Thank you, sir. *Adds New Vegas to the list*

Edit: Hey… with this post I am officially a Mouth!

Mustard pretty much summed it up. Obsidian took an open world game, from an open world-franchise, and did their darndest to make it as linear as possible. You literally cannot just start the game and go off in any direction you want to. Not unless you want to die and roll a new toon five minutes into the game that is. You have to go where the game developers want you to, when they want you to. They even put up collision boxes (which are basically invisible barriers) around certain areas to make it impossible to go that way.

The upside is that the linear approach is designed to advance the overall story, as Mustard said. I don't share his opinion on how great it is though. I personally could not care less about any of the main quest. Annie is my first character to have tried to do it, and the more of it I do, I still find that has not changed. I am just going through the motions to see what is there. I may as well get the content I paid for after all. But I am not doing it because I find any of it truly interesting.

That is not to say you won't like the main quest, or anyone else. It just does nothing for me personally. I prefer sandbox style games that don't force a main quest on you. So the more FONV tries to do that, the less and less satisfied I am. I think it was Wyrd who said a long time ago that there are two kinds of games. Some tell you a story, others let you tell your own story. I prefer the latter.

Absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt YES!!!! It is a blast, one of the most fun games EVAH !!! - And most especially should play through before the next gen is on us; but one play-through is never enough. NV has so many different facets you can't possibly cover in one play-through.








Why March? Better to hit the DC Wasteland in the winter months, the cold keeps down the stench of decomposing super mutants.

Agreed, that is one of my major beefs in Skyrim.


New Vegas does push you into the midst of it, but my character did manage to do a lot of exploring overland and in dungeons; and she did stay neutral for as long as feasibly possible in all the games I played.

One thing SubRosa said that is important to remember - enemy levels are not done anything like the TES world in this game. The enemies are on their highest level right from the start, while the Player is at his lowest level then - so early in game the Player is legitimately having to fight for his life (and loses it quite frequently till they level up).

As the Player levels up, the power level between themselves and the enemy begins to balance out and stays that way for a long time; but at the highest levels, the Player may begin to become overpowered compared to the enemies.

On the 360, there are still some issues that the patches have not resolved, unfortunately - but regardless of them, that game is still worth however many play-throughs you give it.

What Col Mustard said is very accurate:



The difference - I did go in and just explore till about halfway through, and was not disappointed at all. The only thing that disappointed me was that they never made the patches they needed to make for the 360 to resolve the game-ending glitches.

In other news, I started Lonesome Road tonight. Yes, Mirocou, I do plan to try all the DLCs with Annie, then go back to the Mojave to 'beat' the game like a red-haired step-child.

I was a little confused because I had read that E-DE plays a major role in the DLC, but it would not let me take E-DE with me to The Divide (the location it is set in). I discovered that you find another E-DE in the Divide. He is pretty important, and can do a lot more than the vanilla game's version. Though I was surprised to find that his name is pronounced "Eddie". I always pronounce it in the same way the letters are spelled out: "Eee-Dee-Eee". I guess that is the Star Wars-phile in me, since that is how all their robots are named.

So far so good. I love the look of the Divide. It is even more blasted and ruined that the Capital or Mojave Wastelands. It definitely conjures up an image of a ruined Earth: a broken future, and shattered past.

OMG, oh I hope you get some screenshots! I was calling him E-D-E too, urk.

Thanks for all the advice. Happy gaming with the DLC, 'Rosa.

Does this mean you are racing off to play?

Not exactly racing… I still have to finish Inquisition, GTA V, and The Last of Us on the PS4. Then I have to finally play The Witcher 2 before The Wild Hunt is upon us. That will probably take me into summer.

I fell in love with "The Last Of Us," - never got to play it (don't have the PS3); but watched the entire movie on YouTube - like 6 hours!

I played it on the PS3 and fell in love with it (or, more precisely, fell in love with Ellie). Now I have it for the PS4 so I get to play it again. I even held off playing the DLC because I knew I was going to get it for next gen.

