Retronauts - 534: Fallout: New Vegas

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

With 2008's Fallout 3 bringing the fabled RPG series to a new generation of players who couldn't—or didn't want to—play the first two games, Bethesda had an audience poised and ready for more post-apocalyptic RPG fun. With Skyrim currently in the works, the developer turned to Obsidian Entertainment to transform an abandoned Fallout project into a fitting sequel in just 18 months. And what could have felt like a cheap cash-in ended up being the series' finest moment to date.  On this week's episode, join Bob Mackey, Gary Butterfield, and Kole Ross as the crew drinks plenty of refreshing Sunset Sarsaparilla and talks about the sprawling, somewhat messy masterpiece known as Fallout: New Vegas. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

This week on Retronauts, an exclusive interview with Johnny Guitar. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie, And this week's topic is Fallout New Vegas. Yes, we're looking at Fallout New Vegas. Obsidians follow up to Fallout 3 that many fans of the series view as its finest moment. So to be honest here, we have not really covered the Fallout series since 2008. And many a thing has happened, including Fallout New Vegas.

So I'm happy to return to Fallout after 15 years to talk about one of my favorite games of all time. Who is joining me here on the program today? Over here in Portland, we got Gary Butterfield. And I'm Mr. New Vegas. I like it so much. And who was our Ohio correspondence? Over here in nowhere worth mentioning Ohio is Cole Ross. I'm sorry, Cole, did I docks you?

No, that's fine. I would have said Ohio anyway because Gary said Portland. But even though I am far away from the Mojave Desert, I am still a dedicated deputy of prim slim. Now, you two, of course, we're good pals, and we've been on a lot of podcasts together. We are just at Midwest Gaming Classic, but I'm also having you on because you are my Fallout ringers.

You know a lot more about Fallout than me. I think I'm a pretty big Fallout fan, but you guys have played the originals. You've made, I will dare say, probably 100 hours worth of podcast material about the Fallout series. Multi-part episodes about Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, and I think you've done the first two games as well.

We have. We've done everything except for Brotherhood of Steel and the other Brotherhood of Steel Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel and the PlayStation 2-1, sponsored by Balls. Energy, the horrible, horrible Diablo-like.

And you have done a New Vegas series? We did back in 2016. Wow, wow, I can't believe. Okay, so you have thoroughly covered Fallout. I will give my own experience with the series after you folks talk. But let's start with Gary. Gary, where do you start with Fallout?

What is your Fallout experience? Fallout is one of my pillars of my gamer identity of this. It's one of my all-time favorites, obsessive fan since the beginning. I had a really magical summer where I lost, it doesn't sound magical at first, I lost an apartment. And I had to move back into my mom.

That part wasn't magic. The part that was magic was being really under-employed and having tons of time. And that is when I discovered a bunch of turn-of-the-century kind of golden era CRPGs. So it's when I played Fallout and Balders Gate, Icewindale, Arcaneum, all these games. And just absolutely got obsessed with Fallout. I bought a double pack that used to have these jewel case double packs of Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 together.

Played them obsessively. When the third one came out, I played it obsessively. I've gotten them all at launch, including the Lamentable Fallout 76. So I am Played them all basically to death Except for the lamentable fallout 76 You know Gary I had two Non-Consecutive years of unemployment

During the economic downturn or whatever we call it these days And a lot of bad dark memories But boy did I play a lot of games They were the only times So that I could actually finish a persona game Is when I was unemployed It's when you had the time to do that I have very distinct memories

Of waking up early to play Fallout 2 Like it was my job That was me in Persona 4. I would clock in at the Persona 4 factory. Yeah, exactly. After making my coffee. It's an incredible, incredible period of my life where I'm going to like go live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland rather than my mom's spare room for a little bit. And Cole, what is your experience with Fallout?

My experience is going to be, I think, very similar to a lot of folks who are listening insofar as I didn't play a Fallout game until Fallout 3 came out. I'm a little bit younger than Gary and I didn't get into PC gaming until after about the year 2000 or so finally got a PC that was good enough to run games worth playing things like the half-life complete collection stuff like that I just missed out

on that kind of late 90s boom of CRPG kind of games and only knew about you know fallout because of its reputation from lots of you know magazine and online, you know, online magazine write-ups about the series and kind of the mark that it made. And so I saw Fallout 3, you know, coming out to a system that I owned as a chance to finally kind of dive in. And I was smitten immediately. And imagine that based on playing

one of the weaker games in the series, Fallout 3. But when New Vegas came out, and especially around the time of starting our own retro game show, it was a retro game, games at the time, you know, being able to dig into the modern releases on Gog and stuff like that. So kind of approached the series a little bit backwards, but I hopped in, I think, at a really popular point to hop in. Yeah, I did too. I mean, I've been PC gaming since I think like 1996 is when our family got a PC. So I'm playing a lot of games on the computer. But I had a very prescriptive idea of what an RPG should be. And that was basically like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. I really love Japanese RPGs

and when I would see something like Fallout I wouldn't even know what to think of it I would just think this is not for me I don't like this perspective it's kind of like an ugly green and gray world and I really wish I would have played it when it was new

but it wasn't until I started getting sick of Japanese RPGs that I finally turned to Fallout 3 when it was fairly new and I got really into it and it made me realize like oh I like other kinds of RPGs too and then of course

I was there for Fallout New Vegas. It was during another, like, bad time in my life where I had employment, but I had just moved out to California. I was moving out west, the perfect time to play Fallout New Vegas. I was living in some guy's apartment, just sleeping on a piece of foam on the floor, but I did bring my gaming PC. I had my priorities.

And my living space was one of those. I can't believe men live like this pictures you'd see on Twitter. Just a chair in front of a TV. Yeah, like a TV on a milk crate with Bloodborn playing on it. That's basically the life I was living. But I played a ton of Fallout New Vegas in that, like, situation, and I just fell in love with it. And, you know, I followed the series since then. I kind of fell off of Fallout 4.

I don't like it as much as this one. And then actually, what got me back into New Vegas is I had some flight delays during the holidays. I was basically stuck at home for a week alone before I could fly out to see my wife. And I thought, like, how do I want to kill time? And I saw that Fallout 76 was on sale. for 999, which is the perfect price for fall at 76. Oh, yeah. So I did enjoy what I played at that game about 10 hours,

but I thought, like, I'm an idiot. I should just play Fall Out New Vegas again. And that's what I did for the next three months, mostly on my Steam deck. And there are so many games I need to play, but instead I was thinking 120 hours into a game I had already played before. And I don't like to turn everything into homework for Retronauts, but I figured if I wasted this much time,

wasted in quotes, on a game I played before, I should at least make it into an episode. because all of the research has been done and we severely need to talk about fallout it's a big series for like i remember that that uh that episode from 2008 the fallout episode and it was like a weird experimental time for retronauts i feel like it was when you were trying to do individual games as opposed to doing more series retrospectives i feel like there was like a remit uh that was in that era as yeah i was i was a listener i was not part of the show but i do recall that for sure it's a i love this this through line of fallout being there for people when they're in rough spots. Like, you can't see your wife living on a floor, move back in with your mom. Fallouts there for you. You can, you get some quest on your quest log and go free some slaves and, and go through and shoot a six with a six with a big iron on your hip.

Fallouts got you. It does, it does put things in perspective, you know, things are bad right now, but the food I'm eating won't irradiate me. And, you know, the piece of IKEA foam I'm sleeping on, it seems like pretty plush compared to what I'm seeing in the living situations of the fallout world. I did, I did leave that part out of it. My strongest association with Fallout 3 is playing it in the college house that I rented with like four other people and listening to podcasts about the financial collapse at the time. Like I was pretty ahead of that actually, like a super nerd listening to that stuff like in the winter of 2008.

And then playing fallout, New Vegas in the summer after I graduated college in 2010. one of the, uh, let's say, black, black banner years to graduate college. So, uh, that summer was very much a, uh, uh, was, was, uh, was very much a fallout New Vegas time for me. Yeah, that's, that's about the time I was unemployed Cole, getting out of grad school in 2009 and, uh, you know, getting a job at the, the persona four factory. Oops. The next week. Um, so yes, we're all way into fallout. And I will say up front that there's

no way in hell we're going to be able to cover everything about fall on new Vegas because it's it's such a such a big game there's so much dLC uh so i i'm going to ask all of you listening out there do not be surprised if we don't mention something because you're going to be surprised a lot if that's your criteria for a podcast how lucky can one guy be i kissed her and she kissed me like the fella once said So ain't that a kick in the head The room was completely black I hugged her and she hugged back

Like the sailor said, quote Ain't that a hole in a bowl So I want to go over the development of this game And to set the stage for Fallout New Vegas in 2010. So go back to the year 2008 And basically there's a whole new generation Finding out about Fallout who either couldn't or didn't play the original games

because now Fallout is the AAA experience. It's a first-person open-world game. It's similar to, you know, Oblivion. People have played that before. It's just a big spectacle, which the original Fallout games, they were very attractive for what they were, but that was not the direction presentation was heading

for video games at the time. Can I add some context to that? Oh, yes, please, Gary. As a fan at the time. So, you know, playing Fallout, one and two, there is a planned Fallout 3 that's very famous called Van Buren, the code name for it, that Interplay, you know, was going to make, the original devs of Fallout were going to make. And this was in development hell.

