first time i played the final battle i was only lvl 17 and had like 18 hours on the clock. knowing i can do at least 3 other ends 4 more minor factions and lots of other stuff i can bet you need more then 70 hours in total if you are already known with fallout and are able to play the game pretty easy. for normal gamers it would be about 2x as much.

Ok I'll put up some of my character's stats so you can see about where I am in the game, some are less relevant than others though.

Playtime: 35 hours and 5 minutes

Level: 29

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes:

strength: 6
perception: 7
endurance: 7
charisma: 8
intelligence: 8
agility: 7
luck: 6

Quests completed: 49
Locations discovered: 127 (and explored them all, by exploring I mean checking at least every room and taking all the stuff I want to have)
People killed: 245
Creatures killed: 509
Locks picked: 84
Computers hacked: 24
Stimpaks taken: 68
Speech successes: 64
Speech failures: 2
Books read: 18
Health from food: 3121
Challenges completed: 47
Items crafted: 3195
Items repaired: 159
Total kills: 754
Barter amount traded: 59515
Sunset sarsaparilla star bottle caps found: 47

I have had ED-E, Boone and Rex as followers.

63 hours and just completed my first play-through. Avoided some companions, quests and locations on purpose for my second character. I get the good old "walk from point A to B and meanwhile get distracted by other stuff and locations and end up miles away from point B" feeling

I'm 50 hours in and I just got an invitation to see Mr House. I've been doing all the quests I can find, and having a complete ball, I'm not really in a rush to end the game. It isn't a race! (I have 12 current quests in the pipboy, and that's before I get to the Benny/House stuff). And I haven't found the BOS yet, or been to see the Supermutants, or...

You race to the end, the game ends. I learned that in Fallout3. In this one, I'm playing it for all its worth. Hopefully another 50 hours at least (for this playthrough).

Oh and I kind of agree that it feels a bit empty, it only really kicks off when you get to Freeside. Feels like the designers built Vegas, then the surrounding Wasteland was a bit of an afterthought. BUT I've got so much to do now I'm actually in Vegas that all if forgiven..

I'm at Freeside, and I've avoided doing a couple of the lead-up quests to try and drag the game out a bit. Obviously there's still a bit to go for me, but the short and sharp mini-quests have given me the feeling that the game will be over before it's begun.

I've been thinking about this sort of problem from the beginning, and I think that it's possibly because the game isn't 'epic'. Due to the faction rankings system, the compressed nature of the game (and be fair here, you can stand in certain places and see at least a third or more of the playable area) and a couple of other things, you are essentially Joe Average, drifter.

In F3, you earned your recognition, and virtually everyone knew you, eventually. Your character became larger than life in a game that actually catered for larger than life characters. That's the way F3 was intended to be, and it did it rather well. Granted there's differences in FNV, and it's a great game in some aspects, but in some ways it's more Gunsmoke Meets Good Fellas, and really, your character is not really that important in the scheme of things generally.

I have to agree with solid. I have been walking everywhere for about 45+ hours now and if it weren;t for the bonus xp (killing 50 bugs for a perk and some xp, hacking 25 terminals, or taking 100 rad a ways) I wouldn't be at my current level(28). Also, in all this walking I have found that in between many locations it is deviod of anything to kill. I had this where is the danger feeling very early in my playtime. In FO3 once you left the vault within a few steps you were up to your neck in raiders yelling (profane and hilarious insults) and shooting. Also I don not care for the fact that a whole airport (Searchlight) exist, buildings in tact mind you, and all I can do there is run around the tarmac killing radscorpions. I mean just walking across it ads 10 min of time played, but just 12 radscorpions on all that beautiful potential is such a letdown. Now will all these lame and inaccessable buildings stop me from smoking something (although the somethings to kill are hard to find) in slo-mo with the antimaterial rifle, ABSOLUTELY NOT.

This build reeks of cheating via console commands. Unless practically every perk you took was intense training and you took every implant, I don't see how you could possibly have all those those stats at that level.

That is totally what the TES games have always been to me. Some quests, with serious distractions along the way. It takes an active conscious effort for me to say "NO, go to point B, dont go to the new triangle outlines!"

Also, as some what touched on above in terms of replay. I have to think im going to have a fairly different experience in the game when I go through with my "evil guy mode". Being im at 39 hours now, im seeing the factions setting up for something big (dont wanna do spoilers) as I do a lot of interaction and quests with various groups. How close that is to done I dont know. Im not sure how many of the side quests ive done (a lot more then main quest).

As for it looking empty. Well, a good portion of the area IS a desert after all. Id say this place looks more crowded then the real NV deserts lol.

Well, you can choose here between:

Big open world, with not so many interesting locations, but lotsa of them.

Or much smaller map, but every location is much more interesting, better, you have much more of everything, better animations, more weapons, traits, factions, [censored]loads of stuff and quests, and so many references to previous Fallouts.

Fallout New Vegas is much better game to me, but pity it has much smaller map, but that's all.

Bull. I'm 50 hours in and still going strong, i have alot of quests left and plenty of location to discover, i expect atleast 20 more hours on this character. Plus, Fallout New Vegas has much more replayability, since there are different factions and endings. Along with role playing. This will last me awhile.

Edit: Plus, 30 hours in ANY game is a good buy

http://yfrog.com/5kimage201010260030j Count them yourself if you like. 343 + 9 sewers = 352

Didnt include zone 2 interiors, cause it lists actual npc's.

