Video Gamers Podcast - Fallout: New Vegas - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Gaming couriers Michael, Josh and Paul are heading to Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas that is! Join us for this week's incredible gaming deep dive as we talk all things Fallout New Vegas. Chosen by Legendary supporter Glapsuidir, we give a full breakdown on the game, our thoughts, play make love, marry or murder and see where it ends up on our gaming leaderboard. Don’t be a Benny and join us for this awesome episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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multiplayer squad.com to get bonus episodes, early access, ad-free episodes, exclusive I'm not just talking about the gamma radiation. Hello, and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Today we have a very special deep dive as we will be breaking down the 2010 classic Fallout New Vegas. Please rate our show five stars, leave us a written review in Apple Podcasts, and come check out our Patreon page at MultiplayerSquad.com. Support starts at $5 a month, and you'll unlock perks like our bonus Squadcast episodes. Again, that's MultiplayerSquad.com. My name is Paul, and I am your host, or the Mr. House of this episode.

Let's keep things on track, or I'll have to summon my upgraded MK2 Securitron army. Joining me are Unpredictable Benny, who is trying to upend the status quo and climb to the top. It's Josh. I knew I was going to be Benny. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. And I don't mind it. It's okay.

You know what? Benny is the catalyst through this whole game. He sure is. And with us are Yes Man, not in the sense that he's weak and always saying yes to people, just simply the fact that he is so positive, no matter what the message is. So he's always so excited to be here. It's Michael. My favorite thing about Josh's Benny is how striking he looks in that beautiful checkered coat. I'm so happy to be here, guys. Wearing that tablecloth jacket.

Right. Oh, it's totally a tablecloth. Absolutely. Oh, man. All right. So, you know, guys, some of our listeners are probably wondering, why are we covering such an old game? I know we've even made a couple of jokes before recording. Believe it or not, this is actually not the oldest game we have covered on Deep Dives. It's actually the third

oldest. The games that are older that we have covered are Left 4 Dead 2 and Halo Reach, both of which are in our bottom eight on our leaderboard. So I'm curious to see if Fallout New Vegas might be different. Uh-oh. Wow. Yeah. Well, you know, we do have something in our Patreon support called the Legendary Tier. Josh, do you want to tell the people a little bit about it? Oh, do I ever. And it is truly legendary. So everybody that supports the show, first of all, thank you very much.

We wouldn't be talking right now if it wasn't for the support of our listeners. But we have different tiers for people that want different levels of perks or just different levels of awesomeness. And our highest tier is our legendary tier. And the main perk for the legendary tier is that you get to pick a game that we have to do a deep dive on. That's the deal. If you sign up for legendary, you absolutely get to pick the game to do a deep dive on. That's the deal. If you sign up for Legendary, you absolutely get to pick the game. We will deep dive it. And we're going to give you our honest thoughts. Just because you go Legendary and pick a game doesn't mean we're going to like it. So that's part of it. But that's how we are deep diving Fallout New Vegas. Legendary supporter Glapsidier has been with us for a very, very long time,

is one of the most outspoken supporters of the show, loves seeing Glap on social media and stuff like that, always recommending our podcast to people and things like that. So just really awesome long-term listener and member of the community. And Glap Sidir went legendary and then kind of sat on his pick for a little while. And he said, you know, I want to think about it for a little bit, which is fine. There's no pressure to pick a game right away. And then finally, Glaps said, hey, I know what game I want you to play. And we said, okay, what is it? And he said, Fallout New Vegas. And we all went, oh, yeah, we know that game. And then we downloaded it, we started playing it,

and I realized I've never played Fallout New Vegas before somehow. So this was a first for me. So thank you, Glap, for picking this game, because in some odd universe, my brain thought that I had played New Vegas, when in reality I hadn't. Well, Josh, do we have any reviews to read on the show? Oh, we have reviews! They've been pouring in, man. Like I said, I've been a happy Josh in the

mornings lately. Keep those coming. If you're listening to the show and you haven't left us a review, please take the time. It only takes a few seconds. If you're an Apple user, it's the Apple Podcast app. It's very easy to just click the episode and click write a review. If you're on Spotify, it's just a star rating system. So if you could leave us five stars there. And honestly, if you're using any of the other podcast apps, most of them allow you to either rate the show or leave a review, but they're extremely helpful for the show. And we love reading them. And that's kind of what we do. So I've got two of them. I know the show is going to be long. So I picked two of the shorter ones.

But this first one comes in from Bowdoin Gamer 123. Five-star review. And it's titled, Absolute Love This Podcast. And it says, I have always listened to gaming podcasts. But this one is great. With all your hilarious segments and funny hosts, this is the best podcast I have ever listened to. Oh, we love you too.

That's a compliment, man. Makes my heart very happy. Yeah, I love the fact that there's people that say, hey, I've been trying to find a gaming podcast. None of the other ones hit. But man, this one's great. So that makes me happy. And then this other one comes in from random bob 3.0 upgraded version i guess uh and it's titled great podcast uh and it says hi guys this podcast is great i would rate it

six stars if it was possible because most gaming podcasts never have the games i like but you guys do keep up the great work. Ooh, very nice. I'm loving these reviews. I am too, man. I, they just, I thank you for number one.

Thank you for taking the time to leave the review, but it's really awesome to hear from the listeners because this is like, this is a conversation that the three of us get to have that the listeners get to kind of join in on as far as listening and stuff, but we don't always get to hear like their take on things as far as that goes. So I love this, like, hey, man, I found you guys loving the show. We appreciate it. All right. Well, I think that takes care of all of our initial housekeeping. So guys, we just need to split up and deliver these packages without being

shot in the head and buried. Let's deep dive new vegas okay we normally start out this part of the show by reading a description on steam this one is a doozy i don't know if you guys happen to notice the description on steam but here we go welcome to vegas new vegas enjoy your stay and that's the end of the description on steam i was like buckled up and ready to wait and ride the whole thing out i'm like all right we're gonna sit here and not play game my phone for a few minutes that is it seem uh i know that they don't write the actual summaries so bethesda or whoever it was really dropped the ball with this one i actually had to look on a lot of websites to find a decent summary and believe it or not the best I could find was Best Buy.

So I'm actually going to read Best Buy's description for the Xbox 360 version. You are on a perilous journey across the great Southwest in a post-nuclear world. As you trek across the treacherous Mojave wasteland, you'll need to keep your senses sharp for what may be lurking around the next corner. Your goal is to make a name for yourself, but beware, in New Vegas, fortunes can change in an instant. Welcome to Vegas, New Vegas. It's the kind of town where you dig your own grave before being shot in the head and left for dead. It's a town of dreamers and desperados where the right kind of person with the right kind of weaponry can really make a name for themselves,

as well as an enemy or two along the way. As you battle across the heat-blasted Mojave wastelands, the colossal Hoover Dam, and the neon-drenched Vegas Strip, you'll meet a colorful cast of characters, power-hungry factions, mutated creatures, and much more. Choose sides in the upcoming war, or declare winner-takes takes all and crown yourself the king of new vegas in this follow-up to the 2008 video game of the year fallout 3 somebody give this man a glass of water he got through it well done well it's lengthy but i think that's a good summary and that sets everything up for what you need to know it's not a direct sequel to fallout 3 but it does take place shortly after and this is kind of a little bit of a separate one-off that takes place in the fallout world

michael let's start with you first are you a fallout fan and did you play new vegas we know josh didn't but was this your first go around or had you played it before no i played it before and the funniest thing is i think the version I played was the Best Buy Xbox 360 version. I did play it on the Xbox 360 the first time around. And knowing myself, I probably bought it at Best Buy. But no, I played all the way through. I put so many more hours into it. This time, I think I experienced more in less hours, maybe because I played on the PC and not console.

But I played all the way through the game. I only remember doing one ending where I said multiple this time, but I've played every Fallout game there is except for one and two, which means I played three of them, I guess. Three, four in New Vegas. That's exactly right. So yeah, no stranger to Fallout in the third dimension. I remember playing it back at release. I played it on my 360. I probably sank somewhere around 80 hours into it. I remember exploring all of the desert landscape, trying to find everything I could, doing all the side missions. And I would have sworn to you that Benny was in so much of this game in my memory. And in replaying it, you kind of realize like

your memories of some of this stuff is just a little And in replaying it, you kind of realize your memories of some of this stuff is just a little bit off. Benny is definitely a main figure in the game, but you don't spend nearly as much time with him as I thought. So I remember New Vegas very fondly, one of my all-time favorites, absolutely my favorite Fallout game. And Josh, are you generally a Fallout fan? I love the Fallout games. Bethesda to me is just, they make very fun worlds. They're expansive. There's lots of interesting characters. I like the free roam aspect of most of them. It's kind of like you mentioned, hey, if I walk this direction, I'm going to find something that's waiting for me over there. So yes, I've always been a fan of the Fallout series, and Bethesda in general, to be honest.