Eventually this came out, you can play it, you can play a version of it that's been patched and everything. This was a really big deal. And then it became vaporware. So when Fallout 3 came out, when Bethesda bought it, the fan community, very famously, did not take that very graciously. there's a lot of grumbling. It's a very different game. Like, not just presentation-wise, but in terms of tone. And just in terms of there were a lot of plot things we knew were going to happen in Van Buren that didn't happen.

So Fallout 3 was a moment where, like, I really enjoyed it because I just wanted more Fallout and I hadn't played any Bethesda RPGs at that time. So it was my first. But the fandom was really upset. When New Vegas came along at this point, after Fallout 3, it's all this Van Buren stuff. It's the 3D version. of the original fallout three and a lot of ways plays like like a real fallout three uh would or should it's connected to the previous games uh it has the same kind of philosophy and ethos to it

and everything so uh and from a fan like somebody really deep inside the fandom at the time it was an even huger deal you know it was it was this uh this like faint of like oh follow three this is and then like bam we can actually do it 3d and do it the old way yeah that's important context, Gary, because I remember speaking of listening to a podcast 15 years ago, listening to Computer Gaming World or Gamester Windows podcast, the one with Jeff

Green and Sean Ellie and all your friends. There you go. I don't know why I couldn't think of the name, but I remember enjoying the hell out of Fallout 3 and then hearing them talk about how oh, the no mutants allowed people, which I guess was or is the Fallout fan base, they were just violently against anything new, especially

because they wanted Van Buren. And New Vegas does feel like the have branched to that community in which they kind of hire the Vambieran people to make a spinoff if you want to call this game a spinoff. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's in canon. Like, they reference each other

and such. And it's almost like Fallout 3 is the spinoff. You know, this has lineage with one and two much more than three does. Fallout 3 has so much more in common with just kind of a standard Bethesda kind of game in terms of structure in terms of kind of scope

of what you're trying to do. more than anything you're basically saving the world a little bit as much as you can in a game in this setting whereas Fallout 1 and 2 had stakes but were not at all structured like that yeah I was reading differences between the games because it's been a while since I played 3 and there was a Reddit post about the differences in which

somebody was saying like in Fallout 3 you walk into a gas station and there's a multi-level dungeon waiting for you with treasure and monsters. When you do that in Fallout New Vegas, it's just the gas station. There's a bathroom. That's it. I feel like they're leaning more towards realism,

in a sense, in this game, in a way that's not uninteresting. I feel like Fallout 3 was definitely more gamey and trying to play to the features people wanted in 2008. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely that in terms of structure. And then in terms of, like, character and writing, you know, character motivations.

Like, this is stuff we'll get into. later, but one of the big comparison points I'll make, because in the fandom, you know, there is a Fallout 3 versus New Vegas war, you know, because of course there is. And for me, I always think of like the companions you get, the people you meet. You know, I defy anyone to remember the name of three people. You, you know, three MPCs in Fallout 3, whereas the ones in New Vegas are very memorable well written. They brought in, you know, actors from outside of games, not just the Bethesda House voice actors. They have a lot of personality. and a lot of detail to what you can do with them.

I think that kind of follows that through line of verisimilitude. Like, everything feels more real. The people, the places, the landscape that you're in, there aren't these abstracted subways that are like this incredible weird ant-hilled dungeon that's under Washington. You know, it's much more grounded in an overall sense. So, yeah, Fallout 3 is a big hit. Of course they want to make another one, but making these huge, huge games takes a lot.

of time, even if you have a very creaky engine you can reuse. So Bethesda, they are hard at work on Skyrim, so they really can't do much with Fallout right now. So they get the developers at Obsidian to craft their own Fallout sequel. But the caveat is they have to do it in 18 months. So a few months ago, I did a Majors Mask episode, and I can see some real parallels between the development of this game of Majors Mask in terms of having to turn around a sequel quickly and reusing a lot of assets, although both games end up making way more assets than I think the developers assume that they would have to. They're both also more interesting than the baseline series was at the time.

Yes. I'm a real mid-enjoyer of most 3D Zelda's, and I think Majora's mask has a tone that Zelda just kind of doesn't do anymore. You know, it was neat. It was really refreshing at the time. This is like that in Micro. Yeah. It's like because they have this motivation.

they really, really don't want to be accused of just being a mission pack sequel, you know, getting hit with something like, say, like, I don't know, Bioshock 2 got hit with, uh, undeservantly, right? They focus on developing a tone or focus on differentiating it in a way that makes it like way more interesting than something that has the luxury of just taking a straight shot. Yeah, I called it a spinoff, and I feel like that is not giving it enough credit. It really is its own thing. It feels like more of its own thing even compared to Grand Theft Auto 3. this is not the vice city of Fallout I feel like it's it's so it's the same kind of

gameplay but it does so many different things with it and that's not the case for the Grand Theft Auto series and the the PS2 trilogy as it were yeah so leading the project is Josh Sawyer so at the time he was a very acclaimed game developer

with credits on things like Ice Wind Dale never Winter Knights 2 and Alpha Protocol and he was the perfect guy for the job because of the aforementioned Van Buren project he was one of the leads behind that so like you said Gary a lot of Van Buren was incorporated into this new Vegas which again I feel like it practically it worked out for them because there was a lot of existing ideas that could be incorporated into a sequel very quickly but also it was meant to appease a certain demographic of the fans who

had a distaste for Fallout 3 and they wanted they had a story they wanted to tell this this kind of civilization moving forward after the apocalypse in the specific zone. Like you can draw a through line with, say, like the NCR, which is one of the factions in New Vegas, from the founder of it in Fall Out One, who you meet as a child, to the governor of it, to the sprawling organization it is in New Vegas. Like, you actually see time pass if you play all three of them together. Another thing I just want to throw out here, just in case the listeners are not familiar, If you want to see some of these Van Buren concepts explained and explored, a really cool resource is something called the Fallout Bible, which is design documents from Fallout 1 to an existing design, design documents from Van Buren and a fact.

It's something that Chris Avellone put together. It comes with versions of Fallout 1 and 2 that you can get on Gog, but it has a lot of Van Buren stuff in it, what they're planning to do. Yeah, there are some, there are so many resources about New Vegas. not just the wikis, which, you know, I would often, while playing this game, I would do a quest and look at the wiki and see all the other ways they could have done it or all the other ways the quest could have unlocked and just think, like, wow, they thought of everything. I'll call out one source I use for a lot of Fallout research. This is a YouTube account called Triangle City, and the guy behind this account has basically

just made it his job to explore the cut content of Fallout New Vegas. And it feels like there is almost a game's worth of cut content in New Vegas. that's still findable within the code. It just, they were trying to do even more than what they were doing in this final version. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's good stuff. Like, I have definitely looked at a lot of,

you know, I'm a fan of that YouTube channel as well. Something about bringing back in the old, the old personnel and doing the Van Buren stuff. They maybe didn't know this at the time. It acts as a bridge backward as well, you know, for anybody who came on late who wants to go back and see, you know how this stuff was explored in the first two games right yeah well yeah way more approachable because i think i've said this before on podcast but it's so hard for me to go back

to fallout one and two and i i've really tried and one of these days i'll maybe i'll give two a go and try to stick with it but there's just a certain uh something to that kind of game style that does feel so rooted in that and the experience of being in front of a CRT monitor at a computer desk. That's just really hard to interface with today, I think. Yeah, you develop antibodies for it as a thing. I need more exposure, I think. That stuff is so interesting, too, because it's very specific how far someone can go back. Like, we, you know, for our show, we're doing a very old CRPG now for the show. And I'm just like, man, this is fucking archaic. And then I'll put on Fallout 1. Oh, it's the future. You know, this.

This is great. I'm controlling everything with a mouse. I don't have to use the keyboard. It's nuts. Yeah, I think if I had played these games in the 90s, I would have the antibodies. But, you know, it's just hard for me to go back if I was never there. So other developers on this, I'm just naming two of the key ones. Of course, there's like a ton of talented people.

You learn about, if you dive into the research as to who was behind this, there are so many people writing quests and designing maps. And there's just so many great people on this game. But the other lead designer, Chris Avalone. adding more prestige to this fallout game uh he worked with sawyer on a number of projects uh he was a designer on fallout too so there's some legacy there and he also had quite a resume before we're working on this game he was the lead on plain scape torment i know uh cole you and gary love that game and have done an episode about that game and that one just had a a spiritual sequel via

kickstarter not too long ago yeah ties of human era that would be also by not too long ago you mean a decade ago. I know what you mean. Hey, it feels, it feels recent. When I said not too long ago, I realized like, oh, 2015, right? Yeah. Yeah. Not to turn this whole episode into a commercial for our other podcast, but we do go into all these things if you ever, if you want to hear on beat by beat, all the games we've

talked about, including Alpha Protocol, we've done. Yeah. For that show. And Never Winter Nights, too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And as far superior expansion, I'm asking of the betrayer. Yeah.

