Why do you act like the east coast is within easy reach of the west coast? Caps were abandoned because there was a stable government [THE NCR] to provide new currency. Fallout 3 explains the presence of Super Mutants and the Enclave and I remember having tens of thousands of caps in Fallout 1 so really your entire argument is based on things that aren't true.

Your completely ignoring that he east coast as the seat of power for the government would be hit harder, in addition it was hit first. As I recall from the earlier games it was mentioned those on the west coast had some warning. The only reason the NCR exists is because the Vault Dweller pacified the area which allowed them to become a stable government and not swallowed by raiders. The west coast didn't have any such savior.

Then why is there so many pretty much intact buildings in DC? the LA boneyard was practically leveled to the ground IIRC. I'm pretty sure if the capital building was nuked it would suffer more damage then a caved in dome and some holes in the walls....

This.

I also wondered, what in the heck are people living in some of the towns? Canterbury Commons is labeled as a hub for caravans, but only a few people live there!

Humans don't live like that for very long, they build, expand, and thrive.

Maybe the folks alive in the DC area are the descendants of the government employees? That would explain why they plead with total strangers to do things for them and why the DC wasteland is still a hellhole of stagnant civilization and death.

The other explanation is that it was just a video game. I like my first explanation better though.

:laugh: I agree, your first explanation is great and it makes FO3 significantly more believable. :laugh:

What, never? Not even through your own foolishness, mishaps with exploding cars or badly-aimed min-nukes, drunkenly trying to shoot up Megaton at level 2 or jumping off Tenpenny Tower for the fun of it?

You haven't lived!

:rofl: :rofl:

Oh no.. You're right. One time I blew up the Highway of Death while I was standing on it just to see what would happen.

A better explanation I suppose would be that I was never killed by enemy action.

If a 100kt warhead detonated about a 1000 feet above the Mall....that whole part of DC would have been razed to the ground and Underworld's inhabitants would have been incinerated rather than turned into ghouls. But of course, trying to guess which blasted foundation or sub-basemant dungeon was which building or monument wouldn't make a very fun game so they took liberties. My theory is that the Chinese sent in the Mama Dolce's commandos to hit high-priority targets like the White House, then plastered the city with Dirty bombs to finish the job. The people that didn't die outright in the exchange or in the chaos immediately afterward, either fled, died of radiation sickness, or became ghouls...feral or not. You find signs all over the place that surviving Civil Defense assets were deployed, but they only seemed to last a few weeks at most, from the Germantown terminal. And quite a few ferals are wearing the remnants of Army issue combat armor. Most of the Capital Wasteland...outside of Lamplight, Megaton, and what is now called the Republic of Dave....only became habitable again about 50 odd years ago, with large scale settlement only starting around 40 years ago when Rivet City was founded.

That's a very well formulated response and certainly makes sense, however there are multiple accounts (both firsthand and recorded) that say that Washington DC was hit by a full scale nuclear attack.

Too bad the developers didn't set up something like you described, because that would've made more sense than "The place was nuked but almost all the buildings are still standing."

Yep exactly.

Get the Alien Blaster. Wait until it gets close. Shoot it in the head.

If only that's what Bethesda did right? I was always puzzled that most of the buildings were left standing. Must've been some really weak nukes... I mean, there are standard wooden houses still largely intact...

I don't really get how FNV is less post-apocalyptic. I think it's just more realistic about the kind of world you'd expect after the war - like people are attempting agriculture which they'd surely be doing after all these years and living in tribal groups that ally, conflict or exist in tension with one another. It's not like the war happened yesterday. How does Rivet City feed itself? Who knows. The never ending supply of irradiated 200 year old supermarket food I suppose.

I don't get how it's easier too. Creatures like deathclaws were much easier to kill face to face without any sniping in F3. By level 15 I was a walking god. In F3, after I'd bought my first infirmary, that was an instant, free cure from radiation. My first laboratory gave an instant, free cure for addiction. After that, I had nothing much to spend my money on. In F3 I found it easy to accumulate 4000+ rounds of 5.56 ammo well before level 15 with minimal purchases (and wreaked havoc with my Xualong (sp?) assault rifle) - I've never managed this in FNV (I guess the wider variety of ammo types means you scav less of any particular ammo type). I actually want to have money in FNV because there's things to buy. Implants, sixy weapons, weapon mods, special ammo.
People complain FNV is linear - you just have to think more about bypassing the areas dangerous for a low level character. I think this is good game design - the devs nudge the new player towards a route that introduces the NCR and legion in a kind of planned way, but there's ways round it if you look so you still have the freedom. And the smaller degree of scaling means not everything is automatically matched to your level and you can't just march around knowing virtually everywhere (Old Olney being the only exception I can think of) you won't face anything not automatically scaled to your level.

