Random Stuff

[Hana]

lol Sigurd :PIf it wasn't you I wouldn't have bowed out.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Ahhhhhh.No, but I was talking about your avatars, cool cats, right?It didn't click until I saw the Beth forum one.Talking of my mad building, I've got a nearly finished Kvatch dungeon here, do you want it uploaded here when it's done, it's finda beyond pictures and floor plans in complexity now.

[Dwip]

Me: Well, it's pretty late, I should stop playing New Vegas and go to bed. And I just cleared Black Mountain, so this is a good spot to save.Me: Ah, now, here we are on Black Mountain. Let's see, what quest do I need to do no...Four Super Mutant Masters: Stoopid hooman!Me: ...oshi-

[prettyfly]

Me: Well, isn't the Lonesome Road an awesome DLC.Ulysess speaking through ED-E; blah blah blah I'm going to use ED-E to destroy the world.Me; Yeah right, come and take him from me.Ulysess: Robot, Override.Me; ED-E! ED-E!Me:...oshi-

[Dwip]

The plus side of the supermutant attack is that I got the kill supermutants with 5.56 pistols challenge completed that much sooner. On the whole, easier than the kill deathclaws with the silenced .22 pistol challenge. Gun Runner's Arsenal has some really amusing challenges.As opposed to Dead Money, which I am in the middle of now, which is more annoying than anything.[edit] Though, on the other hand, the bear trap fist?

[prettyfly]

I loved Dead Money, although my brother hated it (he is a very run and gun gamer though).There's actually a fairly split opinion on Dead Money on Bethsoft forums for that matter. People either love it or hate it. Also, Automatic Rifle. I love that gun. Though things got more lively when I picked up a Hunting Shotgun inside the Casino. From that point onwards the ghost people were no more than a nuisance. EDIT; I'll have to look at some of those challenges myself, for that matter. I have so much stuff to do still with that game (including buying a legal copy as soon as the Ultimate Edition is available).

[Dwip]

It was halfway to Novac when the inventory messages began to stop taking hold...Halfway to Novac, walking, mind you, because I escaped the Sierra Madre with 3 entire gold bars.A few words on that subject, in lieu of a blog post I will likely make for all the DLCs when I finish them all:1. Man, the logic holes in this thing are epic. Among other things, holograms WTF, corrosive gas that hasn't melted everything, massive explosions that don't collapse the building, and about half of everyone's plan.2. Holy shit was the entire part all the way up until you get into the casino, and by that I basically mean half of the entire DLC, annoying as hell. You guys went to all the trouble of loinclothing me to throw me into THAT? Boring environment, boring (and easy) enemies, boring just about everything. By the end I didn't so much want to kill Elijah as I wanted to kill the DLC writers.3. Boring does not extend to the characters, however, who are uniformly excellent, all of whom deserve far more screen time and play than they actually got. Talking to them was easily the best part of the DLC, and I'm pretty sad I can't take Dean Domino or Christine with me back to the Mojave. Really unique stuff, really cool, worth playing the DLC just for them.4. Once you actually get into the casino, the second half of Dead Money is pretty good, as all of that boring stuff from earlier actually builds to a peak. Again, the talky bits are the real strength of the DLC, although most of the gameplay was pretty cool too.5. That said, holograms as enemies are still titanic bullshit.6. And radios were merely stupid and annoying up until the vault section. And then I realized that whatever my previous goals in life, I have now decided to track down the level designers and smash them in the face with an NES while shouting "Do it again, stupid!" to the backdrop of a courier getting his neck blown off endlessly. Jesus that was dumb.7. The story remains awesome, though.8. ...too bad it gets completely undermined if the player manages to carry anything above 1 gold bar out (thus breaking the economy hilariously), and really really super undermined when the player gets back and runs into a vending machine. With, in my case, 2,500 chips or so. If you weren't rich before, you're rich now.So I'm pretty meh on Dead Money as a whole. Very strong writing, but as a whole weaker than any of the Fallout 3 DLC except Point Lookout. I'm pretty intrigued to see how it ties into Old World Blues and/or Honest Hearts (and apparently Lonesome Road, too) when I get that far, and I continue to be extremely impressed at how well the F;NV team tied together their lore.

