Let's Play Fallout: New Vegas [The Servant]

[ChupathingyX]

Back to Fallout. Which method of speech checks worked better, in your opinion?

I found New Vegas to be better than 3, but it could have still been done better.

I really didn't like F3's speech system because you could save-scum to avoid losing, and it was way too luck based, not to mention compared to NV there were much less SPECIAL/Skill/Perk checks which are really good.

However, to improve it I think they should make it more like the originals where you had to make careful decisions when deciding what you were going to say. In both 3 and NV usually the speech options are the better ones (usually), however, I think it would be better if they took away the tag at the front of the option to tell you that it is a medicine/science/intelligence etc. option so that players have to be more careful about what they choose.

This way you still get more additions through perks/skills/SPECIAL but you have to actually notice them. I could imagine a lot of people not liking this and some liking it, but it would make you think more during conversations instead of just going for the one with the highest number in front of it.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Back to Fallout. Which method of speech checks worked better, in your opinion?

I found New Vegas to be better than 3, but it could have still been done better.

I really didn't like F3's speech system because you could save-scum to avoid losing, and it was way too luck based, not to mention compared to NV there were much less SPECIAL/Skill/Perk checks which are really good.

However, to improve it I think they should make it more like the originals where you had to make careful decisions when deciding what you were going to say. In both 3 and NV usually the speech options are the better ones (usually), however, I think it would be better if they took away the tag at the front of the option to tell you that it is a medicine/science/intelligence etc. option so that players have to be more careful about what they choose.

This way you still get more additions through perks/skills/SPECIAL but you have to actually notice them. I could imagine a lot of people not liking this and some liking it, but it would make you think more during conversations instead of just going for the one with the highest number in front of it.

Ehhh, you'd have to put me under the whole "Not liking it" category.

I kinda like knowing what is scientific and speech-ey

 

[ChupathingyX]

Ehhh, you'd have to put me under the whole "Not liking it" category.

I kinda like knowing what is scientific and speech-ey

That's fine; to be honest I'm not even a massive fan of it now that I think about it. However, I don't think that the speech options should always be the right choice, most of the time yes, but not all of the time.

However, when it comes to having some important conversation with someone (Legate Lanius) they shouldn't make it too obvious (which in Lanius' case it wasn't all of the time). Otherwise players would just choose those options without even having to read them, if you know what I mean.

By the way, you didn't say which option you preferred.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Ehhh, you'd have to put me under the whole "Not liking it" category.

I kinda like knowing what is scientific and speech-ey

That's fine; to be honest I'm not even a massive fan of it now that I think about it. However, I don't think that the speech options should always be the right choice, most of the time yes, but not all of the time.

However, when it comes to having some important conversation with someone (Legate Lanius) they shouldn't make it too obvious (which in Lanius' case it wasn't all of the time). Otherwise players would just choose those options without even having to read them, if you know what I mean.

By the way, you didn't say which option you preferred.

Oh, New Vegas by far. No contest. I (nearly) maxed out speech very quickly, and the game was much easier that way. Even though I maxed speech in Fallout 3, I was still failing challenges left and right, unless I save-quitted

 

[ChupathingyX]

Even though I maxed speech in Fallout 3, I was still failing challenges left and right, unless I save-quitted

If you're referring to saving right before the test, failing, quitting then trying again, that's called "save scumming".

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Even though I maxed speech in Fallout 3, I was still failing challenges left and right, unless I save-quitted

If you're referring to saving right before the test, failing, quitting then trying again, that's called "save scumming".

THAT'S The word I was looking for. Or words. Yeah. I think he mentioned it earlier in the thread.

So... It looks like Obsidian is working on other projects, so I don't know if they'll be making the next fallout game.

 

[ChupathingyX]

So... It looks like Obsidian is working on other projects, so I don't know if they'll be making the next fallout game.

I know they're currently working on a project based on the Wheel of Time books, which could be interesting, however, EA is the publisher and we all know how much bad luck Obsidian have had with publishers.

