I really don't like to have to say this so often.

A: Obsidian put them in to help NPC Pathfinding.
B: Laziness has nothing to do with it, more likely is the unfair deadline that Bethesda forced on Obsidian.
C: There were no random encounters in FO3, all the ones in the list are in fixed locations.
D: Emoticon.

ROFL

About the lazyness thing, yeah, They never got lazy, the devs never got lazy, they cannot got lazy, they are paid for work, not for be lazy.

"Be lazy" is a lame excuse, now, the deadline that Bethesda Softwork gave to Obsidian was very short, also, they are the ones who do the QA and testing, and develop the patches, maybe they are the responsible for not, removing or AT LEAST, making it less predictable the invisible walls,

Im not defending Obsidian neither Bethesda, but the "lazy" excuse had been gone too far, rushed out maybe and sometimes yes, but lazy, never

How realistic does this sound? "I think I'll climb this mountain for recon on Primm... Oh, there seems to be a magical force keeping me away from the mountain! Oh, but wait, this isn't Oblivion!"

The problem though is that even with the walls its often easy enough to get behind the npcs because all too often there standing in place focused on one direction,

and to be honest a lot of places it almost feels like part of the development team is stuck in "rail shooter" mode, even in outdoor areas.

I hate the invisible walls to, I liked to sneak across and get to places I shouldn't.

Kind of ruined it for me since I can't really sneak past those deathclaws at a small level. Darn.
I know they wanted to control the main story of the game but I would have like some shortcuts we could jump or sneak across. Through Sloan and the quarry.

I swear to god there should be a pinned topic at the top that says "OBSIDIAN DEVELOPED NEW VEGAS!" Seriously it is really [censored] annoying now.

Since when a game must be realistic?




This.

But Bethesda does the testing, remember that

Don't want to start something here but isn't the argument against Fallout 3 there because it isn't "realistic" enough?

Its just I think Obsidian did really well with New Vegas but the invisible walls are something that I find cannot be excused away. They are really annoying and serve little purpose, initially they didn't bother me but recently I have been running into more and more of them and I have found just how much of a pain they really are.

When my sneaky and diplomatic semi-pacifist character can't sneak over a ridge and avoid a nest of cazadores because of an invisible wall, I call bull.

It seems to me that after Morrowind, Bethesda and partners forgot how much many players like to explore every nook, cranny, building and mountaintop. I really miss that, because all my characters love to trespass, climb around and generally be nosy.

(Yep, same here, love to go around and look everywhere, loads of fun in Morrowind, loads of fun in DC.) :yes:

Fixed that for you.

People seem to forget the dumb invisible walls in Fallout 3, which IMO were way worse, not to mention beth got lazy and just surrounded the whole map in invisible walls, not like NV where it uses rocks and natural barrier, a lot less lazy.

Yep. Although note Bethesda most likely had a few members helping on it too behind the reported sidelines other than double checking their material and QA. Obviously not a ton but still doesn't disclude it. But yes the invisible walls in general were probably Obsidians. Kind of to force the player not to just skip straight through. As was the concrete ending. In the future though I think invisible walls other than to mark when you've reached the playable spaces barrier will be avoided. And @ Kyle M. Not neccesarily. Seeing as they weren't as lucky in how the terrain was to be they didn't have the option to put mountains. Invisible walls were a better choice in some senses than the mountains as barriers(Note in my previous words they were talking about the invisible walls put up in multiple areas in general). I think they should of handled it as people I know say they did it in Morrowind. EDITED.

No, you didn't. You just added a tiresome cheap shot.

I've been playing RPGs and enjoying exploring the maps since the late 80's. Remember Pool of Radiance? The Ultima Series? Might & Magic? Long before Elder Scrolls.
They had maps. They could be explored. It was fun.

If you don't care for exploration in games, fine. Nothing wrong with that and nothing wrong with telling people here about it. But don't for a second fool yourself that your gaming preferences are superior to those of anyone else or that it grants you license to mock them.

So there. :biggrin:

Edited my post above. Also there's a multitude of reasons and excuses that are plausible from Howard about Oblvion and Fallouts faults. No use going back to it. Full critique should be launched at Skyrim and Fallout 4. Other than "differentiating" steps they took every other criticism on those will have usually 100% truth.

Seriously, I doubt that someone at Obsidian ran down the hall to Sawyer's office one day clutching a printout and yelling, 'I've got it! We'll put in invisible walls!'.

New Vegas was developed in what, two years? That's a pretty damned short time to complete a game. I seriously doubt that they were happy about putting up the walls but at some point in the process I imagine they realized that to finish on time they had to take a direct step. It's not a perfect solution, sure. There are some pretty mild slopes you just can't climb. But let's just give them a break. A game as great as New Vegas, developed under a strict deadline, you gotta give them a little leeway. Other aspects of the game more than compensate.

I'm sure that every single person at Obsidian would have loved to have had time to polish the game, such as using terrain features instead of the walls.

This may not help anyone else, but I just pretend that the invisible walls are the remnant's of House's missile shield.

I agree, invisible walls do not make New Vegas a bad game, not by a long shot, but its an annoying aspect that I feel has no real reason to be there. What are the reasons for the walls? All I have seen them do is to prevent people from avoiding "big bad enemies" and make it harder to wander the wastes, I really don't see how it cuts down on development time, they had to add the walls after all.

The reason they are there so the Super Mutants wouldn't invade Novac, or proven the DeathClaws annihilate the Fire Geckos west of Vegas.

They added the invisible walls due to a lack of an alternative considering the engine and dev time. That and for things like mountains they didn't want people cutting across just to avoid things. Also moving on from inisible walls I feel they found the natural mountain/wreckage bariers better than a stretch of endless desert or another blockade around the gamespace ala Fallout 3. You can't blame or praise them for it. But you -can- criticize.