

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 311 comments


Link (YouTube)

The encounter with the man and woman shooting each other is an interesting one. Playing on the general do-gooder tendencies of the average player, the designers have her pleading for help. I’m not sure how, but it seems to be random which one of them wins the fight. Sometimes she’s dead before you reach them. Sometimes their fight goes on and on. Sometimes she wins. Rutskarn was complaining about the fact that you lose karma for killing him, when it’s very likely that a first-time player will attack the guy in a misguided attempt to thwart injustice.

Part of the problem is that I’m not sure what the designers mean by “karma”. Is it a measure of the bad you’ve done, even when you mean no harm? Like, accidentally running over a dog gives a person “negative karma”, even though it was an accident. Or is it just a re-branded version of Ye Olde Slider of Morality?

Is the winner of the fight determined by combat rolls? I don’t think so. Their fight goes on for a long time, and usually the winner has a good bit of health left. Over that many dice rolls, we should not see wildly different outcomes.

About the lottery winner: He’s a powder ganger, which means he’s with the group of murderous escaped convicts who have been raiding and making trouble in the region. If you talk to another survivor in Nipton, you’ll find out that the Powder Gangers were here as part of a kidnapping, ransom, and robbery plot. Their plans went sideways when the Legion rolled into town and started beheading and crucifying everyone. The legion held a lottery. The “lucky losers” were beheaded. Then most of the rest of the town was crucified. A few more were burned alive on tires. Then the second-place winner had his legs crippled, and the first-place winner was set free. The fact that a Powder Ganger won the lottery was just one final cruelty in a long list of injustices.

But the truth is, I kill the lottery winner because he’s the first guy you meet with eyeglasses, and I always take the “Four Eyes” perk. So… I don’t have a lot of moral high ground.

 


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311 thoughts on “Spoiler Warning S5E7: You May Already Be a Winner

  1. Zalzabar Jones says:

    You must not have changed the privacy settings yet. I can has Spoiler Warning pleez? I am really looking forward to it.

  2. Pete says:

    Woo! I finally got to see the private message!

    …which button is refresh page again?

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Second.

  3. Ernheim says:

    As if you run out of shops with money. The gun runners robot guy always has thousands of caps to spare, and restocks every like, 3 ingame days. And even if he’s broke you can always buy one sniper rifle off him and he’ll have enough cash to buy your entire inventory. Which probably loses you some cash, but means you don’t have to lug all that crap around

    Also, I find it funny listening to you talk about the bad interior design. I’m currently playing Dragon Age 2 and I’m really missing Bethesda’s love of building thousands of unique, if dull, interiors. The what, 3, 4, cave systems that Bioware bothered to make might have been interesting the first time, but after running through the damn things 10 times each without them even pretending it’s a new map, it gets tiring.

    1. Shamus says:

      Yes, but at THIS point in the game you’re hours from the Gun Runners, and the only shops around are merchants with $100 or $200. So, yeah. The NCR shop is pretty sweet, and probably the best shop until Vegas. Even the guy in Novac only has $800.

      1. PurePareidolia says:

        I was going to also recommend Sgt Contreras in camp McCarren – he’s really hard to find, but he’s about as good as the gun runners, especially if you do his unmarked quests.

        Unfortunately he’s even further away from you than the Gun Runners.

        1. Piflik says:

          188 Trading Post just north of Novc has some good Merchants…one requires a Guns Skill Check, though…

          1. James says:

            in the 188 Trading post there is a guy called Alexander (i think thats they guy Piflik is on aboot) hes a member of the gun runners if you have 45 in Guns he’ll sell to you and ALL his guns are max condition and he has a decant amount of caps + Veronica is there

    2. Patrick the Power Broker says:

      Remeber folks, ammo IS money. It has no weight but it has extreme value, and can be traded anywhere. Ive seen many people complain that there is a limited amount of caps, but vendors always take ammo as well. This of course is not true in hardcore mode, when ammo has weight.
      Additionally the most valuable items in the game are…

      Duct tape
      Wrenches
      Hammers
      electronic parts
      scarp metal

      Remeber that busted ass machine gun thats worth 100 caps? You could use it to SLIGHTLY repair the one you have, or you could make a weapon repair kit and use that kit to make that gun worth 4000 caps. By the time I was level 10 I had 50k doing this…no joke…

      1. Irridium says:

        Empty syringes could also be a quick moneymaker if you need money in a pinch. Same with pre-war money.

      2. Rutskarn says:

        On Hardcore, ammo does have significant weight.

        1. RTBones says:

          My biggest problem with Hardcore mode (from what I have seen, anyway) is that you don’t have a readily available and accessible house or storage area that you can use to dump your excess weight. Doesn’t have to be huge, just give me an area I can use for storage, even temporarily.

          1. Patrick the Tibetian Monk says:

            I used the trash can next to the gun runners kiosk. Anytime they ran out of enough caps and ammo i would ditch my extra crap to be sold in there. For some reason, garbage cans in NV seem to be an alterante dimension with limitless space. And when the cash and ammo returns 3 days later, I would just pull the stuff out and sell it.

            1. Someone says:

              I used it to store the fifteen billion units of scrap metal Contreras asks you to bring them.

            2. Daemian Lucifer says:

              I used the dumpster near in the junkyard old lady keeps.

            3. poiumty says:

              I used my companions. Currently, boone has like 5 shotguns, a million shells(read: I don’t know how many), lots of sniper ammo, lots of AP anti-material rifle ammo for my main gun (I use hand load bullets manufactured by myself), pistols, revolvers and rifles for repairing. Dog has 39 40mm grenades, a missle launcher, a grenade launcher, a flamer, a bunch of rockets and…

              Well, let’s just say it gets a bit interesting whenever I want to switch companions. And I’m playing hardcore too.

              Funny how I’m doing the exact same things I was doing in Fallout 2. Yet another reason why New Vegas hit so close to home.

              1. Kelly says:

                Ah the memories of sorting through my 6 man army in 2, only for us to still inevitably die to magician super mutants and enclave hordes. I did the same sort of thing with my 1st New Vegas character, toting around the entire group with the magic of mods. Made things kind of ridiculous though when I realized I was spending more money keeping them all stocked than I would ever reasonably need.

                All the same, anything is better than dealing with companion from Fallout 1. You couldn’t make them change armor and they acted like normal NPCs during bartering, so you had to pay to get back anything they carried.

                1. Deadpool says:

                  That’s because they were meant to die a horrible death in the wasteland… Litereally.

                  Interplay was surprised people kept trying to keep their companions alive, so they changed things around in 2…

                2. Someone says:

                  Yeah, you were supposed to let them help you for a while, but ultimately lead them to their death.

                3. El Quia says:

                  IIRC, you could change their equipment with they pickpocket action. Sure, they would still not use armor, but IIRC they would never catch your stealing (or planting), ie that’s the way it’s supposed to be :p

                  Then again, I could be wrong, it’s been ages…

            4. Shamus says:

              That works? Wow.

              See the maps in Bethsoft games are divided into these small regions. If the game saved EVERYTHING, everywhere, all the time, then eventually your save game would grow to be as big as the entire dataset for the world. Once you’ve visited the entire world, it would have the location and state of every single thing that can be moved.

              As it was explained to me once, your save file is like a mod. It loads the world, then it applies the changes to the local region from your save file. (“Oh, originally this box had 3 stimpcks in it, but now it’s empty.)

              But!

              In Morrowwind and Oblivion your save only kept these changes for three(?) days, to keep the save file under control. So once you’ve been gone for three days the monsters respawn and the chests are refilled. The exception is in the small number of zones where you can live.

              I got burned by this when I would use some random public container for stuff, and come back later to find my loot was gone and the container was re-filled with the default clutter. All this time I’ve been assuming this was still the case and so I’ve been afraid to use things like trash cans as storage. I wonder if they just raised the number of days, or if the system works completely differently. Hm.

              1. PurePareidolia says:

                Same, in fact anywhere that I wasn’t specifically told I could live, I refused to store anything in.

              2. BenD says:

                If it’s like FO3, not all places are safe storage – but many places are, including many not inside your home. In NV, the trash can by the Gun Runners is safe, I think there’s a safe container in the Thorn, and in addition I have found that this ruleset holds true:

                IF (1) No humanoid NPCs will be near the container (none exist nearby, or you have killed them all, or the only NPCs that spawn nearby are busy doing something else – like the Gun Runner mechanics, for example), AND (2) You have never* seen the contents of the container change after you changed it (emptied it upon your first visit), THEN the container is safe storage.

                *Never for me tends to be several in-game days, so the real rule here may be ‘more than 3 days,’ but I don’t know.

                My save files, by the way, are obscenely large, or it seems that way to me. I was over 9 megs on my first playthrough, by the end, and I didn’t do Dead Money or any Enclave stuff or anything for the Legion except killing a bunch of them. This is on PS3 so your PC mileage may vary… but these seem like HUGE save files to me. I wonder how much of the game’s slowdowns and garbage are related to this.

              3. Zukhramm says:

                I remember raiding and then taking a house for myself in Morrowind, I guess I was really lucky.

              4. Ramsus says:

                As I mentioned in a previous episode of SW commentary I used one of the Sunset Sasparilla crates right outside the door of the store in Goodsprings as my storage for the entire game.

              5. Patrick the Hoarder says:

                Yea it works. Works in real life too…. for instance I still have my collection of pr0n, the sweaters mom buys us for christmas and my entire Phlegm collection stored in your basement.

          2. Someone says:

            You can use Ringo’s hideout as your first house if you finish the Goodsprings quest (one way or the other). I’m not sure if bed ownership changes when he leaves/dies, but all of the containers are there.

          3. Gantidae says:

            The two dumpsters next to the merchant in Good Springs works well for early storage while you’re in the southern part of the map. The quick travel takes you very close to them. Also in hardcore it’s close to the springs which can keep you hydrated if you want to save those purified water bottles for in the field.

            1. RTBones says:

              I have considered this, but was afraid of something spawning and losing my precious gear. Thanks for the heads-up.

              On a related note – does anybody actually use the Pony Express (or whatever its called) boxes? And what do you use them for? I had considered them for storage, but to put something in you need to send it somewhere.

              1. BenD says:

                I use them. They seem to be safe, but I have read elsewhere on the tubes someone saying that they lost their stuff after weeks and weeks in-game. So I only use them for things I could tolerate losing. :/

            2. Jeff says:

              If you’re still in Goodsprings, I hope you know that Victor’s house is actually considered the player’s house. It’s entirely yours to loot/store as you wish.

            3. Patrick the Hoarder says:

              I used those for awhile too. Its helpful because of the two work benches nearby, even at the gunrunners kiosk there is only the reload bench.

  4. PurePareidolia says:

    There’s also the second place winner who had his legs broken, sitting in a chair in the general store here. he gets really depressed if you come in and have been vilified by the powder gangers, and you can give him some med-x to OD on.

    Oddly enough, he’s also part of a quest in camp Searchlight where he can point you at some radiation suits. I cannot fathom why. Maybe because he’s easy to miss so they figured, “better draw some attention to him”.

    Actually I think that was the design principle behind a lot of New Vegas – here’s something cool, let’s get as many quests as possible to point you at it, even though it kind of ruins the discovery if everyone knows about it already and told you to go there.