I fell in love with her too, really hated for the vid to end even after 6 hours of straight watching!

Now you have an excuse to drop hints about your b-day present.

My son already thought I wanted it for Xmas, I had to talk him out of it because he can't afford it. Told him I wanted batteries for my wireless mouse instead, lol. (It is actually his wireless mouse, I've absconded with it, lol).

So, yeah.. The Fallout games...

I am a few days into Lonesome Road, and have a few observations. First off it is extremely linear. There are a few small side areas you can go off to explore and find extra goodies, but otherwise you are following a straight line through the dlc.

The enemies are not that varied. The first 'dungeon' is a missile base, and it has some robots and turrets you can fight, or deactivate if you have the hacker skills. You encounter a few of the second type of enemy, which is much more plentiful as you go on. They are called Marked Men, and their name always makes me think of Down in the Park because of the first line of the song. They are basically red people, have good armor, and some hefty weapons. They remind me of fighting Legion, very tough, and you want armor piercing rounds. Finally there are The Tunnelers. They are a variation of the spore pod people from Vault 22 in the vanilla game, at least their mesh is. They have different textures, and are really tough opponents as well. Especially since they tend to spawn out of thin air, and come in packs. Those are the only things I have encountered, except for a handful of Deathclaws in one area, and two mole rats in another. It does get to feel kind of redundant.

As far as stuff goes, my goodness, does this dlc hand out the loot. It is the Monty Haul dlc. It gives you far more high value (and high weight) items than I have ever seen before in a Fallout game. Even with E-DE to help carry stuff, I still have to leave most of it behind. There are no actual vendors to sell loot to. But there are automated commisary stations that E-DE can unlock. Each has 6,000 caps, and you can buy and sell stuff to them. They seem to all share the same pool of items, because I noticed the things I sold at one commisary are still there in inventory at the next commisary. But each one does always have that 6k of caps.

The look of the place is simply fantastic! It is the most desolate area I have seen in FO3 or FONV. They really outdid themselves with not only the ruins, but the red and orange skies and blasting winds creates a palpable feeling of blighted ruin. As I said in another topic, it has a shattered past and broken future. Finally, the devs could not resist a sarcastic touch with many of the roadsigns, whose messages stand in stark contrast to the blasted landscape around them.

America's bright future is in your hands

Welcome to The Divide

Our Hope For Our Children

It is a broken, tortured land

Finally, the main antagonist is another Courier, named Ulysees. His recordings reveal that he is an agent of Caesar, and is responsible for putting the White Legs on the warpath in Utah, and destroying New Canaan (all this is part of Honest Hearts). So it is a continuation of that history. Ulysees also alludes to things the player did in the past, which I decidedly do not like. I prefer to create my own characters thank you, not have the game tell me who I am.

I beat Lonesome Road during yesterday's snow storm. The final confrontation with Ulysees was tough. He is definitely the toughest opponent I have faced in FONV so far. He does tend to ramble though. I skipped over trying to talk him out of his evil plan just to shut him up, so I could start shooting.

Still, between Ulysees' pontificating and his journal entries that are scattered throughout the Divide, you get a pretty clear picture of the Legion. Ulysees was a member of a tribe called the Twisted Hairs, who sided with the Legion. They knew Arizona better than anyone else, so they became scouts. Once the Legion completed its conquest of the state, Caesar had the Twisted Hairs all exterminated. Ulysees was more loyal to Caesar than his own people, so he continued serving the Legion as a scout and spy. Ulysees then went to Utah and used the White Legs tribe exactly how Caesar had used the Twisted Hairs, sending them to wipe out New Canaan, then abandoning them to destruction afterward (that is the backstory of Honest Hearts).

After the final big fight you have the option of launching the remaining nukes in the Divide. You can send that at Caesar in Arizona, or at the NCR. I think you can also split them between both, or choose not to launch them at all. Annie being an NCR spy, sent them all at the Legion. That doesn't destroy Caesar himself or the Legion army at Hoover Dam of course. It just wrecks their 'behind the lines' area in Arizona.