I can say you should turn to their podcast because I'm. I'm not sure how long it will be before I get around to making episodes about that stuff, as much as I want to. In fact, I use those episodes of yours to interface with those games if I can actually, if it's hard for me to play the games, I will listen to your episodes and get the gist of them, I think. That's just my advice. But yeah, Chris Avalon, he, from what I read about him and his impact on the game, like, he is basically doing all the DLC. He is the lead on the DLC. And the DLC, for the most part in this game, has some of the best fallout, content available, especially Old World Blues.

I feel like for me, playing out for the first time, I was like, this is the best fallout stuff I've ever played in my life. It's real great. If you, it's goofy, so you have to accept the goof. Like, the thing about Fallout, and this has always been true, like, they're funny games. And Old World Blues really, really leans into that in a way that turns some, some people off, but I think it is very fun and funny. I think, you know, Fallout does really good, you know, it being a 50s pastiche, like people

are not familiar with follow in general like this kind of nifty 50s uh kind of thing and big dumb sci-fi mad science is a big part of that yeah the kind of genre if if the idea of rusty venture voicing a brain in a jar sounds really fun to you then old world blues is going to be right on your frequency yeah i mean we'll talk more about the dLC in this podcast but i have very little stomach for that era of internet humor and i thought it was i was afraid it was going to be like epic epic bacon amaze balls whatever you want to call it but i was surprised by how well written it was but maybe i shouldn't pee because it is fallout um but yeah like so a lot of talent going on behind the scenes they know what they're up against in terms of audience expectations and they

they assemble the right crew and uh you know after 18 months of development this game does come out on october 19th 2010 uh mostly going reviews although a lot of people are upset about the bugs at launch and it's not an entirely stable game although at the time you should expect that from this kind of a release. And, yeah, I was playing it at launch, and MPCs would disappear underground. I could not access them to get their quests. I would say today it's still not an entirely stable game,

but you can mod the hell out of it. There are so many mods available. I just did a vanilla play-through on my Steam deck because I just wanted the most simple way to play the game. But no matter what you want to do in terms of how a well-the-game looks or different mods to how it plays, there are so many options. And I thought, is it Chris Avalon that has his own mod for Fallout?

It's Sawyer, Josh Sawyer. Oh, Josh Sawyer, okay, yeah. There's the Sawyer mod that really ups the survival stuff, which is really neat. Like, that adds a whole dimension to the game. You have to worry about getting water. You have to worry about getting food and sleeping, things like that. There's also the other mod I want to shout out that's really cool, which I think is called The Tale of Two Wastlands, connects Fallout 3 in New Vegas together.

Like, you can take a train from one to the other and play the same character and play through both games, since do they take place concurrently That's very cool I didn't know about that Yeah that's really neat I've been meaning to do a Steam deck Playthrough of the two of these together With one person with one character

And bring them through Oh yeah and speaking of Steam Deck I think this is one of the perfect Steam Deck games It runs beautifully on Steam Deck And you can just sink so much time You normally wouldn't Staring at a bigger screen with the Steam Deck And I shouldn't need to tell you this

But this game is almost always on sale And normally you can get the ultimate edition, which includes all the DLC for under 10 bucks, and that's easily a hundred hours or more of gameplay. That's all super worthwhile. So you might even have a copy right now. If you look at your Steam Library, I swear most of you will have a copy of this. And that's if you play it once. Like you said earlier, you know, you play this again instead of playing something else. Like I'm kind of always up to replay New Vegas. I don't do it because I have other stuff I should be doing for work. But it replays great. You can do different things. You align with different

factions, you take different NPCs with you, and it does play really differently. And that's something that is a real strength of the series, and I think of this specific subgenre. What I would say is don't let the, oh, it's 100 plus hours kind of dissuade you, especially if you're approaching it from a

steam deck, or even from like a more modern kind of pace of play, because so much of the game is broken up into these, I mean, the majority of the time you're going to spend is side quests. And each of these side quests are wonderful little like bite size, like 20 to 30 minute, you know, fun little complete short stories, which is a strength that it borrows from

fallout too. So, you know, if you're thinking about this as something that is daunting, understand that you don't have to eat this pig all at once, you know. Yeah, that's true, Cole. I mean, I was going in for, I want to experience as much of this content as possible, like the buffet style experience. But you could make it to a new Vegas, the final destination within 20 to 30 hours, I would say, and still have a fulfilling time. but if you want to explore the edges of the map and the DLC, you're going to be busy like me for a quarter of a year, I would say. And you know what?

You're mentioning like the SideQuest are a little short stories. I've been trying to get back into reading and reading more instead of looking at Twitter and, you know, being online, which has been great for me. And I assume that there was Fallout books because these games came out at a time when you could read the Halo books, the Doom books. Everything had a bad book associated with it. I was at the bookstore the other day and I saw there's there's kill zone books. I'm not even kidding.

There are kill zone books. I want the fourth in the series of siphon filter novelizations is the equivalent. Yes, exactly. Gabe's Quest. I want to know what he's really thinking during all those scenes. But, you know, what surprised me was there is no fallout novelizations. There's like a comic that might have shipped with a special edition. But they've been very conservative with licensing.

this out to fill books. And that's why I'm kind of personally excited for the upcoming Amazon series because I feel like, yes, the Last of a series, I'm hearing good things about it, but basically all they can do is kind of go by the skeleton of the story of that first game.

But the Fallout world is such a great post-apocalyptic set-box. Yeah, and I'm, like, I normally wouldn't care. I didn't care about the Halo series. I don't care about the Last of a series. But with the Fallout series, I'm thinking, like, they could do so many interesting things

and I hope they don't fuck it up. We talk an awful lot about how oftentimes when we're thinking about like, oh, I'd like to read this book or I'd like to play this game. Well, what we're actually saying is I would really love to read a tabletop source book of this. Yes. Fallout so far, even within the games, it feels like, you know, a Shatter Run style series of Splat Books and Setting Book kind of, you know, kind of deals.

That's all that we got so far outside of, you know, the games themselves in terms of exploiting it. And the stories live in your head. Byable. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Like, almost. Like, you get this very rich setting and stuff. And you get a lot of flavor.

Like, one of my favorite things about the old fallout games is the manual is written from the perspective of somebody guiding your character. Like, the manual is an epistolary, you know, as opposed to like a neutral source of information. So you get things like that to get the sense. But I'm with you, Bob, in that, like, I think it is begging for an adaptation. I don't know whether it'll be good. But it's, it's rich. It has a lot of potential to be super good, I think.

Yeah, and like Cole was saying, the, what exists out there are basically the source books for fallout. And there are millions of Wikipedia awards spent on Fallout. And I feel like any showrunner walking into the situation is the luckiest person on earth because it's just your story, your Bible is just online. There's a literal source book now, too. Like, there's a tabletop game. Oh. You can literally just, yeah, they put out a tabletop game of it. I should not be surprised by that at all.

But yeah, I think that's coming this summer or something. but I am excited. It's like the one video game adaptation I care about in the past, I don't know, 30 years, maybe. They also got Walter Gaggins to play a ghoul, which is what good casting, good and insulting casting. A perfect decision. Yeah, just like, well, I just imagine Walter Gagons throwing his hands up and like, fair enough. You got me like that. He's usually cast as a man full of hate, right?

Yeah, I get like a cranky weirdo from the South. But now he gets to play a radiated guy with a skin falling off. So, yeah, I'm into it. I'm looking forward to it. I want to move on. So I normally have just comprehensive notes for the games we cover. But for Fallout, like I said, there are millions of Wikipedia entries out there for this game. There's just so much to be said, and we're going to miss stuff.

But I really want to just go over some discussion points. So Gary and Cole, you have more Fallout experience than me. I really want to know how New Vegas compares to the original two games, because from what I hear from fans, that's why they like this game so much. Yeah, it is. So, Fallout 1 is a modest product. It's short. It tells a pretty, like a relatively short and straightforward story. It was them experimenting.

Fallout 2, I feel like, is kind of the birth of this kind of wild out, absolutely full of side quests, content loaded, CRPG kind of thing. Fallout 2 is full of going to different towns, different cultures, learning about people and learning about their problems and how to solve them and being able to solve them in like several different emergent ways. That is, you draw a direct line from that to, you know, modern content-filled CRPGs, but specifically New Vegas. That sense of here are a lot of people trying to make it in this world state.

What are they like? You know, who are they? How are their things influenced? You know, how did their location influence their culture? You know, so you get that with, you know, when you actually go to the strip in Vegas and fallout two, there's a section called Vault City, which is like a city grown out of a vault. They had a much different experience. It's still that kind of tour of people who were dealing with things.