    1. Piflik says:

      Strangely, if you attack him, he will stand up to fight you…

      1. Jeff says:

        I thought one of the patches crippled his legs, so he shouldn’t do that anymore.

      2. PurePareidolia says:

        That’s awesome and I need to try it

    2. Archaic says:

      i just found that one out a couple of days ago that if he dies you somehow fail the quest in searchlight

      that really bugged me especially when the individual in searchlight does in fact point you back to nipton, where you can find the item your looking for without even having to talk to the powder ganger in the general store.

    3. thebigJ_A says:

      I couldn’t do that quest because he bugged out on me. It was some time ago, so i can’t remember exactly what caused it, but it had something to do with finding him and exhausting all his speech options, and only giving him a little med-x (I think).

      Long and short of it, I couldn’t talk to him about the rad suits when I came back. I managed to find the cave on my own, but the crate was empty, there was only the one suit on top.

      Interestingly, that was one of only two bugs I had the whole game. Of course, the second was a bug whereby the Mr. House questline was completely closed off to me, so yeah. (House’s robot would be dead outside his casino somehow, but alive inside, and everything inside was hostile.)

  5. Henebry says:

    Part of the problem is that I'm not sure what the designers mean by “karma”Âť. Is it a measure of the bad you've done, even when you mean no harm?

    I’m not an expert on Karma, but my sense is that Karma doesn’t care about intent. Christianity cares almost exclusively about intent. Karma cares about the outcome. If you think about it, Karma is a philosophy of outcomes: if you participate in badness, badness will in the end participate in you.

    Not that the game’s writers were necessarily thinking about any of this when they came up with this scenario. But it’s fun to think and talk about it, and I’m glad you brought this question up.

    1. Piflik says:

      Also, Karma is broken in this game, but since Karma doesn’t mean shit in the game, it doesn’t matter :D

      1. thebigJ_A says:

        I wouldn’t say it’s broken. It’s just been superseded by reputation.

        Which makes sense, really. If you have managed to get in with an organization, whether you’re a dick or not isn’t relevant to how they’ll work with you, you’re already in. It might affect how some people react to you (which is, very occasionally, represented in-game), but the faction isn’t going to stop working with you.

    2. Gantidae says:

      I agree with this. Though I think the developers definitely were not thinking about this with the karma system. Any killing is bad karma yet not only do you not earn negative karma for any kill you sometimes earn positive karma for a kill.

      It’s just a rebranded good/evil bar. Which is of course its own can of worms.

    3. Klay F. says:

      The thing with this situation is that its the woman who starts the fight, and its the woman who is trying to kill with the intent to steal. I understand getting bad karma in this situation since you are basically helping a murderer rob an innocent person.

      1. thebigJ_A says:

        When I got to this part of the game, I didn’t see anything. All of a sudden some random lady comes running up to me talking about things i hadn’t seen as if I was there. Luckily I’d talked to the dude about the star caps earlier, and managed to find the body, so i pieced it together.

  6. Daemian Lucifer says:

    “But the truth is, I kill the lottery winner because he's the first guy you meet with eyeglasses, and I always take the “Four Eyes”Âť perk. So… I don't have a lot of moral high ground.”

    You can get glasses in the docs house in the very beginning.

    I went a bit of backwards here,because I took a shortcut through the prison,so I already had both boon and ed-e when I ran into these legion guys.They still were tough,but they went down.And they had lots of stuff.

    If only you healed before you attacked those guys.That was such an amazing trick you did,and you blew it.

    Also,I dont get why karma is there at all?They obviously dont use it(well they use it for 2 things),so why did they leave it in?

    As for traders I always use the old lady,because she has a waypoint in front of her,1600 caps,plus she fixes your items,which also makes her have more money.

    1. Deadpool says:

      Why Karma is here? My bet? Bethesda.

      1. poiumty says:

        The other fallout games (at least Fallout 2) also had karma. And reputations.

        I think people in power armor started hunting you if your karma got really low, so in Fallout 2 you kinda wanted to keep your karma high at all times.

        Thing is, back in Fallout 2 you didn’t get negative karma for stealing.

        1. Deadpool says:

          Fallout 2 focused more on Karma than Reputation (different dialogue options, companions, so on) although both had pretty minor effects unless you maxed it out.

          I feel THIS game, the developer wanted to put in Rep and ignore Karma, Bethesda wanted Karma to stay in. So they put it in but made it useless…

          1. X2-Eliah says:

            Yeah, let’s put all blame on Bethesda. It’s not like Obsidian had any chance to screw up, oh no. Must have been Bethesda, yes, those evil monkeys who have never released a single decent game.

            1. Kelly says:

              Well they HAVEN’T.

              1. Soylent Dave says:

                Unlike Obsidian, who of course have a spotless record…

                1. roll-a-die says:

                  Bar NWN2, I agree, and NWN2 is redeemed by MotB, which given that they were given a beta of the aurora engine to modify in the first place, I’d say is great. AP was, decent, little buggy, but overall decent. KotOR2 was better than KotOR1 and also had much better potential than most games, shame Lucas Arts made them cut 6 months off their already extremely short dev time. FONV is better than the atrocity that is FO3, and in fact had far less bugs for me than FO3.

              2. roll-a-die says:

                At least not in the last 10 years.

            2. Veloxyll says:

              Wait, which company is the one that hasn’t released a decent game? I forget

              1. thebigJ_A says:

                All of them, apparently.

            3. Jeff says:

              It’s Bethesda’s fault we don’t have cars or motorcycles. It was mentioned by Obsidian that Bethesda’s engine couldn’t handle it – originally FNV was supposed to be bigger, but since we didn’t have cars, they shrunk down the original design.

              The engine failure is obvious if you grab one of those mods that give you superspeed. Interesting things happen. (In the sense of “May you live in Interesting Times”.)

              They said outright that Karma was irrelevant, in favor of reputation, so if it’s Obsidian fault, it would be in the context of “didn’t remove” rather than “put it in”.

    2. Someone says:

      I’ve had a reverse experience with Nipton Legionnaires. The first time I went through there I thought “wow, these guys look tough”, and didn’t try to kill them, but on all subsequent playthroughs they went down so easy I was genuinely disappointed.

    3. Another_Scott says:

      I liked the idea of having a perk that required me to FIND glasses, then I ran into the ones in the Doctor’s house right off the bat. I was so put off I actually sold them and went out to EARN them! It was a while before I found any more, but it felt very rewarding when I did.

    4. Decius says:

      I killed the winner the first time. Here was a powder ganger, yelling about winning the lottery, in front of a burning town. I blamed him, and dropped him with a bullet to the back of the head as he walked away. Then I found out it wasn’t his fault after all.

      I killed the survivor of the star bottlecap mugging. Because he had it, and I wantsed it.

  7. Eric says:

    The light beam effect can’t be that hard to set up. With all probability it’s an effect you place in the level just like any other object. Would take a couple of minutes to do, less if you copy-pasted stuff all over the place. I think the reason you don’t see it more may be that you don’t want to have the same effects, types of lighting, etc. all over the place, or it starts to get a bit tiresome. As you said, it makes the place look dusty and atmospheric… so right off the bat, you’re kind of limited in where you can use it, depending on what sort of feel you want for the level.

    That said, Bethesda’s dev tools are quite possibly some of THE WORST GODAWFUL MOST AWKWARD TO USE IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEOGAMES, making even building a simple room a challenge what with their totally broken camera controls and whatnot, so maybe the level designers just couldn’t be arsed. To be honest, I’m surprised anyone manages to make a decent-looking game with the tools available. Compared to more modern dev tools, heck, even tools nearly ten years old, the GECK/Construction Set/whatever is just awful in almost every respect.

    1. Zukhramm says:

      Indeed, I had a thing I wanted to do with the game but I just couldn’t be bothered because of the time it takes. It takes time not because it’s complex, not because I didn’t know how to do it but because the tools were so clumsy about it. Basically it amounted to repeatedly clicking through menus in the exact same way for half an hour or more. Maybe there was another way but if so it was not easy to find because I couldn’t find it.

      Please tell me the thing we get is some butchered version and that it’s not what they made the actual game with.

    2. Topaz Wolf says:

      It’s not. It is just a post processing effect that is dragged and dropped. Can even make it any color you want. It’s not even hard to do in unity or the udk.

      1. Eric says:

        Uh, what? Two completely different game engines, there, not sure why you bring up Unreal and Unity. In fact, considering how weak Bethesda’s engine is, I highly doubt it’s a post-processing effect in the same way that something like light bloom is. More likely it’s a particle effect of some sort.

        1. Jeff says:

          Gamebyro should have been dragged to the outhouse and shot, many years ago.

        2. Topaz Wolf says:

          If you must know, the effect (post processing or particle) is highly localized into a colorful box (as seen in the editor) and is simply dragged from the editor’s resources (for both kinds of effects) and dropped into the desired location.

          I merely stated that it is not a difficult thing to do in any editor or game producing software. Do not let such mild thoughts distract from my answer of the original question.

          To summarize, not hard at all.

    3. Fists says:

      I like the fact that it comes in through windows on opposite side of the building at the same time, always at an angle of 45deg to the floor, must have mirrors set up outside

      1. Johan says:

        Cost is not an issue for this bar it would seem, the atmosphere is well worth the price of all those mirrors. And the automated system to make them track the sun and send it beams at a perfect 45 degree angle.

        1. Eroen says:

          Don’t forget the part where it all folds itself away and hides in the sand whenever a potential customer walks around outside, so they won’t spot it. It’s an incredibly sophisticated system, obviously imported from the West.

  8. Patrick the Tibetian Monk says:

    I thought the idea of karma in this game was done as well as it could be, it wasnt perfect but…
    The idea that cold-blooded murder (evil act) was ‘good’ if enacted upon an ‘evil’ person is fairly arbitrary and contradictory. Using the same logic, doing ‘good’ things for ‘good’ people should be negative/evil karma. Murdering a powder ganger is still murder. Slipping a grenade into a legionaires pocket is still as good or evil as putting it in the pocket of Sunny Smiles. But I digress….

    The better system in the game I thought was the group/clan/village rating system. How each group viewed you was less on wether you were ‘good’ or ‘evil’ and more to do with how you actually interacted with them personally.

    1. Ernheim says:

      “Using the same logic, doing “Ëśgood' things for “Ëśgood' people should be negative/evil karma.”
      I don’t really see how that follows at all…
      The developers seem to be acting on a consequentialist system of morality (i.e. acts have no inherent value, only their consequences do). Hence, helping a good cause or hindering a bad cause is good and helping a bad cause or hindering a good on is bad. The ends justify the means and all that.
      Whether that system is right or not is debatable, but given that the application of the morality system is basically just “Is he going to help the good guys or the bad guys?” it works. Probably the system a post-apocalyptic society would adopt anyway, in a “Hey, if that guy wants to slaughter the guys who’re attacking the town, let’s let him stick around” sort of way.
      It’d be better, of course, if they put more depth into it, so the npc reactions to a guy who went around talking the raiders into going away and the guy who blows them to smithereens was different, but still. We don’t really have morality figured out for ourselves yet, so how can we accurately program it into a game?

      1. Hitch says:

        If you accidentally click on a plate on a table and a “good” person sees that as stealing and goes into a murderous rage and you defend yourself, you get negative karma.