Which ever region you decide to nuke becomes a small place you can explore afterward. Nuking Caesar gives you Dry Wells to explore. It was all green and had ghoulified Legion survivors, plus a big crater that blocked off farther travel.

I also discovered there was a little unmarked quest in Lonesome Road. There are 20 posters of a pre-war tv show called RALPHIE, about an E-DE robot. If you find all 20 and click on them you get some experience. So I went back through the Divide and did that. Some of them are not at all easy to discover.

*



Is there a high radiation level here? I always get a creeped out feeling when I am nearing an obvious structure and there are no people or enemies in sight - you know it is not going to go well.

I really like that they varied the destruction so places like this will stand out for having been the seat of the worst of it. The fact that you were able to feel/sense it = I like that a lot, that means some developer really earned an accolade, and I hope he (or she) gets it.

I really like the way you showed the contrast of those signs to their surroundings too, really brings home the mind set people were at before the fallout.

I LOVE Annie's ranger (?) hat! Those look so great on females!

Okay, so on the loot: Can you come and go before or afterward to make trips with that loot? Can you carry it out to the entry and make a pile to be picked up at a later time?


*


Holy Cow, what a great storyline though! And the mini-quest of finding the posters - kind of like Anchorage's intel briefcases! I LOVE those little touches!

What a great update, I so appreciate hearing about Annie's adventures, especially these to parts of New Vegas I never saw!



*

You can make multiple trips in and out of the Divide, so if you really want to, you can get all the loot out. I did make a second trip after I cleared it, to find all the Ralphie posters, and pick up more stuff that I left behind. The respawn rate is pretty high though, I found that the initial areas were already refilled with monsters, and not much time had passed at all. So be careful.

Most of The Divide is not radioactive. However, there are low levels of radiation near the warheads scattered around. There are 50 nuclear warheads in all, and you have to blow some of them up to unblock areas and continue further along in the Divide. Others are option to explode. There is an unofficial quest to blow up all 50, but Annie only found 49. I just didn't feel like taking the time to hunt for that last one.

There is one area in the Divide with massive radiation levels though, called The Courier's Mile. Early on you have to fire a nuclear missile to continue. The place it hits is the Mile. It is an optional area, that I missed at first. It is filled with Deathclaws and Marked Men. And the rads get to about 18 a second in parts. So you don't want to stay long.

Dry Wells is also highly radioactive. I think it was about 10 rads per second in most parts, but it gets worse as you go deeper in. When you reach the bomb crater at the end it is massive. I don't think it is as bad as the front door of Vault 87, but I am sure that if you go down that crater, you will die from the rads anyhow.

The Ralphie posters were neat, because they mirrored the little backstory they had for ED-E 2.0. I just noticed, the vanilla game version is E-DE, and the Lonesome Road version is ED-E... He plays recordings from his old Enclave days, of conversations his creator had with him. His creator saved him from his evil commander (Colonel Autumn from FO3), who ordered E-DE to be disassembled to use the parts to make powered armor. Instead the creator set him loose in the wasteland, and E-DE has been trying to find Navarro, and old Enclave base from Fallout 2. It sounds like the tv show Ralphie the Robot was basically the same. I thought it the most interesting part of the dlc. But after stopping Ulysees, there is nothing more you can do about it. You cannot take E-DE with you to the Mojave, or otherwise help him along the way. The whole little subplot with him just stops without any resolution.

How frustrating that must be!


I think you already know about my obsession with reaching places that the game has tried to discourage Players from reaching via over-radiating them. I killed my character literally hundreds of times with rad-x and rad-away on hot keys being hit every second till I finally explored the exterior of vault 87 (the trick I finally learned was to run in from the North (nne) rather than the east/west/or south; especially not through the Super Mutant camp where your chems and health is deteriorated by the time you start trying to make the run in, lol).