I kind of always knew Obsidian weren't going to make the next Fallout, whether or not they make another Fallout game at all is still a possibility.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Loving the LP!

I can't say I hate Zeta, mostly because of the PHENOMENAL post DLC Mod, Mothership Zeta Crew.

 

[JamesStone]

[HEADING=1]Chapter LIX - Blue is Better Than Brown[/HEADING]​

Spoiler

So now we've really just begun Mothership Zeta. It isn't a long DLC, but it sure as hell feels a lot longer. We have to go into three different areas and destroy the generators in each of them. Mostly for pacing issues, one area will be completed per update.

So the first area we're going to do is the Cryo Labs. As you would expect, it's completely blue. No contrast at all, just really shiny blue metal.

Still better than brown though.

The Cryo Labs are much more open than the previous areas in Zeta, space wise.

There's some decent setpieces, but the little mist shrouded over the ground is kind of ugly looking and off putting.

Plenty of aliens down here.

The laser rifle seems to be our most effective weapons against these guys.

Some places are abritrarily blocked off until you hit a switch. There is nothing of interest in this room, except for some non-alien items.

There is still a ton of these audio logs.

There are more cryo pods in these rooms. They aren't like the people we met earlier, they're usually hostile raiders or ghouls. Apparently the aliens have lifted an awful lot of people off of the wasteland.

They're easy enough to kill. Better than the aliens at least.

This is the reason why I'm not using the Alien Blaster ammo, there are a ton of enemies in this DLC, who are pretty much damage sponges.

The ghouls and aliens fight each other.

There's a couple of chambers with these frozen enemies. They all come charging out through the door, these guys are much weaker to the alien weapons.

It one shots most of these guys.

We move onto the next area.

Pretty much the same exact room layout as before.

Really, no weapon really kills these guys in a reasonable amount of shots.

It's so bright and somehow rather hard to see here.

Oh great, reavers.

Thankfully, they go down in only a few shots, unlike spending a ton of ammo slowly whittling down their health.

There are shelves down here with some supplies that were taken from the prisoners, including some Enclave gear.

You know, Mothership Zeta looks really nice in screenshots, but in motion it kind of looks bad. Don't really know how to explain it honestly.

You can see the aliens experimenting on some prisoners.

We press a button and they are all instantly frozen.

The next room is rather large, but exploring is pretty pointless. Not a whole lot of reason to do so.

Again, some of teh ship looks pretty cool.

They froze super mutant overlords. We do not want to thaw them out.

So the generator is pretty much identical to the one earlier.

Now that the generator is broken, it's time to step into the teleporter.

And after a tiny bit of walking, we're back to where we started. Two more generators left.

Sorry about the lack of updates, but I should be back on track now. Zeta just really sucks.

No problem man, we understand. It´s not like people go to a torture chamber in a good mood.

Also, what are you gonna do after Broken Steel? Are you finishing the LP for Fallout 3 for good, or are you still ending it up with MZ crew mod?

 

[AlternatePFG]

No problem man, we understand. It´s not like people go to a torture chamber in a good mood.

Also, what are you gonna do after Broken Steel? Are you finishing the LP for Fallout 3 for good, or are you still ending it up with MZ crew mod?

I'm probably going to do Mothership Zeta Crew right after Zeta is finished. I have an idea for something right after Broken Steel to give the LP an "ending", so to speak.

After that, I'll take a bit of a break and then go onto New Vegas. (Which will be in the same thread)

 

[AlternatePFG]

[HEADING=1]Chapter LX - Variety! (Or The Lack Thereof)[/HEADING]​

Spoiler

So now, we have two more generators to destroy. Thankfully, it was much faster destroying these two than it was in the Cryo Lab, so I will show both of them in this update.

I forgot to mention that you can bring along the crew to help you, but they aren't immortal like most companions, and I'd rather not have useful NPC's get killed off.

They do things on their own out here, like attempt to hold an alien hostage. It doesn't work out, as you probably could tell.

The robot assembly has a new enemy type. That's pretty much all that's of any interest in the area.

Yup, this area is predominantly brown. It pretty much flip flops between blue or brown the entire time.