[prettyfly]

Here's the thing about the vending machine when you get back; if you make more than 7500 chips gambling in the casino you actually get given a holocard every three days in the drop box worth 1000 caps, at which point you may as well be playing the rest of the game on god mode. Which I suppose is ok considering how high they set the amount of chips you need to win, but if you get it, well, goodbye challenge. Though I don't see whats wrong with the gold bars. I got out of there with three (it hurt leaving them behind :sad: ) and I found I'd spent the money from them pretty quickly. Point remains the same for the vending machines though.I think my main reason for liking it was that I was so absorbed by the atmosphere that I didn't really care about the (admittedly poor) level design. Anyway, the whole arcing story line of the DLC's makes things get more awesome as things go on, although I almost think Old World Blues would have worked better as the first DLC. Of all of them them I probably liked Honest Hearts the least, although I'm sure I remember being sick at the time which may have dampened my impressions of it. Although the ambush scene at the start is an absolute classic. I'd probably call the Lonesome Road my favorite, partly because of the conclusion of the story arc(I'm lost as to why people always complain about Ulysess's 'rants' during this DLC as well), although I still need to finish it first.Apparently the whole radio issue was supposed be due to the fact Sinclair was paranoid about communist invasion and therefore set all the radio's to a blocking frequency. Which is a reasonable excuse (lorewise) for an annoying feature.On which note, me and several of my school mates are setting up a Minecraft server. Which should be interesting.

[Dwip]

So, one of the things about the Gun Runner's Arsenal challenge set is that there's a challenge to kill 15 named NCR Rangers and/or Lieutenant and above NCR soldiers with either Legion weapons or chainsaws. This happens to be my Caesar's Legion playthrough, so I figured hey, since I'm in trouble with the NCR for joining the Legion, I may as well, you know, join the Legion.Which is how I came to be striding through Camp McCarran, taking out NCR troopers right and left with single blasts of buckshot from Dinner Bell straight to the face. Yes, I totally chainsawed Colonel Hsu. And Lt. Boyd. And some other dudes.And this directly after I did the precise same thing to Camp Forlorn Hope. Because if you're going to go evil, go monstrous mass murderer or go home.Relatedly, it is possible to have a conversation that goes about like this:Me: Hey, I hear there's a stalemate around Nelson. What can I do to help?Dead Sea: No, I have been ordered to stay here. But if you want to go wipe out Camp Forlorn Hope by yourself, including the elite NCR First Recon, you can do that.Me: Sounds good. BRB.Me: Yeah, so I took care of that for you.Dead Sea: ...

[Dwip]

Also, re: Honest Hearts, I'm pretty sure my Zion tribal name is Mauled-By-Bear-Traps.

[prettyfly]

I have very fond memories of telling the Sorrows follower that I had when I was entering into their sacred caves that the angry spirits 'probably look a bit more like a bear trap' (although, they were very well hidden bear traps).

[Dwip]

Finished Honest Hearts, and like I did in Dead Money, I did both main endings. And, um, yeah. I dunno. A few words on the subject, some of which will be spoilers.- Unlike the Sierra Madre, which was long stretches of sheer annoyance culminating in some pretty fun times at the end, the bulk of Honest Hearts' gameplay is pretty fun. Zion is a cool place to explore, and it's relatively rewarding to do so just for the experience of doing so. Zion has a very unique environment, too, and I really enjoyed wandering around a place the bombs never touched. Frankly, compared to Fallout 3 I found the exploration aspects of New Vegas to be pretty skimpy, so it was nice to have a DLC that focused on that, plus put a new spin on it.- On the other hand, I'm fairly sure I didn't have a burning need to experience giant cazadores.- On the plus side of the writing, the Survivalist diaries are some of the best writing in either Fallout 3 or New Vegas, perfectly capturing the grief, horror, terror, and sometime triumph of the time after the bombs fell. Between the exploration and the survivalist stuff (which is part of the exploration), these things by themselves are worth the price of admission, basically what Point Lookout could have been if Point Lookout hadn't been a completely stupid pile of utter fail.However, and I don't really know how to say this, but the bulk of the writing, Jesus. This requires a bit of explanation.- So, if you're like me, you were like "Hey, Honest Hearts has Joshua Graham, the Burning Man! His story was really unique and interesting, and I want to know about him, so an adventure with him in it should be awesome!Yeah, about that. He's in this DLC, yes. And counting Salt-Upon-Wounds and the three Happy Trails guys that get jacked 3 seconds in, he's one of the eight speaking roles in the whole of Zion. You even get him as a companion for a little while. He looks and is pretty badass....you also don't learn much of anything about him, or do very much cool stuff with him, which is lame.- And speaking of him, suppose you joined up with the Legion, which I did, and suppose you're doing everything you can to support them, which I was. And suppose that Honest Hearts dumps you into a conflict between random dudes and a bunch of tribals trying to join Caesar's Legion, tribals who you, Mr. Legion, might be inclined to support and help them, you know, join the Legion.Yeah, don't even try. You can't. There is literally nothing for a Legion supporter here, and playing through the DLC will basically break your character concept. You have literally no reason to be helping these people, and yet that's the only way you can go. Considering Caesar's personal backstory, this could have been really epic, and yet.Which leads me to another sad fact, which is...- ...you can very clearly see the budget tradeoffs between more exploration and more plot. On the one hand, pro exploration. On the other hand, the plot of the DLC only makes any kind of sense if you support Daniel, who you don't even meet until halfway through the DLC. The Joshua Graham/kill em' all ending (ie, the logical one, I thought) isn't as deep, has some really whack choices in the dialogue construction, and the ending it gives you actively makes no sense, which is to say that apparently watching Graham cap some dude turns everybody evil. Literally, it even says this. Oh, and if you follow Daniel instead of Graham, you get a whole extra level and like three more quests out of it.Which leads me in turn to...- So going back to the whole "I expected a story about Joshua Graham the Burning Man, or maybe something about New Caananites, and boy did that not happen" bit, I've got to say something about the tribals, and what I've got to say is along the lines of "Holy shit, if this DLC featured this kind of stereotyping about black people, and the NAACP found out about it, you'd have people fighting each other to get the chance to firebomb Obsidian. What the hell was that?"Check it out:- Apparently everyone began rocking it like Navajo at some point, which, ok I guess, never mind that most of them should have been Mexican or Mormons or something. Whatever, and at least when SM Stirling did the same thing, he lampshaded it by having the "Indians" admit they were pretty much just putting on a show. Obsidian plays the trope pretty straight here, right on down to Follows-Chalk and Co. speaking in pidgin, expressing awe at the wonders of civilization, and talking pretty much like Indians out of a 50s Western.- And we can pretty much keep on going with tropes here. Yes, there is a quest called Civilized Man's Burden, and yes, the leaders of every single tribe except the White Legs are actually white Mormon dudes, and yes, they're totally doing the whole noble savage thing complete with "well, they're all really innocent, basically like children" thing and literally following white dudes around like children.Seriously, if Honest Hearts was about black people, it would be a bunch of guys in blackface sitting around eating watermelon and fried chicken and talking about how awesome it is being a slave to Massa in dialect. It's just about that bad, which is why it's so great that there's not nearly enough dialogue and only eight speaking roles period (counting the people with literally 5 lines), because if there were more I wouldn't be able to turn my brain off during the plot.All in all, awesome for the exploration, but seriously, what the hell was that?Here's hoping I love Old World Blues more. Word on the street is that I probably will.