In Mothership Zeta She died hundreds more testing their warnings about not stepping outside the ship without your space suit on (along with my own personal curiosity over whether there may be some secret place one might be able to reach only by jumping off the side of the ship).

In "The Pitt" - well over 200 deaths from swimming the river looking for hidden treasures and trying to explore the fringes for off-maps, etc.

So technically, you have more or less perked my curiosity to explore these areas thoroughly for hidden treasure, because somewhere in my brain I correlate high rads with higher chance of great loot,

Well, you know what they say; the better security the better the loot!



What? That´s not a saying?

That's how I see it too, they wouldn't set up a full guard to watch over a crate of empty bottles; so it must be some great haul there!

I dunno, how many times does Bethesda put a Hard or Very Hard level lock on a container, and it turns out it has 10 gold pieces/caps inside?

Yeah, I've had that happen too - so I know my way of thinking can't be right; but it never stops me from dying of curiosity when I see nearly impossible odds at reaching a place, and killing myself a billion times to find out.


(I think that falls under the category of "some people never learn," )

Well, the old games like the original Tomb Raider were all built that way. The really out of the way little places that most people would not think to look would always have some special goodies placed there. Now a days I don't think they bother as much.

In other news, I worked from home yesterday, thanks to all of the snow we had. That means I had plenty of to time to 'work' on my FONV game. I had started the Dead Money dlc Sunday evening, and I was able to wrap it up last night.

First off, it does not feel at all like a Fallout game. Instead it seemed more like a Silent Hill game. You start out losing all of your gear and being thrown into a hostile environment with an explosive collar around your neck, and a madman with his finger on the switch. Making this worse, radios and speakers will make your collar explode. Some you can shoot out, many (read in the important areas) you cannot. You only have a few seconds to get through those areas, or your head explodes. Needless to say, I reloaded the game a lot playing this dlc.

The enemies come in two types. Ghosts are the first, most plentiful type. They are basically people in long black coats, gasmasks, and helmets, who jump and stagger around in a most inhuman fashion (I did mention Silent Hill right?). Killing them does not kill them. They just get back up after a minute or so. Unless you dismember them. This makes finding a knife very important. The second bad guys are holograms, which cannot be injured by anything. You have to either sneak past them, or shoot out their emitters. Said emitters are often placed somewhere that you cannot see, much less reach, without using the TCL cheat code to fly/walk through walls. That is all you face for the entire dlc, and they become very tedious, especially the invulnerable holograms (which are thankfully few).

On the plus side, the new spanish villa meshes and textures are just gorgeous, even in their post-war state. The interior of the Sierra Madre casino is even more lush and extravagant. But the best thing of all is that once more Serana takes a turn voice-acting some of the parts. Laura Bailey does the voice for Vera Keyes, a pre-war starlet whose hologram is also the spokesperson for the casino. She also does the voice for one of your companions, a BOS scribe who is initially mute, but later restores her voice. Or at least gets Vera's voice after a medical bot fixes her up.

We also get to meet Dean Domino, whom we have all seen on pre-war posters around the Mojave. He's a ghoul now, the only survivor of the Sierra Madre's grand opening, which also coincided with the nuclear war. There is a neat backstory between Dean, Vera, and the casino's owner - Sinclair. I won't give away spoilers, except it is about love, betrayal, and money.

One other nice touch I am noticing in the dlcs is that the characters within are linked together. The BOS scribe in Dead Money is referred to by Ulysees from Lonesome Road. She refers to Ulysees in Dead Money. Both were previously at The Big MT, the site of Old World Blues. Ulysees is the one who sent the White Leg tribe from Honest Hearts on the warpath, precipitating the events of that dlc. So obviously Obsidian had these all planned out in advance, for them to have linked the characters and events together so. That is a very good touch.