        If you sneak to the top of a hill and and snipe “bad” people who’ve done (as far as you know) absolutely nothing wrong, you get positive karma.

        This makes no sense.

        Fortunately it doesn’t matter to most NPCs in this game. Although, I had one giving me a hard time about my bad karma, so I made a crack about her dead family. I had to blow her head of to get her to be reasonable after that.

        (I’d put that in spoiler tags, but I can’t imagine it making sense to anyone who doesn’t know exactly what I’m talking about already.)

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          If you go to any of the powder ganger houses and shoot them,you get positive karma.But,their stuff are still red,and if you take it,you get negative karma.Thats what makes the least sense.

          1. Jekyll says:

            This doesn’t have a whole lot to do with karma but I never understood why beds were still “owned” after you kill the owner. It makes very little sense.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Maybe they had a will leaving everything they had to some distant cousin.

            2. Soylent Dave says:

              After the apocalypse, people mark their property in much the same way as cats do.

              This is also why bad karma makes people dislike you – it’s not because they magically know you’re a bad person; you just smell of other peoples’ urine.

              1. Decius says:

                What, the can tell the difference between my urine and other total stranger’s?!? That’s either awesome or disturbing. Or both.

                1. krellen says:

                  Side effect of all the radiation: everyone’s been mutated to have super-sensitive smell.

      2. Piflik says:

        ” Probably the system a post-apocalyptic society would adopt anyway, in a “Hey, if that guy wants to slaughter the guys who're attacking the town, let's let him stick around”Âť sort of way.”

        But that’s what reputation is for…Karma is not something determined by the people you meet, but bestowed on you by the cosmos…that’s the theory anyway…

      3. Patrick the Tibetian Monk says:

        This is an excellent point…..

    2. Jarenth says:

      Or it could be that we’re all overthinking this and Karma is mapped to positive and negative numbers. This way, doing Good (+) to a Good (+) person would be Good (+), but doing Bad (-) to a Bad (-) person would also be Good (+).

      And people say universal ethical theory is hard.

    3. discordance says:

      The NV karma system is hilarious. I will demonstrate by example.

      You know George on the hill near Boomer territory? He has around 9 caps in his pocket. Let’s say I really really want those caps. I have two options for getting them.

      1. Pickpocket George = Negative karma. Fair enough.

      2. Slice off George’s head and pry the caps from his cold, blood-soaked corpse = Neutral karma.

      WHAT

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Well,you see if you rob him,he will then slowly die from thirst/hunger,but if you just kill him,youve ended his misery.

  9. CalDazar says:

    Ah the Legion, how I hate them.

  10. Zukhramm says:

    I really love this Legion introduction. I think the Powder Gangers were going to attack them and the mayor had cut a deal with them or something, they also had prostitutes and gambling which the Legion doesn’t like. So the Legion decides to punish them with this lottery thing. And they got this creepy Fox-themed guy that makes them seem more like some kind of cult.

    Sure, what they did was horrible and I wouldn’t agree with it, but it was interesting enough that I thought I could play a character who does on my second run. But after this encounter the Legion is basically “We’re slaver, mahahahaaa!” and the only times they’re any interesting is when talking the Great Khans out of joining them, and maybe speaking to Ceasar and Lanius Legatus.

    1. RTBones says:

      Oddly enough, there is a quest that asks you to go find what this is all about.

      On top of the NCR building that had the shop, there is a sniper that will ask you to head to Nipton and find out what’s going on. If I recall rightly, there is even an optional bit that asks you to talk to some folks. I ended up finding a wounded Powder Ganger that wanted drugs in a shop not far from where Josh got blowed up.

    2. Gantidae says:

      This is typical unfortunately. It’s just like the plot hook of six different couriers that goes nowhere. The Legion had the potential to be a very interesting “bad guy” that was extreme in its methods but also deep and you could find a few things to agree on with them. While the NCR were the “good guys” but deeply flawed, corrupt, and highly inefficient.

      Instead we end up with you joining the NCR, ra ra democracy, if you’re good and the Legion, boo hiss slavery, if you’re bad and no depth at all to either faction. Of course there are two more options.

      1. Even says:

        I suppose it might be just about interpretation, but I thought they were both pretty well fleshed out, and definitely not all that black&white. House vs. Independent can especially get pretty deep when you start to comparing the potential benefits and risks of each.

        I think the problem here might be that they only really get more depth when you observe them from the outside and talk to people who are NOT part of the faction. The fact is that there’s boatloads of it to be found, if you just bother talking to NPCs and paying attention to what’s happening in the desert. It really puts things nicely into perspective. Just as an example, I think Cass has some of the most profound opinions on both the NCR and the Legion that I ever found in the game. Even if a little biased, they make sense and she makes a lot of good points.

        1. krellen says:

          It’d be nice if a female courier could talk Caesar out of his misogyny. That’s really the biggest mark against them.

  11. Grag says:

    By the time I got there she’d already killed the dude. We had a brief chat, I was actually doing elevator eyes (one of the better looking female models in the game, honestly) and she shouted “sucker” and started shooting me.

    I thought it was a great scene.

    And yeah, if I played through again I might have to murder the lottery winner.

    1. Someone says:

      I honestly don’t understand how can anyone not see that the girl is evil, she has RAIDER ARMOR for crying out loud!

  12. Archaic says:

    on the topic of the companion EDE the robot, its companion quest is really complicated since you need certain key phrases to activate and push the quest forward.

    and in my first playthrough i never knew about him until after i had traveled all over the place and talked with just about everybody, and if you do that his quest is extremely difficult if not impossible to complete.

    1. Fists says:

      And if you do happen to get through his quest, empty his pockets before you let him out of your site or someone else will, I lost the avenger an a heap of other stuff

  13. Integer Man says:

    Nice stuff. Great way to end an episode.

  14. Piflik says:

    The first playthrough, I entered Nipton from another direction and didn’t even encounter that fighting couple…after I exited some building, the guy talked about how awesome that was and I didn’t really know what he was talking about until my next playthrough…

    1. Hitch says:

      My first trip to Nipton, I heard the gunshots and couldn’t see anything. I crouched to watch for danger. Finally, I saw the guy just as he killed her and he started running straight towards me. I didn’t know he wanted to talk. I didn’t take any chances, I dropped him before he got to me.

      Before I could loot the body, the old guy who tells you about the star bottle caps appeared behind me and forced me into conversation. It was, to say the least, disconcerting.

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Obviously the old guy saw what happened to the last person who approached you head on and hand extended to talk so he sneaked up to you in order to tell you his lines before getting shot. Of course he still told you the thing that he “followed you around to see if you weren’t the type to shoot people on sight” or something to that effect…

  15. Kelly says:

    I honestly can’t see how you got lost so often Shamus. That’s only happened to me in some of those side dungeons way off the beaten path (I remember I wandered around in Dead Wind Cavern for awhile before finding the way forward).

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Its very easy to get lost in these buildings.I too got lost in that hotel in primm like Josh,and later in that office where you find q35.

      1. Kelly says:

        Repcon HQ? That was one of my favorite areas actually (I hope Reginald is the museum touring sort).

    2. Shamus says:

      Er, I didn’t say WHERE I got lost. And you admit that you got lost. So…?

      EDIT: I got lost in:

      * Those damn stupid corridors in the Bright Cult base / rocket base. The layout is pure gibberish.
      * The vaults

      I also got turned around a lot in the Ultra-Luxe. It’s not complicated, but a LOT of it looks the same. I had to walk up to doorways to see where they went.

      1. Kelly says:

        OH YEAH THE ROCKET BASE yeah I completely see where you’re coming from with that one. Never had much trouble with the Vaults myself, except for 34, which is amazingly annoying (not helped by the constant radiation).

        1. BenD says:

          It’s amazing how a little stress reduces one’s ability to wayfind. XD

        2. Johan says:

          THE ROCKET BASE, MY ONE TRUE NEMESIS.

          My first time through the base was a painful experience. After going into the basement to kill the nightkin/demons, I very quickly found what I assumed to be their leader (the only one who was not cloaked or immediately hostile). I decided that I wanted to loot some more so I threw down a map marker at where I was and headed further down. I got turned around several times, went back to the entrance one, and when I got down to the jail (where you find that one ghoul’s friend) I spent at least two minutes thinking “how the hell do I get back out of here, I know I came in here, how do I get back out!”

          I finally found my way back to the marker, but it was a chore. The local maps are 2d of a 3d space (which is actually really good because I don’t think I’d be able to read a 3d map), so often I’ll look and go “surely that hallway is the one I need to be at, and it’s just a little west of me,” before heading a bit west and then realizing that that particular hallway is actually a floor above or below me. It made me remember Oni, which had such a great solution, if the floor you needed to be at was above or below you it would show your compass arrow with a little thing indicating that you needed to be a floor above or below. This probably wouldn’t work so well in a hilly wasteland with variable height, but a man can dream.

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Oh god,the vaults!I completely forgot about the vaults.I even got a headache once(literally),trying to figure out where to go to finally finish the stupid quest.

      3. RTBones says:

        The Vaults. Ugh, yes. Particularly the one that has the radiation all over the place.

        1. Jeremy says:

          Oh my god I think I spent maybe half an hour trying to map that place out. I ended up just going online.

        2. Archaic says:

          yes vault 34 its filled with radiation and the layout is confusing and not to mention all the arbitrary ” you must find said password to pass this door”. but i think through all the frustration you get one of the best weapons in the game that allows you to one shot most robots.

          and oddly enough i find my self going back their first once i get a rad suit to get that weapon it makes certain parts of new Vegas a breeze. especially portions involving robots and dudes in power armor.

      4. Patrick the Crooner says:

        I got lost:

        in Your eyes, when I was playing my unarmed NCR follower female named Debbie.

        in The world, while playing my black male Melee specialist named Kanye. I made him an a**hole no one liked. He followed the legion. What a douche.

        in You, playing a male sneak named Rod. He was boring to play. Everyone else seemed to like him, I thought he sucked.

        in a fog, dont ask me where. I think i was high on mentats.

        in the Sun, while playing through with my character Fogleberg. He wasn’t as good on his own as I hoped. He needed a partner, maybe even a group, to be any good.

        I got lost alot actually…

  16. Starwars says:

    Am I the only one who plays these games without picking up every single bit of armor and guns and so forth? I can’t think of anything more annoying than getting that goddamn “you’re overencumbered” message and then going through these games wonderful inventory lists to try and find shit you want to get rid of.
    Every time I open a container or search a corpse, I always just check for A) things that really are quite valuable or B) things which I can really use right about now to repair my other stuff.

    It’s just… You don’t need a lot of money in these games *at all*. And even with my rather conservative looting, I still have enough money to get the nice weapon mods, implants at the clinic and so forth.

    As for the Legion… A lot of people complain about them. I think they mainly could’ve used some additional NPCs to flesh them out more but I think they’re a pretty interesting faction. Once again it’s down to the fact that, yes… This is not a faction I would support IRL. But, it’s wonderful to create a sociopath/dumb/crazy character and have a good faction choice for him. And in a certain sense, the Legion is actually quite well-done because Caesar has rather compelling reasons for what he’s doing… It’s just that he’s a crazy man as well. Educated, intelligent even. But crazy.

