First of all I would like to say that I consider Fallout 3 and New Vegas to be the same type of games as Morrowind and Oblivion and I consider all four to be so closely related that they have much more in common with each other than any of them do with Arena, Daggerfall, Fallout 1 and 2 or any other spinoffs in the two series. I realize this is a potentially inflammatory statement, but it's not really what I want to discuss here. I just feel like I had to say it as an introduction to what I do want to discuss here. Feel free to comment on it though, if you must.

Anyway, with massive 3D open world games like these there are many layers of fun to be had playing them and I think there is so much variety in what you can do and how you can play, with so much personality and story right in your face that most players don't even think about the mechanics of the game and what you are actually doing when it is all boiled down. In these games you are at all times doing one of the following (I might leave something out but you'll get my point).

- speaking with or bartering with an NPC
- managing one of your menus
- playing a mini-game
- crafting
- traveling through the open world either to a place you can't fast travel to yet or just to explore
- fighting through an open world area
- fighting through an indoor dungeon
- fighting through an underground dungeon

Any quest can involve one or any of these things and the last three can be fairly ambiguous and blend into each other (I think they should) throughout the course of a quest or exploration. My point has to do with the last one which happens to be my favorite thing to do in these games, fighting through underground dungeons. Now "dungeon" isn't an official term but it's fairly ubiquitous in terms of RPGs and it's what I use to describe my favorite parts of any RPG. As a long time player I am noticing a distinct lack of this type of play in New Vegas and I'm not hearing anyone else bring it up which I attribute to the fact that there is so much else going on in a game like this and quests can be perfectly satisfying and enjoyable without it, nobody notices.

I notice. My favorite way to play these games is to end a session of playing by getting to a door that I know leads to an awesome underground dungeon and saving my game right there, crouched and stealthy with my gear all repaired, plenty of consumable items and ammo and my best weapon in my hands. That way I know that the next time I sit down for a good gaming session I'll be all set and ready for a good adventure. More and more while I play through New Vegas I can't find places like that. I just save and stop playing after a quest is completed or a conversation is over or I've completed a mini-game or just while I'm traveling around somewhere because there is a serious lack of what should be the meat of the game, dungeons.

Before you jump all over me, I know there are some. There are some vaults, but even these for the most part lack the variety of the other games. For example I like a dungeon that starts out above ground, then you move into a building, you find an item upstairs that you need to get into the basemant, as you move through the basemant you unexpectedly find that your only way to proceed is through a hole in the wall which leads to underground caverns, then you come to a metal door leading into some secret laboratory, etc. All these different parts of the dungeon look and feel different and have different and increasingly harder enemies yet they blend together into a larger cohesive dungeon.

I'm only about 50 hours in and avoiding certain quests and areas because my first character was hit by the DLC glitch, so if I'm missing some quests that lead to cool dungeons I may not be aware of, by all means let me know. Some of my favorite dungeons from Fallout 3 were side quests like the Dunwich Building and Oasis and I'm just not finding places like that in New Vegas. I haven't done any NCR quests yet (I'm playing this character evil and went with Legion) and I looked it up and there seem to be more NCR quests than the other factions so maybe I missed some cool dungeons there.

So if I'm completely off base here tell me some quests I need to hit up, otherwise I just wanted to put this out there and see if other long time players of these games feel the same way.

I agree, there just isn't that many "dungeons" in New Vegas. I was hoping for some, but truth be told, I was getting a bit tired of Subway tunnels all the time. I would like to explore more caves. You would think out in the wasteland espically under the mountians there would be some nice small dungeons to see. I was so excited to see a certian place, it had a name BLANK Cave (no spoilers) and was very disapointed it was really not a cave, just an area.

So yeah, I wish there was more "dungeons".

And you didn't think the 100 scale miles of sewers around New Vegas wasn't a dungeon? Yeah, the mines and caverns could have been bigger IMO. But D.C. is one of those cities that is bigger underground than it is above, kind of like New York. New Vegas was based on 50's era Las Vegas, which was 1/4 the size of the Ultra tourist trap it is now, so it's no surprise it didn't have subways or miles of sewers...

Please direct me to these hundreds of miles of sewers. I've never been in a sewer in this game. Where do you get in? Or were you joking and being sarcastic? I can't tell.

-There's a manhole entrance to the Central Sewers outside of McCarran, look under you feet! They're huge and you find The Humble Cudgel lead pipe guarded by Ghoul's and a Multiplas if you look around and unlock stuff and check a corpse.

-There's a manhole to East Sewers outside the Sharecropper Farms and the East Pump Station, they're HUGE.