As you can guess, they have a very limited amount of alien props and items to use, so the whole place gets extremely repetitive.

There's a neat little conveyor belt with robots on it though. You can't actually get on it, unfortunately.

These guys shoot explosive orb things. That's about the extent of their abilities, they go down in only a few shots from the Terrible Shotgun. (Thankfully.)

Repeat this image like 5 times and you'll get pretty much the same out of the whole area. It's really dull and repetitive, just like the rest of Mothership Zeta.

You can blow this thing up if you want to. Not really sure what it does...

The conveyor belt actually moves...

We blow up the conveyor belt and get caught in the blast...

And a hole is blown into the side that lets us go further into the area.

There are these little cages with robots in them, they are kind of a new mechanic added in this DLC, but it's really nothing major. Once you kill this particular alien (Who has a shitton of health by the way) he drops this item that lets you use the robots. They really aren't impressive though, they go down in about two shots from the aliens' blasters.

We leave plenty of carnage behind us.

Further into the back of the room, is the generator.

2 down, 1 more to go.

By destroying the generator, it shuts down the forcefield blocking our way out. Let's get back to the hub area.

The hanger is the location with the next generator.

So, this is the hangar. This is the smallest of the sections, and it looks pretty neat. Except for the spaceship, it looks like a floating piece of cardboard.

We activate one of the robots, because why not?

We can't get more than one though.

The Ranger Battle Armor is just about broken. I hope this doesn't drag on for much longer.

Going down this hallway leads to the control part of the hanger.

This is the control room.

Pressing these buttons moves the ship around slightly. It's only purpose as far as I can tell is that it can ram enemies who are coming in from down there.

Pressing a button to enter the generator room summons all these guys. The really dramatic music from the finale of the main campaign starts playing here randomly, but it isn't an epic fight, just a really tedious one.

A few uses of the alien epoxy and the Heavy Incinerator is good as new. It's really effective against these guys too.

Also, level up.

Points in barter mostly. Pretty much doesn't matter where our skill points go anymore. We're practically invincible by now.

Picked Master Trader, because why not?

This is a really long, annoying fight. Using the ship to ram the aliens helps a lot.

Finally, the door opens to the next area.

Now all the generators are down. Hopefully we can get off this godforsaken ship soon.

I apologize for my really overwhelmingly negative attitude towards Zeta, but by god, is it dull. It almost makes Anchorage seem fun in comparison.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

I apologize for my really overwhelmingly negative attitude towards Zeta, but by god, is it dull. It almost makes Anchorage seem fun in comparison.

Yeah, it looks bad.

Weren't aliens non-canon before this, and now they are? If so, that makes me sad. ;_;

 

[Aidinthel]

Weren't aliens non-canon before this, and now they are? If so, that makes me sad. ;_;

Eeyup. If Betheda's smart they'll just forget this whole thing ever happened.

 

[ChupathingyX]

I apologize for my really overwhelmingly negative attitude towards Zeta, but by god, is it dull. It almost makes Anchorage seem fun in comparison.

Just reading through these updates is boring, no offense, up until now it has been fantastic, but it seems like there's just no way to make MZ entertaining :/

Weren't aliens non-canon before this, and now they are? If so, that makes me sad. ;_;

Eeyup. If Betheda's smart they'll just forget this whole thing ever happened.

Don't count on it...

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

I apologize for my really overwhelmingly negative attitude towards Zeta, but by god, is it dull. It almost makes Anchorage seem fun in comparison.

Just reading through these updates is boring, no offense, up until now it has been fantastic, but it seems like there's just no way to make MZ entertaining :/

Weren't aliens non-canon before this, and now they are? If so, that makes me sad. ;_;

Eeyup. If Betheda's smart they'll just forget this whole thing ever happened.

Don't count on it...

I don't know. I've yet to meet a single person who liked it, or the idea of canon aliens in Fallout. Perhaps they'll wise up.

 

[JamesStone]

I apologize for my really overwhelmingly negative attitude towards Zeta, but by god, is it dull. It almost makes Anchorage seem fun in comparison.