    I think many people expected a total grey morality type of thing between the factions in the game (I think it was even mentioned in PR) which is just not true. But I also think it’s a result of the fact that the NCR represents a lot of the values of our Western society as of today which will immediately resonate with a lot of people even though the NCR government and leadership seems to be pretty rotten, ineffective and power-seeking (they *are* invading the Mojave after all). The NCR is definitely my favorite faction in the game in terms of how they’re portrayed.
    The Legion could’ve definitely done with some fleshing out though. It’s a shame because if one were to develop the ideas they have a bit, I think they could’ve definitely felt more like a viable option for many characters. Brutality, yes. But perhaps ensured safety in their lands would be enough for a tired wastelander, having spent his life in a radioactive desert filled with dangers, that is simply trying to eke out a living.

    Unfulfilled potential there.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I had to restrain myself from picking up everything.Its like a reflex to me.So at first,I only picked up something that is worth 5+ caps per pound.Later,that went up to 10,yet I still had to be constantly drunk to carry everything around,despite the fact that both companions were also full.Though,to be fair,most of the things I filled my companions with were bunch of doctors bags and purified water.And that was with using only the energy cells and melee weapons.I cant imagine how much more stuff Id be carrying if I had a gun build.

    2. Hitch says:

      They did a really good job with the NCR in my opinion. You do tend to side with them playing any sort of remotely “good” character. But if you pay attention, you really wish there was a better option. They’re wonderfully flawed.

      Caesar’s Legion, on the other hand, really need a PR guy. Their brutality may be exactly what the wasteland needs but they do such a bad job of presenting their case, even a character who would tend to agree with them just wants to shoot them in the face.

      1. Kelly says:

        There is a better option: House.

        1. 8th_Pacifist says:

          House is a dictator. He’s a tyrant, and he doesn’t even know it. Supporting him means the end of any semblance of freedom and democracy. You’ve installed a despot.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Despotism is actually a good thing when the despot is smart.The problem is that,sooner or later,the despot dies,and his replacement may turn out to be an idiot.Though that shouldnt be a problem with house.

            Plus,its a wasteland.You cant worry about individual freedoms when the world is crumbling around you.You have to put the people in front of the individual.

            1. 8th_Pacifist says:

              I think it’s pretty clear that House’s empire is less about the good of the people and more about servicing his own ego, so he can brag about being the saviour of humanity and the man who brought us to the stars.

              I don’t like him very much. He’s smart, but not infallible. Just when will he decide humanity is ready to live on its own terms? What if it’s never? Man likes control too much to give it up lightly. I’ll take my chances without him.

              1. Kanodin says:

                House is an extreme narcissist who doesn’t really care about people, agreed. He’s still the only person with both the knowledge and resources to really start improving the Mojave. Democracy is certainly a good thing, but it does not seem viable as shown by the NCR, with that in mind his dictatorship is a very good alternative.

                1. 8th_Pacifist says:

                  I don’t think the NCR is ideal by any means, but I think it’s the least worst option. And the most wonderful thing about it is that it’s unstable, which means that sooner or later it’ll have to change. Whether for better or worse…

                  Giving House a firmer grip on his power may do some good, but I don’t accept that it’s the right choice, or even the best choice. I don’t think dictatorship is ever a good option; no one person has the right to think for thousands. In the end, the only reason he’ll be stable is because he has the biggest stick.

                2. Kanodin says:

                  I’m not saying the NCR isn’t viable, I’m just saying there are good reasons to accept House. I don’t wanna hold one choice up as best (though we can probably safely hold the legion as worst) as their are good reasons for all three of them.

              2. Kelly says:

                But his ego is, frankly, entirely justified. Vegas exists BECAUSE of House.

                He’s certainly better than the NCR, who just constantly expand at the demand of ranchers like some kind of post-nuclear Texas and are currently ruled by an idiots president and an incompetent general.

                That’s another reason why having an independent Vegas (not ruled by a “guaranteed to go insane” AI) is important not just to the locals but also to the NCR. Their constant expansion has been expensive and created a lot of crazy rancher plutocrats like the dude from the Ultra-Luxe, “Hurricane Heck” Gunderson.

                1. krellen says:

                  If you want to see why you shouldn’t pick House, just take one look at Freeside. If you sort things out between the NCR and the Kings, the NCR starts helping the people of Freeside. House is the reason they live in squalor in the first place.

          2. Kelly says:

            As opposed to installing one of two psychopaths (Yes-Man or Caesar) or lying snakes like Kimball and Oliver. House is a dictator yes, but he does in fact have plans about genuinely improving the wasteland and is shown to USUALLY be a pretty fair ruler so long as people don’t do stupid crap like what Benny did. Hell, if you’re a courier with good karma, the ending shows you actually do push him in the right direction.

            Besides all that, you aren’t “installing” anyone. Vegas is, without argument, House’s domain from the start. He’s the reason the Mojave was hit with so few nukes to begin with, and why The Strip is the glittering gem of the wastes that it is.

            1. Kojiro says:

              House taxes people for over 50% of their earnings and views Vegas as his toy. He will force you to destroy the Brotherhood of Steel, regardless of your views, if you want to help him. He ruined the lives of many people who were in New Vegas to make it “his domain”, as you put it.

              House is not good. He limits the rights of all his citizens, he has no respect for you nor anyone else, and he only has the interests of New Vegas in mind because it’s his project. The snowglobe talk actually demonstrates this perfectly: Like his collection, New Vegas is his little bauble, a perfectly contained environment that he could, at a whim, turn completely upside down.

              At least Yes-Man will listen to what you have to say.

              1. Kelly says:

                The Yes-MAn ending has him finding a program that will make him “more assertive,” which in a black comedy universe like Fallout practically basically translates to “homicidal.”

                House saved Vegas from the nukes. House brought the tribes together into organized forces. House did EVERYTHING but fix the Dam, which the NCR engineers did. Yes he’s dictator, and yes he views the place as his project, but that project involves improving the life of basically the entire Mojave.

                And honestly, the Brotherhood are idiots except for Veronica, who is basically a Follower. No matter what ending you get for them, they’re all either dead or screwing with travelers.

                1. Zukhramm says:

                  Though, if making the choice from the point of your character there was no way to predict Yes-Man finding that program. And I have no doubt my high int high science (and all my characters are like that) could find shut down Yes-man and control the Securitrons on his own.

                  But yes, I do rank House above the NCR.

                2. Even says:

                  If there’s one thing that bugs me about the criticism on the Independent ending, it’s all these freaking conspiracy theories on what the “assertiveness” means. I think the most ridiculous one I’ve ever read was that it would be just some Xanatos Gambit by House to ensure his legacy.

                  The reason it bothers me is BECAUSE IT TOTALLY UNDERMINES THE WHOLE ENDING SEQUENCE ABOUT “A FREE INDEPENDENT NEW VEGAS”! GGNNNNNNHHH

                  It just doesn’t make an ounce of sense to me.. I just thought it would mean that he would just be a little less helpful so that he would not need to help everyone who just talks to him. It would make the most sense considering that he’s focused on helping you, and having analyzed the data and decided that it would be the most helpful thing to your cause.

                  Or something. I just like to think my Good Karma/Independent with robot army-route was in the end for the best of the Mojave.

                3. Someone says:

                  It doesn’t matter what House did, a crucial element of the puzzle is the fact that House’s entire empire depends on NCR.

                  New Vegas is an economic parasite, which produces nothing and relies on NCR tourists for sustenance. If House ever had a falling out with the NCR, the tourist flow would run dry and so would the treasury. The families would leave, and the only thing House would have going for him would be the army of robots. And, while he has a lot of robots, we know NCR has thousands of soldiers, has control over pretty much everything between the Strip and Hoover Dam, has the ability to fight isolated, technologically superior forces (Enclave, BoS) and definitely has the willingness to go the extra mile for the sake of conquest.

                  And really, while NCR is not perfect by any stretch of the word, they ARE the best you could hope for in the wasteland. Sure, the military leadership is overly aggresive, sure they are stretching themselves too thin, sure the system is corrupt, but those are the problems of an actual society, a nation and not an isolated community, the problems of which are scraping enough food together to survive the coming winter and trying to lay low enough to not get wiped out by a roaming raider gang or a stray pack of Cazadores.

    3. Shamus says:

      “It's just… You don't need a lot of money in these games *at all*. ”

      You need 2k to get in the Strip if you don’t know the secret way. Implants are 4k each. It’s possible to get as many as 8. You have to pay for all of that in cash. So, ignoring stimpacks, ammo, and whatever else you might want to buy, you might need as much as $36,000.

      1. Zukhramm says:

        You don’t need to pay to get into the strip, only to have the money, so with all implants that’s 32,000, and also, doesn’t the main quest lead yout to The Kings, who can get your into the strip?

        And implants, you don’t need them, and if you find it late in the game you might have maxed your stats if you didn’t read about them beforehand. I didn’t even find the place at all.

        1. Tse says:

          Crap, I can only buy one… I have 1 endurance.

          1. Sleeping Dragon says:

            I assume it’s a joke post but I believe you can get 2. Far as I remember if you get the one that raises endurance it also counts for your implant limit.

            1. Tse says:

              Not a joke. I don’t really need endurance. I just eat a lot of stuff at the beginning of difficult fights. My hp regens faster than it gets damaged.

      2. Mailbox says:

        You know Mumbles said it’s a wasted skill, but this sounds like a good time to bring up BARTER!

        Also CARAVAN! It’s not that difficult of a game to understand and you can earn a lot by challenging players.

        1. Khizan says:

          Barter isn’t actually a wasted skill in New Vegas.

          There are several opportunities for Barter be used in conversations, much as Speech is. In fact, iirc, you can barter check the final boss into just giving up the assault. I was pretty pleased with how useful they managed to make the Speech/Barter skills without making them blatantly overpowered.

          1. Mailbox says:

            Why are you telling me this. I was promoting Barter. I always max it out. I was referencing the opinion Mumbles had on barter and making the point of how useful it is given shamus was talking about needing a lot of resources to spend which barter helps accumlate very well.

      3. Daemian Lucifer says:

        9 implants actually.And the two special once cost 8k and 12k.

      4. acronix says:

        Also, if you want to get certain weapons before “running into them” in the wasteland are very expensive depending on your barter skill. I remember wasting 3 thousands when I first found the antimateriel rifle, and I think its ammo was expensive too.

    4. Patrick the OCD Collector says:

      I am an unrepentant hoarder. I grab EVERYTHING. I can’t stop. I cant help it. I have to fight the urge to look in every garbage can, every desk drawer, every locker….. honestly I kind of annoy myself with the tendency to do that…. I dont know why I do it. I am almost always just below the point of being over burdened.

  17. RTBones says:

    Two things:

    First – Eddie Money? Really, Mumbles? You might want to watch out – the 80s are calling, and they want their music back. :) (In truth, I dig 80s music, including Eddie Money – but I did LOL pretty hard when you started singing Take Me Home Tonight, possibly because my mind went right to the gutter, but I digress. For making me LOL and singing one from the WayBack Machine, I present you with this nice shiny LOLercycle.)

    ^OO <– LOLercycle

    Second – long fuse dynamite. There actually is a use for it. There is a Vault quest where you have to destroy a level of an irradiated vault. The problem? There is gas coming in vents that will blow you to itsy bitsy bits unless you can use something that will blow the vault but allow you to escape. I used long fused dynamite, and it worked like a champ.