It really baffles me that I somehow missed Fallout New Vegas. I would need to look at what came out around that time to try to figure out how I missed this entry into the Fallout series. I must have been playing something else. Just somehow slipped past you, huh? I mean, it must have been playing something else just somehow slipped past you huh i mean it could have been a fallout fatigue too because it came out so close to fallout three i think yeah that might have been it and maybe it came out and i just went oh that's an expansion to fallout three and so it just because it was called fallout new vegas and i went oh well

it came out so close to fallout three it's just a dlc or an expansion and yeah i've already played that so i'll just move on to something else. Yeah, it's interesting to have such long gaps between the Fallout games in the main series, because Fallout 3 came out in 08, Fallout 4 was 2015, and of course, that was the last Fallout to release. Where's Fallout 5, man? I know, right? We gotta wait for starfield first all right so obviously new vegas being a little bit dated it's now 2022 the game is 12 years old it is one of the most popular games to mod it's also kind of known a little bit infamous for being tricky to mod by keeping it stable and able to run so i wanted to ask you guys how long did it take you to mod new vegas

just to make it playable um is a week an acceptable answer is that okay wait you're the model of this group michael yeah no and that mods everything i i do i like especially bethesda games i mod the heck out of them and And this one, I actually even watched a tutorial on how to do it right because I'd heard before that it's notoriously hard to make stable when you mod. And so that being said, the modded version that I had by the end, I think I had like 53 mods running on this one. Something like that. Yeah, I modded a lot more because... I mean, this is the first time i ever put an emb on a fallout game ever um emb basically what what that is is it it essentially

is a a collection of mods that goes in together and it doesn't change the game at all it just changed the way like the camera works a little bit the lighting the textures um and so in my emb it was very like rustic very deserty if you look right at the sun you can't see anything because it's like you're actually looking at the sun which kind of affected the gameplay a little bit since i'd already played it so much before so i modded a lot um but i stuck to only mods that affect the look and feel of the game nothing that affects the story because i wanted to go through and play the vanilla story again all all the way through like I had 12 years ago. I spent probably an hour. I watched a YouTube because I don't mod very many games. I mean,

I think the only mods that I've really done are back when I used to have an ultra wide monitor and a game wasn't made for ultra wide. So I'd have to like go in and mod the files to make it fit like an ultra wide screen or something. So I'm not, I'm not near the modern that Michael is. I think I watched like a 30 minute YouTube video that really took you through the process step by step. I downloaded the things the guy said. I modded it. I played the game. I went back and added one mod after about an hour of gameplay, which was a sprint mod that we can get into a little bit later if we need to. But yeah, I'm realizing that, yes, I am a graphics snob. Some games I don't need good graphics for, but if you're putting me in a 3d immersive world,

I want decent graphics. So I really focused on trying to up the graphics of fallout new Vegas. Um, probably more so than anything else. Yeah. I would say it probably took me about two hours to get everything up and running. I tried playing the base game Vanilla with no mods, and it literally crashed during the tutorial. So I made it about three minutes into the game. You know, I talked to the doctor. I walked out where they give you the varmint rifle. And immediately, as soon as I pulled the rifle out, it shut down. So I was like, all right, we're going to need to mod this.

And, you know, Michael had initially said, because I kind of gave you a heads up where you were like, well, yeah, you can just add everything automatically in Vortex, right? And I was like, well, it actually, with New Vegas, it's a little more complicated. You know, this involved downloading files from Microsoft. You have to change lines inside DLL files. There's all nvse stuff a script extenders i think is what it stood for you know you you definitely have to tinker with it a bit in order to play it nowadays which is kind of surprising because 12 years is a while but it's not that long ago um it actually is pretty intense to try to get it to run nowadays. To give you an idea of some of these mods, these are things like Unofficial Patch,

the Yuki Chigai Unofficial Patch, New Vegas Anti-Crash, New Vegas Tick Fix. I was really surprised because Bethesda is normally famous for putting out such polished games. Oh, yeah, dude. They never have bugs or crashes or anything. No official patches? No official patches no official patches

to take care of all this now we should mention that this is on pc as well i don't know if this game released on pc initially if it was like a console where they kind of ported it to pc i don't know why but it was apparently the pc portion of this game was extremely buggy or it just wasn't really intended to run on modern hardware. I'm not really sure why it was a thing, but I do remember watching this video on modding, and they're like, okay, so the first seven mods are so this game doesn't crash, and it doesn't hitch, and it doesn't stutter, and things look smoother. And then it got into like, I'm like, give me the graphics mods, man. Where's the graphics mods? Give me those 4K textures.

And then it was like, okay, well, here's your graphics mods. And then here's a couple more that you might want. Well, Josh, if this makes you feel any better, Fallout New Vegas did release simultaneously on Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. So no excuses. I think that's where it was notoriously hard to run, even off the start, was PC. Because I remember playing on the 360. I had no problems at all. But when you have a console game, that's why some games don't release on consoles sometimes,

or vice versa with PCs, because it's designed in one way and it releases another way. But yeah, it's funny because I'm no stranger to doing things like anti-tick and Bethesda games that are older. Script extenders, the first thing I ever do is put a script in. This is going to happen once an episode, guys. Words are so hard. A script extender. Say it 10 times fast.

I don't want to right now. I applaud you for trying to get me to do it, but no, I will not. So wait, what kind of mod were you? It's called a script extender. Yeah. There it is. Boom, I did not. So wait, what kind of mod were you? It's called a script extender. Oh, there it is. Boom, I did it. Drop the mic. I'm out of here.

You guys finished the episode. It'll only go downhill from here because I got it right. No, but I'm no stranger to script extenders because I do a lot of mesh improvement mods and those always require a script extender. Look, man, I'm on a roll. But I've never done one where it's like hey i've got to go into my windows like into i'm like no no i don't need to mod windows to mod a game yes you do yes you do like you have to upgrade a couple of files in windows to do it so it's crazy yeah follow a

tutorial don't just try to start downloading mods and make it work it's a little too temperamental for that. All right. Well, let's start to get down into some of the nitty gritty here. Michael, do you want to set the stage a little bit about the story around New Vegas? I should have talked a lot less just now, because now I've got to go through a whole description without messing up script extender or... Okay. So the year is 2281. The not so distant future, which looks somewhat like the distant past.

Y'all play Fallout games. You get it. Essentially, we are a courier named Benny. Nope, we are not. We are a courier who is assassinated by a man named Benny wearing a tablecloth for a coat. Very suave. Beautiful man, though. Let me tell you that much.

And essentially, he shoots us in the head, and that's how the game starts. And compared to other Fallout games, it starts very quickly. You're not growing up as a child or watching... You're not crawling as a baby. Yeah, you're not crawling as a baby, watching your wife get shot in the chest from some nameless entity. Literally, you get shot in the head, and then you're talking to a doctor who's like, hey, I repaired you. This friendly robot Victor found you.

And he fixed you up a whole bunch. And so the whole thing is right off the start, boom, revenge. That's all you have in the game is who killed me. How do I kill him? And that's basically the beginning of this game. Now, you do find a few things out like you're looking for this platinum chip along the way hey he took a platinum chip from you and you know it's new vegas so you think the platinum chip might have something to do with like buying into a

high rolling casino or something like that or a high roller area we don't know we're just trying to find out what this platinum chip is but along the way as you make your way to new vegas because you don't start in new vegas you start in a small podunk town outside very friendly people for the most part some not so friendly but mostly friendly as you make your way along the way that's the whole game is is friendly and not friendly people who do you align yourself with who do you not the game has a lot of different factions and they have a lot of different objectives they want you to do but the whole thing is let's get the new vegas find this benny character and see if we can take that tablecloth off his shoulders yeah and along the way as you do have all these different factions

you kind of learn how they're all at war with one another all of them are more or less fighting over the hoover dam and so you're gonna choose so you're going to choose who you're going to align with. Who are you going to betray or backstab? Who do you want to support? Or are you going to support anybody? And these are all choices you can make over the course of the game. All right. Now, Josh, I think your job might be a little bit easier because most people have probably played Fallout in the past. But when you think of Fallout gameplay, what comes to mind? It's an open world exploration with some gunplay involved, a lot of interacting with characters, lots of questing. I mean, this is your standard Bethesda game. If somebody out there listening has never played a Fallout game or a Elder Scrolls game,

then number one, what are you doing? Yeah. You know, at least give them a try. There's some pretty famous series. But yeah, I mean, the gameplay is really that you're in this huge open world. You can, you can literally point your feet one direction and just walk. You don't have to talk to the characters that walk up to you and try to point you in the right direction. You're probably going to die if you do that. But there's lots of things to interact with. If you see a house, usually you can go inside a house. Most buildings are you're able to explore or enter and look around. There's characters in the game that usually all have pretty interesting personalities. Fallout tends to go a little over the top with some of the

characters. And then other characters are just kind of normal people. So they do a good mix there. It is a first person perspective and there is shooting. Now, while you do have melee weapons in Fallout, a lot of it is geared around shooting things. more of like an action type game. Or you can use this thing called the VAT system, which will allow you to kind of pause combat, aim at specific body parts. It'll tell you what percentage chance you have to hit them. And you can kind of play it on a little bit more of like a tactical level at that point, where it uses up action points and things like that as well. So you kind of get the choice of how you want to approach it. But otherwise, it's meeting characters. They send you on quests. You have your big overarching quest line, in this case, getting to New Vegas and finding Benny. There's a gajillion side quests. There's a huge open world to explore. You can really just lose yourself in these games. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about how you build a character in New Vegas. So like

all the Fallout games, you do have the special system for your base stats. And so that's an acronym that stands for strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck. And in the very beginning, you get to build your character, pick where you want to allocate various points. And I don't think there's a whole lot to say about the special system. Although two things I did want to mention. Since New Vegas does involve a lot of casinos, you can play roulette. You can play blackjack. You know, there are games that you can play where you can bet actual currency in the game.