The thing that New Vegas did, I think that kind of codified that, was making them factions. You actually, they have philosophies for what they want the future to be of the Mojave. Yeah, I believe, I mean, there are four main factions that play into the end game. But just looking at the wiki, I think in total there might be around 20 different factions you can influence in this game. And it does have an impact for sure. And just talking about the way that the side content and the factions play into the main quest, everything culminates in this battle. You know, the whole kind of McGuffin here is control over the Hoover Dam and thus the ability to generate power and, you know, allow civilization to move forward again after being frozen for so long. And going and ingratiating yourself to these different factions, you know, kind of changes who's going to be present at that big battle that is always going to happen no matter what.

there is that integration between the side stuff, even if certain factions are, you know, small, but some of them are deceptive. You walk, the first one that you find walking out of your main town is the boomers and you think, okay, there's going to be dynamite obsessed freaks. No, actually,

they control Nellis and they're a pretty big faction in terms of, you know, getting actual firepower on your side, right? Well, the boomers are actually different than the powder gang is who you think you have. Oh, okay. Fuck. but they do control a jail

like there are people you can ally with but it's the important thing about that final battle that you're talking about and this is 100% there are shadows of this and fall out to you is that the final battle these factions are ideologies of what they would do with the future

so the thing that it most has in common with the old ones is actual role playing like when you're choosing a faction to ally with and do things for and favor you're choosing which future you want for the mojave uh there and and that's really important like my guy would do this you know and you're making a decision like my character you know he picks up what the brotherhood's putting down that seems like a good future you know for this yeah yeah i feel like the i mean

it's been 15 years since i play fallout three i've only played three once but i remember factions were not a thing in that game it had a very late aughts game design thing where it had a karma system in it which is still in this game but it's not as as as uh as uh important important, but in Fallout 3, it was like, do you either want to be pure evil or pure good? This is how you play video games in the year 2008. Kick the puppy, eat the puppy. Yeah, very biochunk. Even that didn't really bear out very much.

It affected certain companions who would go with you or not, which, what do I care about any of these uninteresting fools? But like, it was mostly at the beginning. What did you do with Megatot? Did you nuke it or did you side with the evil business guy? Here, it is, you know, everything is. connected to more different points, which just makes for a more interesting and kind of dimensional product.

And we're talking about how New Vegas is similar to one and two. How do you think three deviates in a way that fans dislike? To me, I really enjoyed three. I can't see myself going back to play it in the way that I would replay New Vegas, but I had a perfectly fine time, but I know it is controversial. But I feel like I fall out four. I know you folks, you played the game, you enjoy, you made a big podcast about it. That was the one that threw me off. That was the one that I didn't like. I could see it. The thing with Fallout 3 and 4 is I've come to peace with them, they're just very different.

You know, and the way they're different is that lack of complexity in terms of motivation and such. When going directly from Fallout 2 to Fallout 3, the kind of poster trial for that was not having conversation trees anymore. In Fallout 3, you had like an illusion of that, but they were very, very simple. and then four double down that even more with the four point just kind of attitudes yes no sarcastic and tell me more and that those four things you can do

I love yes no and sarcastic as a thing but three is on that continuum New Vegas story had more complicated kind of nesting in this and accounted for more of what you did which was a big fallout thing like characters you know caring about how you the choices you had made up until that point you were you weren't just an avatar

like you're in fallout three you're the player you know and in fallout four you're the player you're not a character that you make you know i think that's the biggest difference is how much of a role playing game it is in a in a literal like the word role playing sense yeah fall three is incredibly bland and though it is a you know you have that novelty of having you know this rendered post apocalyptic you know i recognize this as you know american society what have you, that very quickly is revealed to be kind of a veneer, especially, you know, when you start having the conversations, something that New Vegas adds back in, um, is respecting choices that you had made previously, but even just making checks against your attributes.

Yeah. For certain stuff, for certain things. Like, three didn't really do that. You just kind of had percentage to succeed, uh, based on skills and stuff. Whereas New Vegas is kind of making a little bit more of an effort to, you know, respond. Yes. Yeah.

Like in New Vegas, you can, I'm good at guns so I can talk about guns. Yeah. As well. Whereas in Fallout 3, like being good at guns is just shooting. You know, these these kind of like integrations like that. And to be fair, like I'm fine with Fallout 3 and I like Fallout 4 just fine. I just have to accept them as different things. Yeah.

You know. Yeah. The emphasis on role playing, you folks keep underlining, I think is very important because I noticed when I was playing the game, the different dialogue options you would get based on certain perks or certain attributes you had that I forgot that I was like oh I forgot I had this perk and I can actually use it during this dialogue option and

just have just you know it's the they thought of everything is what I always think of this game in a way that they really couldn't if they were making fallout for and all the dialogue had to be voiced and locked down at a certain point in development well that's the thing that makes New Vegas so like impressive to me is that it is voiced and they

still manage a facsimile of that you know like do a good version of that yeah yeah but as it was like there has to be a tradeoff here. And obsidian was like, not really. Yeah. No, we, we, we, we, we can not do that. And, and, and I think that's where a lot of the jank kind of came from, you know, it coming out and being buggy and having quest break and such. And that's because there are so many interdependencies. That's a price you pay for that complexity, you know, but for me, I will pay a lot of things for that complexity because it makes me feel like, uh, you know, choices matter is an awful gaming cliche, right? And it always means bioshock stuff. Like it means, you know, Save the puppy, eat the puppy stuff. In New Vegas, though, it'll be like, I took this perk. Here it is coming up 10 hours later, and I had no idea.

It mattered that I did that. I have to be here for this. My choices matter, and it's not just a binary moral choice that you make, you know, at the end. Like most of the ones do. You're right. I mean, the buggyness is the downside of all of these different variables floating around. And I feel like I had a pretty pleasant time with this play through, although I would recommend staggered saves for everyone playing this today

because at a certain point I was following a quest chain and at one point an MPC had to leave to go somewhere and they would just drop dead as soon as they walked outside and it was inexplicable that shouldn't have happened there were no enemies targeting them but I just had to give up on the quest line because as soon as they stepped outside they just died yeah yeah and there was just buried in the code somewhere I couldn't fix it you got to save your games like it's 2004 yeah yeah yeah that's also one of those things where it's going to vary a lot from person you know the same uh gamer type someone might have where like they look at fall at one and they're like i what do i do with this like i don't i don't know how to make i don't want to do this this looks bad uh same thing with saving like if you were raised in that environment you're quick saving constantly uh you know i just keep rolling staggered saves for video games because it's built into my blood no yeah absolutely uh and i want to talk about the the uh the uh the the uh the

mechanical advantages of fallout new vegas because uh you know objectively there are many improvements over three a lot of them that i forgot were not even in three like uh iron sights aiming and there's not even that much of a focus on you know uh non-term-based comment but they they do make it a little easier uh there's more perks you get less often there's different improvements to vets there's the survival aspects that are mostly optional but now i feel like survival games are so popular that this no longer feels like it ever needed to be optional but They felt the need to make it so that, like, this is the hardcore mode. Yeah.

The survival thing is really cool, and it is something that stands above Fallout 3, unless you mod it back into fallout 3, which unpositive has happened, which is having survival, it makes you struggle only in the early going, you know, as you're scrounging for resources or whatever. But as you go into a new place and loot it, there's a lot of stuff that would otherwise be. entirely disregardable that you're going to get excited about seeing like oh here is water water is different in this mode of the game that it is you know kind of a in the base one that is something that they would go on to make into the actual like cool hook that makes fallout four worth playing which is the survival mode yeah for that which is which is more intense than the the soyer josh sawyer mod of new vegas even yeah and you know so they kind of rolled that in uh you know they realized that was cool, I think, at some point.

Yeah, at a certain point during my playthrough, I thought, like, oh, I really should have turned on hardcore mode because I was really enjoying the game and very engaged with it. But after a certain level, it happens all the time with these types of games. Things just got too easy. I was, like, way overpower for every fight. And I was basically just, like, a quest and dialogue collector. I was not even there for the combat. If combat happened, it'd be over quickly.

But, you know, running into all of the Brahmin stakes and all of the drinks I could have that I just would throw away. or, you know, ignore entirely, I just felt like, oh, I really could have engaged with the survival mode. And I would have been a little more into, you know, the challenge of it all without being overwhelmed. And it changes combat. It makes it more difficult, too, because suddenly more of your healing is over time, as opposed to being instantaneous. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting the way that that doesn't happen as much in Fallout 1 and 2. Like, you become powerful, but it's a little bit more even. It's something I've experienced with every Bethes. a game, even though this wasn't developed by Bethesda being in that same engine, that getting

post-scarcity and overpowered feels like an inevitability in these almost. And you can watch Bethesda try to come up with a solution for that over and over and over and never quite get it, you know, like the different kinds of level scaling in different ways they've done that. And I always end up as some kind of ridiculous golden god, 75% the way through each of those games. Yeah, it does feel like a really tough. nut to crack in these games and I my heart goes out to them for trying

to figure it out. That's another big thing that the that makes this game New Vegas more satisfying than three which is the you know it with three they tried to bring in a little bit of the Skyrim like you know level up level matching kind of stuff scaling

kind of deal didn't necessarily work and wasn't well used here it's almost entirely absent. Yeah yeah it's just you're not supposed to go to this area it's full of kill wasps yeah you know You know, over and out, Roger, I'll go the other way. When I could finally defeat any kill wasp almost immediately, I thought like, well, I'm God now. Yeah, absolutely.

The Casador's, I think that's what I'm going to be? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're really there as just like a wall that you hit. And for the first, I mean, they're scarier to be than Death Clause in New Vegas. I love that they're a wall, but you can also get by them if you're obstinate enough. Yeah, yeah. So it still has that nonlinearity. You just have to be creative about it.