CE Map

Even if its just a valley or ditch, its still a location to discover.

3 hours????? Thats your fault for rushing through.

I figured someone would say that, I took 2 intense training and bought all implants except for intelligence. Do the maths and you'll see it adds up.

And about the number of locations, I have discovered a 128 locations now and just about the whole map is full now. It'd be 200 locations max but never EVER will it be 352 I refuse to believe that.

Fallout new vegas has around 75 sidequests, there are 4 main quests that MUST be completed and then according to your decisions you can add an additional 2 - 6 quests to that. That makes for say 85 quests is about the limit. I have already completed 50 and main quest done. (which tends to have the longer quests). So I'll have about 30 quests to go together with a handful of locations to explore (with about half of them being really small and just filler material), I reckon I'll be done with this after another 20 - 30 hours. Which is not worthy of a fallout playthrough if you ask me.



But that's the thing, the map is smaller and the locations are even worse than in fallout 3. If have found so many BS filler locations I'm getting sick of it. Locations like coyote tail ridge which is seriously just a rock you only had a few of these in fallout 3 and none were as ridiculous as that one.

I do still have alot to do in new vegas/freeside itself though (at least I think I do) since I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what's to do there. But I doubt it will make me play for another 50 hours.

Personally, I can't even begin to fathom how one would prefer Fallout 3 to this but I guess different strokes.

The one thing I would hold against Vegas is that some places feel a bit empty. Not in the outside world (where I think they did a superb job of getting the wasteland feel right) but in some interiors that feel a bit too large.

But in terms of actual content? Wow, I think New Vegas goes faaaar beyond Fallout 3 here. That said, I think there is a shift towards more quest content instead of "looting dungeons" here, which is much more true to Fallout as a whole. There are some fetch quests, but most quests have a much more complex design than what we saw in Fallout 3. And very importantly, there is a significant focus on various skills and playstyles you may employ. And that's not even going into the various factions which you can support, or not.
After going in to the Strip for the first time and just now getting out after spending a lot of hours in there, I have a huge amount of quests open (despite completing a pretty fair amount in Freeside and the Strip). It's been a really long time since I got that "wow, what the hell am I gonna do next?" feeling from a RPG but New Vegas manages it. Characters are very well written generally speaking, not annoying cartoons (even the more far-out ones can be pretty believable, much more so than any of F3s characters if you ask me).
And the flexibility of the game is great. Despite it in some ways being more story-driven than F3, it still gives the player a lot more real say in how things are done.

Again, different strokes but I think New Vegas is by *far* superior to F3 and I think it'll rival F2 for me personally.

What was your starting Endurance?

I definitely miss the subway system.

Call me a purist, but navigating through that thing and figuring out what led where and just surviving all the damn ghouls.

That was time consuming, edge of seat and fun. I also played as a sneaky character so maybe it took me so long because I was walking super slowly all the time and looking for every single bit of stuff I could grab and hoard away in my Megaton House

You are right, I've said so before but I'll say it again since I know people won't bother to read every single post on five pages ( I wouldn't either). I personally enjoy vegas more in every conceivable way, except for the exploration part. I had already stated that fallout new vegas removes the exploration/dungeon crawling part but replaces it with a vastly superior rpg element. However I feel that the rpg element alone is NOT enough to replace the WHOLE exploration element (let's be honest here there's next to nothing to explore in this game). They should have kept some dungeon crawling in there for more variation in gameplay. Instead now the greater part of the game is completing quests which is great, even though there's alot of fetch-quests in there. And I loved fallout 3 for having immersive non-fetch quests. I do think that new vegas offers way more enjoyable gameplay, as the weapons handle better you can change ammo type, the whole crafting system is updated ( it a weak the whole crafting system but I still like it, it's a nice try and they could improve on this in dlc or upcoming games) and I love all the factions and the interaction between them.

I'm not sure but I believe it was 6, I could support 6 implants so I guess it was 6. Besides that I can assure you that I have not used the console YET. Not even for hacking computers or picking locks.

Actually the math doesn't add up.

The game starts you with 40 total points in special.

6 implants + 2 intense = 8 Total of 48

Yet your special adds up to 49

Where's the extra point from?

Hmmmmm, interesting. I know where the fault lies and that it's because I overlooked something, because I didn't use the console. I'm pretty sure I bought 6 implants but hmmm.... I'll go check and see if I can find out what's going on here.

I've found it, I took the small frame trait which boosts my agility +1.

I agree. Also the people that are skipping the dialoague because they "read faster" are really missing out. The voice acting in this game is nothing short of superb and is a big part of the immersive experience.

Either that or they're just not buying it.

I'm just going to add my 2 cents to this debate. I don't have the game yet but I will soon so I'll just be gong off of what I read on the forum.

For the people saying FNV had all of those pointless map markers, I can name a few places in FO3 that had no puropse like the baseball field (nothing but a baseball bat and some raiders), the carpark overlook thing ( I forgot the exat name but all it had was a buch of cars) and one of those markers you get for the blood ties quest is just a dock for a dried up lake or something like that.

One thing I think is missing from NV are the hunge unmarked quests that were in fallout 3. Like that scary as sh** place in the bottom left corner of the map. Stuff like that makes exploring a fun thing not a chore.

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