    1. Irridium says:

      I used C4.

      Worked just as well.

      1. Ringwraith says:

        Although C4 isn’t the cheapest thing and quite possibly not available to you at that point.

        Admittedly, I had a detonator for absolutely ages, didn’t know you actually needed it to try the stuff (which I didn’t even know existed either) and I was still carrying it regardless.

        1. Irridium says:

          I actually had quite a bit of C4. Like, 8 stacks.

          I was level… 22(give or take a level) when I did the quest, so yeah.

      2. Ramsus says:

        I used….carefully positioning myself so that I would barely not die! I only had to try like three times too.

    2. Hitch says:

      As Shamus said, that’s incredibly situational. Is there a source of long fuse dynamite anywhere near that vault? Or do you need to be a bit of a hoarder to hang onto it for quite some time before you discover a use for it?

      1. RTBones says:

        Dunno. I can tell you, in my case, I found the long fuse dynamite very very early, and like the SW cast, asked WTF is this for. I didn’t do the vault quest until MUCH later, so I guess that makes me a bit of a hoarder. I haven’t found a “cache” of long fused dynamite, though there may be one out there, or possibly a way to make it.

      2. Ringwraith says:

        I always carried one or two on me with the normal stuff, though I do tend to hoard stuff.

    3. Someone says:

      I stood in a sideroom entrance, ignited the gas with a laser pistol and closed the door before the flame could reach me.

    4. Mumbles says:

      Blame my job establishment. I hear Eddie Money all the time and it gets INGRAINED.

      1. RTBones says:

        Don’t know why I found it so funny – might just be I hadn’t heard the tune in ages and something in my brain went O…M…G…that’s Eddie Money she’s singing!

    5. BenD says:

      I have been throwing a grenade and slamming a door shut in front of my face and I could have been using long-fuse dynamite? Awww maaaaan

    6. Sleeping Dragon says:

      If I remember correctly there is this fireproof room (the game actually stresses that yes, this room is fireproof I believe) very close to the vents so you can do it by bouncing an ordinary dynamite/grenade off the wall and just closing the door real fast.

      1. BenD says:

        Right, like that.

  18. Kelly says:

    Oh another thing:
    Why do you keep mocking the pronunciation, “KYE-sahr?” That’s the CORRECT Latin pronunciation of Caesar!

    1. Shamus says:

      Which would mean something if some meaningful portion of the populace spoke Latin. You know, we speak English, and so the Latin pronunciation is foreign to us. And thus funny. Language is like that.

      And it’s not like this army of idiot misogynist degenerates have a classical education. Why ARE they using the Latin version?

      1. Saurous says:

        Well, it does seem like Caesar is trying to instill the whole “we are the Roman Legion all over again” concept in his troops, so it makes a little sense that they use the Latin version. A lot of them do actually use Latin phrases (or, rather, they say “ave” a lot), so it’s not like the archaic pronunciation comes out of nowhere.

        Besides, it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to imagine Caesar just telling his less-educated troops to call him KYE-sahr all the time.

        1. Zukhramm says:

          I think Ceasar says it’s to set them apart from the rest of the tribal people in the wasteland. I’m not sure (that is, I either missed it or the game does not make it clear) if Ceasar actually believes he is recreating the successfully Roman Empire or if it’s just to control the Legion.

          1. Kelly says:

            It’s to stand out and create a clear identity yes, he says as much if you question him. His exact words are indeed “I chose Rome exactly BECAUSE it’s so foreign.”

      2. Zukhramm says:

        Because Ceasar himself has the education, and he makes the rules.

      3. muflax says:

        It’s a shibboleth. Pretty much any human tribe tends to pick a few of those to differentiate itself from the neighbors. And speaking as someone who studied some Latin in college, insisting on correct Latin pronunciation (with “Caesar” in particular) is a very common thing among Latin (and Roman) geeks and New Vegas’ Caesar is just that.

      4. Kelly says:

        Because Caesar was an ex-Follower, and many of them ALSO speak Latin (Arcade does so on several occasions). Hell, most everything about the Legion actually does show a fair bit of research. The Frumentarii for example really WERE basically the roman secret police. Basically Caesar is big on authenticity.

        Also not all of the legionaries actually speak the language correctly, as can be seen from random dialogue from some of them.

        1. Shamus says:

          I’m still not seeing a reason why it wouldn’t be okay for us non-Latin speakers to find ky-sar funny.

          Qui vir odiosus!

          1. Kelly says:

            I just don’t find the idea of correct pronunciation of foreign words particularly amusing, but I guess I can see why it might get a chuckle out of someone who had only heard the commonly used version.

            I’m just being anal about it basically.

            But yeah. The Legion. They tend to get the Latin right. THE MORE YOU KNOW~

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Lulz,u sed anal!!one

              Its worse though when a word morphs into something else and thus becomes funny.For example,one old word for scolding someone in my language has become a slang for sex,and thus makes the kids laugh at old books that have it.

          2. Patrick the Gratuitous says:

            I always find it funny when I refer to you as Gaysar….

            …. Ya nancy-boy pillow biter..

      5. Deadpool says:

        Basically, because Caesar uses it. And it works, because he seems just the kind of pretentious bastard to use the original Latin version just to make himself feel more important.

        1. KremlinLaptop says:

          I was going to comment on this when you turned it on, but I’ll do it now; killcam is actually useful.

          When you set the killcam to be in first person perspective, you can still keep moving around and doing stuff while it slows down time. Meaning each time it jumps into kill-cam it’s actually giving you bullet-time.

          This was a damned useful feature when I had the unscoped hunting rifle and fast moving targets.

          Edit: aw buggery, this was supposed to be a new comment not a reply.

          1. Someone says:

            Not if you’re like me, and have been mentally conditioned, by years of TF2 and other FPS games, to mash “R” every time you kill someone. Then you’ll just end up constantly staring at your weapon being reloaded…veeeeery…sloowwwly…

            1. KremlinLaptop says:

              Yeah… that sort of happened to me for the first twenty hours or so too.

              I swear in online FPS games more often than not I get killed because I’m too busy reloading.

            2. Sekundaari says:

              Soon enough, you’ll learn. Soon enough…

              1. Someone says:

                Oh I’m learning alright.

                Realistic games are the worst in that regard, I’ve already spent an embarrassing amount of time getting killed by advancing enemy troops and then kicking myself for reloading a 200 round MG magazine because I’d shot 6 rounds at a stray rocket trooper and I can’t even count how many failures in SWAT 4 could have been averted if I didn’t stand there like a defenseless idiot, reloading the MP5 after killing one perp and staring down the gunbarrels of the other three.

                1. Jarenth says:

                  You have no idea how many of my deaths in Crysis 2 Multiplayer are because of this phenomenon.

      6. Kanodin says:

        These are tribal people living in a wasteland 200 years after the end of the world. They wouldn’t know what a Caesar is and would use whatever pronunciation Kaiser introduced himself with.

      7. Soylent Dave says:

        Maybe they’re using the German pronunciation. Which is coincidentally the same.

        (But they’re spelling it the Latin way for reasons somehow related to the apocalypse. Naturally.)

        1. Bubble181 says:

          Kaiser is pronounced KAY-ser
          Caesar is pronounced KAY-sarr.

          Very similar, not exactly the same.

          /anal

      8. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Well, I would imagine Caesar’s background makes it justified that he would be among the few people in the wasteland who actually knew Latin. I am working with the devs here in accepting that for some reason smart people would actually learn it 200+ years after the war, I mean, sure, a bit of medical terminology but this about covers what it would be useful though I imagine… perhaps a secondary use could develop as a “secret language” for the Legion if nobody actually knew it… but I digress. My point is, if Caesar knows how it is pronounced correctly he may want it to be pronounced correctly, and tbh if he wanted his troops to pronounce it as a “pretty, pretty unicorn” they’d probably pronounce it like that.

        From the design perspective I think it was meant to establish that Caesar meant serious business with that whole Rome thing and wasn’t just some crazy guy who read about Rome in a pre-war comic book and had delusions of being Caesar reincarnate or something.

        That being said it did rub me the wrong way as a player since we also pronounce it with a “c” around here so it didn’t feel all natural. I can see what they were aiming for with it though.

    2. Sekundaari says:

      I thought she was just correcting the others, enthusiastically. That she just finds correctness of names important, and ensures people don’t just go replacing the K-sound in the beginning with some S-sound or such.

      1. Kelly says:

        The wild giggling leads me to believe otherwise. I could easily be mistaken mind you (and if so I do quite apologize Mumbles).

        1. Sekundaari says:

          Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. I mainly said it for the sake of the joke anyway, Kelly.

    3. Kavonde says:

      I’m pretty sure the folks at Obsidian didn’t know that. If you talk to Caesar, you get to hear all kinds of mangled Latin pronunciations. It’s been awhile since I cheated my way through my high school Latin classes, but I don’t think “centurion” is pronounced “kenturion.”

      1. Starwars says:

        No, it is actually pronounced “kenturion”.

        It was one of their goals to have all the Legion use the correct Latin pronunciations, though there are one or two characters that slipped through the net unfortunately.

        1. Kanodin says:

          Yep, c in Latin is almost always a hard K sound, and v is a w sound, j usually becomes a y sound. Am I forgetting any other odd rules?

          1. guy says:

            For one thing, you’re forgetting that classical latin doesn’t have a J. It uses consonantal I’s instead, because J had not yet been invented. Also, I as a vowel is frequently pronounced similar to a long E.

            1. Kavonde says:

              Huh. Well, never mind, then. All this time I thought Caesar’s odd-sounding pronunciations were sort of a commentary on how much knowledge was lost in the Great War, but it turns out that he was just smarter than me.

              I’ll keep that in mind the next time I drop a plasma grenade in his pocket.

            2. Kanodin says:

              Where on earth did I see a J then, I know I was told to pronounce it as a y at one point. Maybe I’m just confusing my Romantic languages now.

              1. guy says:

                Well, when the J was introduced during the medieval period, it replaced consonantal I’s, which were pronounced like Y. So if you see an allegedly latin word or name with a J in it, it was originally an I and you pronounce the J as a Y.

                So, for instance, Jupiter was originally Iuppiter.

          2. krellen says:

            Remove “almost”. In Latin, c is a k sound (they don’t even have k, because c is k); if they wanted the soft-c sound, they used s.

        2. Kelly says:

          The only ones I remember getting things wrong were the odd random soldier and I THINK the dog guy. Were there others?

          1. Starwars says:

            The Legion guy in Red Rock Canyon. I think he actually has the correct pronunciation for one line of dialogue and the wrong one for another.

            There is at least one other as well though I can’t for the life of me remember who it is at the moment. Possibly the guy you meet up with for one the Legion missions (Cato I think?), but definitely not sure about that.

    4. guy says:

      Thank you!

      I’m glad I’m not the only person who has a “fingernails on blackboard” moment when they hear it mispronounced.

    5. Mumbles says:

      I like saying fun words. KAAAIIIII ZZAAARRR is just fun to say no matter how you slice it.

      1. Kelly says:

        Fair enough I guess.

      2. BenD says:

        And it makes Caesar sound like an ominous, dangerous, skeery enemy.

        Hence the giggles.

  19. Rosseloh says:

    I assume we’re talking about the guy who says something like “she just started shooting!”? I haven’t watched the video yet.