Just reading through these updates is boring, no offense, up until now it has been fantastic, but it seems like there's just no way to make MZ entertaining :/

Weren't aliens non-canon before this, and now they are? If so, that makes me sad. ;_;

Eeyup. If Betheda's smart they'll just forget this whole thing ever happened.

Don't count on it...

I don't know. I've yet to meet a single person who liked it, or the idea of canon aliens in Fallout. Perhaps they'll wise up.

Yeah, Bethesda royally fucked up with Mothership Zeta, but aliens being canon could be an interesting thing to do. If well written, it could be a good alegory about the racism and xenophobism (imagine a Area 51 kind of place, were the last remnants of an alien crew were kept cryo preserved. A Wasteland scientist finds the base, reactivates the defenses and the experiments. You could choose to either side with him or the aliens, him saying that he could find something good to humanity, and aliens are not humans, only animals, and Bethesda being so good in this type of thing, almost every part of the past of the place would be told by the scenario and logs/terminals), but no, "aleunz r ivel" MUST be best, though Bethesda, it´s the easiest 50´s style exploit EVER! Sigh...

Also, I loved Fallout 1 and 2, but I always hated the special encounters like the alien ship with every bit of my dark soul. There´s no place in the game that tell us that they aren´t canon. Most of them only needed level 10 to visit. And it was DNF type of references (i.e. stupid direct ones with absolutely goddam NOTHING to do with the specific universe), the worst offender imo being the Cafe of Broken Dreams followed by the guardian of forever. Oh, and let´s not forget the guardian at the bridge or the incredibly idiotic Monty Phyton chapter of the BOS. I love so much more wild wasteland in NV because although almost everyone can understand them while playing, they fit incredibly well in the game and can be easily explained.

 

[ChupathingyX]

SNIP

I really don't think aliens should be apart of the Fallout universe. I would much rather prefer that it stays human because we know what humans are acpable of and what goes through their minds, aliens on the oher hand are different and the aliens in MZ were just evil 1950s aliens who were much better parodied in Destroy All Humans!. The Fallout series lampoons humanity a lot and I personally think that would be ruined by aliens taking the spotlight because you can't make fun of the ethics of a race you know nothing about.

As fo Wild Wasteland, yeah that was made specifically to counter the out-of-place references in Fallout 2.

 

[AlternatePFG]

This is (thankfully) the last Mothership Zeta update.

[HEADING=1]Chapter LXI - The Thrilling Conclusion![/HEADING]​

Spoiler

We destroyed all the generators, so now we have to take a quick space walk, and we're done with this god forsaken piece of content.

Just a bit of foreshadowing, I eventually run into what I think (Could be wrong though) a gamebreaking glitch, but it was fixed with a bit of console commands. The game seems to glitch out when I'm unhappy the most. More on that later.

The aliens were just a joke from the first two games, somehow Bethesda thought that making an entire DLC based of a minor joke was somehow a good idea. It might have been decent if it wasn't designed so poorly.

So, this spacesuit is totally functional and fits us perfectly. I'd question the logic, but I really just want to get this DLC over with and this Space Suit is our only option.

Except for suicide via airlock. Decisions, decisions...

The other characters hang out in this room, it's pretty much just filled with random clutter.

This is a strange looking airlock...

A random button that someone might elbow on accident, which would decompress and instantly kill everyone in a whole section of the ship?

Seems like a good idea to me.

There's still gravity here, unfortunately.

Worked like a charm.

Now it's time to go outside. Be prepared to have your mind blown...

The least convincing space skybox every created!

I mean, it's Gamebryo, sure, but this is just terrible.

We can see the inside of the ship from here, that's cool.

Oh no, not again!

Why was this a good idea again?

Wait...

What was the plan in the first place?

Now we're in another airlock room. Too bad we can't do the same thing for this part of the ship.

Oh look, these guys show up.

And this is where things start getting buggy.

This is a better view of Earth, mostly because it's hard to tell how flat space is here. Space and earth are actually just one big room, if you noclip out of the ship.

