» Wed Jul 07, 2010 1:41 am
Guys i will tell you why FONV is buggy and that is the way it will always be because to be anything else and it would not be Fallout.
The issue is the bugs and sometimes the game seems unstable, fair enough. It seems that sometimes the game just goes crazy and crashes. Now keep in mind this is all a guess on my part but i would have to say it is a darn good one. Now also all of the bugs folks are complaining about in the last 6 plays i will honestly say that i have had no more lockups or CTDs than with any other game in my 15 plus years of PC gaming, this does not excuse it but i only say this to frame it in the propper perspective. A game like Fallout New Vegas with the myriad of ways in which the player is able to resolve game issues creates a problem for developers because they have to pre program solutions for the many different ways the game allows the player to complete a quest. So the developers have to anticipate the many different ways that I want to complete the quest, and now multiply that by a million plus different individuals and that is part of the mess. A quest can be solved by having a high enough skill like explosives, or speech, or barter, or intellect, the list goes on. To bug check that and iron out every issue or course a player would choose is not possible and still have a game that will ever be ready to play before it is obsolete. It is a trade off really.
As a player i have almost unlimited freedom in how i play my character, the game seems to be able to not only absorb my choices but it seems to me that it is reading my mind as i progress having anticipated what my character will do as WE progress through the game. It is that freedom that makes FO so kick ass but it also that freedom that causes problems as well. Any game event triggered by the player approach for example, the event is triggered by the player walking to a certain point. Once on that point the trap is sprung and the game rolls on, but as a player the second time i see the trap i may not go to the same point again having got my ass handed to me or certain people died etc etc. So i cheat a corner, work the angles, position myself differently and i am not where the game thinks i should be, or for that matter i should be. Bang your at the desktop. At this point in time who is to blame, the developer who did not anticipate ALL of the players choices or the player who is not where they should be because they used meta game knowledge to change the straightfoward event into something completely unforseen. Granted oversites do happen but in the end we as players are asking the developer to anticipate our evey choice and design the game around them. It is not possible.
Actually it is possible but to do this the developers would need to change the esence of FONV into something more linear in design. They would need to develop some of the players choices OUT of the game. They would need to simplify the may variables a player can use to progress through the game. They would need to simplify the world and script these events to be consistent every time. They could develop a more stable game that goes A to B to C to D to E to .......X to Y to Z, but that is not Fallout and is not why i play Fallout. I play Fallout, I love Fallout because A to C to B to F to X to Y to T ........ to H to Z also works but that flexibility complicates things for the player but even more so for the developer. They would need to turn Fallout into GTA4, which donot get me wrong GTA4 was a good game, but it is by no means even in the same ballpark as Fallout. Fallout is awesome godlike because each play is as similar or as different to the previous experience as the player chooses where as GTA4 will always be the same no matter how many times you play it. Eventually you will exhaust the different resolutions possible in Fallout, but not today and definately not in one play through. Fallout is a game where it is mandatory for the player to return to find every nugget of content because you have to do things differently in order for those nuggets to be avalable.
I am not an apologist nor am i a shill for Bethesda but i am a big fan. I have been gaming for over 15 years longer if one would like to hear about my Taipan prowess on the old TRS 80s. This does not make me an authority. This does not make me the wise man on the mount. This does not dismiss your problems with the game. All i am is an over 40 cheese dike with a penchant for hot sixy ass kickrers, attempting to frame this issue in perspective. I for one having seen hundreds of games that all look the same at best and atr worst have watched as folks complain themselves right out of an awesome DAO experience into some half assed DA2 the Rise to Power which translates in to DA2 the Cashing in on Brand Loyalty aka the Quest for more money. Not a single word absolves the developer of any culpability there are things that should be fixed, but it could be worse.
Asai