Welcome to New Vegas (first impressions)

[Wolfman Walt]

It's occasionally happened where they do not.

[hoochimama]

I knew about it, it's just a bit gamey for me. Not in my tastes. If I want to benefit from their companionship I have to endure the negatives as well.

Most of the negatives seem to come from crummy companion AI, meta-game to begin with. Another benefit to having companions in your party and still walk around solo is that by completing specific quests with them in your party(even if they're not present) it advances their companion quest counters(most of them will only give you their companion quests when you complete 3 or 4 out of about 9 specific quests, and they need to be in your party when you complete those quests for it to count).

[Blargh]

A rain of 40mm incendiary grenades. The unique grenade MG is utterly daft. Surprised at just how easy it was to acquire. Seriously, Dead Wind Caverns. Now.

Basically any time your lackeys say something that isn't whinging about sneaking, whinging about you shooting at them/missing your target (even when you aren't) or basic combat chatter, it's probably time to check in and ADVANCE things subplotwise. Except for when they bug out. Ehue.

[Tofu Man]

You guys do know you can use the "wait here" function to park them in a safehouse or bunker and STILL get their perks without them, right? That alone makes just about all of the companions more than useful.

Yeah, hence me saying that if I was strong enough, I'd leave it at home.

(...)Also ED-E's perk is nearly essential.

Well, I wouldn't call it essencial but once you do with it, it's kinda hard to do without it, if you know what I mean. Who knew the biggest habit-forming thing in the game wasn't one of the plethora of drugs?

(...)Next time Raul complains about crawling on the dirt, I'll blast his kneecap off.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand I shoulda spoken sooner. Crawling around in the Australia part of the Mojave, hunting Deathclaws and looking all badass, Mr. Raul decided he'd shout "I guess we're doing this!" and walk out in front of me at the exact time I was about to snipe a Deathclaw in the head with me gauss. Suffice to say the Deathclaw wasn't all that impressed with my new tactic of catapulting ghouls towards him, although the distraction itself did give me enough time to reload and shoot again. I did eventually reload the game, unfortunately.

Another benefit to having companions in your party and still walk around solo is that by completing specific quests with them in your party(even if they're not present) it advances their companion quest counters(most of them will only give you their companion quests when you complete 3 or 4 out of about 9 specific quests, and they need to be in your party when you complete those quests for it to count)

Yeppers. To finalize the whole Raul thing I got going on here that's starting to bear resemblance to the Fawlty Towers show, I just found I can't start his quest 'cause i've already spoken with some NCR dick in Novac.

WELL, EXCUUUUSE ME if I got to Novac before I had the balls to clean out the whole Black Mountain and fetch Mr. Sorry-ass from the top of it. GODDAMN YOU MANUEL!

[hoochimama]

I find that it's a bad design decision, for my current replay I now have a list of quests/locations I won't begin and characters I won't talk to without having the appropriate companion in my party since I don't want to miss out on companion quests.

The shitty part is that you run into most of these quests and characters way before meeting the relevant companions.

[Kashluk]

Well, you could say it's one way of creating replay value out of thin air. Is it classy? No. Effective? Sure.

[Stalagmite]

Just went through my second playthrough as the Wild Card. It was ok, I was planning on making it to level 26-28 but at 24 I got bored of running around and just said fuck all and finished it. Was impressed that I was able to BARTER the Legate out of combat and surprisingly had a harder time dealing with the balls deep general who fires at me first and foremost along with 5 rangers backing him regardless of the fact that I had an army of fucking robots backing me. He was a tough bastard and you can't help but admire him for being tough as nails balls to the wall of the idea of taking me out for certainty regardless of the fact the he will get pulverized seconds later by metal might behind him, refusing to leave the dam utterly. I had to reload a few times.


I may be fucked to go an NCR route just because of that fucker.

[Blargh]

Oh dear, look upon what you (apparently) missed. A sad day.

Personally, I found both Oliver and Moore to be repugnant chunts³, for a variety of reasons, so the above was reasonably cathartic.

³Which could also be said of Caesar, Mr. House and even Yes Man . . . Such consistency.

[Stalagmite]

I thought so to of course I was just surprised that you even needed a speech check to get him to leave, senseless bastard is senseless, though bursting my bubble of a flawless ending in which Obsidian filled me with a sense of impending invincibility is of course gonna have some sort of impact.

Oh and look what I did miss, too bad I couldn't be fucked to attempt that route again with equivalent results. OBSIDIAN.

[Retlaw83]

I'll admit one of my juvenile interests in Fallout has always been the cool weapons and armor. I found an Avenger minigun, and strolling into a fight with it while wearing T-51b was awesome, as I was able to plaster a squad of NCR troopers with it. In the time it took me to kill all five of them and expend all 120 rounds, I took one return shot which my armor stopped.

I immediately became turgid and involuntarily ejaculated into my own mouth.

[Blargh]

Inadvertently hitting upon the importance of Proper Computing Posture ITT.

[MadBill]