That kind of speaks to like a general sense of like immersive SIM DNA that is in this almost. Like the characters and monsters in this, they have their own AI scripts that they're doing and can be fooled. You know, you don't go into an area and everything is just alerted to you automatically. Like if you're sneaking, that matters. If you take this different kind of route, that matters. The game doesn't want you to do this, but if you insist you can make it work and there are a lot of advantages to doing it that way. That, you know, goes into that freedom we're talking about with role playing. Like, I matter.

like I'm choosing to do this. Early in the game I thought, like, I want to sneak around these enemies, so I'm going to put on my stealthiest outfit, maybe use a stealth boy, then eat the stealth drugs and see if I can make this work. And sometimes it would, and it felt like empowering. Like, oh, there was an option here. It's a sin, my darling, how I love you, because I know our love can never be.

It's a sin to keep this memory of you When silence proves that you've forgotten me Yippie, yea, there'll be no wedding bells for today Jingle, jingle, jingle, as I go right merrily along. Jingle jangle! And they sing, oh, ain't you glad you're single? Jingle jangle! In that song, it's so very far from wrong.

Speaking of options, we're talking about mechanical advantages and improvements. We've mentioned this before, but there have been so many narrative improvements over this game from Fallout 3 to this game. And not just in the role-playing aspect, the faction thing. the faction thing especially, that really provides so many different options for quests. And I really want to know what completionists think of this game because it must drive them crazy. Because when you play this game,

certain routes will be cut off if you pick other routes because obviously some factions hate each other. So you're not going to see everything in one play-through. And, you know, as soon as you befriend a new character, you'll see quest failed, quest failed, quest failed. And you're thinking, like, I don't even know what this quest is. that might drive you crazy but it's just the game telling you that this is this is who you're

with now and you can't go back yeah that that's a what like a great example of the the player versus character kind of role playing thing right like a character would be fine with that a character would say i like these people i wasn't planning on doing anything for the slavers anyway you know but a player as gamers like we're kind of inculturated and and encouraged to just want to gruffle up all the content like yeah things gamers love are, you know, scope and polish, right? And this game has scope, but it's scope with a twist. Like, it's scope you can't have all of it once, and it doesn't have polish, you know?

So it's kind of like a tough sell for some people because of that. Like, we talk about, you know, you're wondering what completionists think of this. I imagine that drove tons of people, like absolutely bonkers. But if you put yourself in the mind of like a character and you say, like, no, no, this is just my story. My story, I did this. I didn't do that. it's more realistic and it's more closer to like a tabletop experience which makes a lot of sense with the the roots of this in fallout one and two which started as you know gurps games and then changed yeah you have to wonder you're almost certain that obsidian played oblivion and completed the wizard guild before they did the the thieves guild and figured well it's ridiculous that as a thief i need to steal the archmages staff because i am the archmage.

Yeah. It's not accounted for at all. It's just these two things that are contradicted. Here, you know, they've accounted for those contradictions and lock you out of stuff. And I know for sure. I've heard, I've heard the complaint that, you know, you can't do everything. Like, that is a real bummer for folks. Admittedly, they probably could have found a better solution for presenting that information.

Like, they could have said, Quest precluded instead of Quest failed. Failed. It probably provides some bad feels. I didn't do anything I'm ignorant It's not my fault Yeah there's I mean Keith like when I was playing the game

I was like thinking of another play through Maybe when I'm retired Okay these are the things I want to do for Because there are so many roots That are just things players would never do Because I think stats have shown That in those karma-based games 90% of players play as good

It's just a staggeringly bigger amount of players Will play as good But most players are not going to side With the powder gangers when they start the game They're clearly villains, but you can, and there's unique dialogue and situations there. I really don't understand who would side with Kaiser, but if you want to be a slaver, there's your chance. But most players aren't going to do that because it just feels too icky. But if you want to, there's unique dialogue, situations, quests, weapons, all that stuff.

Yeah, it's one of the things that I think is probably a ding against the games, like, perfection in that respect. like ordinarily for this kind of ideological battle you would want ideologies that are arguable you know you know I could see the point of all this and not only do they not really do that because like I don't know you should be born knowing slavery is wrong you shouldn't have to be taught that uh in addition to that like they didn't give as much content for the legion stuff yeah to me that stuff is for sickos like me who are going to play it again you know just to see it and it can be a short play through because you get powerful you know very powerful before well before the end of the game

I don't need to do that many quests I just want to see it you know it's almost like deleted scenes yeah for me yeah I mean my own perspective obviously I'm not I'm not pro slay this is an anti-slavery podcast

whoa whoa whoa you didn't tell us that before we signed up right well I apologize but yeah obviously I'm not gonna want to side with with with Kaiser although I did get his ending just to get the achievement to see what it was

because it's easy to change by the end it's actually easy to change your path to get a different ending. That's the only time they really let you change. But with the factions, I feel like there's no clear good guy. I love the moral ambiguity here because I feel like in the beginning of the game, they really kind of trick you into thinking like, oh, the NCR is the clear good guys in this battle because they're really turning things around.

But then you see they've had a positive impact, but then you talk to more people as you play more of the game. You find out, okay, the NCR is the military. And they're basically as good as the current military. military, which is not really that good. Yeah. And then, yeah, I was like, wow, the game tricked me into being pro-military very briefly. Just by contrast, being compared to people who are crucifying folks on phone poles.

There's no real good guy, but there's a bad guy. Yeah. Like, there's three, like, you know, morally like, eh, solutions. And then there's the Legion. Yeah. You know, I don't want that. I really found, maybe you guys don't agree with me on this, but I found, I got all the endings just to see what would happen. And no ending is truly satisfied.

but not in a way that's unsatisfying for the player it's just that like everything you do is so compromised and everything you ally with is so compromised that there is no true great ending for your character at best you just keep living and things might improve the only one that I feel good about is yes man which is fuck it nobody has control over this dam or this region um uh except for the people who live here right

yeah yeah and it's think he was the guy that I allied with with my first play through for sure also he's day fully a lot of people are going to fall into it because he's a fail safe yeah yeah yeah but he's also really charismatic and good and it's worth noting like he's a fail safe but it's not phoned in and the caesar stuff even though that's lame like the stuff with his brain tumor like that stuff's all really interesting you're not going to ally with the legion because they're slavers and that sucks but if you do the writing there isn't like let's go eat some puppies you know like they believe it You know, we know they're wrong because there's no excuse for slavery, obviously, but the characters believe it. It's not, it's come by honestly, you know, and they think they're making a good point. And you can read that in the lines like and actually. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's very easy these days to read how fascists think, especially on social media websites. And they really don't see themselves as evil.

They, they have justifications. And of course, they're incorrect. But they're very devoted. And I feel like the dialogue for, for Caesar or Kaiser, whatever you want to. call him. It does speak to that, that, you know, that belief some of these people have. Yeah. It's charismatic. Like, even if it's not, I don't buy it because I'm not a child, so I don't go in for fascism, but it's, it's charismatic the way it's presented. Something that is great about the main factions, and this is a way that New Vegas also harkens back to the, you know, Fallout 1 and 2,

is that at its core, and correct me of them wrong, Gary, a lot of what Fallout ought to be about and was at the beginning is that the past is poison and the more you cling to it, the more it will destroy you, like something radioactive itself, right? That gets, I mean, that is a thing in fallout one and two, but it's never more than in dead money. Like, there's, there's a DLC where that is the thesis underlined a thousand times of this. But yeah, like, yeah, 100%. Yeah. And so, you know, like, especially with NCR and. Hazer's Legion, and a little bit of Mr. House, going back to the, you know, the old time

rigging ding ding, ding, let's, you know, rule this place with crime kind of stuff, you know, all of those are older ways of thinking and structuring power, right? Whereas yes, man, you know, does ostensibly put you in that position, but it does, you know, again, kind of remit more of the power, at least to the smaller factions that you've been dealing with. Yeah, the people. Yeah. I mean, a lot of work went into developing the philosophies of all of these factions, even the very minor ones, like the Brotherhood of Steel, which I believe, are they're like real villains

in Fallout 4, if I remember correctly, but here they're just like a beaten down little sect who mostly just stays in their little basement, right? They're so shitty, and this is more accurate. Like, that's a big problem with Fallout 3 is the brotherhood are suddenly at all. Yeah. And in 3 they're paragon. That's what I'm saying. They're basically the

knights of the round table. And then in 4, they're like, what if they were kind of racist and also like, we need to have a, they're more palatable than the legion, but they're still a little fashy in that here, like, they've gone through this arc. Again, this is in conversation with fallout one and two, you know, they're at the height of their powers in fallout one. And fallout two, they're in this period of like regression.

You know, they're hiding out. And there's lower logs and computer log and stuff. You can read about the story. In New Vegas, they're scared to poke their heads out. You know, they're starting to on this upswing and they're deciding whether they can do it or not. That's the conflict you get involved with. Yeah, I'm just looking at all the factions and, yeah, I just, I'm astounded by, I mean, not all of them have the same amount of impact, but there are, are pretty significant factions outside of the main four, including like individual ones within certain towns. A lot of work was put into this for sure.

And I feel like this was their main narrative emphasis was just who you're allying yourself with, yourself with, and how well developed those philosophies are. Yeah, what that represents about the character you're choosing to bring through here. Yeah. Like how much do you indulge the kings, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this just silly, you know, comedy stuff, or do you want them to be a power and take them seriously? Yeah.

