Yes, that was an epic moment and I wish there were a lot more of them!



Honestly, you're not passing up much if anything as the few that are even open don't have anything in them. Most are not even accessable which is the whole point of this thread. BTW, I agree with the OP that there are not nearly enough areas to explore solely for the sake of exploring.

So instead of liking a rectangle you guys like squares, basically.

There are a lot of explanations, REPCONN is located in this region. A rocket manufacture who uses radioactive material. If you take the tourist tour in the HQ you will not notice how the handle it like any other trash. Camp Searchlight mystery is solved if you check the fire station and the hint leads you to another place, the cottonwood crater. It's really terrifying to know that this is happening for real, we just dump this stuff in a cave and trust in tiny barrels.

I like rectangles and squares. Especially when they are mixed together in interesting ways to create new shapes. I like a ton of interesting shapes of varying size and color.

Octagon?

same here. I miss the massive buildlings/compounds from Fallout 3, like Dunwich Building, Evergreen Mills, Germantown Police Station, Little Lamplight, Megaton, Nuka Cola factory, Paradise Falls, Oasis, Tenpenny Tower, etc. Not to mention all the MASSIVE downtown museums/capital bldg and Vaults. I enjoyed walking through those big buildings and exploring stuff, noticing little details. Remember how large some of those places were? Several of the larger buildings in Fallout 3 took a good 30 to explore the entire place.

There aren't that many large indoor areas to explore in New Vegas like there was in FO3. Now, obviously this is pretty accurate as there wasn't a whole lot in Vegas in the 50's compared to DC, so I guess i'll have to live with it. But I do miss exploring huge buildings with multiple floors, basemants, etc. I know there are some, but not nearly as many as FO3.

Oh well, still an awesome game either way

I completely agree, right down to the oh well, still an awesome game.

Just want Bethesda to know that we like this stuff and notice that it's missing from New Vegas.

In the original Fallout games, caves/vaults/underground complexes were all forms of dungeon crawling and abundant so I don't think it unreasonable to have a hefty amount of content devoted to it. My only complaint with FO3 and dungeons was that they literally copied and pasted the old TES/Oblivion dungeon system when they probably could have used their resources for something more engaging and interesting. Even in the original Fallout, dungeons were more creative on a much more limited budget...I remember one dungeon starts out as a radioactive sink hole that the player needs a rope to go down and into the military complex underneath...I mean come on..

Fallout 1.
Vault 15.
Radscorpion cave.
Mariposa
Cathedral
Glow

Fallout 2
Temple Of Trails
Vault 15
Smileys Caverns
Trapper Town Caverns
Redding Caverns
Tanker
Broken Hills Sewers
Broken Hills mines
Mariposa Part 2

They had some, but most of them had a point to them as well and weren't there for the sake of just being there.
For example, all of them except Mariposa Part 2 (IIRC) had a quest or two associated with them.

There are a lot of caverns and mines in New Vegas. Now, granted, they aren't all huge, nor do they necessarily hold tremendous amounts of loot, but still.

I know you mentioned it, but I guess the closest things you'll find to dungeons are probably the Vaults, several of which do have closed off sections and caves built in.

I love a dungeon as much as everyone else, but New Vegas is based in Vegas. Las Vegas is in the desert and w/ that come sand and clay. There wouldn't be a lot of dungeons just because it really wouldn't be that realistic.

Loved FO3 and played it through 3 different times and loved all three characters I had. However, there is really only a couple of outcomes. Yes, the ending narration is different depending on how you handle the last of the main quest but evil and good doesn't really matter unless you can't go into town w/out ppl shooting at you. I am still on my first play through in FNV, but from what I understand, depending on how you talk to ppl, who your companions are, what you have done for other towns, different quests can be available to you. The exploration is not nearly as vast but the character interaction is way more complex. You can get almost any quest in FO3 (provided you didn't blow up Megaton first or something) no matter what but in FNV there are way more stipulations on what quests may be available to you. I enjoy both games for what they are and try to take the great with the not so great.

But doesn't this in fact speak in favour of NV?

I agree but then again, that kind of game design has largely been lost. Although some of the original Fallout devs worked on NV, we still see random locations (not sure about dungeons) that look to be there for the sake of being there. However, I would love to see some DLC with an interesting story tied to some long forgotten underground complex, more vaults, etc... I think that's what made the original games so much fun to explore...you know, the primal and barbaric wasteland up above contrasted by the high tech military ruins underneath.

