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[IlyaP]

50 minutes ago, Durckad said:

I refuse to accept this reality.

I NEED MY BANDOLIERS IN SKYRIM, DAMMIT.

[RumHam]

52 minutes ago, Durckad said:

I refuse to accept this reality.

My last playthroughs of Oblivion and Fallouts 3 and NV were all on the steam deck and modded. My last Skyrim play was the switch because at that time playing it portably seemed close to actual magic. 

I remember loving Goldeneye four player split screen at like 6-14 FPS. It's far easier to accept a reality you are born into, than to have to downgrade. 

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, Durckad said:

The fact that "only" 53 mods is lightly modded is both hilarious AND somehow true is really quite the accomplishment. 

Also, you know you're truly running a Bethesda game when you spend more time setting up all the mods than you do actually playing it.

It took about 40 minutes, versus my last playthrough at about 60 hours.

Also, NV modding is so mature at this point they really just need to collate a single modpack, but people grumble about that so they haven't so far. Like three of those mods are "Better Globes," (referring to model globes you find in the world) "Better Books" and "Better Ghoul Faces." They should really be part of a larger mod.

The biggest things are the ENBs and retexture mods, which make the game look maybe 85% as good as Fallout 4. It's really remarkable both how easy and also how massive a difference things like modern particles, much better lighting effects and resetting the LOD distances make.

[Durckad]

9 hours ago, IlyaP said:

I NEED MY BANDOLIERS IN SKYRIM, DAMMIT.

Monocle megapack or gtfo.

9 hours ago, RumHam said:

My last playthroughs of Oblivion and Fallouts 3 and NV were all on the steam deck and modded. My last Skyrim play was the switch because at that time playing it portably seemed close to actual magic. 

I remember loving Goldeneye four player split screen at like 6-14 FPS. It's far easier to accept a reality you are born into, than to have to downgrade. 

Nah, I was just fucking with you.

My first playthroughs of Fallout 3 and Skyrim were on consoles (360's) as my PC at the time was very much not up to par. In fact the only reason I switched over to PC on both of those games was because my 360 red ringed and I decided to upgrade my PC instead of getting another console. 

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

It took about 40 minutes, versus my last playthrough at about 60 hours.

Also, NV modding is so mature at this point they really just need to collate a single modpack, but people grumble about that so they haven't so far. Like three of those mods are "Better Globes," (referring to model globes you find in the world) "Better Books" and "Better Ghoul Faces." They should really be part of a larger mod.

The biggest things are the ENBs and retexture mods, which make the game look maybe 85% as good as Fallout 4. It's really remarkable both how easy and also how massive a difference things like modern particles, much better lighting effects and resetting the LOD distances make.

Ah, that's good to hear honestly.

It's been a while since I've played NV and the time required to get it up and fully modded and not looking like absolute shit was definitely one of the barriers for doing another playthrough (maybe even one that results in me finally finishing the game...).

[Werthead]

Extremely comprehensive progress update from their superb narrator. This is the guy you need to hire to voice your PowerPoint presentation.

Also, the game looks great. Some nostalgia here, I think OG Oblivion was the first big game release after I joined the board and the first to get tons of discussion.

 

[IlyaP]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is the guy you need to hire to voice your PowerPoint presentation.

It's 'the English voice' thing that Dylan Moran spoke about! 

[IlyaP]

Quake 2 XP has been impressing the hell out of me, and makes me wonder just what the upcoming Quake 2 remaster could offer that isn't already on display in this exceptionally marvellous mod. Especially with the Mech Warrior 2 soundtrack in place of the score by Sonic Mayhem. Both are good, but Jeehun Hwang and Gregory Alper's music fits Q2 so very well.

[Caligula_K3]

Finally reaching the end of Tears of the Kingdom, about 130 hours in. What a phenomenal game. The fact that I've played for this long but am still delaying going to the final boss by finding shrines, dicking around making stupid machines, and doing random side quests says a lot for what a fun game this is, how much there is to do, and how much of the content is interesting.

[Luzifer's right hand]

Playing Sekiro right now.

I bounced of the game mechanics when I tried it first after buying it on a sale but after playing hundreds of hours of Elden Ring I tried it again and now I'm enjoying it a lot now even if I'm objectively bad at it.

I think there are bosses in this game I died against more often than I died against all Elden Ring bosses combined at this point...

Edited June 29, 2023 by Luzifer's right hand

[Ran]

 

Just an announcement showing cinematics, but it captures the vibe of Blade Runner quite well, and the game director has solid credits. 