Because they both work, you know? Totally. And I did want to mention the foundation this game is built on, which is the very famous Gamebrio engine that makes the most hideous characters since the original Dark Souls. And I will, I won't mince words here. This is an ugly game, both unintentionally and intentionally. When I was playing this for three months straight with no other games in between.

When I played another game, I just remembered, oh, these are what colors are. It's like that Simpsons thing when the Raid came on the color fast. I remember those. Down with boatwork. It is. It is, I mean, I think with Skyrim, there is a new engine. So Skyrim is a much better looking game, but it's still ugly in its own way. But this is very much pushing up against what the Gambrio engine can do.

It has all the little eccentricities of this engine. Like, when you pick up an item, for whatever reason all the other items nearby float upwards about three inches me, me, pick me. It's like puppies

at the pet store. Exactly. There's no way to address that. I'm surprised that that has always been a mainstay of Gamebrio, just the floating items. And also, yeah,

a lot of, a lot of skyboxy rooms, but I also noticed that this game is too ambitious for this engine because a lot of the things are very D&D and that in the dialogue description,

it will have a description of what the character is doing because it's like it will be too hard to implement this into animation and then some of their bigger set pieces are very limited by what the Gamebrio engine is capable of especially I think because they had to make these games for the PS3

and it sounds like the PS3 just gave them the biggest pain in the ass for Fallout perpetual memory problems yeah yeah but I mean I would say prepare yourself for that but I'm very happy we have moved away from this engine oh yeah it's that abstraction that makes certain situations be look absolutely ludicrous you know like skyroom is a better

engine so still shots of it look beautiful but you still get that vahal at the end where it's eight guys like stiffly running into a corner and it's the eight greatest warriors of all time in heaven fighting a dragon and it looks like action figures like it's the most money you could throw it something and still have it look like classics of game yeah and you get that for this too the you know the hoover dam battle is real silly looking you know they it's They attempt to give some scale to it, but, like, they're not there. When you're talking about the description, like, they would show you a verbal description, like D&D of what someone's doing. That's what all of the old ones were, you know?

So, like, and it would be visual things, too, like in the first fallout, when you step out, which I'm replaying now. So it's fresh from my memory. When you step out of the vault, you get a little paragraph description of what your character, what the first time seeing the outside world is like for them. But they can't show it. They can't get that scale across visually. So there's still kind of like little bits. of that and this, but it's a technical limitation, not just a

you know, it was a false technical limitation. Like they, you know, if it was in a different engine, I feel like they could have actually shown it. Yeah, one thing I really noticed because they tried to do it later in the DLC is that you could never be in a conversation with more than one person at a time. Yeah.

Which I think really cuts back on the amount of narrative situations that can put you in. And I think it's a limitation of the engine because when you get to Old World Blues, I was very confused at first because you're talking to all these basically brains and jars, but you're only seeing one on the screen. So for the

first 30 minutes, all you're doing is talking to them, but there's only one on the screen. So I thought, like, does this thing have multiple personalities? And then you learn, no, there were six of them, but they could only show you one because of the engine. And this is a problem that had been solved. Like, you had cinematic conversations in Mass Effect, and they got

even better in Mass Effect 2, which came out a year before this one did. Yeah. Gamebrio? That's what they get for making an engine that's a portmanteau of game and embryo. It's gross. I don't like saying it. Super gross, yeah. Like, this is some kind of, like, weird game mother gives birth to the gamebrio.

I don't care for it. And can you remember how Fallout 4 fixed some of the engine problems? I know it's like it is a PS4 generation game, whatever you want to call it, like, eighth generation game. But I remember it being a vast improvement. It didn't lock you into the Bethesda. angle. Yeah. It's also like the shooting and jumping everything like fallout four is the best feeling

of these like the part of my affection for it is that it functions as an action game which none of these ever really have like you you are doing you know real time shooting but it's not a particularly good shooter you have that says this kind of compromise between turn based and and shooting but you need it it's not only is it like a choice as that kind of a call back to the old turn base thing but the game would be really. really hard without it. You need that to help you aim because it's not a particularly, you know, snappy game. All-O-4 is.

You still have VATs, but you can play Fallout 4 as a shooter and it feels like a fine shooter, at least in my hands. And, you know, things don't float. It's a game about picking up junk. So it's really good. Nothing says pick me, pick me in this. It's improved across the board in terms of engine. Okay.

Yeah, my member was Foggy. I know the shooting was a lot better, which I think maybe there was like a little too much shooting in that game for my for my taste it just was more action focus but yeah 76 not not a great game but when I jumped into that I was just like wow this is a pretty game but that's because I'd been playing fallout new Vegas for a very long time yeah play the guitar play it again my johnny maybe you're cold but you're so warm but you're so warm I was always a fool for my job. I did want to mention the DLC, so each one of these could be several podcasts,

and I don't want to give any of them the short script or whatever, but it's all very worthwhile. One is not very good, but I still think it's worth playing. But there's a few of these that turn New Vegas into their own kind of game, especially Dead Money. It's interesting to see the developers using this engine, using the parts of Fallout to try to make a new type of game experience. In this case, Dead Money is their version of survival horror.

And for the most part, it really, really works. Yeah. Dead Money, so I love Old World Blues, and that Forever was my favorite. On Revisit, Dead Money is up there. Like, it's serious, you know, it's not funny. But I think that it is really, really creative of the engine between it being survival horror stealth focused. And I think in terms of like message and theming and kind of poignancy, it hits it out of the park.

Like I think Dead Money is weirdly beautiful. Yeah. It has a real romantic kind of feeling to it. Like the romance of the old world. You know, it underlines that theme Cole was talking about earlier about not letting go. As directly and well as anything in the series. No.

Absolutely adore Dead Money. Super good. Yeah. Yeah. I would say Dead Money, the only. disadvantages, it's not always very fun to play, especially with the areas of poisonous fog

that you have to get through as fast as possible. It's a little like Evan Tide Island kind of thing in Breath of the Wild. They take away your equipment as well. You know, so you're starting over in a dangerous place without all of your resources is the idea. And it can be a huge wake-up call. What's funny is

the DLC can kind of be bisected in terms of they're the two they're more well-regarded, which are old world blues and dead money. Those are kind of their own self-contained things, whereas the ones that I think fall down old world, or not old world blues, sorry, what is it? Honest Hearts and, um, uh, Lonesome Road. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then Lonesome Road. Those are kind of more concerned with like a macro story and kind of tying a lot of stuff together. Like honest hearts, I think the only thing to really recommend about that is, boy, Bryce Canyon is pretty. Yeah. Well, and if you're a lore nerd, it's like, oh, here's the Joshua Graham. Yes. Legion stuff. But again, as we mentioned before, you're unlikely to be in on the Legion, you know, because they're, uh, they're slaver fascist.

Yeah. And then Lonesome Road, I think, is too serious. Like we talked, we talked a lot about Fallout Tone and it's one of the things I'm nervous about the TV show. I think that, uh, tone is really important. Like, these games are funny, but they're not comedy games. You know, there are jokes, but you have to be able to take it seriously as well. Lonesome Road is dead serious.

Uh, it's just, you know, a character monologues to you. like your older cousin who got really into slam poetry. Like, imagine a tiny Henry Rollins on your shoulder. It's some kind of goblin curse. Yeah, like you run a follow of a goblin. And they put a tiny Henry Rollins whispering in your ear constantly. That's kind of what Lonesome Road is. Mechanically, I like it, but it's a little too Cormick McCarthy for my post-apocalyptic tastes.

Old World Blues, I really like it because it's very humor focused in a non-crongy way. And I also like there's this base building aspect to it that I think is really fun because it gives you constant things to search for because you have this like basically the fallout equivalent of a smart home in which you can upgrade everything within it to give you some sort of bonus or some sort of like item spawning capability like the toaster the refrigerator the jukebox the bed they can all be upgraded and to find upgrades you basically have to enter a bunch of different buildings around this fairly big map and there are also like what I would loosely call Metroidvania aspects in which certain guns will lock certain doors and then you can backtrack it's so like I feel like it's such a dense DLC yeah that uh that home base um so as like a long time fan in the uh the follow bible there are design notes for a place called the EPA that was cut on a fallout 2 almost all those appliances are from that zone like that is directly content uh that was cut from fallout 2 oh wow okay the personalities of the the different appliances stuff like that so I was a literal pig and shit I was clapping

like a circus seal when I got to that because it's this thing I had read about and played kind of half implemented versions that you know fans had modded back in and here it finally is like with you know complete like a version of it that is complete yeah um uh old world blues isn't just funny uh it's also the the dLC in this that uh kind of gives you a new hub world to go and look at most of the others are pretty linear uh in terms of it as well like old world blues is follow New Vegas's equivalent of Point Lookout, one of the better DLCs for Five Three. Yeah.

If you go online, again, the Triangle City account is really good. These DLCs especially have a lot cut out from them. And one thing I forgot is that there were file size limitations for DLC at this time because the hard drives on these consoles were so small.