This is where i think youre wrong sir. That statement suggests that you have barely played through the first few hours of the game, you seem to build your thesis on quests encountered extremely early in the game. Try playing another twenty or so hours then maby youll rethink that statement. Take Beyond the Beef for example, that quest is pure brilliance imo and it actually encourages you to roleplay, try different approaches. It is but one of many quests that actually have you thinking.

I acctually find it alot more rewarding to complete an intricate quest based solemly on roleplaying and thinking. Compared to running like chuck norris through a large cave shooting everything that pops up, getting fancy schmansy loot etc.

What FNV lacks in caves it more than enough makes up for by offering us large amount of great quests and roleplay oppertunities that NO other game this year not even ME2 or DA:O imo has offered.

:foodndrink:

One of the things where FONV fails (for me personally) is that It doesn't give me the same "drive" to check out the locations. FO3's locations really made we wanna go there and check them out, NV is more like "i guess i'll check out this location". (I'm not saying NV doesn't have fun locations, FO3 just did a better job at it i.m.o.)

Another thing, being able to whipe megaton of the face of the earth just cause some old dude doesn't like the view from his balcony outside his luxery suite and that he's also willing to give you 500 caps and luxury suite for your efforts, was definitely one my FO3 highlights. There are only 2 things that i've ecountered in Vegas atm(*) that can be used to compare it with: Helios one and blowing up the BOS bunker... but they're still far from "a Megaton" (Quality vs Quantity i guess)


(*) there are still a few notable locations i have yet to visit, so i may be missing some things.

Realistic is a tricky word to throw around when talking about video games. Are you talking about realistic compared to real life? That doesn't apply here.

They have created a very unreal game world with some elements of the real world incorporated. It's up to the developers to decide what is realistic to their own made up version of Las Vegas and the surrounding area. If they had decided that there were 16 vaults around New Vegas instead of 6 and that the nightstalkers had mutated and could multiply rapidly, making vast networks of dens beneath the wasteland it would be perfectly realistic for this unreal version of Vegas and the surrounding areas. Or anything else they could dream up while creating more places to explore.

Leaving out a lot of underground or large indoor environments to explore doesn't add to the realism of a fake world that is based on a real place. I don't see that connection at all.

Good. FO3 had too many "dungeons" for my liking. Too many buildings and subways that were all the same and took a flippin hour (or more) to finish exploring. Don't get me wrong, a lot of it was great but after awhile the obligation I felt (I know, my problem. Was afraid of missing something) to search yet another f***ing building sometimes felt oppressive.

This.

:thumbsup:

I think FO3 probably wins for its "exploration" aspect. Unfortunately many of the locations in FO3 don't really make sense when you try to piece them together in the game world. Take Megaton for example. There's a town built around an unexploded nuclear bomb with a clean, unopened vault less than 15 minutes away, yet nobody is paying any attention to it. The Enclave doesn't come to overrun it. The BOS doesn't try to claim it. Either group could easily overtake Megaton's "defenses" and have an atomic warhead. Shouldn't they go crazy for that?

I think NV wins for its cohesion. I get a sense that every location, even the dungeons, had some thought put into them. I wish I could have both "high exploration" value and "high cohesion" value (with low glitch value) but that is asking a lot.

FO3 had a lot of dungeons for certain.

I think it almost had TOO many.

It broke the usual "beat dungeon, get reward" system common to all RPGs by having very little, if any, "end room" loot in most of them, we were so conditioned to assume we'd never find anything good that then we ended up missing out on loot because there was something in that one dungeon. They also scattered loot all over in them, rare items laying on the floor with no attention drawn to them, ick.

In general the design of "dungeons" in the new fallout series could use some work. Yeah, they're awesome and feel real and look like actual ruins, but the actual game design is pretty poor.

Cearly some people here enjoy discovering an empty one roomed 4 by 4 shack with 2 ammo boxes in it.

No.

Its just that we enjoy doing intresting quests and consent the oppertunity to rolesplay a roleplayingame. Rather than doing dungeoncrawls.

I dunno, maybe those people do not make it such a big of a deal; and maybe they consider it a better solution than a multitude of huge non-quest related corridor mazes with 4 ammo boxes and a terminal at the "end room".