FO:NV Old World Blues released.
 

Hop on over to Steam if you're interested.

…in related news, FO:NV Collector's Edition is $14.95 over at Direct2Drive. And, yes, they'll work together because the base game installs through Steam regardless of where it was purchased.

No, I don't work for Obsidian! Honest!

Unavailable in Europe until tomorrow according to a twitter post. I am a bit pissed right now.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum….php?t=2005276

Jemy, I'm pretty sure u have other games on your shelf :)

[Cynism]Tell them at Steam that half Europe has a boxed release of Drakensang 2, whereas NA has it not (so far at least).[/Cynism]

Nothing I feel I could just play through in just an evening. I am pushing Fallout New Vegas at the moment and I had just started Honest Hearts when I faceplanted myself into the levelcap.

What makes me a bit pissed is that it's a digital release so there's no excuse for the delay. It is downloadable on XBox Live so my friend got it already. The DLC is also available on torrent sites.

I would think there are a lot of factors influencing when things are available locally, even for digital distribution: localization, different publishers (perhaps not in this case), marketing, how things are organized. Mostly things at least I don't have detailed knowledge about. So I really can't judge whether different release dates are excusable or not.

I'm pretty sure they don't select different dates for fun.

How many total hours were you at when you hit the level cap?

I used an XP reducer mod for FO3, and I'm debating on whether or not to use one for FO:NV.

About 130 hours according to Steam. I have at this moment done every quest, with DLC1, listed and unlisted, while still having all five endings open to me (meaning I have avoided quests that screw up my faction standing).

With all three DLC's installed you can go to level 45. That's 15 more levels than F3. If you do not plan on doing every quest in the game like I have done, you aren't likely to hit the cap. Also remember that I disabled the companion limit. My party take down everything in sight. I am fine with that, I am playing a high CHA+INT character.

Does your character receive XP for enemies killed by your companions?

Yes. That is the point. If you aren't running around with the amount of companions that I do, the game will be slower, including the xp gain since you probably won't get as much XP since you aren't going to kill as much. My companions tend to fire at everything that appears, cleaning out areas by their own.

I see, thanks. I wasn't sure if that was handled the same way as in FO3.

In FO3, you didn't get XP for a companion kill unless your character inflicted a certain percentage of damage to that enemy.

Oh. I never really bothered much about companions in F3 actually, and I hit the level 30 cap very early. The vanilla companions in F3 were poorly done. I did use a couple of companion mods eventually (I liked the ones that fleshed out NPC's) but at the end even the best of those felt like dolls running a combat A.I. No real interaction.

F:NV have a much stronger emphasis on fleshed out companions. Each companion have their own story and their own opinions about the events the game. They have their own companionquests and ways to upgrade them. Having a full party in F:NV feels a bit like playing a Bioware game. I did increase the difficulty to Very Difficult for balance and there are even harder settings through mods. I remember now that I forgot to change this when I played Dead Money (in which I did not bring any companions).

The leveling curve in FO:NV is a lot more gradual than it was in FO3. Still, I think I reached cap maybe 2/3 of the way in.

I certainly wish I had used an xp-reducer mod for NV because I have reached level 20 of 30 far too early for my liking. Oh well, gives me a reason to do a heavily-modded second-playthrough, since I usually don't add too many mods before I play a game to see what I think of it in its vanilla state.

Speaking of companions, I am traveling with Cass at the moment, and I can't ever get her to change her weapon (her armor can be changed easy enough though). Is there a way to make her equip something besides the shotgun she has when you first recruit her?

I guess it's because I have had both DLC's installed while playing the main game.

Companions equips weapons if they have higher damage (not DPS). Weapons you give are also using real ammo while weapons they have with them do not, so you must give them ammunition too (and plenty since they use it fast). Best deal is that weapons you gave them doesn't seem to decay.

I actually looked up the best weapon in the game of the type the NPC's was normally using and gave them that along with a thousand in ammo or so.

If you did work for Obsidian, not saying you do but if you did, I'd ask you to tell them that I'm not buying any of their DLCs no matter how tantalising because I want a full expansion darn it.

Unless the it fills in the huge empty spaces on the west and east sides of the map.

It does sound good though.

Did you buy Tales of the Sword Coast? As far as I concern, most of these DLC's are similar to TotSC in size and how they are done. Both of the DLC's I played for FNV have given me radically different experiences than the main game did. DLC1 is a Survival Horror game, DLC2 feels like I am truly playing a western movie among indians. Not brilliant as Hordes of the Underdark or Mask of the Betrayer, but similar to Tales of the Sword coast in terms of content.

What I like is that they bring back some of the experiences I had when just beginning to play FNV, the joy of exploration. Eventually you are almost too powerful for the main land and you just jump back and forth with the map.

Btw, OWB is bought and it's downloading atm. Time to continue Honest Hearts after breakfast.

Indeed, that would certainly help. Unfortunately, I don't think an increased level cap would slow you down from being too powerful while still being fairly early in the game the way an xp reducer mod would.

I see, thank you for the info. I was hoping for some way to have more "hands-on" control over companion's inventories and equipment, but at least there's an option.

It's too bad that companions aren't as fleshed out as a traditional party-based RPG (both in terms of story, managing their inventories, and tactics), but I suppose that would be rather difficult to pull off given the open-world setting and the fact that companions are completely optional. One can dream though :)

That's kind of how I look at it - I would much rather have a really meaty $30-$40 expansion than several scattered $10 DLC that isn't as coherent or in depth as a full expansion would be. I still might get it in a package deal someday because the NV DLC does looks intriguing, but the separate "chapter-based" DLC model just doesn't seem to add as much to the main game the way an expansion would.