I have choice and consequence. No one is unkillable, unlike Skyrim where every 3rd person is "essential" and another 5th are children. I'm able to get various endings through various in-game choices. Skyrim was so linear.

"New Vegas is a hallway that leads to delicious cake being served to you by lusty women with D-cups of Justice.

Skyrim is a large room filled with horse manure that lets me jump in any pile of manure I please.

Therefore Skyrim is better."

That is crying out to be someone's signature!

Too late XD

*fixed.

Anyway, to add to the thread, an RPG should give me choices whenever I encounter a problem, preferably those choices should be tailored for the possible skills/stats/gear/moral of the character I'm playing. If a game cannot provide these things it makes it a bad RPG, if it barely has any of it then it's not an RPG. If I get a quest I should be able to choose the outcome for it within reasonable context, meaning that for that daedric god that has a rusty mace or something in a basemant in Markarth should have an option to screw him over. But the only choice you get in that quest is to help him. Either you help him or you abandon the quest. You can't trick the daedric god and you can't help the other guy to shatter his influence over that area. I've seen several quests where there are no choices for how to complete them, and the ones that do have choices are largely meaningless.

If I get a quest to help kill a vampire that has been raising the dead of a local cemetery of a town then I should get the option to listen to the vampire and hear him out. I should get the option to side with the vampire, I should get the option to kill all the undead, destroy his research and plans and tell him to get the [censored] out of the town, I should get to charge the town an absurd amount of money for dealing with this problem they have and if they reject my offer then I will help the vampire out until they give me what I want out of fear at which point I will backstab the vampire.

Not every quest has to have a dozen solutions to them but they should at least have 'some' kind of solution. Remember going into the first draughr dungeon by Riverwood to get the Dragon Plate? And you cut down that dude from the spider-web? Yeah you can't side with him. You can't talk him out of going further. You can't beat him near death and then tell him to give up the artifact or you'll kill him. You can't give that Dragon Plate to a different NPC that works for a different agenda. You can't show the shop-keeper his dragon claw thing-a-ma-jig and then tell him you want a lot of money, or hell, tell him you'll give it back if his daughter gives you some sweet lovin'.

FNV is by no means the holy grail of RPG's and it too has quests where you feel like you want to do something else but you can't but at least you get several choices in that game for what you want to do. You going to assassinate the president? Well you could C4 the platform, sabotage the artillery, sniper him from above, go all guns out, or just let him leave and fail the mission but still continue on with the main quest. You want to find Keely in an abandoned vault? Well you could kill Keely, you could lie to Keely, you could side with Keely, you could charge the OSI scientist more money for your troubles, you could give the research data to the OSI scientist for a fair price. You want to help clear out a gang from a town? Well you could go in silently and take them out or use traps to kill them, could go guns blazing to wipe them out but what's this? The town needs a new sheriff! Well then there are 3 options to go by, whatever suits you, but hey since you now have the info you wanted by clearing out the PG's you could just move on and leave the town.

At least in FNV the quests try to give as many choices as it can even if sometimes you want to do something the developers hadn't thought of. Difference is that in Skyrim there are clear differences in quests that show that there is the possibility for branching paths, but despite this being thrown in the developers faces they choose not to expand upon it. There is a quest up in Winterhold where the Jarl has a "mage" as his uh... Advisor... And this "mage" isn't a mage, the Jarl just thinks he is because he's a dunmer, so the dunmer wants you to knick a magic staff from the Inn so that he can further deceive the Jarl into thinking he is a proper mage. And guess what? No choice. Not a single choice. You can't kill him cause he's essential. You can't buy the staff or tell the Jarl or Inn keeper about this. The only choice you get is to knick the staff and give it to him.

There are clearly other choices there that could have been implemented to suit roleplaying but the developers chose not to do it.