And this is where I hit a bit of a problem. For some reason, she wouldn't open the next door that we need to go through. There is supposed to be a hologram of an alien head to appear that this point, but it doesn't. So, I have to use console commands to unlock the next door.

This is another, really short lab section. New enemy type, abominations are pretty much feral ghouls, but with aliens.

Insert Portal 2 space reference here.

We take the teleporter to the next area.

Nothing really unique in this section.

Oh yeah, because the stupid alien workers keep getting caught in the crossfire, we keep on getting bad karma. In fact, we end up going down from Very Good to Good karma because of them.

The Heavy Incinerator is still useful here.

Now we're in the outer edges of the ship.

We light a whole hallway on fire with the Incinerator, including some alien workers who got in the way. I really don't give a shit about preserving our karma anymore.

I love this gun.

Oh look, another view of Earth. Apparently, the aliens have some kind of death ray aimed at Earth. I wonder what this button does-

Whoops.

Now we have to blue up three generators. Yay.

More aliens spawn in here constantly.

Another teleporter...

New, rather annoying mechanic. These barriers hold you off for awhile, or block your way entirely. It's just really for scripted events.

It's just blocking an abomination from attacking you.

The abominations can be dangerous at times, they have this little flail attack that can do a good amount of damage if you aren't careful.

Ceiling turrets are also incredibly annoying as well.

This is supposed to be their Living Quarters. *shrug* It's just the same items used over and over again from the other areas.

A whole ton of them start pouring out of that room. I needed something a bit more... explosive.

Apparently there are turrets in their living quarters as well.

The Atomizer is pretty damn good.

Time for the final boss of Mothership Zeta. Who goes down in one hit.

We clear out the entire room almost instantly...

Welp, that was easy.

A giant alien hologram appears on the screen ahead of us. That's ominous.

So now we're engaging in a giant Star Trek styled space battle with the alien mothership. It's not nearly as cool as it sounds.

That pretty much sums Mothership Zeta up in a nutshell, huh? The aliens aren't a terrible idea in theory (Their role would need to be changed for it to fit, but still) but Zeta is far too repetitive. Despite it being pretty damn short, it feels way longer than any of the other DLC's and that's not a good thing. The enemies are a pain in the ass to kill, and in general, it's not very fun.

Everyone is here now too. We can do this, we can beat this and Mothership Zeta once and for all-

Wha-?!

And it turns out, Mothership Zeta was just some horrible, horrible dream and we're back on the boat from Point Lookout.

...

Okay, okay. I did this simply because:

1) The finale goes on for a really long time, and it's pretty much just an extended "You press a button to shoot them once, they shoot back, continue until one explodes" ordeal
2) Zeta is really silly and out of place, so it's not going to actually be part of the LP's 'canon' so to speak. I will not be using the weapons and stuff from it
3) Do I really need an excuse for this?

All you missed from the big fight was a cool explosion:

There.

While I'm not the biggest fan of Broken Steel, it's a masterpiece compared to Zeta.

Now I'm off to play something fun, like Dark Souls or something.

Okay, what do you think of Mothership Zeta?

I swear, this has been the biggest speedbump for this LP. I didn't want to play the game while going through Zeta, let alone comment on it. There's really nothing to say other than "It's boring and it sucks". It doesn't tie with any Fallout lore, etc. it's just really random and out of place. I promise Broken Steel and the like will be better.

 

[ChupathingyX]

And it turns out, Mothership Zeta was just some horrible, horrible dream and we're back on the boat from Point Lookout.

I literally laughed out loud when I saw this

Okay, what do you think of Mothership Zeta?

I'll let one of my favourite characters from my favourite film describe it for me...

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

And it turns out, Mothership Zeta was just some horrible, horrible dream and we're back on the boat from Point Lookout.

This was my reaction

Spoiler

Is.... is it over? IT IS? PRAISE BE TO JESUS!

Dear lord, I am more glad than ever I decided to skip this. Well, have fun with Dark Souls. You've earned it.