well,he is kind of right, not just with new vegas, but bethesda games in general......none of their games have ANY world-effecting choices.

It completes your story. That is what an ending is, and the game lets you know how your actions shaped the world. With this we can piece together what actually happened in the game world, once canon events are established.

Who you sided with also meant something, as people would react accordingly. Make an enemy of someone, and they behaved towards you as an enemy in the FO world would. Compared to FO3, all you have are friendlies and enemies, and if you go postal crazy on friendlies, don't worry, return a few days later and all is forgotten. Brutally murder people, no sweat. Blow up a town, no worries, hell you can even give out water and finish the game as the nice guy.

So, there are two types of c&c in game. Those that will have a direct impact on your character, and those that take time to develop. Hence, ending sliders to see how your actions shaped the future of the Mojave. Not everything someone does is going to have an impact that suddenly changes a game world. Some do, some don't. At least NV did a lot better job at it than 3, as nobody cares one bit in 3, regardless who you steal from, who you murder, towns you blow up, people you enslave. Regardless what you do, you still get hugs, just sometimes you have to wait a couple days to receive them.

So long as I know that in the context of the world, the choices do have an impact, I don't need to see them for the choices to have meaning. If a character tells me that what I've done or am about to do is a big deal, and all evidence points to that being the case, then the choice has weight to me. If an ending slide reveals that my actions saved/damned a city, then I consider the decision important.

In the case that I mentioned with Helios, we don't directly see the results, but that doesn't change the situation that the Courier is in or the choice he has to make. He can't know what the effect will be besides what is told to him. Neither can we on the first playthrough, but even through we don't directly see the energy making things easier wherever we send it, we can logically assume that it does, and the decision itself is about the moment of the decision, not the effects. The argument that "it's an easy decision because you don't see any results" is pointless, because the results or lack thereof come after the decision, and shouldn't be a factor.

Even if the civil war in Skyrim was somewhat broken... the choices did effect the world, right? It was not well made but they moved in this direction.,

Doesn't some street lights around Vegas get powered after the quest?

Do we? I didn't notice, but it'd be pretty sweet if that's the case. I always just assumed that it went towards the same things that they already had powered by other sources, and it simply relieves some of the burden from them.

untill proven wrong, bethesda writing is OK at best.

I do not think FO4 will differ from this, but I guess the other goodies will help keeping the game memorable

But the fact is,most of everything given to you as an option changed nothing post-game. The game telling you what you allegedly do isn't as satsfying as actually seeing things crumble or rise.Not enough quest felt as important as The Megaton Bomb, and Tenpenny Ghoul Quest. Theres not enough chain reaction or critical effect.

That's subjective. I prefer the story to have a solid ending, as all good stories do, and to see the future outcomes of our actions given in the epilogue-like ending slides. For me, learning how things play out thanks to my Vault Dweller/Chosen One/Courier's deeds was incredibly satisfying. I felt like I had made a huge impact on the world, and that my character could then settle down peacefully while these changes proceed on without him.

My problem with the major changes in-game is that they have a tendency to hold less impact than they should. There is virtually no change in the wasteland at all besides a new crater, and besides Moira, some random encounter survivors, and James scolding his kid for mass murder, no one really seems to care about, or even acknowledge this supposedly major event.

Sure they could do a morally grey story.... its something Fallout has never really been about. All the games had cut and dry bad guys. The Master, The Enclave, The Calulator.(first incarnation at least), The Enclave again, and The Caeser's Legion are clearly badguys. One can debate House vs NCR vs Independent. But its kinda hard to argue the Legion is the morally right choice for New Vegas.

The outcome of quests tended to be either "good" or "bad" assuming there was a moral choice in the quest at all. In a few cases the better outcomes wouldn't be obvious. New Reno had a lot of alternate fates depending on the Chosen One's actions. Or they took a whole lot more work such as the problems facing Broken Hills.

Morally grey isn't necessarily better, Far to often it makes the outcomes pointless because who you choose doesn't matter.... which is just as bad as when your presented with the good choice and the evil for evil's sake choice.

What's actually better is if the morally good outcomes take a more work for likely the same reward then the bad outcomes. A hypothetical example would be you have a Raider den. A settlement wants you to wipe it out because its been preying on them for years. You could use some explosives placed tragically around the building to collapse it on top of them killing everyone inside including dozens of people captured as slaves. The settlement is saved from the Raiders but continues to struggle due to the lack of man power. Freeing the slaves and getting them out a live is more difficult but the settlement prospers in the end. Or you could use the explosives to blow a big gaping hole in the settlements defense allowing the raiders to sack the whole city, this gives you the most reward but then the entire population of the settlement are either dead or slaves. This gives you the good outcome with questionable methods, the comic book hero outcome and the evil bastard outcome.

The reason my Lone Wanderer spares the Overseer is because Amata would be sad. I spare him because he's the father of my childhood friend...

The problem with this is that it's a video game, so "level of difficulty" no longer becomes a concern.

In a real life situation, I would probably just blow the building up for fear of losing my life. In-game, I know that I can always just reload a previous save if I die, so I'll probably take the more difficult option if the outcome is more "good".

I'll yield on helping Butch's mom because it is rather obvious that helping her is the right thing to do.

I won't yield on Bob. I mean Harold. On my first trip through Oasis, I chanced upon the solution that left Harold feeling genuinely happy. It earned me some good karma.

My memory of Dr. Lesko isn't fresh enough. All I can say that the one time I dealt with him I played a good character, and I chose not to kill the queen ant. I trust I had a good reason.

I agree with your black-and-white examples (thanks for taking the time to do it) except for Megaton. Are you sure about that one? That eyesore juts up from the landscape. It needs to be removed, but unfortunately, there are people living there, and it isn't right to kill them. Gob's just a zombie, so killing him doesn't count, but Lucas Simms and most of the others are nice enough. Both choices are equally bad, but something must be done. It's a tough call. I normally disarm the bomb and then feel guilty for disappointing that sophisticate and humanitarian Mr. Burke.

What if the "good" path actually has the smallest material reward, or comes back to bite you in the ass later on (for instance, mercifully sparing some guy who just betrays you later on), despite being the most difficult path? In essence, the best outcome for the Wasteland would be the worst outcome for you, compared to the neutral or evil path. I guess one way they could "balance" it, if it even needed to be balanced, was to give good karma outcomes a bigger XP reward and evil karma outcomes a better material reward.

There are some quests where there is an immediate change. Again, not every quest is going to be like that. Goodsprings for example can be wiped out and replaced with Powder gangers. The prison can also be wiped clean of powder gangers and taken over by NCR. You can turn cottonwood cove into a radioactive pit. So, there are quests with immediate change, and when you pick a side, you make enemies.

Compare that to the megaton bomb, sure, you wipe megaton off the face of the earth, and for being a mass murderer there are zero consequences in game. How is it important? You would think other settlements would hate you or at the least, not trust you whatsoever, seeing how you blew up an entire town. Yet, nobody cares, and ghoul Moira will still be your pal.

There were improvements in Skyrim compared to FO3, and hopefully that trend will continue.

I lost it when I got to Gob. That's messed up.

And I suppose the Harold and Lesko bits would be viewed differently by people with different sets of morals. Personally, I can't imagine a much worse long-term fate than Harold's if he lives. And I'm pretty set on Lesko too (I actually helped him as well, but not because I felt it was the right thing to do). Wiping out towns is a no-no for me.