All in all, I did not really like Dead Money much though. I don't think I will ever want to do it again. I did not mind losing all my gear. But what drove me nuts was the bomb collar that was constantly being set off all the time by radios you cannot see, destroy, or ever find (I think they place some between the walls). Combined with that the town outside of the casino is a maze of twists and turns and multi-story buildings, all of which look exactly the same. So you wind up going through the same places over and over again, and constantly reloading because the invisible or invulnerable speakers are blowing you up. Oh, and lets not forget the clouds of poison gas that start killing you after seconds of exposure. In the end it just became very frustrating, and I couldn't wait to get it over with.

One other point of note, is that once you start the dlc, you cannot leave the Sierra Madre and go back to the Mojave until you have finished its main quest. After you finish the main quest, you can still explore around the casino and surrounding town all you like. But once you leave for the Mojave, you can never go back. This is similar to Honest Hearts, where once you journey to Zion, you cannot go back to the Mojave until you finish its main quest. But with Honest Hearts you can still return to Zion at any later time. Lonesome Road OTOH, you can leave any time, and go back any time.

So next up is the final dlc, Old World Blues.

SubRosa, thanks for sharing and I'm glad you enjoyed 'working' at home on your snow day. FONV DLCs - who knew?

I have to agree that this DLC sounds awful till you get to talk to the main characters, and even though the story you find there is neat - is it worth the beginning, lol. It was brilliant to think of going through the walls, I would never have thought of that!

Your account of the DLC makes me want to look for YouTube vids and see if anyone figured out some hidden path (like in Super Mario Bros. when you crouch behind a wall and it drops you to the end of the level,

Sounds kinda silly not being able to go back until the DLC´s MQ is done. If that were the case with Fallout 3 then I would never have explored Point Lookout. And not being able to return to the DLC area once it is done is also a bit off to me

Welcome to the way Obsidian thinks. You are going to play the game how they want you to play it, not how you want to.

I started the final dlc - Old World Blues - yesterday. Like most of the others once you start there is no going back until you finish the main quest. You don't lose your equipment like in Dead Money, but you do lose your brain, spine, and heart. Getting them back is your impetus for completing the dlc's main quest.

It has a very 50's sci-fi movie feel to it, which is not bad. But they turn it up to 11, to the point of feeling really hammy and silly. For example the main bad guy is Dr. Mobius, from The Forbidden Zone. I am still waiting for the Krell brain boost... He and the Think Tank (I will not label them 'good'), are brains in floating mechanical bodies. The spokesperson for the Think Tank sounds like The Blue Falcon from Dynomutt, or the Tick. He is so hammed up and over the top that Wes Johnson's Imperial Legionaries from Oblivion sound tame and dull in comparison when they try to arrest you. The silliness doesn't really help things, imho. Though waking up with no brain, spine, or heart yet still able to do everything as normal does not exactly lend itself to taking the dlc seriously either...

Once that is out of the way you have a pretty decent sized world to go out and explore. Unlike Lonesome Road, you start out in the middle of the area, and can go anywhere you want. So exploring it is fun and truly open-ended.

There is more variety in creatures than the previous dlcs, which is also nice. You have Lobotomites - the previous victims of the brains you are working for. They are basically psychotic people with guns or melee weapons. There are hostile cyberdogs, night stalkers (mutant dog/snakes from vanilla FONV), and all manner of robots. There might be others, I have not gotten too far yet.

They give you a couple of new guns. The Cyberdog Gun (it has a dog's brain, though what it does besides growl and bark is beyond me) is nothing special. It is an automatic weapon that uses .357 ammo. It is not very accurate though. There is also a sonic pistol that is necessary for the main quest, as once you upgrade it, it can disable force fields. Naturally lots of quest important things are behind force fields... It can also stun robots, which is nice. But the damage it does is so low that I found it easier to just fill the robots with lead.

The way I saw it expressed was "Bethesda games are for people who can think for themselves, and Obsidian's are for those who can't."

Yesterday I was walking through a parking lot, and I saw two bottle caps laying on the ground. I instantly thought "Money!"

