I started with a melee character because I absolutely loved melee with a heavy weapon (like a sledgehammer) in FO3 because the force of the blows sent the creatures, especially humanoids flying back. While this might not be the most realistic reaction, it really felt like you were wacking them hard.

In New Vegas, however, the havok physics seem to be reallly toned down. With guns I don't mind it as much if they just collapse to the ground, but when you catch them on the chin with a super sledge or bury it in their chest, they just collapse vertically to the ground in a completely anticlimatic fashion.

This is made worse by the fact that V.A.T.S. seems set oddly for melee weapons, where when the attack goes off you almost every single time I've been in kissing range while swinging a hammer, which results in our bodies just clipping together and the other guy just collapsing with a squish (no more meaty *slap* sound like FO3 unfortunately) to straight to the ground. I've made sure that I'm a good melee distance away when I start V.A.T.S., alas, it ports me up to stand on his toes when the attack happens. Further, many times V.A.T.S. actually speeds up and there's not much slow motion in it at all.

All of these issues have sadly made melee completely uninteresting for me. Am I the only one to notice this? I realize some of it is taste and some of it might be slightly odd view parameters in V.A.T.S., so it's definitely not a bug report, just seeing if I'm the only one that noticed this change.

For me, when I use the anti mat rifle people go flying, its funny. I shot a death claw once (one shot? kill sneak crit) and he must have flew 10-15 feet.


I once shot a guy indoors in the face and his body flew back into the wall.

Not tried melee yet though.

Why did shot get blocked out?

Besides the antimatter rifle, really people seem to just fall alseep and bend at the knees and crumple to the ground when they die almost every time. I miss the old physics and Vats set ups (by and large, most VATS cams have been super close or from bad angles). This is exacerbated by some VATS sequences going in super fast quick clips rather than actual slow motion cinematics.

Dude how awesome would it be if there was an antimatter rifle?

heheh

I think I'm going to see if I can copy the VATS cam and Havok engine ini info over from Fallout 3. Maybe that will make the difference.