Fallout: New Vegas - Why It Felt Incomplete

FO3 should have been done as a prequel, the game was portrayed as if the bombs dropped just years ago.

FO2 already felt like the end of the west coast setting, by the time you have big government with blossoming cities up and running with street-lights at night it's not really fallout any more.

Post-post-apoc is no longer post-apoc.

Dhruin said:

120 hours+ for me, still going. Quite possibly my favourite modern RPG (depending on my mood) - brilliant game.

Click to expand...

two play-throughs, 80 hours a piece, never beat it, can't say enough good things about it. Definitely agree with Dhruin on this one.

I can't believe some people actually spent 100+ hours on New Vegas. That's absurdly high to me, because I breezed through the game and spent about 30 hours total on it. I did some side quests and I explored but I basically followed the main quest through to completion because it was the most interesting thing to do. I don't feel like I missed anything and I only played for 30 hours. To you 100+ hour people, what are you doing all that time? I talked to everyone I encountered, everyone, and I never got lead on any exciting or epic quest lines because of it. Occasionally it would trigger a side quest, but nothing crazy that would have me playing for 100 hours. I also explored every nook and cranny of an area before moving on. I didn't uncover the map just to uncover it though, I had to have been doing something to be there in the first place.

I don't see the point of picking a spot on the map and going there just for the sake of exploration. I'm not here to just explore the map. The game should give you some reason to go there, like a quest that sends you to the far corners of the map. Since it didn't happen like that I did end up missing out on a few locations. But again I ask, what did I really miss out on by not going to Jacobstown? Was there 70 hours of content there or something? I don't get it. To me, Fallout: New Vegas was short.

According to Steam I have 172 hours in the game. I did every quest in the game (without breaking faction), the first three DLC's and chased down the best weapon for each NPC.

Fluent said:

I can't believe some people actually spent 100+ hours on New Vegas. That's absurdly high to me, because I breezed through the game and spent about 30 hours total on it. I did some side quests and I explored but I basically followed the main quest through to completion because it was the most interesting thing to do. I don't feel like I missed anything and I only played for 30 hours. To you 100+ hour people, what are you doing all that time? I talked to everyone I encountered, everyone, and I never got lead on any exciting or epic quest lines because of it. Occasionally it would trigger a side quest, but nothing crazy that would have me playing for 100 hours. I also explored every nook and cranny of an area before moving on. I didn't uncover the map just to uncover it though, I had to have been doing something to be there in the first place.

I don't see the point of picking a spot on the map and going there just for the sake of exploration. I'm not here to just explore the map. The game should give you some reason to go there, like a quest that sends you to the far corners of the map. Since it didn't happen like that I did end up missing out on a few locations. But again I ask, what did I really miss out on by not going to Jacobstown? Was there 70 hours of content there or something? I don't get it. To me, Fallout: New Vegas was short.

Click to expand...

Well, if you mainly concentrated on the main quest, 30 hours sounds logical. The main quest consists probably only 15%-25% of the quests in the game. This is very typical in Bethesda games. In Oblivion the main quest was only around 10-20% of the overall quests available.

(Those percentages are based on my own experiences with the games, I don't know what the actual ratio is).

In New Vegas many side-quests can start with a mundane conversation, and they keep on building and building after that. Maybe you just lack the kind of curiosity that many other gamers have, thus you didn't find the quests.

As for Jacobstown, there were two quests that started elsewhere and took you to Jacobstown along the way. And there were two quests that started in Jacobstown.

KapitanUnterhosen said:

FO3 should have been done as a prequel, the game was portrayed as if the bombs dropped just years ago.

Click to expand...

That's one of my top complaints for FO3 and FO:NV. The timeline is all screwed up; you would not have much of any of the depicted debris 200 years after the bombs; ie., couch chairs, newspapers, possibly even pre-war weapons would have long since rotted away. This is not even taking into account the residual radiation that would have also dissipated to a large degree. The game environment is set up to be taking place 10-25 years after the bombs, not 200.

Fluent said:

I don't see the point of picking a spot on the map and going there just for the sake of exploration.

Click to expand...

To experience the story that the environment of the game tells, not merely the story dictated outright by NPCs.

Fluent said:

I don't see the point of picking a spot on the map and going there just for the sake of exploration. I'm not here to just explore the map. The game should give you some reason to go there, like a quest that sends you to the far corners of the map. Since it didn't happen like that I did end up missing out on a few locations. But again I ask, what did I really miss out on by not going to Jacobstown? Was there 70 hours of content there or something? I don't get it. To me, Fallout: New Vegas was short.

Click to expand...

It's not the game's fault if you don't "embrace" the concept of an open-world RPG. It would be absurd if the main quest had you traipsing around 200 locations (or whatever). Exploration is a major part of the idea. It's not a BioWare corridor RPG.

As for Jacobstown, you missed out on a companion and an interesting little story arc. Would it have been worth it for you? I'm guessing not, because if you were enjoying it enough, I guess you would have wandered for the sake of it.

By the way, I didn't go to every area in my 120 hours but it does include 2x DLCs (haven't finished OWB - still going).

I got in about 88 hours on FNV and still missed a few quests and skipped a couple of areas. I did explore although a lot of the content I was lead to via quests that would keep leading to another. Some were handed out by my companions.

Overall FNV was one of my all time favorite games - which is saying a lot since I am not big on the setting as I tend to be a fantasy buff.

Don't get me wrong, I like exploring the map in open world RPGs, but I prefer to be lead to areas via quests or people telling me about them. I prefer to always be doing some sort of quest or have some sort of reason to explore. Just exploring in and of itself feels like I'm not doing anything. I would hope that the game design sends you to all the major locations at one time or another. As someone said, Jacobstown had 2 quests leading you there at some point, I missed both of them. And even though I rarely just pick a spot on the map and explore there, I don't think I missed much other than Jacobstown in New Vegas. Strange that I still only spent 30 to 40 hours with the game as a whole. And like I said, I talked to everyone I saw. I'm very curious in these types of games and try to find all the quests I can. It just didn't happen for me for some reason?

I mean I still found some side quests, but not many that I can recall. Quests to me is where most of my own personal content lies. If I'm not finding quests then I'm not doing anything.

I also enjoyed New Vegas but like a lot of RPGs lately, it didn't leave much of a lasting impression. I guess that comes down to personal taste though. I felt it was a forgettable game. There were some cool moments though. Seeing Mr. House for the first time was kinda cool. The best was clearing out Scorpion Gulch though. That place was wicked at mid-level. I don't even know why I cleared it out really, I was looking for the plasma pistol that was missing from the Brotherhood of Steel headquarters and somehow got dragged the whole way through Scorpion Gulch. Fun stuff. Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot to write home about for me. I guess that's part of the reason why I didn't care so much about exploring the whole map, either.