[Ser Not Appearing]

On 6/23/2023 at 7:05 PM, Werthead said:

Huh. Sony was going to use the same deal it had to make Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop timed PS-exclusives on Starfield, and Microsoft were so irritated that bought Bethesda outright and made Starfield Xbox exclusive.

Meanwhile, I'm doing my first Fallout: New Vegas replay and decided to do it lightly modded. Only 53 mods installed this time around.

So, I played a Fallout game for the first time about 3 or 4 years ago. I played Fallout 4 and absolutely loved it. Among my favorite games ever. Then I saw everyone says Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 are better.

So I downloaded New Vegas. And it was kinda fine but it felt rather boring (to me) comparatively. I think a lot of this is because I started with all the crafting and modding and base building options in Fallout 4 and so going to a game without them felt lame ... but what else would you say I'm missing about New Vegas that makes it good / better?

I've asked around and been told "story" or the machine guy is so cool ... and that didn't hit for me. Hoping for other stuff. I always like to understand.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Ser Not Appearing

[Toth]

16 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

So I downloaded New Vegas. And it was kinda fine but it felt rather boring (to me) comparatively. I think a lot of this is because I started with all the crafting and modding and base building options in Fallout 4 and so going to a game without them felt lame ... but what else would you say I'm missing about New Vegas that makes it good / better?

I've asked around and been told "story" or the machine guy is so cool ... and that didn't hit for me. Hoping for other stuff. I always like to understand.

No really, it's the story people praise. And the simple thing that the skills of your characters actually have a meaningful impact, opening up choices and closing others, the same as your personal decisions and how all of that has an actual impact on how quests proceed. Fallout 4 has smoother gunplay, but many were annoyed how much it fails at being a roleplaying game, what with the "Yes - Yes, but give me more money - No (Yes, but later)" dialogue options.

[Ser Not Appearing]

Kinda the same response that I get every time I ask about it.

I freely admit that I just don't get it. I want to but I always listen and consider and ... just don't get it. I always thought I was into RPGs but I must be blind to certain things. I didn't notice any meaningful difference in dialogue and even thinking about it after the fact ... it seems like an small preference more than a big issue.

I guess it's a lot like when an audiophile talks about how bad MP3s sound. It must be true but I don't pick up on it. Not really a problem, really, but it always surprises me anyway (and not understanding better irritates me).

Edited June 30, 2023 by Ser Not Appearing

[Werthead]

5 hours ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

So, I played a Fallout game for the first time about 3 or 4 years ago. I played Fallout 4 and absolutely loved it. Among my favorite games ever. Then I saw everyone says Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 are better.

So I downloaded New Vegas. And it was kinda fine but it felt rather boring (to me) comparatively. I think a lot of this is because I started with all the crafting and modding and base building options in Fallout 4 and so going to a game without them felt lame ... but what else would you say I'm missing about New Vegas that makes it good / better?

I've asked around and been told "story" or the machine guy is so cool ... and that didn't hit for me. Hoping for other stuff. I always like to understand.

New Vegas is a game that respects your choices. You can, at any time, do anything you want in the game. This includes straight-up murdering the main villain of the game when you get sent to him to set up a peace conference (or you can just walk into his camp at any time and, assuming you can survive his formidable defences, kill him). Or you can turn around and kill the leader of the good guys and set the villains up to win and have that as a meaningful outcome. FO3 and 4 mark all important NPCs as indestructible, so that's not possible.

Or you can make possibly the best choice ever in a video game:

Spoiler

Declare all the factions to be bullshit, seize control of an army of laser death robots and set yourself up as the King of the Wastelands and everyone has to get on your good side or you can go to war with them (you can also reprogram an orbital laser cannon to obey your every whim, which keeps even the Legion on-side, since you can vapourise their capital city at will). And it's up to you whether you rule as a tyrant or benevolently (the game ends 5 seconds later, so it leaves most of it to your imagination, but you get to see the start of the process).

FO4 is basically a theme park. It's very fun, hugely so at times, but it's also very silly and doesn't make sense. The post-apocalyptic thing doesn't make sense when it's 210 years after the bombs fell and Boston has been inhabited by the factions for almost that entire period, and yet nobody has thought of cleaning up skeletons, looting supermarkets in the city centre, building fortified bases or setting up merchant supply lines and military patrols until you show up (this makes even less sense if you play the version of the main character who was a lawyer in their former life; at least the other one was a military officer).

FO4 also lost a lot of points when they developed a quest that was directly based on a fan-added quest from New Vegas and did not credit or pay them, or acknowledge they'd stolen someone else's work.

Also:

Quote

In New Vegas you can "romance" a robot, if that's how you roll.