That is why Skyrim is not an RPG, because of the vast amount of times where there could have been branching paths or options of how to solve things but the developers chose to not implement them. Skyrim is an adventure game that holds the carved off face of it's predecessors as a mask that it is an RPG, but take a peek behind the rotting mask and you'll see it for what it is. An adventure game. Being set in a high fantasy setting does not make it an RPG, choosing between mage, warrior and rouge does not make it an RPG and being able to explore the world as you please does not make it an RPG. The core of role-playing games is the ability to role-play, and when that ability is diminished to the point where all you can do is choose to do or not do quests and what race and class you want.

Finally, I refuse to acknowledge make-believe as a proper role-playing tool, it should only be used to add flavor to the game, not used as an excuse for the game's shortcomings. Some people say that they pretend their characters do things according to their morals and ethics and that they ignore what the game tells them, but that doesn't mean Skyrim is a good RPG, it means that they have good imagination. If you can carve an ice sculpture with a pen then that's very impressive but it doesn't change the fact that it's not a proper ice sculpturing tool. Skyrim may be a great tool for self-imposed restriction and play-pretend imagination to run wild but that means that any game can be suited for this. You could 'ignore' what characters sometimes say in Saints Row 2 and imagine that the protagonist is doing things the way you want them to. You can pretend your character is bad at using a shotgun and can't drive a truck worth [censored]. You can pretend that your character is working for The Saints because they hold an anarchistic ideology of the world and want to see crumble and rebuild into something new and the only way for you to do it is to crush the leadership and authority of the current world.

You can pretend your way through quite a lot of games and imagine that things are running differently in your head.

But when we come down to it, they aren't, and you're just making it all up.

An RPG should be able to stand on it's own without the need of player outside-the-box-imagination.

Skyrim is the kind of game that relies solely on it to work as an "RPG".

But enough of my ranting.

Gabe are you a confirmed bachelor? Got nothing against confirmed bachelors, but I may have difficulties holding back a joke about why you're a Legion supporter.

Hmm, a riddle: I'm a confirmed bachelor, a lady killer, a black widow and even cherchez le femme.

What am I?

Very confused.

Or you used console commands.

Nope, I know what I am.

Offtopic. (please don't derail the discussion, I just want to explain my view on this, not debate it, if someone wants to explain their view on it to me feel free to PM me instead)

Sorry for the offtopic post. Just wanted to clarify my views on it.

I completely disagree and here's why. Yes you can go north, South or East but there's no point in going north or east legitimately because Obsidian put those enemies there as gateway blocks to kinda force you to go south and if you are able to go north or east and are able to make it past the Cazadors, Deathclaws or Radscorpions which isn't hard to do at least for the Cazadors then you'll completely wreck the balance of the game when you start getting higher powered weapons before you normally should. In theory an open world game is well an open world with some risks included.. New Vegas doesn't have that option at least for the 1st 12 levels which makes the beginning extremely linear unlike Skyrim or Fallout 3.

To me it's not a great design decision because it makes the beginning of the game extremely linear with some choices that are different but it's still the same everytime. Skyrim at least for the 1st half hour is also in that same boat but once you leave Helgen then you have the freedom to go north, south, east or west. I can go east to Riverwood and start the main quest or head Southwest to Falkreath or East to Riften to start Dawnguard, etc. You don't have that option with New Vegas, you either go south, sneak north/sneak east, that's it. Even Fallout 3 has more options at the beginning past the 1st half hour, you can go north, west, south or east and unlike Skyrim, Fallout 3 doesn't allow you to do it as easily but you still can do it. All you have to watch out for is Yao Guais and other higher level enemies.

It's the only thing that I don't like about New Vegas, the 1st two hours will almost always be the same, you go do this, help Sunny, save or destroy Goodsprings, head to Primm, etc. That's linear, with Skyrim all I have to worry about it Helgen, then afterwards I can go wherever I want within reason, same with Fallout 3 although not as easily due to enemies like Yao Guais. New Vegas does get better once you get 10 hours in and are past Novac but until then the Open world is very linear, with few options in terms of directions to go.

I don't know. I can't relate to anything you just wrote. It all goes completely contrary to my experience.