-There's a manhole to North Sewers by Westside. You can also get to The Thorn through them, they're HUGE.

"Look around, choose your own ground" -Pink Floyd

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/North_Sewers

Well thank you for planning my evening for me tonight. I hpe there are some quests related to these areas. I'll have to do some research.

If anyone can think of any other cool dungeon like areas, keep them coming. My point still stands though.

No main quests, just a fun time-killer. Took me 1.5 hours to kill everything, loot everything, and add to my local map data on the old Pip-Boy.

DC was an urban area, makes sense to have "dungeons" I know I wouldn't want to go digging massive, unnecessary tunnels under the desert. I think the game is great for its setting.

BTW, are there West Sewers? Some people in North Sewers and the Thorn warned that it's Fiend territory, but i haven't found a way there yet. And i was left unimpressed by the loot in Sealed Sewers

Yeah it looks like less dungeons. It would be nice for some more dungeons, so close quarter combat builds would feel more worthwhile, but I'm also no fan of how Bethesda does the generic "dungeon door" thing...

Vvardenfell is not an urban area, yet there are dungeons of varying sizes everywhere.

The lack of dungeons bums me out too, though at least the vaults are great. Shame there's so few of them.

But DC (and Vegas) is (based on) a real place...

I do miss the massive amount of dungeons in FO3, but i prefer large buildings to caves and sewers, probably because i played oblivion WAY too much.
i may have even played FO3 some more if only i didnt give it away because i thought FNV was going to be even better, but i shouldnt have thought that, because nothing gets better than FO3, except maybe Mass Effect 2, but ive yet to figure that out.

I just don't think that matters that much. The DC and Vegas in the games are based on real places but have many, many, many unreal things in them. They can use their imagination to put any kind of dungeon anywhere they want, if they wanted to. I found a coyote den the other day and got really excited! Til I saw that it was not a dungeon, it was just a black depression in the ground that could not be entered.

about to start playing for the night, just thought I'd see if anyone else knows of a good cave or sewer or bunker or den or whatever

I hate dungeons
Wide open desert>cramped, dark caverns. I am mildly claustrophobic

I for one am extremely pleased that they didn't include a large number of dungeons in the game, I'm sure they put that energy into other parts of the game where it was more needed (branching quests and so forth).

I like good (and tough!) dungeon crawlers but Fallout was just... not about that kind of experience. I think there's still too much fighting overall in the game, but it's hard to design a large openworld game and not having a lot of combat I suppose.

Today spulanked Morning Star Cavern (near Mojave Outpost), Nopah Cave (South of Vault 3), and Ant Mount (barn south of Vegas). Also there is an unmarked Radscorpion burrow southwest of the Nipton Road Pitstop, in the dry lake near the western entrance to Crescent Canyon. All very small with no worthwhile loot. Except Nopah Cave :nuke:

Dungeons are good, but i od enjot just wandering and finding enemies, i played Oblivion alot and i got tired of just walking to a new place and then going inside it adn it was a giant caave.

Im all caved out, if they were large ruined buildings, sewers, or something other than caves yes, but i still do just enjoy wandering the wastes. i still like caves but ive been to way to many

I LIKE UNDERGROUND PLACES

CAUSE IN UNDERGROUND / CLOSED-OFF AREAS I DONT LAG

I am honestly glad Fallout: New Vegas doesn't include anything like the subway system in FO3. The first few times into the subway were nice enough, but it never ended. Always the same booby trapped subways filled with the same ghouls. Got boring quickly.

What I do miss a bit though is something like the huge super mutant filled trenches in the middle of D.C. Something like that (but then of course filled with NCR and legion troopers) would have been great in the middle of the wastelands. It would have given the conflict a bit more of a feeling of urgency to it. As it is, there isn't actually a lot of space that really feels like a battlefield. Even the area in between Nelson and Forlorn Hope seems more like dead space, with very little fighting. Even with a stalemate, some trenches and some gunfire in the general direction of the enemy camp would have added some warfare feel to it.

Maybe it's true that there are more dungeons in Fallout 3 or Morrowind but with the price to visit many clones. In NV every place seems more unique now, I love also the "CSI" sidequests

I just went to Jacobstown and the climate change really reminded me of Oasis from Fallout 3, very cool (no pun intended). So I got the quest and went to Charlseton Cave where the nightstalkers live. It was awesome and just what I'm looking for, but SOOOO SMAAALLL. That always seems to be how it is in this game. At any rate, it's interesting to read all your replies and see how other people feel about this. It's something I noticed right away and hoped I just hadn't played long enough to get to the really huge dungeons, but it looks like most in New Vegas are just really small.