Visually it doesn't look as post-apocalyptic, it actually looks like a nice enviornment to wander about in. It shows various communities progressing and rebuilding after the event but has reminders of what happened scattered about, this still gives it a post apocalyptic feel but less obvious and appears less severe.

I think it's a kinda catch 22 situation with the linear and easy thing. In Vegas from the start if you follow the road and main quest this way the game feels very linear and easy. As soon as you stray from the path it switches, yes you have freedom but the difficulty goes up. BUT once you get to a certain level in New Vegas the obstacles or nasty criters that made the game harder when straying from the path earlier suddenly become easy to deal with. At this stage the game gets very easy regardless of where you go.

I also think Vegas needs more to spend caps on! I have bought all implants, one of each weopon at least, buy vendors out of amo (for guns I use) & parts for crafting and I still have over 100,000 caps. I think this is becasue it's easier to get caps in Vegas compared to FO3 and caps also seem to acumulate quicker in Vegas.

I've noticed the FO3 forums used to get a lot of requests from people asking for help or tips on how to beat overlords or other big nasty creatures. There were ways to combat most of the DLC baddies whther its shooting guns out of hand or finding a big rock to stand on etc, but people felt the need to sign up and post a question in order to get past that stage of the game. Perhaps this will happen when DLC comes out for Vegas as well? I doubt it will though unless the DLC can be started from the start of the game and assuming enemies in Vegas DLC will be leveled?

Perhaps it's more sensible and fair for us to wait for the Vegas DLC and see what the game is like as a complete package before making any final judements.... not sure I'm that discipined though :unsure2: call it a character trait if you like!.... hmm new thread idea, post your own real life character traits!

Yeah I kinda felt like cheating using the AR Rifle and armor/incendiary piercing rounds. 100 guns skill, sneak critical (don't even matter if it's headshot or not), the perk that increase critical dam %, one shot kills. I one shotted the Mother Deathclaw in the Deadwind cavern but the Legendary Deathclaw took the initial critical hit and lived, then it proceeded to one-shot my ass. To be honest ALL Deathclaws should be like that, it'd make it much more challenging.

What are you talking about, exactly? The NCR, Caesar and Yes Man all have you kill House, yes. The motivations behind asking you to do so differ greatly, however. And there's other aspects that differ as well. The NCR doesn't have you interact with the robot army at all. Caesar has you blow it up. Yes Man lets you either blow it up or reactivate it for your own good. Doesn't exactly scream "single path!" to me. Granted NV isn't Alpha Protocol or anything, but it's a hell of a lot less linear than FO3 was, which basically went "Find your father -> kill Enclave troops -> get GECK -> escape Enclave -> Liberty Prime," with pretty much no divergence possible.

Compare the Enclave to the Legion. The Enclave is automatically hostile to you, and will remain so for the entire game. The Legion is initially neutral to you. You can actually support the Legion if you so choose, and help them win the game, massively changing the ending. It'd be like being able to side with the Enclave and getting a bunch of Enclave quests and a special Enclave ending that actually makes sense.

Individual quests in NV are "linear" in that they have set objectives you must meet, but those objectives can be done in several ways in NV. Take the "Kill the Brotherhood" quest for the NCR. You have to blow up the bunker, but you can do that by hacking, stealing the keycards, or just massacring everyone. Or, you can say "screw all that, we're going to negotiate!" and have the NCR and Brotherhood work together, assuming you didn't put an anti-NCR zealot on the throne.

Compare Fallout 3. "Follow Liberty Prime as he exterminates everyone in his path."

Furthermore, as a whole, NV's main quest isn't particularly linear, in that it gives you four separate questlines you can choose. If you have to call it something, call it branching.

Though I think FNV is by far the better game I do MUCH prefer the DC ruins as a setting than either the Mojave Wasteland or the Strip. Now that I've pretty much played FNV out I'm tempted to do FO3 again, but I know I'd miss all the stuff that made FNV so great.