    Anyway, in three playthroughs that have gotten past that point, I’ve never actually seen the argument. I’m usually just finished talking to the survivor of the Nipton massacre when my camera gets grabbed by this guy yelling “did you see what she just did to me?”

    “No man, I didn’t. What the hell are you talking about? Geez, leave me alone, I have a ghost town to examine!”

    1. Hitch says:

      I’ve taken several characters through Nipton. Even if you know it’s coming, it’s very hard to get into range to see the gunfight.

  20. mumakil says:

    It might just be me but after i heard nipton had a small gambling establishment at the ncr outpost and then ran into a guy jumping and waving a lottery ticket and just rambling about winning I thought he had won like the main prize from a lottery(i somehow ignored the smoke plumes even though i saw em :D) so the moment we left conversation i blew his head off. No caps though :(

    damn i wanted those caps…….

    1. Someone says:

      I’ve read about a huge jackpot lottery on a sign just outside Nipton, and assumed that was what the guy was talking about. I didn’t bother killing him, because in FONV “huge jackpot” can easily mean 300 caps.

  21. Bobby Archer says:

    Those light beams are nice and atmospheric, but they kind of bug me because they’re coming in from both sides of the shop. I know I’m probably alone in this, but I really wish they’d stuck with less is more and just put the rays one whichever side of the building the sun is supposed to be on.

    1. Peter H. Coffin says:

      I wonder if they still shine in even at night.

    2. Jeremy says:

      I was about to make the same comment – it bugs me intensely when there’s light streaming into windows on two sides of the building from one sun. It’s like old “outdoor shot in studio” TV shows where people have multiple shadows (and wobbly trees).

      Even outside it annoys me that its really hard to tell where the sun is – the lighting is really flat.

      (Of course it would be a lovely way to intro a player to a multi-sun world by letting them work through an indoor space with odd lighting from outside.)

    3. Jeff says:

      I can say definitively this is Bethesda’s fault (or rather, their crappy obsolete piece of crap engine). Documented extensively in Oblivion modding communities.

  22. Demonix says:

    I really want to watch this, but Rutskarn’s CONSTANT JUMPING is a real turn off. Stop downing pixie sticks and mountain dew before playing please!

    1. Rutskarn says:

      It’s Josh. Josh is the player.

      1. Dumbledorito says:

        It’s still you doing it. And when we find out how… oooooh, you’re in for it.

      2. X2-Eliah says:

        Riiight. Not falling for that one, bud.

      3. Sekundaari says:

        Eh, what’s the difference.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Josh is a kid in adult body,and Rutskarn is just a kid.

          1. Irridium says:

            A hipster kid.

      4. Someone says:

        Yeah, yeah, just blame the poor Josh, very mature.

      5. Jarenth says:

        He’s probably just talking about your Hitman videos.

      6. Kavonde says:

        Always trying to scapegoat Josh…

      7. Patrick the Acrobat says:

        I still find it amusing to hop, skip and jump across the wasteland. Breaks the tedium of endless treking across the desert.

        And it reminds me of a fonder time when I was once referred to as…

        …OUTLANDER….

    2. Nick says:

      Indeed Rutskarn! It’s annoying to watch you hopping around your room through the secret webcam we installed! Slow down on the sugar and caffeine man! There’s no need to copy what Josh was doing in game to real life!

      1. X2-Eliah says:

        So that’s why Mumbles has been giggling through random points during the show.

        1. Patrick the Forewarned says:

          If he is always giggling, then perhaps he can no longer be called mumbles. Perhaps we sould call him ‘Giggles’.

          In fact…there are some who call him….TIM?

          1. krellen says:

            Mumbles is the she.

      2. BenD says:

        Now this sounds like the Ruts we know and … feel varying conflicting emotions about! ;D

  23. Deadpool says:

    “Long fuse dynamite? I never saw a use for it!”

    *shoves regular Dynamite in someone’s pocket and has it explode too early*

    “Maybe I shouldn’t be surrounded by his guys when he dies.”

    And you just found out what long fuse dynamite is for.

    1. Someone says:

      I wonder, how do you shove a dynamite stick with a flaming fuse in someone’s pocket and not have his pants catch on fire?

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Ask bugs bunny.

      2. Rutskarn says:

        Because the combustion point of canvas is pretty high, while the combustion point of a treated fuse is pretty low.

        1. Abnaxis says:

          It’s not the combustion point that matters for the fuse, it’s the energy released by the reaction. Fire generally burns at a hotter temperature than what it took to start it.

          Not that I know what the energy released is for a fuse, or how it compares to the flash point of pants, but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to work in the phrase “flash point of pants”.

    2. Abnaxis says:

      Has anyone tried firing up a Stealth Boy and seeing how many long-fuse dynamites they can plant before the first goes off? As close together as those Legion guys are walking, I bet you could get a good 3 or 4 kills, at least. And the rest might very well die from the splash damage…

      Alright, I know what I’m doing when I get off work tonight :D

      1. Someone says:

        This might be an easy way to take out Caesar and his posse!

        This is what I love about Fallout, there are so many ways for a crafty player to succeed!

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          there are so many ways for a crafty player to break the game!

          There, fixed it.

          On a more serious note though, this is kind of a cool thing as a concept, and Goddess knows I had my players in pen and paper RPGs do stuff like get to a meeting place a day in advance and mine key locations so they can detonate select charges if the negotiations go awry. The thing is in case of FO3 and NV the scripting doesn’t (can’t?) account for everything a crafty (or clueless) player can come up with so it’s fairly easy to break it, resulting in stuff like broken quests, skipped key dialogues or bits of info or getting stuck somewhere and this pisses me off severely.

  24. Eddie says:

    Have we figured out the rules for this season’s drinking game yet; I haven’t looked through the previous episodes’ comments? Although I think I might have one to begin and end the entire drinking game: every thime Josh jumps, take a drink.

    1. Bobby Archer says:

      This version of the drinking game has a high probability of your liver trying to kill you. With a knife.

    2. Deadpool says:

      We’d die.

      The old rules were, basically (from memory, so probably forgot a few):

      Whenever Josh screams “Stop shooting at me!”
      Whenever Reg gets addicted to something.
      Whenever Josh eats/drinks/chems more than 3 times in one inventory use.
      Whenever Shamus says “In the original…”
      Whenever 3 or more people speak at once.

      Anyone remember the rest?

      1. Eddie says:

        Yes, I suppose it would be less like a drinking game and more like just continuous drinking.

        The Fallout 3 drinking game was:
        * Josh opens his inventory and consumes 3 or more things in the middle of combat.
        * Anyone uses the phrase “in the Original Fallout…”Âť
        * Reginald becomes addicted to anything.
        * A new overpowered weapon or item is acquired.
        * An obvious bug or glitch is encountered.
        * All three of us are talking at the same time.
        * Josh tries ineffectually to kill bad guys with f-bombs.
        * The phrase “200 years”Âť is spoken.
        * “STOP SHOOTING ME!”Âť
        * Reginald dies.

        Although I though it was deliciously ironic when Shamus mentioned “the original game” in the first episode and he was referring to Fallout 3.

        1. Shamus says:

          Arg! I really thought that had slipped by, unnoticed. My shame is now complete.

          1. poiumty says:

            Oh you have no idea.

        2. GTRichey says:

          One addition for this season (only for the most masochistic) would be any time Josh jumps. Though if anyone were to actually try this they’d quickly lose viewers to liver failure and alcohol poisoning.

          1. Kavonde says:

            Might be better to say “take a drink every time someone makes fun of Josh’s bunny-hopping.” Though you’d still be in serious danger after a couple episodes…

            1. GTRichey says:

              Definitely a better option for those of us with a fondness for being alive (or really anything other than a hatred of it). You could also add any time the crew starts hating on caravan.

          2. Veloxyll says:

            No human can drink that fast!

        3. PurePareidolia says:

          I think of all of those, the 200 years is probably going to have to be retired, possibly the only time it comes up is talking to the Deathclaw Omelette lady in Sloan where she asks what the best thing you ever ate was and you can reply “anything that isn’t 200 years old” and she goes “can you believe people still eat that stuff?” which I thought was awesome.

          But new Vegas is actually fairly well maintained and growing back, so it makes a LOT more sense than fallout 3.

          1. krellen says:

            I’m currently running a Fallout game set in Kansas City, contemporaneous with New Vegas (slightly after, actually). In my setting, the Missouri River Valley is a lush, green, bountiful place, and lots of people live there because of it.

            Because 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse, desert wastelands where once was river valley lushness doesn’t make any damn sense. Seen pictures of Pripyat lately?

  25. Rampant Pedantry says:

    The fight between Tomas and Jacklyn is determined by combat. The catch?

    They are nearly identically matched…at the very bottom end of competence. Each has base Guns skill of 5, a 10mm Pistol to fight with, and just enough armor to deflect most of the damage either of them can do.

    The fight slightly favors Tomas, as he is wearing Leather Armor vs. Jacklyn’s Raider Badlands suit, but the difference is very marginal. They each have 120 HP, and the 10 Mil is rated at a base of 22 damage. With their skills where they are, they’re probably doing closer to half that, against DTs of 6 and 4 respectively, for a ballpark damage per exchange between ‘nothing’ and ‘6’ when they are actually hitting each other (which they will tend not to do). I’m a bit hazy yet on how the combat system derives damage from skill or in combat, so I don’t have hard numbers there. However, critical damage is a flat addition based on the weapon.

    The 10mm Pistol’s critical damage is another 22. This by itself doesn’t account for a random kill, but if one of them happens to land a critical headshot they will tend to cripple their target’s head, both doing additional (potentially lethal) damage and causing the victim to clutch their heads and bend down, exposing the top of their head to further bonus-damage action from the attacker’s wildly flailing gun arm. Apart from the headshot, most limb crippling seems to invoke animations that either bring the victim’s head in-line with their torso, slightly increasing the likelihood that another NPC will tag their brains out, or at the very least stops them in their tracks for a moment while they go ‘Argh’ and their assailant racks up more free shots, further overbalancing the fight.

    I strongly suspect that this is what is happening here. Even discounting the above wild theory about limb-crippling as a factor, the two combatants tend to be doing a great deal of practically nothing to one another right up until the moment that one of them crits, raining a sharp cavalcade of doom upon the victim. Once one is notably winning, they will tend to stay there until they have notably won.

    This is all on the averages, of course. In most of my runs, Tomas survives with either most or only a fraction of his health left. I have only encountered Jacklyn alive once, at around full health.

    YMMV, all hail the RNG.

    1. Someone says:

      NEEEEEERD!

      Seriously, how do you know all this stuff?!

      1. Vipermagi says:

        Vaultwiki and/or GECK, I’d presume :)

    2. acronix says:

      On every playthrough, I never found Jacklyn as the winner. It was always Thomas, and I ALWAYS missed the shootout. The first few times I was all “what? No, I didn`t saw any shootout, why can`t I say that?” until I assumed it was a broken event.

      1. Vipermagi says:

        I recall Jacklyn winning twice out of I don’t bother counting how many times (ballpark: 8 maybe?).

    3. Shamus says:

      That is a really good explanation.

      1. Rampant Pedantry says:

        Thank you, Shamus.