And I feel like I'm glad we have like we've moved beyond that to the point where games are almost too big now. Like a new game could be 100 gigs or more. and I hate that but I forgot about the time in which these file size limitations were really strangling the games

especially we did a podcast about Tales of Monkey Island because that was a we wear exclusive the entire game had to be like 40 megs or something like that something criminally small so they had to start with that

and then enhance those assets for the Steam version so yeah it just this is only 13 years ago but still your hard drive and your hard drive Xbox was what like 50 gigs maybe if you got the one with a hard drive which it wasn't sold at and that's why there were those size limitations yeah i used to have a like an external hard drive i had to like shunt onto the top of my Xbox yeah ludicrous that download rock band songs it's yeah it's an error i'm glad that we have left behind um so i mean there's just so much to talk about i wanted to ask both of you what quest lines did you really like from this game there's so many standout ones there are so many ones you encounter

just in very interesting ways what did you like the most from this that aren't necessarily like key to the story of the game yeah the one of them that gets pointed out a lot that I rather like is the fly me to the moon one where you run into the ghouls

that are trying to get off planet there and take a rocket there and there's the human who thinks that he is a ghoul and he's not he just doesn't understand you know that he's not and you can And, you know, one of the ways you can, you can sunk that if you're a real monster is to basically black pill him, you know, that like, hey, you're, you're, you're deluded. You're not going to, you're not going to go with them.

You know, you're not one of the, this cult. You're not the religion. It's actually like a fairly, I mean, it involves the ghouls, which are just gross creatures, although they have sentience. And, you know, they're very tragic. But it's very sweet in that they understand this human guy is not actually a ghoul, which is. is why they won't let him come with them on this trip. It won't survive. Yeah, because it's like this poor deluded guy,

he, we let him hang out with us, but we know he's not a ghoul. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Goals are immune to radiation and they're going up in this rickety homemade rocket. Like this guy would immediately burn to death.

I love that you get, you do get a, you know, they reward you for doing this quest. But the big reward is you just get to see the rocket ship. And if you do the things right, like they make it. You know,

they're probably not going to go well. it's a rocket run by just a bunch of people like hey let's build a rocket you know but it's again there's like that similar to dead money there's like a romanticism to it when you see it like one of those weird moments of just kind of like beauty like oh they made it good for them you know uh really fond of that yeah uh big standout this isn't a quest line but it's just a quest that has a lot of different articulation points that are real standout uh which is beyond the beef when you get to Oh, that's great. When you get to New Vegas, there is the ultra-lux casino where everything is realized wide shut.

And by poking around, you find out that they're fantastically appointed banquets are, in fact, you know, made up of human flesh. And you can even encounter some of the people that they're harvesting from and decide whether or not you want to partake or let them go. Yeah. Yeah, that was the one I was going to name cold. The other one I think you mentioned earlier was, is the entire story of dead money. and that is basically the story of this Howard Hughes-style figure who basically falls in love with this singer and builds her a gilded cage to live in.

And what also factors into that is her romance with the now ghoul lounge singer Dean Domino. And it's funny, I feel like all the things you see on the loading screens, they pay off in the DLCs for the most parts, or they pay off much, much later. Because when I ran into Dean Domino like 80 hours in, I was like, oh, it's this guy, it's the loading screen man. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, they, they, they had planned out this kind of expansive world for it. Yeah. Great stuff. I also like classic inspiration because it's not combat or, you know, loot kind of stuff. That's the one where you go to the, uh, the sign shop, uh, where all of the, uh, signs used to be made. And there's this guy who wants to pick up in the craft, but doesn't have any ideas. So he gives you a camera and you have to go out and take pictures of these different signs that are still out and functioning in the world.

Yeah, and you can go to the, he's at the neon graveyard that's a real, like, Vegas thing, you know, there. So that was real neat, too. One early quest that I really like is finding out who gave away Boone's wife to slavers. And Boone is one of your companions. One for my baby. And I wish they would do. Oh, go ahead, Cole. No, just one for my baby.

That's a real standout. Yeah. And it's memorable because I wish they would, I love, like, Detective Games. I love Ace Attorney and Dangen Romp on all those. And I really wish there were more detective quest lines because you have to find a culprit and you really don't know if it's correct until you have them killed. And there are so many ways to find out who it is. Again, they thought of everything. But that stands out to me because it makes you play a detective, looking through people's items, questioning them.

And then you're not sure if it's the right person until the quest is over, really. Yeah. And you can, I love that to you because the player can. have information that the characters don't. I feel like in a lesser game, you know, you could, you could finger the wrong suspect, but Boone doesn't know that. Like, you can have him kill the wrong person and he's okay with it. And you fooled him.

Like, you might be wrong. I think in a worst game, it would be like, eh, you know, wrong. And, you know, Boone would just be like, you got it wrong. But the characters in this world don't have, they're not psychics, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's just between you and your God that you did that wrong and sent an innocent person to sniper hell. again there's there's many there's many options

you can have Boone kill the correct person but you can tell him I believe it's the wrong person you can basically say does it matter aren't you happy now and then he can he can just refuse to join you at that point but you can also have him kill the wrong person and then lie to him yeah you can use him to get rid of some people

which is just really cruel like a horrible thing to do to this guy but again the options there because you know it's that immersive sim DNA like the game world operates outside of just or presents the illusion of being outside of just being designed at the behest of the player

which is the best stuff that to me that computer role playing games can do you know and you run into that with like immersive Sims as well like DeusX is the big example of that like that's dayus X stuff and it was a cool thing that fallout two could do and I'm glad they brought it back and you can't really do it and

fallout three and follow three you get to the end and the choice you know there aren't different ways the quest can articulate there's just you ask for money or no you know and if not you get good boy points yes yeah the main currency of that game is good boy points or bad boy points if you're nasty when an irresistible force such as you meet an old immovable object like me you can bet just as sure as you live We've been talking up this game a lot

I want to know where this game lets us down And I think what most people agree on Even the developers is that When you get to New Vegas It is a very, very big letdown And again, it is because of the engine It's because they also have to make this game for the PS3 Which has not played nice with the engine

But New Vegas is this You can see it on the horizon You can see the landmarks It's where you're being drawn to Throughout the entire game And once you're there, you can choose to end the game. When you get there, it is four kind of small rooms of the skybox connected with chain link fences. And boy, it is, I mean, even for 2010 games, I feel like they could have done more in a different engine.

But as it stands, it does feel like a huge letdown. It's pretty ludicrous. It's one of the things in Fallout 4 that I have to hand it to him. Like, Fallout 4 is Boston feels like a city. If you want to explore a city in this context, you can't do it until. fallout four you know the way they got around that in fallout three with was just having uh rooms connected by subway dungeons you know it's like they never been able to do but this has Vegas in the title like Vegas is the point of this and it's

it's like you said it's on the skyline uh it's it's ridiculous like it is it is ludicrous uh as a place there's seven people who live there you know uh you know all their names like it's uh it's just really really abstracted also this is a game with Vegas in it and the gambling is really underwhelming, right? Like the case, yeah, I will play that blackjack until the blackjack is fine.

So I'm using this as a way to get into. They present this homegrown game of railroad. I believe that's what the oh yeah, what that's. Caravan is the caravan, yes, there we go. And it's really bad. It's a real bad. It's a huge it's a huge letdown in terms of

you know, how is gambling or how these games, you know, evolved and it's just, a collectible card game using a standard bicycle deck. Yeah, don't care for that. Blackjack is always going to be Blackjack and that's fine. But when they introduce these kind of elements, that and there are some standout quests where you are doing, you know, trying to set up your casinos, going to try and like recruit the comedian, choosing the human or the ghoul, trying to staff the sex workers at the

one in Freaside and going out and finding the real ghoul cowboy or, Justo the robot. Yeah. You know, I was kind of hoping for a little bit more in terms of getting in with the, uh, being able to run those things, uh, kind of just the casino is having a little bit more of an impact on the overall culture and, uh, integrating with play a little bit more. And they just kind of end up being ways to play, you know, Windows 3.1 versions of classic gambling games.

Yeah. Yeah. They end up being kind of just like quest. Like you just go somewhere and talk to somebody. Yeah. I was going to ask who among us has actually played a game. of Caravan in this game. I try.

I think it's an achievement, like, play one game. And if you look on Steam, it is one of the rarer achievements. That's a tough competition. Like, video games have a great lineage of fake card games. Yeah. In them, you know, like we can't all be triple triad. And it's a real problem. Witcher has one.

Is it like Gwent or something? Yeah, Gwen is the Witcher one. And people look, you know, Gwint is supposed to be pretty good. But, yeah, Caravan sucks. Yeah. In general, I think the other thing, too, is that, like, it is, it's a Gestalt game. Like, the actual, you know, combat does not feel super good. Like, you can have fun with it.