[Dwip]

So Honest Hearts is apparently what I need to think about tonight, so I'm just going to argue with myself for a moment here. It's ok. I'm a professional.Point: Well, about the whole Indian stereotypes thing, pidgin, and all that, the Zion tribes DO speak in what's apparently some sort of Dutch/Spanish hybrid, and are apparently somewhat racially diverse.Counterpoint: That doesn't make it any less awful, particularly.Point: Well, Daniel and Joshua do sort of show some ambivilence about playing God-of-savages, Daniel especially. Also, to be fair, Joshua is kind of a heavy duty dude, so it's not really implausible that he'd run some tribe, stereotyping or no.Counterpoint: And yet it really wasn't necessary to roll with the whole "The only good Indian works for a white man or is dead" thing, either. Seriously, if the tribals shown in Honest Hearts are THAT dumb, how did they live this long? The White Legs are said to not even be able to cook or hunt or anything, and they made it 200 years like this in the middle of goddamn nowhere?Point: On the innocent savage note, Follows-Chalk is sort of naively charming, in a sort of vaguely racist stereotyping way.Counterpoint: Sure. And it works for him. Everyone and their dog maybe less.Point: You wouldn't have any problem with any of this if it was generic wastelanders, would you?Counterpoint: Probably not. Nor would I have a problem with it if the Dead Horses and Sorrows were anything but blatant stereotypes. But they are. On the plus side, at least I didn't defeat the White Legs by giving them blankets with smallpox.Point: There actually is a moral arc between Joshua Graham, Daniel, and Joshua's past in the Legion and not being that guy anymore. There is a plot here.Counterpoint: There are only like 20 or 30 lines of dialogue spread between Daniel and Joshua in the first place. How much plot is there really? How much is it undermined by the fact that I'm literally fetching lunchboxes for Joshua? Could be worse, but it ain't good.I dunno. I hear there were tribals in Fallout 2, which I never played. Were they this blatantly awful?

[prettyfly]

Hey didn't I post something here to Dwips second last response last night?Anyway...I think all of the racial stereotyping and that went over my head when I was playing Honest Hearts, partly because I was completely out of it, partly because I'm not an American.

[Arthmoor]

Oh God, Microsoft, what are you thinking?!?!?

[Dwip]

@prettyfly - Didn't see anything.@Samson - Yeah, I've known about that for a while. And I'm pretty much with the author there. Ribbon UI is pretty good in Office, and makes a lot of sense. Sticking it in Explorer is just trying way too hard.For that matter, Windows 8 doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot of anything I might need it to do, Windows 7 really works for me, and it's fairly probable I'll just skip it entirely.