So, of course, it's caps and you can trade those in for chips and you can gamble. And if you make your luck rating like nine or 10, you will win so often in the casinos. They will kick you out because they will assume that you're either cheating or you're too lucky and they will actually kick you out of the casino, which is very funny. You, I've literally never in a fallout game, put points into luck.

Almost ever. I blaze my own path. Okay. It's fallout. I'm going to do it. You, I've literally never in a Fallout game put points into luck almost ever. I blaze my own path, okay? It's Fallout. I'm going to do it. And you just blew my mind because I sat down at a roulette table and I'm like, you know, I'm just going to play bet on black and bet on red for a while. And I'm like, why am I losing so much?

Was your luck rating low? Yeah, you just taught me something. After like 90 hours in this game total between my two playthroughs. You just taught me something. What kind of madman puts all his points into luck, though? Like, that's what I want to know, man. It's all about strength or agility or constitution or something, man. Like, you probably use light mode.

No, yeah. Don't you, Paul? Hey, I didn't put a lot of points into luck. I'm just saying that the option is there. If you were ever going to put points into luck it would be in new vegas given the setting but what i what i love even more is if you create a low intelligence character that means if you make their intelligence one or two do you guys know what it does to the game no apparently it completely changes some of your options where you can like rely on stupidity or something like that to get by dude it changes so much of the dialogue in the game instead of talking to a vendor and saying you know because you get the

dialogue you never hear the character talk you just click it but it'll say like show me what you have for sale and that's what you'll click and then you'll see the items if you have a low intelligence character he just says me buy things yes yes it brings up your inventory and even at the one point in the game when you're talking to the female doctor and she's explaining implants she goes through the whole spiel and then your character goes wait you sell plants and then she kind of rolls her eyes and re-explains what implants are and then gives you a discount because you really need some intelligence implants so that just tells you like the way your build-out rates can change the game yeah it's pretty great i've seen in some cases where like it only it only happens a few times but in the game as you're playing through

certain checks happen and we'll probably cover this in a minute, but if your speech is very high, you get an extra dialogue option. Well, apparently, if your intelligence is so low, you actually have a chance to pass a quest marker based on how dumb you are. How stupid, yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Oh, it's so funny.

I always build my characters like the way I want to play them, and I never want to be the dumb guy. Like, I'm not a smart man, Jenny. You know? Be biased up. Right? Oh, dude, just go full force gump build.

It's all luck, and it's all endurance, and you're just running everywhere. Yeah, go full force. Yeah, so endurance and you're just running everywhere. Yeah. Go full forest. Yeah. So Michael, you were just mentioning the skills. I think the skills are infinitely more interesting than the special stats. Oh yeah. Skills you get, you get how many?

I think 15 points every single time you level and you level pretty often in New Vegas. Sometimes you'll complete a mission and you'll level twice. And so you get to pump all of these points into things like barter, energy weapons, explosives, guns, lockpicking, medicine, melee weapons, repair, science, sneak, speech, survival, and unarmed. So I was curious, what were your guys' favorite stats to pump into? I have an issue where I cannot resist a locked chest or a safe or something. So I always, in every game, always go lockpicking because it really bugs me. Like, what's in that safe, man? And so I went lockpicking.

There's a part early on where it's like, hey, you can't repair this radio or something. So I really kind of went jack of all trades for a while. And then I started realizing like, okay, I don't need some of this stuff. And the thing that Fallout New Vegas does is you have so many different skills that you're never going to be able to really do the jack of all trades thing. And so I learned that pretty quick. And I kind of went, oh, the way I would normally play a game doesn't work with this. So at that point, I really started to pump my points into speech because there was an option with a character where it's like, hey, if your speech was a high enough level, you could say this line, but you can't. And I was like, oh, well, that's just going to bug me. So yeah,

I really went speech, lockpicking. And those were the two that I really tried to max out. Yeah. Josh makes a really good point in this. This game, when it comes to dialogue options, and you skipping through having to do a lot more legwork... The quests are so long in the Fallout series of games, just like the Elder Scrolls games. But if you pass a speech check, you can oftentimes skip a little bit of having to go do a courier mission where you have to run and grab something and bring it back to this guy so he'll trust you. You're just like, hey, I'm a civil tongue devil. I'll talk to you. You're good. But almost every check like that in Fallout New Vegas is a speech and something else. It's either a speech and a barter or a speech and a science.

And the cool thing is, I'm like, okay, I learned pretty fast that if I just maximize speech, there's always going to be a speech option in almost every case. And that worked out. That being said,

lockpick also, super important. One of the most important things about all Fallout games is check every single box. And it's so frustrating when you come across an ammunition chest

that's locked. You don't have the locking, picking skill to even try to open it. And it's so frustrating when you come across an ammunition chest that's locked. You don't have the locking picking skill to even try to open it. And you're like, dumb. I hate this. I know what's in there. It's good.

And then you try to mark on your map. You come back there like 20 hours later and you realize it's like two, nine millimeter rounds, which you don't even use a nine millimeter gun anymore. But the last thing that I always use, which is super important is something I completely forgot about just now. Your turn, Paul. I'll come back.

Okay, sure. I legit forgot. The most important one. The funny thing, and we covered this in our recent episode on Wasteland 3, is that Josh and I play RPGs very similarly. I first maxed out speech and lockpicking. Those were the first two that I pumped basically everything into. And then after that, I started putting more into guns, barter, and sneak. And so I was going with more of a range kind of build.

And so I was trying to use sneak to kind of like work my way around the map. There were a couple times that I would steal quest items off of somebody. And that's always really helpful too. So a few points into stealth never hurts in Fallout. But Fallout also gives you a lot of consumable items that temporarily boost your skills. And so if you ever absolutely have to do something or pass a check, usually you can read a book or consume something in the game that'll give you a temporary boost, you can pass that check and then you go back to your normal stats.

Did you remember, Michael? What were you going to say? Yeah, it's funny because you actually reminded me twice there. It was barter because in every RPG ever, I just want to make lots of money and save money. And it's funny because I never once... I don't think I've ever in any playthrough of any bethesda game used any of those temporary stat boosts i sell them all to vendors to make money and just buy a whole bunch of stim packs like i don't care about accuracy i'm gonna spray this room and when i start dying i'm gonna hit tab open up the pip boy heal myself spray the room some more dude inventory management is always hard for me in bethesda games because anything and everything

is lootable you can loot like i think of this more in in terms of elder scrolls where you can loot like every cup every plate every apple every piece of ham like pieces of cheese and next thing you know in your inventory you've got 700 of something and fallout is no different my inventory was full of like gecko meat and like cactus blossoms and it's like at some point i don't know what to do with all this and you kind of just like sell everything the biggest thing with that is weight fallout uses a weight system for your inventory where if you pick up a big heavy suit of armor that's like a third of your weight allowance so So I was constantly doing the weight shuffle where I'd want to pick up a gun and it's like,

oh, you can't do that. Now you're over encumbered. And I'd have to sit there and be like, okay, well, I don't need this. I don't need this. And I'd look and I'd be like, wait, this broken capacitor is five pounds. Like why have I been holding onto that?

You know, and it's like, you dump that and you're kind of playing that inventory game a little bit. Why am I walking around with an eight pound battery for what battery weighs eight pounds you ever picked up a car battery uh okay those things are heavy man eight pounds yeah no and it's funny we were talking about the special earlier and i was like the only important one is strength so i can carry this crap around yeah sometimes i would check my inventory and i'd be like how do did I end up with 12 9mm pistols? And then you just start repairing

and you break them all and repair others. Yeah, the inventory is kind of out of control. That's a good segue here. I wanted to ask you guys, what were your favorite weapons in New Vegas? What did you like to roll with? I used a myriad of weapons, to be honest. I did not get super attached to any one weapon. That was part of the fun of this game for me,

was like, oh, I feel like using an SMG, and let's just go really fast and spray everybody. Oh, okay. Well, now I want to use a shotgun. But I really like the energy weapons. Those are the ones that stood out to me more than any of the others is I want that like laser rifle. Yeah. Laser rifle or plasma gun that looks like it's shooting out, you know, gamma radiation or, you know, laser beams and turning enemies into pile of ash and stuff like that. But yeah, I didn't really find myself attached to any one specific weapon, to be honest. Yeah, I was exactly the opposite. I used three guns

for the most part, if you want to call one of them a gun, because it lobs grenades at people. I was very, very, very into the grenade launcher because that was my frustration. I'm done with this vault that I got stuck in and i just want to blow stuff up and i learned quickly that i can blow up my own companions and in this game they don't die they just go into a temporary coma and wake back up um but every fallout game i play i pretty much run sniper i run sniper as much as i can um for the most part if it's an open area i will sneak around as much as i can like in this one there's these people called the powder gangers and they've holed up in this prison by the time i got inside that prison there was no one left alive because i literally was on the mountains around it just

sniping people off and i used a prototype um laser pistol that i found in a vault which was insane which i never do energy weapons it's like me using magic in elder scrolls games i never do it i'm like sword and board i never use laser weapons but in this one i found this prototype laser pistol which has some like giant crit chance and i'm like i'm gonna roll with that for a long time and i did the energy weapons are pretty fun i always had ammo issues because you find a lot of ammo in the open world for like ninemm, 10mm, stuff like that. But the energy weapons, you kind of tend to run out. Similarly to Michael, I love running snipers.