You know, I have fun with it. And, but generally, it's not just the shooting. It's not kinesthetics. It's, like, prep, you know, the most fun times in combat are, I'm fighting something I shouldn't be fighting yet. And I have to use a lot of mines and kind of craft a space to fight them. That's really fun. Most of the fights, though, that happens. and are just real silly, you know, guys walking back and forth with a six-shooter at their waist

just shooting and yelling at me as I'll shoot them in the head. They have no self-preservation instinct in this game for the most part. It's not, yeah, it's not a game about that. I'll also say that playing this really brings me back to just how long ago 2010 was because I feel like it is progressive in that you can play a queer character, if you will, if you want to, and there are options for that, but I feel like all of the queerness feels like Easter eggs to me. In fact, one of your companions is

a gay man. I'm sure. I don't know if he's by or if he's gay, but he's presented. Okay. But even that, you have to dig through dialogue options to find out. And I feel like that's as upfront as games could be even in 2010 when it comes to these kind of like queer themes and queer

characters. Veronica's a little more up front about it, but it's not much better. Yeah. I think that like I don't, I have mixed feelings about that. I have no like to stand on this. as just like a straight cis guy, so I don't know. But to me, it felt like, why would that character just immediately volunteer their sexuality to a roving gun nut, you know, who they're, who they're teaming up with? Like, I actually really liked that it didn't come up until it was appropriate.

Like, I think you have to hit on him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it didn't feel hidden. But I, if anybody who, like, I'm not here to tell queer people what is good queer representation, you know, like, for me, that worked. And it felt more natural, but I also, people call, yell at me and call me a prude all the time.

So who knows? No, I will say, yeah, straight cis guy checking in here. My opinion is not that valuable. But I did feel that, yeah, like discovering queerness is like the Easter egg of real life, I guess, too. When you talk to someone, I feel like, oh, you, this is what you're into. Okay. And in a way, the game is semi-realistic. But I also feel that in Fallout, people are not as concerned with their social lives,

which is generally when your sexual identity is. more visible. So I feel like that aspect might not be as visible in general. Just like whatever anyone's into is not on the hierarchy of needs in the Polks Apocalypse. So it's not as obvious. Yeah. It felt a little genre concerning to me in that way too. And it's also a thing where at least for me, it was a little refreshing in the face of bioware where everyone is a player sexual. Nobody has a sexuality. They just, whatever the player is controlling is the hottest thing in the world, if you give them enough paintings. You know, and then you'll on unlock the sex, you know, minigame or whatever with them, that stuff always felt way more

artificial and gross to me than any other treatment of it. Yes, I believe outside of Benny, and I could be wrong about this, but I think all the sex in Fallout New Vegas is sex you have to pay for. I think it's sex work. As far as I know, I'm sure there are a lot of options I have not explored. Yeah. So I do want to wrap up soon, but I'm sure people are intimidated by the idea of this game, especially if you were like me and into Japanese RPGs and unfamiliar with Western RPGs like this one. This one is a little more friendly, of course, than the old fallout games.

But still, it is now an old game, and it has some certain things that newer games don't have. And I will echo what Cole set up front in that this does not need to be an 120-hour game. It can be a 20-to-30-hour game, but I feel like once you get into it, you might want to see as much of this world as possible. if the antiquatedness of the experience doesn't throw you off. I feel like this game has a real, a real sense,

a real knack for grabbing you because of all of the role-playing elements we discussed earlier. You can decide who your character is, what you want them to be, and what you want to focus on. That really plays into the narrative. Yeah. You have to, it's a weird place to be in, though,

because it can be as long as you want it to be, you know, it can be 20, 30 hours and you can beat it. But you do have to give it more than like four hours for it to really, really show its hook. It has this slow kind of beginning with a tutorial, with a town where there's not a whole lot to do. They give you, you know, the equivalent of going and killing rats in the basement. You know, you'll clear the schoolhouse. Mantises, things like that. Like, it doesn't

do all of its strengths right away. You do have to get a little bit further into it. So it's kind of hard, I think, for people. Like, people could pick it up and just be like, this feels like crap. It's real brown and ugly. I don't want to play this. I think you have to give it like five hours. And then I think it's probably an all or nothing like you either want to play it and see the things it has to show you or it's not a game for you you know it's rare for me to think of somebody who is going to be like yeah i could i beat in three hours or 30 hours i didn't do any of the side quest i just went right for the ending you know that would be weird i can't imagine people doing that yeah i would say all of the joys pretty much all of the joys in this are found off the beaten path

the game will direct you kind of along the road you know making a counterclockwise sweet on the Mojave getting to Vegas and what have you you know and to avoid kind of only being dragged from kind of the more bland parts to the more bland parts is be ready to say yes to the game

when it is tempting you off of that because oftentimes the game's going to say yes in response to whatever you you know try to do when you're over there doing whatever it's tempting you with yeah I'll echo what Gary said earlier just to emphasize this that I don't think

the game will win you over immediately. The initial scenarios it presents you with are very vanilla. Yes, you can side with the patter-gangers, but the initial scenario is innocent villagers versus escape prisoners throwing dynamite at them. I think most people are going to go for the obvious to help the villagers and not understand that even siding with the enemies is an option.

And even then, it's not an option that's very compelling. But once you explore the periphery more, once, like you said, Cole, explore the side quest, you can see how your individual, choices will affect quest lines and open certain ones up. Even down to the way you're dressed, I remember entering an area not understanding

why is everybody hot, everyone is shooting at me immediately, did the game bug out? And then I realized like, oh no, I'm wearing my NCR armor because it was the strongest thing I had, and they hate the NCR. So even down to the way you're dressed affects the way MPCs will view you and if

they're hostile to you or not. So it's not even just how you build your character. It's what you're wearing that will affect, you know, responses to you. This is more just general advice, but Fallout New Vegas has very specifically gained this huge reputation as being, you know, one of the greatest games ever made.

And I think it definitely deserves that. If you're listening to this and are approaching the game for the first time, knowing that, do your best to forget it. Expectations can only hurt you, I think. Because if you go into it. Yeah, yeah. And that's definitely true here.

But like, yeah. like that that's every time somebody's told me something was the best thing ever and I played it it's bummed me out yeah uh you know um yeah could kill kill kill that part of you that is going in because all that you're going to find is you're going to get three hours into this and say well what was everybody talking about you know yeah the open world uh the way open world games articulate has really changed a lot they they feel a lot less lockdown a lot less modular um things like the witcher three and Breath of the Wild and even Metal Gear Solid 5, things that would follow this really try to make these games more interesting and more engaging constantly. And I feel like this is very much of an old-fashioned open world design that does fit the time it came out.

But even in 2010, it did feel a little dated, I would say. Yeah. But I think if you can meet it on its terms and you are in the pocket for that kind of very robust, role-playing experience where you matter, your decisions matter, and not in the typical Bioshock way. There's a lot to gain from it.

Be curious. When you meet somebody, they might have an interesting story. There might be more to that story than you think. And you might think you know everything about a situation because you've sized it up, but not everything is as black and white as the powder gangers in the beginning. Like a lot of things, there's a lot of additional context.

Also, if you feel like a lark, make a character with really, really low intelligence and play them. Because you play this game. has like real dummy mode uh and that is very very cute and funny uh constantly asking people about caesar's luncheon not understanding one of these days i will be brave enough to play a low intelligence character with pure melee build one of these days just just an absolute big hungry dungus who like just smashes with a hammer we call we call a bam bam mode yeah so i guess in

summation uh play fallout new vegas you probably own it and if not uh look look for your couch cushions. You'll have enough in there to play at least one of the DLCs. But this has been Retronauts. You can find us online at Retronauts on Twitter. Of course, we are supported by all the fans out there at Patreon.com slash Retronauts. If you want to support the show, we recommend it.

If you want to sign up at the $5 level, you get all these episodes one week at a time in at free and also access to a vast catalog of full length Patreon-exclusive episodes as well as two Patreon-exclusive episodes every month. We've been doing this since the very beginning of 2020. So there are now almost three and a half years worth of exclusive episodes

that you haven't heard if you're not on the Patreon and that Patreon level also includes access to monthly columns or sorry weekly a weekly column and a weekly podcast by a contributor to Diamond Fight there's a lot happening on the Patreon it helps support the show check it out at patreon.com slash retronauts Gary and Cole, thank you for being on the show let everyone out there know about duckfeed.tv

and of course your vast catalog of Fallout New Vegas episodes or just Fallout episodes in general. Yeah, we did a month on Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 Yeah, we've We've done a lot of This lineage of CRPG

Yeah There and you're really really slowed it down It's different than Retronauts If you never listen to it It's more we go beat by beat through the plot You know Through these things So it's a little bit like a book club

Yeah Or a let's play almost With analysis But we recommend it And those are all on our public feeds We also have a Patreon if you go to patreon.com slash duckfeed TV and we have a bunch of episodes that are also on that yeah very specifically the follow coverage has been on our show watch out for fireballs which i don't

think we've said this first brandy goes yeah uh but uh that can be found there uh you know either duck feed dot tv or watchoff for fireballs dot com and uh and you know check it out we have a bunch we have a bunch uh this upcoming month we're releasing our live episode from the midwest gaming classic uh that we had bob on but we've had bob on a bunch we have uh Doddy Oxford, Retronauts is going to be on an upcoming Bonfire Side chat with us. About the Leland Ring, we've had some crossover and stuff. So, yeah, hopefully easy to come on over. I probably won't do Retronauts about SimCopter,

but you can hear me talk about it for about eight minutes on your episode. As for me, I've been Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Serbo. I have a ton of other podcasts of Talking Simpsons network at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. There's Talking Simpsons. There's What a Cartoon. and behind the Patreon paywall at Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

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We'll see you again next time for another episode of Retronauts. Take care. You know, Thank you.