[Arthmoor]

I have little doubt most of the general user public will skip it too unless forced to get it with a new PC. Windows 8 is going to become the next ME/Vista debacle. I can see this from a mile away.

[AndalayBay]

Hey Arthmoor, did you see that shadeMe has released a new version of the CSE? It's now a complete package, which makes things a little easier... Just noticed you had some Oblivion updates.

[Arthmoor]

Nope, I hadn't noticed that. Those Oblivion updates were leftovers I figured I'd best get out before they were forgotten

[Hana]

Uh... and where is this new CSE? I don't see anything on Nexus or his thread for that matter

[AndalayBay]

Sorry Hana, I was referring to the new beta, which I'm hosting on DC. I should have said that. If you want access, sign up at DC and I'll add you to the group. ShadeMe doesn't mind who gets access, he's just not prepared for a public beta. I have it in a private area on DC that only members of our hosted projects have access to, or members of a special group that I've set up for the CSE.This goes for anybody else here. If you want access to the latest beta of the CSE (6.0.8), sign up at DC and I'll add you to the group.

[Ysne58]

You really should sign up on DLC. Lots of great stuff going on there and some of it is still for Oblivion.

[Hana]

Oh, if it's the beta, never mind.

[Dwip]

In the continued discussion of Fallout: New Vegas DLCs only prettyfly and myself care about, Old World Blues.It can be summed up thusly:The Good: OWB is hilarious.The Bad: OWB is hilarious.You may be asking at this point "Wait, what?" Well, here's the thing. So, either you liked the zanier parts of Fallout 3 (aliens, rednecks, &c, &c), or you didn't. If you did, OWB is good for you - they dialed it up to 11 and left it there until the speakers blew out. Like I said, it's pretty damn funny, and very well executed, sort of like if President John Henry Eden and GladOS had a baby while making endless dick jokes, which I assure you is better than it sounds.The trouble with this, of course, is that Fallout: New Vegas is not Fallout 3, even with Wild Wasteland on. It's an altogether more serious game that takes itself more seriously and wants to be taken seriously by the player, and OWB singlehandedly undoes all of it in about 5 minutes. Did you go through Dead Money and Honest Hearts first, like me? Wrestle with their moral complexities and lessons? Well, OWB faceplants you right into a half hour long conversation that isn't so much sprinkled with humor as tossed into an ocean of it. A little jarring, perhaps, and completely at odds with the rest of the game. Until you get used to it, it's pretty jarring, and I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't have been wiser to play it a little more straight.As to the actual gameplay, it's pretty good, if perhaps a touch too overreliant on giving enemies way too many hitpoints and running the player through test chambers (like, oh, what's that game? P-something). No joke, I went in at level 30 or so with like a thousand rounds of 12 gauge and half that in .50 MG, and came out with about half that. OWB is supposed to be leveled for 15+, but I don't really see how that's even possible. Stock up, is all I'm saying. That aside, there's a lot to explore (35 locations worth), interesting stuff to pick up, and a talking stealth suit that's my new best friend (and keeps me hopped up on Med-X).Plotwise, the main robot plot is whatever it is that it is. As a Fallout sitcom, it works pretty well. As an actual plot, maybe less so, which is nevertheless probably all right if you can accept it for the Fallout sitcom (almost in spaaaaaaaaaaaace) that it is. For my money, the most interesting bits are the various tie-ins to Dead Money and Lonesome Road, which fill in a little bit more of the backstory.So, you know. Fun. Just don't expect it to make a lot of sense. Or let up on the turgid hand penis jokes.

[prettyfly]

I thought the plot actually made quite an interesting turn once I met Mobius, in fact, it even seemed a bit more serious at that point (but still, the room with all the mentats). The main thing that impressed me was that they managed to make a bunch of fetch quests incredibly enjoyable, although as you sort of pointed out, by swamping you with so much crazy shit you're well beyond caring (also, it gets even crazier with wild wasteland. Particularly with Spike in the village). Speaking of which, I'd like to know which hallucinogen they were taking when they came up with these idea's.The enemies were definitely a bit to annoying though, particularly with their stupidly high perception. I would have rather them cut the difficulty back and strip the player of their inventory when they enter the DLC. It felt bizarre how they left me with all my gear anyway, particularly considering all the bits of technology I was carrying. I'm sure I would've enjoyed finding bits out about characters in past and future DLC's as well, if I hadn't already spoiled the entire extended storyline for myself. But otherwise, fun, although it didn't captivate me quite so much as dead money did (one of my friends called it a 'clusterfuck', which is part true, but I don't mind clusterfuck gameworlds that much, although they don't pull you in as quickly.)