I love running rifles. There was a little while when I was running with a pistol. Maybe you guys also had it called Maria. That was a pretty good upgrade for when I initially got that. I got mine very late. We'll talk about it later. I was going to say, depending on what order you do things things you might have gotten that very early or very late or never and um that's something that i should have mentioned earlier as far as spoilers go we will share some major spoilers

but we'll make sure to give you guys a warning for that later we'll keep everything spoiler free up to then um one of my favorite weapons did you guys ever mess around with a cattle prod no no i never even found the cattle prod the cattle prod basically does not do any damage but if you if you whack a guy three to four times with it they fall unconscious so if you don't want to kill people just run around with a cattle prod you can swing it something like 2400 times before it breaks oh wow and i never actually ran the the real missions i don't know about you guys whenever i log out of a gta game or fallout or hitman i can't help myself i i save the game and i just go here everyone kill everybody in sight and i just ran around new vegas whacking everything with the cattle prod and there would just be 40 bodies

just sleeping with like the little z's in the air above all of them as they're all unconscious and then they all wake up and you just whack them again and they go back i go to my bike i'm laughing so hard picture this right now because i'm picturing paul as i see him right now running after these npcs with his cattle prod. Yep. Oh, and just laughing the whole time because it's too funny. But you can also rob them, right? So just whack them with the cattle prod, steal whatever you need, get out of Dodge, and they don't even know. Yeah, so there's tons of weapons you can play around with.

I will say toward the end game, I finally picked up an incinerator, i got so excited and it was kind of garbage yeah i was so sad yeah you think a flamethrower would be a lot more fun but that is a little bit underwhelming yeah and even i got a named one from one of the vaults i think and i i i think i've entered it because i tried it once and i'm like you know this way that not the weight of it is terrible it's so heavy yep and there, not the weight of it, is terrible. It's so heavy. And there's not a lot of ammo for it, really. The flavor fuel isn't everywhere.

Towards the end, I got something that was like a power glove, I think. I would punch with it, and it went like... Kind of like... It was like Lucio. It was like Lucio. I was Lucio in this game. Yeah. And that was pretty cool. And that was way damaged. I'm like incendiary

you're gone incendiary incinerator words yeah are you crushing your bills defeating your monthly payments sounds like you're at the top of your financial game rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise

Visa card the credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply. So let's talk a little bit about the things that make Fallout unique. So Josh, you were bringing up the VATS system. I think when most people think of Fallout, that's probably the first thing that pops into their head is where you start combat, you hit pause in the game,

you hear the same sound every time you do it, and it zooms in on the enemy, and you get to start picking where you're going to shoot. Do you guys like using the VATS system or do you prefer to just play it more like a shooter? I, to give you an idea, I never once used VATS in Fallout New Vegas. I know it exists. I've used it in Fallout 4 and some of the other games, but for whatever reason, this time around, I just went, you know what? I want to play this like an action-type game.

I never went into VATS at all. So VATS, just for people that aren't aware, stands for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. And so that's where it kind of pauses the game. It pulls up your enemy a lot closer. And then, like I said, you can sit there and toggle through the different like limbs if you want to aim for the chest or the head or the arms. And if you do, different effects will happen. So if you hit them in the leg, like you'll cripple them and then they can't move very fast. Or if you hit them in the arm, now they can't. Their accuracy is really, really low and things like that. If you hit them in the

head, it does like a ton of extra damage and Um, and, and you can cripple all of the different limbs and stuff like that. So there's this kind of whole system that goes along with using vats. Um, but I just, in this case, I didn't find any of the fights very tough. Like normally you would use vats if you're in like a really hard fight against against a hard enemy, and it's like, okay, well, this guy's really fast. So let me target his legs and cripple his legs. And that way, he's a little bit slower. Or this guy, he's shooting me really quickly. Let me try to see if I can't target his arms so that he doesn't have accuracy and he can't damage me as much. So there is some strategy there. I just never needed it. And I never used it in this one.

I know Michael used it in this one i know michael used it uh say say yes twice if you're terrible at shooters yes and yes that's me um i was i was really mixed with it like i i had a great time with the sniper rifle from far away but i get so overwhelmed when i'm in a vault or something like that and i'm close quarters and there's just so many things to shoot and quite frankly they're too close to me for me to use my grenade launcher because i'll blow myself up um then i would use vats quite often and i i use the uh the blade runner gun for it i forget what it's called there's a blade runner mock-up gun in this game it's another special weapon that i found in a vault i did a lot of vault hunting by the way because it seems like

all the special weapons were in vaults but this thing had like a vats like if you do a headshot in vats crit chance was higher and um now that's obviously uses your action points so you can't just go around and vats all the time but i would start a fight by taking out like or crippling the hardest guy in the fight and then i'd spray the room so i used about 50. I used it situationally. And sometimes it was amazing. So in the very beginning in Good Springs, I don't remember the name of the guy, but there's one guy who's on the run from the Powder Gang. And you kind of gather everyone in the town and they're going to fight with you and you're going to fight them off. Oh, yeah.

And so as soon as you start killing the Powder Gang, it tells you on the top of the screen, the powder gang now hates you. You've gained infamy amongst the powder gang. And I started running toward my very first quest objective. And I'm running at the bottom of like a giant hill, almost like a small mountain. And out of nowhere, the game pauses and a powder gang starts yelling at me from the top of the mountain. He goes, I hope you like dynamite. And he pulls back a stick of dynamite and I paused it, aimed right at the dynamite, shot it out of his hand.

He exploded and it was so cinematic. It was so funny. So whenever I saw anyone try to use any kind of explosive, I would shoot it out of their hands. But other than that, I mostly played like Josh. You don't really need it for the most part. It's not a terribly difficult game, but there were some times when I would use it because it was just a lot of fun.

All right, now what about the Pip-Boy system? Because this is the other big thing in Fallout. If you want to pull up your map, if you want to look at your quest, if you want to look at your inventory, all of it look at your inventory all of it runs through your pip boy how do you feel about that the pip boy sucks dude i think it's really bad it's so poorly i hate the pip boy i do too i get it i've seen in like fallout poor michael's face right now he's like but i have a replica pip boy on my shelf back there hold on is it. He's like, but I have a replica Pip-Boy on my shelf back there.

Hold on, is it out? He's like, I ordered the Ultra Deluxe Edition and they gave me a functioning Pip-Boy. Like, what are you talking about? I hate it, to be honest. Like, I don't know what it is. I want to be able to pull up a map. I want to be able to go straight to my inventory. I don't want to have to pull up my wrist, have it look like it's a little dial, and then sit there and filter through the different tabs so that I can get to the map or I can get to the data or the conditions or whatever. It's the most unintuitive menu system

in a game. And I'll be honest with you you i don't know that it really serves a purpose for immersion or anything like that it's just a frustrating quality of life thing for me sure it does you can't use vats without a pit boy josh i didn't use that so good point it's so ugly all the text is green the map you don't see any real detail the the pit boy never bothered me in the past this go around i was like i just want to hit m and pull up a map i don't want to hit tab go to the map tab go to the local map tab and everything just takes a little longer i think because the game's a little older modern games i think just handle those mechanics a lot better guess who has two thumbs and has an opposite opinion

of both of you this guy uh you love it it's not so much the pit boy right the pit boy is annoying because there is the animation where you have to pull it up and look at it i just i like i think every game should be like this to where it's a one button that pulls up every menu item you could possibly need you can use the mouse and click on them as you go if you want to um i just it's one button that pulls up every menu item you could possibly need. You can use the mouse and click on them as you go if you want to. Look at the difference between Fallout and Skyrim. Skyrim, when I'm playing it, I'm always like, wait, what brings up my magic again? I'm like fiddling through the keyboard trying to push keys. And I'm like, no, that's my shouts. No, that one's my inventory. How do I get to my magic? I'm like, well, if I got a Pip-Boy, I can just click this and I can scroll through the different options i got data which shows in my map my quests

all that stuff on one convenient little screen that being said yeah the map is is lame and had i spent more time modding it i would have modded the map because i mod a map in every fallout game to where it actually looks like a map um but i like having one button that brings up every single thing i can possibly do in this game. It makes it easy for me and I don't have to think about it. Give me those shortcuts, man. I don't want the one button. I want the five buttons so that I can just go straight to my inventory or straight to the map or straight to my skills or something like that.