One massive problem New Vegas has - and I'm replaying it now - is that it's far less accessible than either FO3 or 4. The start is a little more obtuse, the narrative hook is a bit vaguer and the map is, almost design, a fair bit blander than brighter, multicolored Boston, and less interesting than Washington, DC. It is a desert. But the map is actually a little bit smaller than FO4's, so fitting in at least vaguely convincing recreations of the Mojave Desert, Hoover Dam and Las Vegas into a smaller map space is quite impressive. And once you get to Vegas itself and take care of the game's initial quest (so that's resolved very quickly, unlike FO3 and 4's bizarrely-paced main stories), the game and story really kick up a gear.

Obviously the crafting and base-building stuff simply isn't in the earlier Bethesda games (and various attempts to patch them in via mods have not been successful), so if that's a major draw of FO4 for you, their absence is a problem for those earlier games, as is them simply being older, uglier games with less of the UI and QOL improvements from the later game.

[Martell Spy]

They dumbed down the the RPG mechanics in Fallout 4. And the main story is very much a railroad. I'm a big Fallout fan and I do play 4, but it is kind of a let down. It's a better game on next gen though, combat is crisper.

Fallout New Vegas has tons better side quests. Just one example you help this npc and if you make certain choices you end up murdering a weapon shop owner. And not only that you can loot and sell everything, and it's a lot. I haven't been 4 yet, as I keep putting it down, but I have seen nothing approaching anything like that. 4 seems to be all about finding this kid and you had better like doing that. The combat and looting is nice though. 

I just killed the Courser, actually. First time I got this far. Been pushing through my annoyance with the main story.

But yeah, you can enslave a man in Fallout New Vegas. You can feed a man to cannibals. I can't imagine Fallout 4 letting you do anything even remotely near that controversial.

 

[IlyaP]

And Fallout 4 can't even get the scale of locations and their distances from one another in eastern Massachusetts correct! *kvetches in hometown pedantry*

[Ser Not Appearing]

I actually beat New Vegas by taking over the robot army. Was definitely the best option.

For me, the resolution of the main quest in Fallout 4 is a standout among all quests in New Vegas and Fallout 4. I, for one, didn't see it coming. My second favorite quest / story component is actually what happens with the guy in the Brotherhood of Steel questline of Fallout 4. That was another surprise and felt pretty compelling. Then there's a dynamic thing that you can encounter where there's two versions of a guy fighting and you have to pick one and hope you got the clone. Further, the different factions seem more compelling in terms of their competing ideologies.

In New Vegas, I really enjoyed the Elvis impersonator group, just on principle, and there's are a couple of quests that have stuck with me pretty well. One is actually the Repconn rocket (that I hope and assume will appear in Started somehow). I think New Vegas also had the vending machine / talking head prize thingy that hooked me for a bit. The main conflict actually seemed kinda lame to me compared to Fallout 4, though ... and that's apparently a minority opinion for whatever reason.

Oh, and the Fallout 4 music is better and the DJ is my preference ... once you make him less of a wuss.

Anyway, always fun to discuss.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Ser Not Appearing

[Slurktan]

On 6/29/2023 at 10:13 AM, Luzifer's right hand said:

Playing Sekiro right now.

I bounced of the game mechanics when I tried it first after buying it on a sale but after playing hundreds of hours of Elden Ring I tried it again and now I'm enjoying it a lot now even if I'm objectively bad at it.

I think there are bosses in this game I died against more often than I died against all Elden Ring bosses combined at this point...

I love Sekiro but always keep in mind despite how it looks, it actually is a rhythm game.  Once you grasp that it gets a lot easier.

[Gorn]

To me, the best and most impressive part of New Vegas is that there are no generic "bandits" or "raiders". Every sentient character in the game belongs to some faction or other, and every faction has named leaders and hierarchy, relations with other factions, and different places on the morality scale. Also, every faction can be made friendly under certain conditions (but never all of them at the same time), even ex-cons who raid settlements and drug-addicted psychos who murder everything in sight. And in case of "evil" factions, you get to see what makes them evil directly and personally.

I liked that approach way more than "there are bandits/raiders who will always attack you, take our word for it that they're super bad, kill as many of them as you want" standard Bethesda approach.

I think the only RPG that did something similar was Pillars of Eternity 2, since it is hard to pull off and requires some excellent writers in the development team.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Gorn

[Derfel Cadarn]

Started playing Resident Evil VII on playstation through my VR headset. Not got very far, shiting it the whole time and I’ve not even been attacked yet!

Wpuldnt mind the Actual PS5 VR but can’t justify the expense at the moment.

Playing Assassisn Creed Origins, like the Egypt setting but not used to the combat yet, i’m still too used to Odyssey’s.

Got FFXVI but I dont have the room yet to install it.