One sure sign of having played Fallout a bit too much

Last night I finally beat Old World Blues like a red-haired stepchild. Ph3aR M3 N00bS!

All in all I liked it a lot. I really love the stealth suit. At first the white stripes on it turned me off, but I warmed up to the look after a while, as it made it appear more unique, and helped set it aside from the Assassin Suit from Dead Money/The Sierra Madre. I really love the suit's AI, which warns you of danger, and provides a little welcome companionship without shooting you in the back or constantly stepping in front of your rocket launcher, like you know, companions do.

I found this mod that fixes a few issues with its stipack and med-x administering. Likewise this mod fixes a bug with its sneaking speed. Thankfully the two mods work together, as they alter different things. I even made myself a third mod of my own to tweak the suit's stats to make it light armor, since medium seemed a bit much.

Old World Blues also offers a bunch of other new toys to play with. Most are energy weapons, like the LAER. The Sink - your base for the dlc - has a bunch of little AIs you can upgrade that will do different kinds of item conversions. The toaster will destroy regular toasters you bring it, and break them down into scrap metal, scrap electronics, and so forth. I am so high level now that I really don't need any of it, but it could be handy for a lower level character.

Mostly I loved the completely open world, and a decent mix of enemies. The pipes that criss-cross the area were really fun, since you could walk across them all (just watch for mines on them!). Sometimes they made for handy bridges over chasms. Other times they help you sneak past baddies, or get the drop on them with a sniper rifle.

The only thing I really did not like about it was the almost slapstick silliness that they portrayed the Think Tank and Dr Mobius with. It made it difficult to take any of the dlc seriously. If they had played them with a more serious tone, it would have been my favorite dlc of them all. But as it is I put Honest Hearts as the best of them, and then Old World Blues as second. Dead Money was definitely my least favorite, and I cannot see ever doing it again. Lonesome Road was good, and worth doing, just not as good as HH and OWB.

Now it is back to the vanilla game, and time to wrap up the main quest. I am in the mood to finish up FONV and move on to something else, so I don't think I will spend a lot more time on it.

Maybe go back and join me in the Capital Wasteland..?



When I start playing again, that is

Wow, SubRosa, sounds like you've almost *cough* beat the whole NV game and all of its DLC as well.

What's next after FONV? Back to TES?

I have to agree with you on this, I wanted to go back to Anchorage so bad, was so disappointed that we couldn't that I deleted it and reloaded it just to play it again.

That happened to me when Fallout 3 first came out and I had "marathoned" 25 levels of it, lol.

Oh how interesting this is - and I hope you took some screenshots to share with us!! I know that DLC with the exploding collar is going to bed disabled on my data list after reading your take on it on here!

Oh, I so hope you keep going till after the big battle, I am dying to hear about it !!!

Miroucadian: When I am done with FONV, I plan to rejoin Mirocu in the Capital Wasteland. Pseron Wyrd gave me the idea to play a character named Molly Hatchet, and I have been itching to get around to her. I have even found and created some axe mods for her to use. Maybe after I am done with her in FO3, she might even migrate to Tamriel?

mALX: When I marathon a game like that, I start having dreams in the game's graphics! I still remember one day a few years back where I was going into work in the morning, and at the front door I found myself saying "Another day, another septim..."

I wouldn't completely write off Dead Money. You never know, you might like it more than I did. Give it a whirl and see what happens.

I did take some screens from Old World Blues, over in the Fallout Screenshots topic, and in my vids topic. The last few post of mine in each are all OWB stuff. Everything from the Science Fiction Double Feature pic and on.

Molly Hatchet! I love it, (and love them - saw them in concert!).

I envy you! I love Molly Hatchet, but I never had the chance to see them live. I did see Charlie Daniels once though, that is close!