Right. Yeah. I do not like having to go, okay, well, I need to look at my gun. Let me pull up my Pip-Boy. Okay, let me go to my inventory tab. Let me go to my weapons tab now, or my armor tab, or my miscellaneous, or my health tab. There's just so many tabs. I don't need that.

Yeah. And mine could be situational because I hop from a console to PC to the Steam Deck deck all the time back and forth and for me it's just easier it's like okay what do i do on the console for consoles why what is it on the keyboard i just give me a pip boy sure or you could just play with controller on pc also yeah that also that's a shooter though so i'd be selling myself short a little bit. Everyone knows that. I hear you. All right, so let's go ahead and talk a little bit about funny encounters or funny side missions. We'll just spend a couple minutes here before going into some major spoilers.

So without getting into anything story related, was there anything that stuck out, especially from the humorous side of things? Wait, hold on. I can't go into. How do I talk about this without talking about the story of the game? Just don't give any major spoilers. Just like not the major main quest line. Like, like, I'll give you an example of a side mission. So as soon as I'm done with Good Springs, I start and I don't know about you guys. I don't walk on the roads.

I just put a marker and I beeline it as the crow flies. Yeah. And I'm going to jump over mountains and I'm going to swim through rivers. Once or twice, I ended up like in a stuck area and I had to kind of like backtrack and go around. But one of the very first side missions I picked up was a dude frantically runs up to me and starts yelling about how his wife needs help. And he's like, yeah, just go right here. It's on the right side of the broken satellite center. And then turn right and go rescue my wife. She's up there. She needs help right now. And so I start running up that mountain. I'm like, well, yeah, I'm going to go save this guy's wife. And there's just

geckos everywhere. I slaughter dozens of geckos i'm taking all of them out lo and behold there's nobody up there i find a stash i load all i i i loot all of these guns and currency and whatnot and then all of a sudden i turn around and that dude has now run up behind me and is like hey sorry i lied. My wife's not up here. I just lied to you. And now I got to go loot that stash that I found up here. And so then I just opened fire and immediately killed that guy because he just lied to me. But that's just like funny where you even get side missions where people are lying and try to manipulate you.

And that's the kind of stuff that you run into in Fallout. Yeah. There's a few that stand out And that's the kind of stuff that you run into and fall out. Yeah. The one, there's a few that stand out for me for the sake of time. I do remember one being fairly bananas, um, where you're in this town of Novak, um,

which you later find out is named that because it's a no vacancy sign. That's broken. Yeah. I was like, Oh wait, I get it now. Um, but,

but yeah, there's a, there's a guy that is upset because somebody betrayed him, and he wants you to figure out who it was. And when you – so you go around and you question all of the people in this town, and you're looking for clues, and it's almost this slight murder mystery type quest. But the funny part is he's like's like hey when you find the person you think it is take them out in front of this dinosaur and i'm gonna shoot them in the head from my little tower that i'm in and you're like okay and then so it's like you finally think it's this person and you're like hey follow me and they follow you out there and then sure enough

you put this hat on to like signal to the guy yeah and then i so i you put this hat on to signal to the guy. So I've got this hat on, this NPC standing next to me. And I'm like, well, wait, nothing's happening, did I do? And then all of a sudden, the NPC's head just explodes. And I'm like, I can't believe he did it. And then the guy comes running out and he's like, hey, all right, was that the person? And you're like, I think so. Sure hope so. By the way, that NPC that fired that round is probably the best companion you're like i think so yeah i hope so by the way that mpc that

fired that round is probably the best companion you can have in this game because he's just rolling around just sniping everything with me um yeah so i won't go too deep into him but i've got four written down i helped a super mutant wearing a blonde wig named tabitha fall in love with a robot named ronda a reunited love as one does yep i uh i met a reclusive boomer and i helped him fall in love with his love from afar i got a dog companion a new brain and i helped a bunch of elvis impersonators change their tune oh the elvis impersonators the kings the kings gotta love it oh yeah fantastic all right well we're gonna go ahead and start to share major spoilers now at this point i know the game's 12 years old but i'll still just give a spoiler warning so if you want to jump ahead go ahead and skip forward 14

minutes and nine seconds and that'll get you through the rest of the show all right so early on in the game you meet mr house and he is a person that i guess somehow uh it fused his brain into a supercomputer so he's now like a couple hundred years old and he's kind of like the guy that runs new vegas and you are in search of the platinum chip because that is what Benny stole off of you when he shot you and left you for dead. So Mr. House kind of like calls you over as soon as you enter Vegas. And he tells you that the platinum chip was actually made by him. And he tells you where you can find Benny. Now, I was curious as to what you guys chose to do at this point. Did you go and confront benny did you talk

to him did you completely ignore benny you can beat this game and never even talk to benny or do anything at all with his quest so i was kind of curious to know what you guys did with him i actually it's funny you mentioned that the way that you go through it with mr house i didn't meet mr house until way after i talked to benny so right when you get to new vegas somebody comes up to me like hey mr house is looking oh i think i think it's victor i think victor comes up to you and he's like which is a robot you'll figure this out later guys if you play the game victor the talking robot uh who looks like roy rogers kind of um is like hey mr house really wants to meet with you and you need to go talk to him and i'm like cool i'm busy

though i'm on a revenge mission i have to go talk to benny and i go into the casino where benny's at i meet him right away and i'm not very smart guys like i'm not i'm just gonna go on record and say i'm not the whole entire game up to this point the four or five hours to this point i'm on a revenge mission and benny's like listen hear me out follow me to this hotel room and i gotta talk to you and i'm like okay i'll follow you let's go a conversation. I go and I talk to the guy and he's like, listen, hear me out. I'm going to leave and I'm going to go take care of some stuff and I'm going to have you do some stuff too. And I'm like, sure, no problem. That sounds like a good idea. So then all of a sudden these hit men come try to kill me and Benny's run off

and I don't see him again until like, I don't know, 20 hours in the game later, because I'm so side quest hungry that I don't talk to him until way later on when I meet him in the Kaisar's camp. Yes, I said Kaisar. I know Paul hates that, by the way. Good old Caesar. Yeah. And then I get Maria and hack his head off later on. But yeah, I didn't realize that that was actually an unconventional way to do it. I guess a lot of people killed Benny off the start because they should have, because it probably makes the story go a little faster and easier. But yeah, no, I was like, revenge, revenge.

Oh, this guy seems nice. He's wearing a tablecloth for a jacket. I'll listen to him. Stupid. So your Benny ran away and got captured by the Legion. And did they give you a choice for how to kill him yes they did do you remember what those choices were yes one of them was I could crucify him and I talked to Benny about this I'm talking to Benny and I'm like hey Benny

question for you hey thank you yeah I'm gonna kill you how do you want to die you want it quick and he's like that'd be great that'd be be swell. Gee, daddy-o. Gee, baby, baby. He says baby like 900 times when he's talking to you. Baby, don't kill me that way. Don't do it. And then I'm like, what if I crucify you? And he's like, oh, no, baby, please don't do that to me. So, baby, what did you find down there? I see.

And how's that going to happen? Don't do that, baby. Not crucifixion. I could be up there for days with those twisted creeps laughing and pointing and then i'm like what if i let you go and he's like oh that'd be great that daddy oh and all all these old words um and then i'm like you know at this point i learned my lesson i'm not letting him go i didn't want to crucify him that'd be not that'd be not nice it's a little over the top yeah i'm like i'm gonna kill him quickly and then i realized i looked down i'm like oh i don't have any weapons that kill him quickly i have a machete but i've already committed to this choice so i hack him like 19 times before

he dies oh no and i'm like oh oh man he didn't he didn't go quickly but apparently he thought he did because the voice line is probably the same. And then I took Maria. Oh, wow. What about you, Josh? This just goes to show you how differently this game can play depending on the choices that you make and stuff like that. Because I talked to Mr. House. He said, hey, Benny's over at the... What's the name of the casino?

Top 38, I think. Yeah, the Topps Casino or something like that. So I go over to the Topps. I'm talking to some guys. I sneak my way up to the elevator. And then I wind up going up to where Benny's at. I confront Benny. He's like, hey, we can work together.

I'm going to go to, you know, come find me later or something like that. And I just went, nah, man, you shot me in the head. Like, I'm not working. And I lit went, nah, man, you shot me in the head. Like I'm not working. And I lit Benny up like right then and there. And so Benny, Benny went down like a sack of potatoes, man. I looted his body, found the platinum chip on him.