        The real beauty of this whole encounter though, waits to be revealed if you haven’t run the whole course. I highly recommend collecting the star caps if you can, as you go…you’ll need fifty.

    4. ClearWater says:

      What does it mean to cripple someone’s head? Their head can’t walk any more?

      1. Rampant Pedantry says:

        To answer the above, I am currently knee-deep in the oily wading pool of the GECK, vainly attempting to autodidact my way through some modeling and game design, so that’s where I get most of my data. It should be noted that this data is only as reliable as the source, which I can only rate as ‘fairly’ reliable. In fairness to the GECK, I’m not a faultless experimenter and there may be perfectly good reasons for some things I see as complete madness, but that’s another conversation entirely.

        For Clearwater, in addition to provoking the “Ow, my face.” animation, crippling a target’s head applies a fairly significant Perception debuff which has further effects on combat if the victim survives. Depending on your build, this is generally an unlikely circumstance as combat favors the player totaling out most common opponents in the time it takes to cripple their face. Sometimes useful against some harder targets though, ie: Super Mutants/Nightkin, anyone in power armor, that sort of thing, where you have a larger margin between ‘cripple’ and ‘outright death’ on a headshot.

        Most of the time, I suspect most players are going to take it as the cherry on top of the bonus damage you get on headshots anyway.

        In the case of the player, in addition to the statistic debuff, you get periodic concussion effects laid over your screen along with a nasty audio tone, effectively rendering you periodically blind and deaf until you get it fixed.

        So a crippled head probably means you’ve cracked your skull, possibly including ocular orbits, mild to severe concussion, broken jaw, abruptly missing teeth, any of that field of really painful, distracting, nasty stuff wherein you still have a technically-operational head but it’s in really unhappy shape and should really probably be looked at by some sort of medical professional before someone hits it again. You may even have a bullet-hole in there…human beings have survived some pretty terrific cranial injuries in reality, let alone in action cinema video games.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Makes you wonder whats in those doctors bags that allows you to mend bones and heal concussions.

          1. Rampant Pedantry says:

            “Thank you for purchasing DOCTOR BAG(tm). This Doctor Bag(tm) kit consists of one(1) Doctor Bag(tm)’s Bag(tm), containing one(1) Doctor Bag(tm), one(1) Doctor Bag(tm)’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Doctor Bag(tm)(c), and assorted Doctor Bag(tm)’s Doctoripherals(tm). Please consult your Doctor Bag(tm)’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Doctor Bag(tm)(c) for a full list of Doctoripherals(tm) now available from Med-Tek, as well as instructions on the care and feeding of your brand new Doctor Bag(tm). Please do not forget to feed and care for your brand new Doctor Bag(tm). Here at Med-Tek, your health is our top concern.”

            That said, if the crafting bench is any indicator: Forceps, medical brace, surgical tubing and a scalpel.

            Let us pause to reflect on mental images of the Courier, perhaps our own dear Reginald, with a surgical-tube-tied medical brace propping his poor broken head up under that lovely bonnet.

  26. TheAngryMongoose says:

    Glad I’m not the only one who kept getting lost.
    Vault 34 was the worst. Getting lost is irritating. Getting lost while slowly being irradiated is horrible.

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      Aye. It doesn’t help that every single room in a building looks the same, usually, and that there’s no true layout beyond ‘make room, random door, random corridor, random rooms’..

      Actually – I really wonder whether the interior designers even had a plan for the non-obvious-landmarks (ncr base, lucky 7 casino) or did they just plonk down room cells randomly.

  27. Abnaxis says:

    I have gotten six characters to this point in this game, and I never saw the woman the man was referring to before I saw it in this video.

    And the lottery winner…it is actually exceptionally difficult for that man to live. One time I decided to follow him and see what he does with his new lease on life…

    …He runs out into the desert, pretty much doing a beeline for a radscorpion nest, and dies in a swarm of giant radscoripions. I once got it into my head that I would try and protect him. After the nest, he just runs around in wide circles, aggroing every last damn swarm of golden geckos and radscorpions in a two-mile radius. And even if you kill everything, he stops–in the middle of the desert–and cowers.

    Ironic death, indeed.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      I actually wonder if it would be cooler to have this guy come back as some caravan guard or something, even without the player getting any obvious clues that it’s actually him. or if the “ironic death just after life was spared” is more in line with the black humour of the fallout setting.

  28. Mailbox says:

    That powder ganger at Nipton is indeed a great encounter. “You say you won the lottery? BLAM! Yoink! I’m afraid you’re mistaken cause I believe I won the lottery. ” Then you learn what the actual prize was and you laugh at the irony.

    I never feel sorry for those two star cap squabblers. My intentions are always for collecting those star caps and if you have some, better watch out.

    1. Hitch says:

      What’s sad in my case is the ratio of the times I’ve cold-bloodedly murdered Tomas for his caps (every play-through except the first when I genuinely thought he was attacking me) to the number of times I’ve actually managed to get anything from Festus (zero).

  29. Vipermagi says:

    The light-falling-through-shades/gunkonthewindows thing irked me, since it happened from both sides of the building. At least one of those sides should be shaded… Still, it’s pretty atmospheric.

    Oh, btw, Shamus: Fairly sure you can get glasses in the good doctor’s house?

  30. Michael says:

    Ironic death?

    I prefer the term “poetic justice”.

    You know, like the story with the Colosseum and the criminal. “Behind one door lies a ravenous lion, the other; your freedom.”

    But really there’s lions behind both doors.

  31. Milos says:

    I never noticed on my two playthroughs but that lottery guy’s voice actor was also behind an insignificant character in Vampire the Masquarade – Bloodlines. A certain nosferatu’s ghoul I think. And how do I remember this? I have no fucking idea, that guy did nothing impressionable and I didn’t play the game in years.

    1. Saurous says:

      I’m pretty sure he’s Yuri Lowenthal. The dude’s voice shows up freaking everywhere in the game, including the male Courier’s grunts and girly battle screeches.

    2. Kelly says:

      I don’t know if Yuri was Knox in Bloodlines, but he’s definitely all around in this game.

  32. Gantidae says:

    All the talk about engine limitations made me very glad the Gamebryo engine is now a thing of the past. Future Bethesda games such as Skyrim will have a new engine. Now we’ll get to see how much of all the random craziness was Bethesda and how much was engine limitations.

    1. JPH says:

      I’m willing to put money on it being Bethesda’s fault.

    2. Jeff says:

      I never heard this! Joy of joys!

    3. Sleeping Dragon says:

      New engine-new bugs says I ^_^

      1. Jeff says:

        Oh no, my joy!

  33. Rob says:

    I’ve never seen the girl before, both games I’ve played through I’ve heard gunfire in the distance gone to investigate and than the shooting stops and the guy shows up and starts talking to me about the women he killed. I’ve never found her body either.

    My first encounter with the lottery winner was amusing. I listened to him tell me everything and than as he ran down the road into the distance I thought about who he was and what he had done and how, you know, he really shouldn’t have lived through that. I shouldered my hunting rifle took aim and brought him down. Felt pretty good to be honest.

  34. Fat Tony says:

    Shamus in doc-mitch’s house you can seea pair of glasses as soon as you’re talking to him over his left shoulder is a desk with a typewriter on it, to the left of said type writer is a pair of reading glasses.

    (At my cousins hope the gravatar works)

  35. Wolfwood says:

    lol you killed the lottery winner for having glasses. At least you have a significant reason of stealing from his \corpse.

    I just killed him for swearing a bit more than i appreciated. Also murdered the man who was crippled for speaking to me without any respect! A stranger walks in the room brimming with guns, the least you can do is not drop the f-bombs until after you’ve introduced yourself XD

    1. Patrick the Forewarned says:

      I’m with you on this. I shot his crippled face off for being to sarcastic. People with no ability to walk shouldnt be so caustic.

      Well…to be trtuthful I pretty much shot anyone who didnt kiss my butt really…. he jut died quicker than most…

  36. Kavonde says:

    I’m kind of disturbed to find out that ED-E’s name is pronounced “Eddie.” Combined with the town of Novac, I’m getting worried that someone at Obsidian is stalking me.

  37. Slothful says:

    You know, it’s pretty lucky that all glasses are exactly your prescription. Also that in this apocalyptic wasteland where everything is covered in filth and grime, those glasses are pristine and easy to see through.

    Especially since you’d never be able to find a clean cloth to wash them with.

    1. Abnaxis says:

      Y’know, with all the detergent lying around everywhere, you would think the clothes everyone is wearing would be spotless. But no…

      1. Zukhramm says:

        Well that’s why it’s laying around. No one’s using it.

        1. BenD says:

          No one’s using any of those brooms, dustmops, mop buckets, or miniature canister vacuums either. *grinds teeth*

          1. Kavonde says:

            Seriously. A lot of this stuff would be forgivable if Bethesda hadn’t locked Obsidian into the “200 years later” thing, but apparently giving Harold enough time to turn into a tree is more important than having your game world make any sense.

            I have a hunch, though, that one of the DLC’s will take you to the NCR proper. Maybe Shady Sands? Then we can have our minds utterly blown by the lack of random garbage, century-old dirt stains, and buildings people are living in but haven’t even tried to repair.

            1. Irridium says:

              Garbage, far as the eye can see!

            2. BenD says:

              The thing about Harold is that it shouldn’t take 200 years for a reasonably sized tree to grow in an acceptable soil (let’s pretend that Harold is acceptable soil due to his unique situation). Plenty of tree species could beat that by 150 years. An empress tree could do it in 20. There was NO REASON for the 200 year nonsense.

          2. bit says:

            To be fair, it is still a wasteland, irradiated desert; I’d rather be dirty than waste fresh water or walk around glowing.

  38. Johan says:

    Shamus, you died to Vulpes Inculta? I NEVER died to him. He and his little gang seemed pretty damn weak for FIVE ENEMIES (which is part of why I could never take the Legion seriously, if you don’t kill him you find out that he is pretty high up in the Legion hierarchy, which made me think “really? That dude I killed back at level 5 was important? These guys suck!”)

    Even on my playthrough where I didn’t put any points into weapons I could kill him. Lay down a few frag mines/powder charges (which you have a few of by now, I saw Josh pick up the frag mines in Primm), through some Dynamite, pop Mex-X and Psycho and go to town with whatever weapon you have handy (submachine gun is nice, but any will do really, if you only have a melee weapon you can also pop alcohol).

    And if you take out the Powder Gangers (when you have an energy weapons build) there leader has a plasma pistol, a fine weapon (and oh yeah Josh’s incinerator).

    Really unless you decide to do something reckless and silly, like drop Dynamite into Vulpe’s back pocket and then stand around while the Legionaries start surrounding you and giving you meaningful looks, he isn’t that that.

    1. Shamus says:

      Obviously I didn’t lay down mines. I play a lot like josh. I don’t set up traps and such. I just start blasting. And in a fight with five dudes, one of them with a ripper, in the open, using firearms? Yeah, that’s not going to work out well.

      1. BenD says:

        Also, no one is talking about level when they get to this point. On my first playthrough I was level 12 or 13 at Nipton (I’m a tourist, what can I say – I go everywhere except where the plot seems to be) and I suppose I could have probably offed them with the ‘blast away’ method. Have to try it sometime.