Last night I 'beat' FONV like a bad stepchild. The ending was alright, but nothing spectacular. One one hand it seemed to try to crowd a lot of things in leading up to the final showdown at the dam, like having to go to a bunch of factions and either destroy them or get them to sign on. I had already done much of that beforehand. For example, I had won over the Great Khans a long time before. But the game didn't recognize that, but at the same time I couldn't talk to them again to bring them onboard. I had to use the console to manually advance the questline, or I wouldn't have been able to go any farther. Then later on during the final battle the Khans showed up and attacked me! Oi!

Still, all of the faction romancing started to get tedious, as I just couldn't give a crap about most of them, like the Omertas. I wound up just killing the Omertas and the Brotherhood of Steel rather than bothering with trying to sweet talk them. At the same time, there were other factions I had already won over just because I liked them, but they never take part in anything. Like the super-mutants at Jacobstown and the Followers of the Apocalypse. The Boomers did show up with their refurbished B-29 Superfortress and bombed the heck out of the Legion. That was really cool to see. OTOH, I had upgraded and took over on an entire army of Securitrons from Mr. House (who I killed), and the game never let me do anything with them! That was really annoying. It made all the business of chasing Benny, getting the platinum chip, and sneaking into Caesar's camp to upgrade it pointless, since none of it ever amounted to anything.

The final battle came in two parts. The first was clearing out a Legion attack inside the dam, which again got a little tedious after the tenth group of Legionaries came running through a door. Then it moved on to assaulting the Legion camp. The fight on the dam itself to get there was cool. That is when the B-29 showed up, and it was really cool. The fight in the camp was a letdown though. It was a breeze. The final boss bad guy Lanius went down with just two bursts from my carbine (and it is not overpowered damage-wise, unlike many of the vanilla guns). I had a much greater challenge fighting the final bosses in the dlcs.

All in all, I found it to be a letdown compared to FO3's ending. That was really grand, especially Liberty Prime. That end battle was a lot more difficult, and thrilling, and the end of the game slideshow of what you had accomplished was much more satisfying.

GAAAAAH! The Khans attacked you? Urk!

I read (tonight) that the Followers (if you recruit their help) load the Dam interior up with health/medical kits as their part in the battle. Of course, if the game is going to end right after the battle anyway, it isn't like you can loot the stuff and it will do you any good unless your health really gets low in that final battle and you actually do need it (one vid had that guy wearing the armor you just got in that DLC that pumps you with chems while you are in combat - every two seconds it was dosing him, his Stimpaks went down 50 in no time, lol).

In that vid I just mentioned - that guy went in as everyone's friend and was pulling the Wild Card ending; he had to fight Legion/NCR/Khan/and the robot army - all of them! - Now that was more like the battle I would have expected the dam to be, except it was all everyone against him (and NONE of them fighting the Legion!).

He kept getting these warnings on the center screen that he had offended this or that faction and was not trusted/disliked/hated/etc - it was kind of funny, because he could barely fight for all the reputation warnings popping up on the screen.

I think that robot army is run by a computer program that is controlled by House, or over-ridden and controlled by Yes Man - but if House is dead, the robots don't get their signal to activate (unless you insert Yes Man's software into one of the terminals).

So you have to side with one or the other of those two to get that robot army at your disposal, kind of like selling your soul for power - and that may be worthwhile if you actually saw that huge army of Securitrons rolling across the dam shooting everything in sight, right?

To be honest - I think just to see that in action, I would try a run through as a dirty scoundrel Wild Card. But that never happens. They only send them out in twos to accompany the Player through the Dam, and they never enter the Legate camp at all. The Player is on his own, except two (whoopie) securitrons - really disappointing after the huge buildup the game gives you over this battle.

Now, I have to wonder if this is like Oblivion's Battle for Bruma - where the number of people at the battle is directly related to the Player's recruiting of troops for that battle?

In all of the vids I saw NCR and Legion, in your game and in one other I saw Khan, and in three vids I saw the securitron army and Yes Man.

So maybe that romancing period is necessary to have a bigger battle, (but from what you said happened with the Khan, it would probably just be more people shooting at the Player).