And I walked straight out of the casino without anybody being any, any wiser on that. So it's just really, that's like telling that the way that I played the game versus the way that Michael played the game was so vastly different in what happens to this one character that you meet, you know, to where it can be multiple hours later where you're still interacting with this guy. Or in my example, it's like Benny's dead, dude. Like Benny's just done. He's not a part of the

story anymore. I've got the chip. That's what I came for. And then that kind of starts the other branching quest paths like that. But yeah, I just slaughtered Benny in cold blood. Mine was much closer to Josh's than Michael's. But when I walked in, I talked to the dude running the front desk, Swank, I think was his name. And I told him, hey, Benny is cooking up some kind of scheme and i at this point had really high speech i think i had like 80 speech or something and uh i did this very early on in the game and i basically talked my way to convincing him that he should just let me into benny's room and he let me keep all my weapons and he said if you go ahead and kill benny we're not we don't care.

Go ahead. Kill him. Our guards won't come after you. So I went up to his room. He's just sitting at like a little counter. And I just immediately crouched and tried to rob him. And sure enough, I see the platinum chip. And so I grab it.

And then immediately he started fighting me because he caught me pickpocketing. So then I shot him in the face 28 times and killed him right then and there. Man, those guys at the front door wouldn't even talk to me. And you're like, I just sweet talked him smooth talk my way up to Benny's room and just nabbed that ship real fast. Hey, I got a joke for you guys real fast, by the way. Sure. What's red, white and black and won't go to the dry cleaners? Benny's coat because I'm wearing it all over the casinos in New Vegas.

Yeah, you can wear his outfit. You can equip his gun. You can also equip other factions' armor and they think you're a part of their faction, which is a funny wrinkle in the game. You can run around as part of the Legion if you want, or whatever it might be. So let's fast forward a little bit, because I know that this show's already running quite long. So let's kind of just jump to the very end game. I'll just kind of try to summarize briefly if

there's anyone that hasn't played Fallout in forever. So basically, you've got the NCR, which kind of represents the old system of police, military, law, order, that kind of stuff. It's kind of like the way things are now. And, of course, they're living post-apocalyptic. You've got Caesar's Legion, which is like a very brutal dictatorship. They basically, by brute force, take slaves from the areas they conquer, put them into the army. And even though it's very brutal, it does technically bring some stability in that sense where they control their areas. And so the NCR and the Legion have both converged on Hoover Dam, and they're both going to fight over it.

And then you still have Mr. House, who wants you to go upgrade his army. That's what you find out the Platinum Chip is all about. The Platinum Chip was created a couple hundred years ago. It can upgrade all of the Securitron army. And basically, at this point, you have to choose to side with the Legion, side with the NCR, side with Mr. House, or go rogue and make Vegas bow down to nobody. And it's going to turn out to be independent. So there's pros and cons to all the endings, but what did you guys choose and why did you do it?

I went with the independent Vegas. Um, I, the NCR was kind of like the, you know, these are like the law kind of guys. And I'm not sure I wanted to side with those, the hall monitors, you know? Yeah. I mean, kind of, you know, these are like the law kind of guys. And I'm not sure I wanted to side with those. The hall monitors. You know, yeah. I mean, kind of, you know, they're your

kind of standard military. We're trying to bring order, but I don't know. I found the NCR to not be that interesting. Caesar's Legion, those guys are just crazy. I couldn't bring myself to align with them. They're too, I hate arrogance. And so Caesar just didn't jive with me at all. Mr. House, it's neat because you do have an interaction with him where you actually get to see his body and the machine that's keeping him alive for a little while. And I just kind of went, you know what? I've got the Securitron army. I've got all the power in the world because I've upgraded the systems on these things. I'm not following anybody. I've got all the power in the world because I've upgraded the systems on these things. I'm not following anybody. I'm beating my own path, man. And I'm not going to

bow down to any of these factions. And so I honestly didn't know what I was doing. Because again, this is the first time I've played New Vegas. And so it ultimately wound up that I went with the independent Vegas ending, which I was fine with. I kind of got the hint that maybe that's not the best ending because the way that they kind of posed it, I'm not sure there is a best ending or not. But I was fine with that. They were like, nobody messes with Vegas and it's independent and it's freedom. And I was kind of like, yeah, I'm happy with that. It's a little bit of anarchy a little bit to that ending yeah what about you michael so having played this game before i just did a hard save and experienced

three of the four endings um because the first ending i ever did ever playing was the same ending that josh did back in the day um and so i was like you know what's the difference so i spent a lot of time doing side quests this time to try and get a perfect ending quote unquote and then i realized this game um is mean and there's no perfect ending whatsoever so josh i think you actually probably might have picked the best ending to be honest with you overall um i really was curious about the ncr this time and so i spent a lot of time doing ncr quests and trying to go down that route as like my quote unquote primary ending. But what I found is that no matter what I did, I

had to upset a different faction no matter what the ending. And in two of the four endings, you have to kill the Knights of... The Knights of Brotherhood? The Brotherhood of Knights. The Knights of... Wait. The Knights of Knee? The Knights of Knee, yeah. The Knights... There we go.

The Brotherhood of Steel. You guys guys threw me off but i almost got it wrong again um which in every fallout game i always want to explore that quest line like hey brotherhood of steel you know like give me my power armor this and that um but it was it was really interesting to see multiples but the one that i have never experienced is the one that i actually want to try which is the the kaiser or the Caesar ending. Because if you think about it, we talk so much trash about how obtuse they are and arrogant and they're slavers and they're terrible people,

but really they're ancient Rome. They actually kind of got a lot right because ancient Rome was about conquest. They were about taking over everything they could possibly do, which is what this is about. And I mean, they did enslave people. So I do want

to finish it up and do that one more time and check that one out yeah just a couple of black marks on the uh roman empire i mean you know but it was okay at the time sure yeah yeah it was okay listen listen to michael michael arguing on the side of the slave owners one in rome right one in rome so oh how funny uh in my ending i just decided i'm gonna do whatever mr house tells me uh when i played it that felt right to me he is the one who created the platinum chip he had nothing to do with my death he has great plans for all of it vegas is incredibly peaceful and stable. The Securitrons aren't good or bad. They just keep the area safe. And if you're not doing anything wrong, they leave you alone. If you start running around hitting people with cattle prods,

they will start shooting you. And so I felt like that sort of made sense. Vegas is doing well. Mr. House knows what he's doing. I did not feel like I could just kill him and choose one of the other missions. So the biggest downside to following Mr. House is I had to completely wipe out the Brotherhood of Steel. As soon as I got there, I immediately activated their self-destruct. I sprinted out of their little tunnel and they all died, which is not fair, but that was what my character decided to do. So I went, the house always wins all the way through the end, which I thought was a good ending. At the very end, I had good karma. And so my little, you know, the little slideshow at the end said Vegas would remain stable for generations and it was still

going to be ruled by Mr. House. So that was, that was my ending. I killed that old geezer. Yeah, you took him out. I really did. He's only survived 350 years. It was long enough, man. He had a good run. Oh man. All right. Any other major spoilers or anything else at all about New Vegas you guys want to talk about before we jump into community reviews? No, I think we've covered a good bit of it. Yeah. If you're at this point in the episode, I'm not really spoiling it, but just kill Benny as fast as you can. Pull a Josh. Be like Josh.

Kill Benny. And you'll get a good pistol out of it. You can roll with that 9mm for a little while. It's not bad. Yeah, not at all. All right. Well, that's what we think about Fallout New Vegas. Josh, you got some community reviews to read for us?

I do indeed. I have gone to Steam to pull reviews from the community to try to give an idea of what other people think about New Vegas. Maybe you've picked up on some of what we thought. Maybe you think, you know how we're going to rate this game, but first we're going to kind of give you a look about what some other people think.

So I have pulled some good reviews, some bad reviews, and we're going to dive into those right now. This first one is recommended. This dude has 4,249 hours on record i hope he likes it that might be possible i don't know i mean he has explored every inch of uh every you know town and secret i or played i don't know that's an insane amount of time for new ve. Wow. Okay. So the review says, In the Nevada desert, a package delivery courier suffers severe cranial trauma,

resulting in obsessive compulsive disorder, and goes deep sea diving aboard a spaceship and battles the king of the fish people while searching for radioactive souvenir rocket toys to use as jet fuel so a group of religious zombies could launch themselves into the heavens 10 out of 10 i swear i'm not high i forgot about that side quest that one is absolutely stellar i almost mentioned that as my favorite side quest uh that one was pretty good we don't have time to get into it but that that was i was like is this really happening is this like these guys this is happening huh um and so that one uh was good i mean the reason i like this review is it really does give you an idea of some of the bananas things that you can do in new vegas all right

so this next one is not recommended 42 hours on record and it says the writing is pretty great but you're much better off just watching a playthrough or some kind of best moments compilation rather than suffering through the atrocious gameplay oh i don't i don't think that's fair and i think you should play because the biggest thing to new vegas is making choices you want it to be your own you don't want to watch someone else make all of that for you the only caveat the like you know caveat, I'll talk about the negative reviews after we're done with all of these. I will say that at no point in New Vegas did I find the game to be difficult. I had two companions with me, which might have trivialized some of the combat. I actually had the robot E.D. I don't know if any of you guys repaired him and got him working.