And on a sidenote, if you (and not singling you personally out, but all the "challenging early monsters means linear" people) think New Vegas' approach to worldbuilding is linear, I can only imagine what kind of trouble Risen and Gothic games (1-3) would provide to you (and I find exploration in those games infinitely more interesting and rewarding than anything Bethesda has churned out in the past 10 or so years).

It's really hard to put up a good argument about how linear New Vegas is because there isn't one.

...You're joking, right? If you go north, and either sneak/luckily kicked [censored], you will either find a unique spot (Chance's Grave and the Tribal Camp), with a Unique Weapon (Chance's Knife), along with a huge amount of EXP if you manage to survive. Going further up north leads to a farm with nothing more than Mantises and Bullhorns grazing by it, which is a lovely sign of the Great Khans in Red Rock Canyon. Not worth it? BULLCRAP. East leads a quick shortcut to Sloan, NCRCF, and some of the Powder Gangers spots, these places are filled with weapons for early gamers, and loot. If you play your cards right, you just notched up to level. 5 Without even finishing Goodsprings quests. Further down is mountains, leading to some passages (The only one I suggest not going in is Prmm's Pass but that's somewhere else), Which can lead you to many areas, one leading to Camp Searchlight in the south region, the others cutting a swath right to the I-95, Along with the racing track where it's filled with giant ants. After that, you can proceed up north, ta-da, you didn't even touch Goodsprings, Primm, or Nipton, and already you're cutting corners. All of the areas I listed have tons of loot, EXP, and crafting items to cook up nice meals/poisons/apparel. Tally-Ho!

While in Skyim, the idea of 'the entire world open' is also bullcrap, Forsworn regions are strictly offlimits till you're a high enough player, considering their weapons can kill you quickly surprisingly. Giants are "HELL NO" areas as well, and those lightly populate the place. Some forest regions you'll be in deep crap because of the damn forest spragets or w/e showing up, controlling the enemies and shooting out spells at you, or if you're unlucky enough to find a Wispmother who drains you of your health with her Wisps because you're too low level. Overall, you COULD travel anywhere in Skyrim...but its best not till you're high level, and even than, getting there is boring as hell, as the spots you do go have very bland loot (What? some gold and a common crafting item? Give me a break). The only rare and unique weapons out there can be acquired through basic Quests (Usually Daedric). So there you go.

They even had some early player information given by the guys in Vault 19 in case you braved the north.

I would actually agree that NV is more linear than Skyrim in the beginning, partly because of the smaller map and partly because of the difference in enemy scaling, but I would disagree that restriction of movement (within reason) makes something a lesser RPG. A character is shaped by their interaction with both the environment and other people, and Skyrim's social interaction is genuinely abysmal. NV has less early paths to take, but the paths that you can take are strong and highly interactable.

I don't remember if this was posted earlier, but everyone should give this a good watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0

It's very boring in the beginning, but it speeds up and makes a great point eventually.

Your very proposal is wrong. It is not correct to say that New Vegas is linear in any fashion. You CHOOSE to go in a certain direction. I can choose to go north and sneak past enemies. Heck, you don't even have to sneak if you know where to go. (Black mountain)

Fallout 3 has zero chances to stray from a straight path in it's main quest. This is the same in most of it's side quests. New Vegas has more than 3 times the amount of quests and just about all of them have different choices, consequences or endings. The main quest alone can be completed on 4 different sides and has ending slides that are almost different for every player's playtroughs.

Now which is linear?

Kind of contradicting yourself there.

Why would you call a stretch of game where you can choose to save or condemn goodsprings, join in on a gang's destructive plans or wipe them out and choose between 3 different sheriffs for Primm, linear?

skyrim is a good time but not the best rpg. it falls short of producing a epic win. fonv has always giving me so many ways to build my game and has a great epic win in its cq and dlc's.

Just gotta tell you - VERY well said - I agree with everything. In fact I think I've decided to stop dilly-dallying in Skyrim and get it out of the way. I can't believe how few good RPG's there are out. Even when you look at a list of the "best RPG's" games that give you no choice whatsoever are listed time and time again. It's like RPG's don't really even exist.