      2. Johan says:

        I assumed from the moment I saw them that they’d attack me on sight (big dudes in badass armor, the whole town slaughtered, and holy crap are those crucifixes!?!), so that’s probably why I prepared so.

        Also I ALWAYS load up on drugs. When a fight seems even moderately against me (usually 5-6 enemies against me at low levels, more when I get higher), I pop whatever I’ve got (that Ant Nectar you looted is awesome for this, +4 Strength are you kidding me). I ran through the Bison Hotel blown out of my mind on Psycho and Buffout I’d created in Doc Michel’s house (at the chemistry set). And since you can find a lot more in the Hotel I then use it whenever I’m going to fight Vulpe.

    2. JPH says:

      I love how you first go on about how incredibly easy it is, and then explain the 5 or 6 steps you have to go through in order for it to be easy.

      Dude, most people don’t play like you do. Most people just start blasting.

      Also, does Mex-X bear any resemblance to Tex-Mex? ‘Cause it sounds tasty.

      1. Johan says:

        I played through it again to get another feel for it, and you don’t even really need to mines or anything, just the drugs. Psycho and Med-X, Buffout if you have low endurance, alcohol and/or and nectar if you have low strength and need to melee them.

        As guy says, drugs have always been a great player crutch throughout the series, but I fully understand that others don’t play that way (different strokes for different folks). I love the joy that comes from a well executed plan, my second time in Primm I laid mines at the corner next to the Vikki and Vance casino, and then lured the gangers there into the mines. It was beautiful. I like to feel in control of the battlefield (even if that’s a delusion and I’m making it up as I go along): “OK, I’ll sneak attack that guy, then when everyone’s hostile I’ll throw a frag and follow up with my submachine gun, will I need chems for this?”

        I understand that not everyone likes rooting around in their inventory for what particular knick knack would be best in this fight, and that not everyone uses campfires (although with high Science you can make Slasher, which gives you the benefits of Psycho and Med-X, and stacks with Mex-X) or even companions (you can also make party-time mentats at a campfire, +5 Charisma adds a lot to Nerve), I just wanted to point out that the tools are there and can be used to great effect, and to share my own part of the Mojave journey: killing people with funny names (seriously, Vulpes? alright it means “Fox” but it sounds so much like Vulpix (a pokemon) that I laugh whenever I see it).

    3. guy says:

      I’ve only played the first two, but if New Vegas is anything like them popping a bunch of drugs makes you an invincible combat monster who considers minigun fire part of a balanced breakfast.

      Seriously, I have fond memories of popping a bunch of drugs and going to town on the Cathedral. With a minigun.

    4. Daemian Lucifer says:

      If you consider a fight easy just because you chug down loads of drugs,what do you consider a regular encounter then?I cleared out the prison because I was so high I was above the moon and used a stealth boy,but I dont consider it to be an easy low level thing.I managed to kill the death claws in the quary via a similar method,but I dont think it is an easy fight.Whenever you need to use drugs to survive,its not an easy fight.

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        This. I’m the kind of gamer who has an extremely reserved approach to consumables. I think this might be resulting from how some of the old, unforgiving games conditioned me, like in certain roguelikes if you get your hand on a good scroll/potion/wand you are so going to hold onto it until you’re on your absolutely last legs. In short, if it’s a choice between avoiding fight and burning a number of consumables my first instinct is to avoid and keep the items for a fight I can’t skip. FO3/NV does try to give you a bit of a scare with addiction but they hardly follow through, in general games tend to be much more forgiving nowadays ;)

        1. Vipermagi says:

          I either simply forget the fight can become noticably easier, or feel I really should hang onto those 15+ Med-Xes for some later encounter. Safe to say, I drink a lot of Sarsaparillas (of which I always seem to have 60).

      2. Rampant Pedantry says:

        Anecdote: My first trip to Quarry Junction to visit nest there. High as a /kite/, and drunk to boot. Had just acquired the Anti-materiel Rifle for the first time…did not meet the efficiency requirements on Strength or Guns, by reasonably small margins.

        So I recruited Cas and ED-E for their perks and had them wait back in Sloan while I perched up on some rocks with a suitcase out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel and a stack of gun magazines, in a beret, taking pot-shots at horrible giant monster lizards before proceeding on my quest to liberate the Mojave from itself and everyone in it.

        Thinking back, my entire first run was a lot like that all around. No idea what I was doing, just a vague sense of vendetta and madness down the long road to revenge.

        Fear and Loathing in New Vegas.

  39. Corsair says:

    I had some trouble with Vulpes Inculta because I was just about out of stims, poorly equipped, and dirt poor. Took me a couple tries to manage to kill him. Should not have played Hardcore my first game.

    1. Kanodin says:

      Your first game is the best time to play hardcore mode in my opinion. Do it in any future playthroughs and it’s just a nuisance, but the first time it really adds to the game. At least for me.

      1. Even says:

        Have to agree with this. Especially if you’ve already beaten Fallout 3.

        1. Michael says:

          I don’t mean to be rude, but what does beating Fallout 3 have to do with Hardcore mode in Fallout: New Vegas?

          1. Even says:

            Yeah my apologies, I should have probably elaborated a bit more.

            It’s mainly due to the repetitiveness of the normal gameplay. There’s not that much overall change to basic gameplay beyond some minor additions and tweaking here and there when it comes to combat and such. It’s definitely better than in FO3, but it’s still nothing too amazing. Having played subsequent playthroughs without hardcore mode and experiencing it for what it is, I don’t believe I would have enjoyed the game as much if I hadn’t went for hardcore the first time through.

            1. Kavonde says:

              Fourthed. My second playthrough’s sans hardcore, and while it’s going a hell of a lot quicker, it’s also much less engaging. Hardcore really is a great addition to the game.

            2. Khizan says:

              I did hardcore my first time, and I loved it. Still do. On the first playthrough, it adds a lot to the game by making you watch your supplies and making it harder to just roam around the wastes with more weapons than an armory.

              I found that it added a lot to the game, because I’d run into situations where I was in the middle of an area already and I was wishing for a weapon I’d left back at my house for weight issues. I thought about my supplies carefully before going out on a mission.

              In successive playthroughs, it’s started to matter less to me because I already know all this stuff. I game the casinos so I don’t need to keep and sell everything. I know the missions so I know when I’m going to want to bring along a heavy weapon and when I’m just going to be mowing down mooks.

              And so, hardcore has become less interesting strategically because I already know the strategy, and now it feels more like inventory micromanagement. So I’ve dropped it and find I don’t really miss it that much. I was already carrying around a full arsenal with the help of my companions, so all it’s really done is cut my need to keep food/water on me, and freed up a bit of weight.

              Everybody’s first playthrough should be hardcore. After that, I don’t feel it’s restricting enough to keep it strategically interesting. A recent playthrough changed my mind about this from the last time I posted here about it because I found that I wasn’t really making interesting choices anymore, I was just tabbing to the pipboy to drink/eat after quick traveling.

  40. Tzeneth says:

    You know, for the lottery guy. My first reaction was: he won the lottery? SCORE! I then proceeded to kill him for the lottery ticket. I figured I’d stumbled on a guy who was going to get me a lot of caps. Of course I learned 30 seconds later I was wrong. Made me mad that all those lottery tickets were worthless.

    1. Johan says:

      I think his “winning” lotto ticket is worth 10 caps, and everyone else’s tickets (you can pick up a few in front of the crucified powder gangers) are worth 1 cap.

      Not much, but about 2 beers worth. Though why would someone ever buy his ticket for more than any other? Maybe you, the player, sell it by telling the story of Nipton and how he “won the lottery” so people consider it lucky (obviously you leave out that you killed him afterward, so it couldn’t have been THAT lucky)

    2. Darthricardo says:

      Yeah, I did the same thing. You won the lottery,eh? Well, it looks like I just did too. Ka-ching. Of course, it’s his fault for not telling you what exactly he won… I mean, he goes around trumpeting that he won something of value, so… yeah… guy had it coming.

  41. C. Hundley says:

    I don’t know if this has been said, or if this will even be seen, but there are actually a pair of reading glasses inside the Doc’s home you start out in that work for the four eyes trait. It took me four starts of the game to realize that.

  42. RichVR says:

    I am very sorry for what I’m about to write. Not so much because I’m sorry about the content. More that I will be a persona non grata here forever more.

    I usually didn’t watch the Spoiler Warning stuff because of the actual spoilers that I might see. As I have said before, I just built a new system and pretty much everything that Shamus and his crew discussed is a spoiler to me, not having played any of the games all the way through yet.

    But I figured, what the heck, give a few of them a try. I like Shamus, his writing. And I like the comments that he and his friends write here.

    And so my comment that will get me a lot of static.

    Mumbles has a very annoying voice. And more so, she is a distraction from what is going on in the videos. To the point that I just can’t watch them.

    I’m sorry. I’m sure that she’s a fine person. But she’s just annoying.

    I’ll leave now and not come back, if that’s the consensus. But honestly, is it just me?

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      Well.. I don’t hear it. Might not be just you, but at least it’s not everyone.

      1. Mumbles says:

        It’s okay, I think he’s confusing me for Rutskarn.

        1. Michael says:

          There was the one episode where you were wailing like a dying dinosaur due to a broken spine or something.

          I think you apologized for it, though.

    2. Desgardes says:

      I’m just a little confused, because……..if there is agreement, you want them to drop her? Cause that sounds like something totally likely to happen no matter how many people hate her.

      Also, what makes her a distraction and no one else?

      1. RichVR says:

        I woke up the next day and remembered what I wrote here and was instantly pissed off at myself. I have avoided returning for a while but I thought I should return and take my medicine.

        I was not asking for anyone to be dropped. I was just making an, admittedly stupid, comment. I’m actually surprised at the lack of vitriol. I appreciate it. And I am sorry for my late night mistake.

        I was just expressing something on a website that I should have kept to myself.

        I apologize for my stupidity.

        1. Desgardes says:

          :3 Supposedly you’re not supposed to crucify people for their opinions. SUPPOSEDLY!! D: But, hey, what you gonna do?

    3. LadyTL says:

      Yes it seems to be just you.

    4. some random dood says:

      Not so much annoying to me, more surprising. A while ago, Shamus had rules that tried to keep the tone of the comments section fairly polite, with minimal swearing, so when the Spoiler Warnings started letting rip, it came as a bit of a surprise.
      Just wondering – is the use of the various 4-letter words still discouraged in the comments sections, or is it now open-season to match the language in Spoiler Warning? Or maybe only comments on Spoiler Warning allowed full fruitiness, but try to keep the other sections F-Free?

  43. Corsair says:

    To be honest, I found Hardcore Mode to be a nuisance anyway.

  44. superglucose says:

    I just want to say that your comments about who you initially helped point to some distinct gender lines in society. Each of you immediately thought, “oh, the man started it!” It was BRILLIANT of Obsidian to shaft people like that. “I’m playing the good guy, so I’d better save the damsel in distress!” SURPRISE!!!!

    Greatest. Moment. In. Game.

    Well except for “Of course only I saw them! They were invisible!” I love that guy.

    1. Shamus says:

      It’s not just that she was a female, but also that she was asking for help. The other guy never spoke in his own defense.

  45. Fang says:

    I didn’t know you where supposed to follow the road into Nipton so I found out about the Lottery then met that guy who won.

    Needless to say killing him felt goooood.

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