No. Yeah. So there's this floating robot that looks like a radio almost that follows you around that you can get his companion. And he's super strong. It just vaporizes like everything. And then I had Boone from Novak, which is the guy that you referenced, Michael. The greatest companion ever. So I had these two companions with me, and it absolutely trivialized all combat in the game for me. And so maybe that's my fault, but there was a time where I went, you know, this isn't hard, man. I'm just running through everybody.

I'm mowing everything down. I mean, I died once or twice, but it was because I blew myself up with the grenade launcher. See, I ran with no companions, and I struggled fighting at the Hoover Dam. I died a fair amount of times, and I felt like that made the difficulty spot on where it should be. It was not a walk in the park. I was constantly eating food so I could still heal, and I think that that might have been the issue, is just using two

companions. Yeah, I mean, it's a minor complaint. I'm not saying it ruins the game or anything, but I could see why this guy might say that the gameplay is a little bit atrocious. I think that's a little strong there. But there were points where I kind of went, this is just too easy for me. So, all right. This next one is recommended 122 hours on record. This guy likes the VAT system, by the way. We talked about that. Met a cute girl in the desert. My vat said I had a 0% chance to hit that. 10 out of 10. Such realism. And he insults himself too, which is great. I had to read this one because it was the best joke I had seen in any of these reviews.

And I thought that was hilarious. That's great. All right. And then this last one is not recommended. 22 hours on record. And they say, it's a good game, but don't get me wrong. Wait, it's a good game, don't get me wrong, but it's not the best game ever type of game.

People are a little bit overhyping this game. I don't like using the word, but this game is quite overrated. It's like a DLC version of Fallout 3, which is quite good, actually. The people who worship this game is quite overrated it's like a dlc version of fallout 3 which is quite good actually the people who worship this game hate on fallout 3 which is the engine for this game it's literally the same game but yeehaw edition also you don't have the legend easy pete lol i would like to leave a positive review but the overzealous community makes me think otherwise don't be a stan be be a gamer, boys.

So that guy rated it negative just because people rate it positive? That's what I heard. I think he's... I think so. I think he's kind of saying, hey, I don't see this game being a lot different from Fallout 3, so why is New Vegas getting so much hype and Fallout 3 isn't?

I don't know i mean i just pull the negative reviews i'm not saying i always agree with them yeah i think both games are great i think new vegas is just such a different setting in such a different story it does not play like a dlc it's definitely a full-fledged it is a full-fledged game i will just get in the same engine the guy that is that yeah i do do not think New Vegas feels like a glorified DLC. It's not like Blood and Wine for The Witcher 3, right? Where it's a great DLC and it'll

give you 40 hours of content but it still feels like it's an addition to the base game, whereas this New Vegas feels like it is its own entity. Right. Blood and Wine, you're still mostly going to the same towns for a lot of your quests, stuff like that. This is a whole new world not attached to it,

albeit a smaller world, I think, than Fallout 3. Yeah. All right, so that's some of what the community reviews say. It is now time for us to play a little game where we try to guess the overall score, the overall rating for Fallout New Vegas based on Steam reviews, which is a scale of 0 to 100. I don't know that a 100 has ever existed on Steam.

But that is what we're about to do. You just stole my guess from me. You just straight stole my guess from me. I was going to say 100. And Paul, I think, won last time, if I remember right. I think I did. Yeah. So, you know, Fallout, beloved by almost everybody.

I think if you were to poll people, most of them would say New Vegas is the best. I think this one's going to be somewhere in the mid-90s. My gut is saying 96%, so that's what I'll roll with. 96 for Paul. Michael? I don't want to seem like I'm being that guy um but i am because my my gut straight up was 95 right up front i was like mid 90s it's gonna be very high i thought about going 96 but since paul took it i'm not gonna do that and i don't want to go 97 97 doesn't get much buffer yeah

so i'm gonna i'm gonna go 95 all right uh i have to write my answer down first. I can't play the game where I just undercut Michael one because I have to write my answer down before I look at the score. Is it 94? No, it's not. I actually guess 90%. I think that this game is older. I think that there's still people that are picking it up, but this game does feel dated in a lot of ways. And I know a lot of the reviews came from when it was released, but I felt like there's still people that are picking it up, but this game does feel dated in a lot of ways. And I know a lot of the reviews came from when it was released, but I felt like there was probably people out there that were going to be like, Hey,

it's a fun, but it's kind of old and it's bugging. It crashed a lot. And I thought that the negative, you know, crashing and stuff would affect a little bit more. So I guess 90, you make a really good point.

And now I'm scared. Well, you don't need to be scared, Michael, because Paul hit this one on the head once again. Oh, wow. Nailed it. 96% actual overall rating. All-time reviews, 96%.

So, Paul, you are on a hot streak, man. It's two in a row. Yeah. Is that a hot streak? Is it? I think so, too. Is that a streak? Two in a row with how accurate you're worth. i did say that he bumped his luck up a lot in the beginning so that's true

all right nice take us into this next segment let's do it hey there sunny smiles was your dad a Because dang, you are a knockout. Alright, this segment is called Make Love Marry or Murder. This is where all three of us have a chance to give the game our individual rating. Is this game a game that we want to murder? We don't recommend it. Don't waste your time. Don't waste

your money. Stay away. Is it dating material where maybe it's worth making love to it but it's not going to be something that's going to keep your attention for long? Or is it marriage material? We highly recommend it. It's worth getting into.

It's a must play game. And I don't know. I don't mind going first. I'll keep it nice, short and sweet. I absolutely think this is a game is marriage material. I think it's a pain in the butt to have to mod it and play it. But once you've got all that set, the game runs pretty darn well. I think the choices that you make and the side missions, there is so much cut off to me because of how I chose to play my playthrough. I would

have no problem jumping back in tomorrow and doing a whole nother run, making completely different decisions. So many different weapons and build outs you can do i love the characters i love the voice acting i'm i'm all about fallout new vegas it's my favorite fallout i love this game it's it's a mary for me what about you michael i you know it's funny what paul said makes so much sense too if you're willing to put in the work you know if you're willing to put in the work and mod it um i'm really mixed on this one because you do have to mod this game really to get a good experience out of it i i don't think it stands the test of time super well um that being said marriage also takes a lot of works work gentlemen so yeah absolutely this is a marriage material

game but you don't put the work in um The reason why I'm marrying this game is, first of all, I'm a huge Bethesda fanboy. I love all their games. But of all the Bethesda games, if you include even the Elder Scrolls games, this is the most RPG game they made. Because you truly do have... You have so many different choices you make for the ending.

You know, the end of Skyrim, you're the Dragonborn. you make for the ending you know the end of skyrim you're the dragonborn you make some choices going along there the end of oblivion you help martin septum save cyrodiil whatever i know i'm bringing up elder scrolls one because i can't remember the ending to both the other fallout games um but that's how it is though this game truly the world is your oyster or your very very dirty desert oyster because there's no water in this game at all. And if it is, it's probably dirty water that's going to give you rats. But the whole point is, it's a true RPG. And I love true RPGs. There are so many different ways to get to the ending. There are so many different ways to upset so many different factions. And I

think that's absolutely worth a marriage from my standpoint. So I marry this game. This one is... I'm conflicted on this one, to be honest. I know what my standpoint. So I marry this game. I, this one is, I'm conflicted on this one. To be honest, I know what my rating is. I don't, I don't have to change or waffle on my rating.

The issue for me is that I never played fallout new Vegas when it was a fresh release. This is the first time that I have played fallout new Vegas and it's 2022. And this game came out in 2012, 2010, 2010. So I'm playing a game that you know is 12 years old and i feel it um you know it there's a lot about this game that feels very

dated to me i didn't mind modding it so much because i wanted it to be the best experience that i could experience it like i'm going into this brand new and so if i'm getting 4k textures and i'm getting some you know stability and non-hitching and things like that, for me, that's worth it because I want to play this game at its best. But even then, at its best, this game still feels very dated to me. And so I think it has some very redeeming qualities. I think that some of the questing is great. I think some of the characters are great. I really enjoyed my time with it, but it's not a Mary for me because there's just some quality of life issues. I hate the Pip-Boy system that absolutely irritates the tar out of me. I didn't find the combat to be really, really enjoyable. Maybe that's my fault. Maybe it's because I ran with double companions, but I found the combat to be kind of lackluster. And some of these just kind of quality of life issues. So while I think the story was great, I like the RPG aspects of it. For me, it's a make love because it just feels like an old game to me at this point.

And it's sad because I love Fallout. I love Bethesda games. Don't get me wrong. This is not anything to do against the game itself necessarily, other than the fact that it just feels old to me and the quality of life just isn't quite there. And so I'm giving it a solid make love. I think there's an awful lot to enjoy about this game, but I just can't marry it because I don't know that I'd ever have the desire to go back to it. It's odd how much I respect what you just said, because I think all the same things. I just liked it a little bit more than you did. Yeah.

And I think if you lean more towards story, I think the other things are more forgivable. But I have to wonder, if this was y'all's first time playing fallout new vegas would you feel differently is there some of that like because to a lot of people i mean a lot of people fallout new vegas is the absolute best of the fallout series and i've actually read a lot of people that say fallout new vegas was one of their favorite games ever oh yeah so i went into this knowing that this was a hyped game and kind of going like, that's why I spent all the time modding it initially.