OMG, that final battle in FO3 - crossing that bridge behind Liberty Prime! That was absolutely THE MOST thrilling moment in gaming history imho - for me it was. I was on the 360 going across that bridge, and the controller was jumping out of my hand with each explosion, I could barely hold it; and was yelling for my husband and son to come see it - I have never felt a thrill in a game like that before or since then.

The implosion of Raven Rock would have been another almost as thrilling, but they have that dratted Fawkes come up and talk to you right then; and by the time he shuts up the excitement is all over with. I have determined to leave him in his cell my next game just so I can enjoy watching that building implode and all those helicopters on top of it blow sky high in huge fireballs.

I love that game so much!


You are most def right, that battle did not come anywhere near the epic feel of Fallout 3's final battle - and that epicness is most def what I was looking forward to seeing, and the one reason I did not watch a vid of it in all these years - wanted to experience it the first time completely blind as to what was about to happen like I did in that Fallout 3 battle.

Did I tell you how much I am enjoying your trek through the wastelands? It has really brought me a lot of wonderful memories of some really fun times playing; and some awesome insights into these games as well! Thank you for sharing Annie's adventures, it is a blast to go through them with her!

SubRosa, I agree that ending in FNV isn't satisfying , I didn't care for most factions either and it felt tedious walking back and forth, trying to convince them to join you or wipe them out. I like the main quest up to the point when you kill Benny but afterwards not.

Though I remember that Securitons did help me in the final battle I guess you went with the NCR, right? I went with the Independent and when you beat Lanius, General Oliver ambushes you with his own army and that's when Securitrons came from behind and I could order Victor to throw Oliver over the Dam which was hilarious and other Securitrons helped me finish off the rest of his army.

How many securitrons actually fought with you on the Dam when the battle first begins up till the point you entered the Legate camp? On Youtube, I never saw more than 2 at a time helping the Player.

I was talking about the battle that takes place after you beat Lanius and General ambushes you with his army in Lanius' camp. As for how much Securitrons help you on the Dam, I don't remember anymore, but you're probably right, there aren't many.

Pfft, my first concert was Peter Frampton. I get teh cookie.

Kidding, as usual. I remember when Wyrd blurted out that name, Molly Hatchet. Definitely would go well in the Capitol Wasteland. Depending how busy I am this weekend (and whether it's sunny or not) I may play some FO3 as well. I keep getting that urge.

I loved Frampton back in the 70s! Like they said in Wayne's World, if you were a kid in suburbs back then, you were automatically issued Frampton Comes Alive. But my very first concert was The Animals

Anyway, I finally rolled Molly Hatchet as a toon to beat the game with. (Where is Wyrd, he loves this kind of talk!). She hasn't done too much yet. Just went to Megaton, and explored Springvale and the Super Duper Mart.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT !!!!! You're back in FO3 !!! Now, if I get a break to play, I might join you there! The Super Duper Mart was my first stop too, just did the Minefield quest, already over-radiated myself (etc), lol.

So when I was making my character this time, for the first time I didn't choose "Caucasian" - really liked the look of the "African American," so decided to roll with it.

When I first set it up and closed out the facegen screen; I was in the room where you are being born, and "Daddy James" was still whiter than rice on a paper plate! I didn't realize he would stay white, so I immediately cooked up a good story line for what REALLY happened to my "Mother" after popping me out.

Imagine my surprise, when on the next scene (as a toddler) I am confronted (and cajoled by) a black man with "Daddy James's" voice! So, I was really surprised by that, but it is really cool to see a completely different "Daddy James."

Next game I start, I want to try an Asian character, dying to see an Asian Daddy James!


*

OMG, Baby Daddy changes races too! Maybe he was just pale from all the excitement when you were born? I never noticed, because I don't always bother starting at the start, so to speak. I often start from a save I have from when where the game really gets going: when you are all grown up and Amata comes to you and says your father busted out. That is what I did this time with Molly in fact.