Right. It's like, Hey, let me, let me experience this the best way that I can. Um, I just can't get over that. There's some things about this game that really felt dated to me.

So I have to wonder if you guys knowing and having the history with it improves your opinion of the game a little bit versus going into it like as a newbie like I did. I think there's probably a certain level of nostalgia and the fact that Michael and I both loved it. So I was already giving it a lot of goodwill right off the bat. Now, Josh, I looked up, man, we did not know how good we had it in 2010. I looked up 2010 releases, and I can tell you what you were doing, Josh. Let me give you, I'm not even going to list every game. I'm just going to give you a couple highlights.

Ready for what came out in 2010? This is why I didn't play New Vegas back in the day? Yeah, lay it on me. This is a wild, wild year. You've got Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2, God of War 3, Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption 1, Starcraft 2, Halo Reach, Heavy Rain, Just Cause 2, Fable 3, Darksiders, Mafia 2, Amnesia, Street Fighter 4, Rock Band 3. All of those came out in one year. What do we have this year? This year we've got Elden Ring.

That's the only one that would make that list. That's incredible. What a year. I do have one thought, though, that Josh just made me completely realize is that the Bethesda formula is getting old. All across their games, that first person, same look, same feel. Since Fallout 3, all their games look and feel the same.

It actually makes me kind of curious on what Starfield is going to bring differently, or if it's going to be the exact same formula, but now we're going to be in space. I'm very optimistic for Starfield. But if they don't enhance that formula somehow, I don't think I'm getting that fatigue as well. Ubisoft is dead to me because that formula has played its course completely with me. I have zero desire for Ubisoft games anymore with the exception of maybe the

division. I thought the division was pretty fine. Bethesda I'm with you. I'm starting to get that fatigue and maybe that's another reason reason why Fallout New Vegas just wasn't a Mary for me. And that it's like, I've seen this formula before. 20 years of the same game. I've played it before. This feels dated to me.

You know, I'm not getting the newness out of it that a lot of people did. Maybe that's why. But even then, even all of that, it's still a make love for me. So that says a lot about the game, you know, in and of itself, too. Agreed. All right. Well, let's go into our last segment. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up.

All right. If you are new to the show, the leaderboard segment is when the three of us have to rank all of our deep dive games against one another. And unlike make love, marry or murder, where we give an individual rating, this is where we have to come up with a three man consensus. Where are we going to rank this game against other games that we have done

deep dives on? How do we compare this to wasteland three? How do we compare it to bro force? How do we compare it to Overwatch? And these are obviously wildly different games, completely different genres, and that is part of the fun. So a lot of things go into this. How much fun is it? How much bang for your buck do you get? Would you rather play a shorter, cheaper game like Broforce or pay a full amount and play a full AAA title? So looking at our leaderboard here, we have a grand total of 78 games on this list. You can see it at multiplayerpodcast.com.

It's right there on the homepage. Just scroll down a little bit there. And maybe just to give you guys a couple markers, we've got Outriders coming in at number 10. We've got Weird West at 20. We have Deep Rock Galactic at 30, Raft at 40, Wasteland 3 at 50, The Quarry at 60, and Minecraft Dungeons at 70. Which group of 10 do you guys think this belongs in? It's interesting that we just trashed the Bethesda formula. And I'm looking at a game that I'm trying to figure out if this goes above or below. And it is the Bethesda formula.

And that's the Forgotten City. Because it's the same formula. It's the same look and feel, just no combat. I would say I want to put it at 25. The reason why I want to put it there... I'm sorry, 26. The reason why i want to put it there i'm sorry 26 the reason why i want to put it there is i'm like do i want to play this bethesda-esque game or that one and i loved the forgotten city i know it belongs below weird west for me but i want to put it above forgotten city because which one would i rather play there's a lot more content to

um new vegas and there's a lot more choices there's a lot more i mean they're both good rpgs but i want to put it right above that and and i don't think i've ever gone first either so this is uncharted territory for me um but that's where i'm putting it i like it i'm very close to you michael when i look at our leaderboard i would personally put it at 22. I see our top 21 as being like the stand apart first tier of games. And then I would put New Vegas as the very top of the next tier. I would have it at 22. Josh is kind of sheepishly acting like he's hiding. I don't know how far down that means.

I am hiding because you guys are not going to like my rating on this. There's no way that you're going to say New Vegas is worse than Wasteland 3. No, no, I won't say that. I do think it's better than that. But I will be honest, I don't like this game nearly as much as you two. Again, I go back to the, it feels dated to me. I think there's a lot better games out there to play nowadays. Maybe back in 2010,

new Vegas was a top five game, you know, but for me in 2022, it's just not man. And I'm not trying to slander the game because I gave it a make love, but on our leaderboard, I'm looking at games that I would rather play. Lost Ark is 35.

I was just going to say Lost Ark. I, I was going to, Lost Ark is, I mean, play lost ark is 35 i was just gonna say lost ark i i was gonna lost ark is i mean lost ark has some fun elements to it i was actually in the like the mid 30s to be honest with you guys um i that's not that far off i can't like i i look at the games in the mid twenties and I, there's no way I would choose fallout over any of those games. Um, yeah, I'm in like the late thirties, to be honest. Like I would put it probably, well, no, actually I'd probably put it right. We're 35 lost arc for me. I'd rather play V rising or any of the games above it. Some of the games below it. See raft, I think is great. I would rather play raft. I'd rather play vermin tide too, but you know, Raft, I think, is great. I would rather play Raft. I'd rather play Vermintide 2. But, you know, I don't think I'm going to convince you guys of that either. So for me, I think a fair rating for it with the non-playing-it-back-in-2010 bias is like right at like 35.

So as we take a look at Hollow Knight, Forgotten City, Destiny 2, Nier Automata, Resident Evil Village. I think that's somewhere that we're going to land. Does anyone have any major heartburn putting it above or below any of those? I mean, I would lobby for under Resident Evil Village, but I know that this game has a ton of nostalgia for a lot of people, and that's going to be tough to overcome. It's not just nostalgia. This game rules, Josh. I think you might have a little bit of rpg fatigue which i know we all do yeah maybe we have played so many rpgs lately i mean i feel like the last four months if you look at our deep dives all but like two or three of them are rpgs i do wonder if we reordered it might be a little different it could be you know like I said I you

know I'm not trying to take away from the game it's just like I think about what would I rather play again you know what I mean in that regard and it's kind of like would I rather dive back into Fallout New Vegas or would I rather dive into like Resident Evil Village again and it's like well I'd play Resident Evil Village over vegas again yeah but maybe that's not fair you know yeah but maybe that's not fair either so i don't know that's me i mean you guys like i said i'm fine putting it in the later 20s if you guys want as like you know a good compromise in that regard i you know that's up to you guys at that point i you know i was in the mid 30s you guys are in the mid 20s if we want to put it in the late 20s i'm fine with that if you want to put it ahead of destiny 2 and move destiny 2 down that makes me happy as well i was just gonna say let's just vote for either above or below destiny 2 i think that's

probably where it should be well my vote's easy because i already put it i'm fine with that so all right one above destiny 2 yeah all right So we'll keep it right below the forgotten city, keeping the Bethesda engine games next to each other. That'll work. So we will pop that in there. And now our leaderboard is up to 79 games. Guys, this number keeps quickly crawling up there before we know it.

We'll have a full 100. That'll be cool. Can we, from now on, can we refer to the mid twenties ass as the Bethesda Bros? No. That's what it is. It's funny how we end up with these games in clumps,

like how we had all the couch co-op games four in a row next to each other. Now we're getting kind of these Bethesda ones all clumped. All right, so we will lock that in in the leaderboard. We will have it at number 27. Again, if you want to check that out, it's at multiplayerpodcast.com. And I think that wraps up our show for today. So we want to give another Glap and help support the show. You can also hit us up on socials at MultiplayerPod and make sure to check back in with us on Thursday when we break down recent gaming news. And then

our next deep dive, which will be two weeks from today, is going to be Saints Row, the rebooted, not the very original, but the reboot that just released in August. So I think that wraps everything up, guys. Anything to add? No, thanks, Clap. We appreciate you. Thanks for picking this one. If you want to make us play a game, go legendary and we'll deep dive it for sure. Fortnite, Minecraft, whatever.

We get a lot. Yeah, we get a lot of threats. We do. That's pretty smart. Yeah. Well, hey, I'm going to go legendary, make you a lot of threats. We do. That's pretty smart. Threats than any. Yeah. Well, hey, I'm going to go legendary. Make you guys play this game. And we're like, do it. That's the point. You know?

Yeah. I mean, but if I had an opinion, be like Glap. First of all, go legendary. Second of all, pick a game that we at least make love to. Go pick Fallout 3. We'll go even older. 2008. Just don't do it in the next two weeks yeah

there you go give us a little bit of an rpg all right well thank you everyone out there for listening we appreciate you all and until next time happy gaming all right cheers all see everybody