Duck and Cover

Is Roberto the first to notice that New Reno is busier than New Vegas?

Before I get flamed for hating on NV, I assure you that this is not the case, nor the intent, of this post. As a staunch fanboy of FO1&2 I could not help but notice the lack of people frequenting the Strip. While I understand that the game engine is limited in this respect (as other posts on the subject have already surmised) I am nonetheless at a loss as to how this could be. Perhaps in the FO Universe Reno drew more travel, but who knows these things. At any rate, where are the dirty street vendors selling nefarious drugs (a la New Reno), and for that matter the sheer lack of foot traffic on the Strip really takes away from the whole experience.

As a pre-scripted retort to those naysayers, Roberto enjoys F:NV as much as the next person who realizes that the originals will never be re-created and is content with the continuation of the series, but what the shits?!

IMO had there been more of a pedestrian presence on the Strip I feel as if many would not have been as dismayed at the final product, as judging by the detail and quests a significant amount of development time was earmarked for this area.

At any rate, have to get back to practicin'! HA-HAAARRR!

All the towns in New Vegas have more going on than the "towns" in Fallout 3, but the engine forces them to not be as detailed as the originals. Layouts of Fallout 1 and 2 cities were complicated, and would lead to Xbox kiddies getting lost and never being able to find anything in first person perspective.

I guess it can be explained in-universe as Mr. House keeping the trash centralized in Freeside? Note Dixon and that ghoul infodump dude.

As to Walter's point, I recall reading some people were obfuscated by "labyrinthine" buildings etc., accusing Obsidian of being used to designing top-down style games. I can only imagine these individuals are challenged finding their way through their own houses, quite sad.

In the fluff it could be argued that New Reno would have more traffic simply because it was a much longer established city, while New Vegas was maybe a decade or two old and the resulting population are either vacationers or the gangsters bestowed the honor of helping run the joint, as opposed to the folks living outside the walls; especially since there's a very minimal influx of settlers looking for land in the Mojave. At least that's how the story could explain it.

Very good point Senister; I had not taken into account the founding dates for New Reno & New Vegas, respectively. Roberto is appeased with this answer for the time being.

As for kiddies not being able to navigate the buildings, perhaps those affected should stray away from RPG's that lend their beginnings to dungeon-crawlers.

Before Cakester asks where his worthless posted picture of some lump of crap he modeled went, I deleted it.

As for story considerations, New Vegas also has the credit check and army of securitrons to keep people in line. On the other hand, any piece of wasteland trash can drift into New Reno. While the population still isn't sky-high, you can find most of what you're lamenting a lack of in Freeside, the Thorn, and the sewers underneath Vegas.

Retlaw83 wrote:Before Cakester asks where his worthless posted picture of some lump of crap he modeled went, I deleted it.

An acceptable birthday present. Thank you.

[quote="Roberto"]New Reno is busier than New Vegas?[/quote

I remember a lot of complaints back in the day in the opposite direction.

Some people wondered how this city in the middle of nowhere could produce enough food, enough of an economy to support that many.

Where are all these people coming from, where do they earn enough money to support this burgeoning gambling mecca with multiple casinos, 4 mafia families, distillery etc. etc.

If you really want to delve into that stuff...

Cimmerian Nights wrote:

Roberto wrote:New Reno is busier than New Vegas?

I remember a lot of complaints back in the day in the opposite direction.

Some people wondered how this city in the middle of nowhere could produce enough food, enough of an economy to support that many.

Doesn't that follow with the same situation as Las Vegas today? It's an interesting place. People don't flock there FOR the resources, the resources are brought there for the people.

Stupid thinking = [surprisingly] max profit

Manoil wrote:

Cimmerian Nights wrote:

Roberto wrote:New Reno is busier than New Vegas?

I remember a lot of complaints back in the day in the opposite direction.

Some people wondered how this city in the middle of nowhere could produce enough food, enough of an economy to support that many.

Doesn't that follow with the same situation as Las Vegas today? It's an interesting place. People don't flock there FOR the resources, the resources are brought there for the people.

Stupid thinking = [surprisingly] max profit

You mean (especially) water, food, whatever else, sure.

Point is, post-apo world, there's no infrastructure to get that there, nor the middle class population with enough disposable income to support such a huge enterprise. New Reno has more mafia dudes than patrons, that can't sustain itself.

Vegas' sheer size presents the same problem. But (I haven't finished it yet) it can be explained away more easily since there's a huge NCR presence, and the soldiers are young guys with spare cash looking fior a good time.

I don't know, I don't sweat that shit much, just remember other people bitching about New Reno's lack of realism back in the day.

Retlaw83 wrote:All the towns in New Vegas have more going on than the "towns" in Fallout 3, but the engine forces them to not be as detailed as the originals. Layouts of Fallout 1 and 2 cities were complicated, and would lead to Xbox kiddies getting lost and never being able to find anything in first person perspective.

Well, from someone who didn't know about Sulik until he loaned a game to a friend or didn't find east Reno (and the SAD) until he read about it in a faq, some games could, you know, do less of the whole "hide the exit hex behind a building at the end of an empty street", although I do love loading up Fo2 and finding something new almost every time I do it. Shit, the explorable caves in random encounters was another I didn't find until a couple of years ago.

Then again I'm not exactly raring for any more DC metro type bullshit.

Apart from that who here actually found the Vegas sewers? It's not really a matter of finding it since the manholes are pretty obvious, rather about bothering to explore it when the entrance (the one I found first, at least) is filled with lots of untalkable-to NPCs and the whole area, while probably bigger than Vegas itself, has nothing worth mentioning going on inside. How about some free DLC to fix that, heh? No? Awww.


Also, on the engine, my memory might fail me or I might be mistaking sizes on the basis that I walked everywhere since "in the old days" running drained stamina (I KNOOOOOW, SHOCKING INNIT?) but weren't towns in Morrowind bigger and with more peeps than towns in Fo3/NV and not even a separate cell?? What gives?

Cimmerian Nights wrote:New Reno has more mafia dudes than patrons, that can't sustain itself.

Unless the mafia dudes are also patrons themselves, making cash from the drugs trade. In organised crime, the boss rarely pays the troops, usually other way around in form of tribute.

New Vegas' gangsters probs wanna gamble and shit too.

Cimmerian Nights wrote:I remember a lot of complaints back in the day in the opposite direction.

Some people wondered how this city in the middle of nowhere could produce enough food, enough of an economy to support that many.

Where are all these people coming from, where do they earn enough money to support this burgeoning gambling mecca with multiple casinos, 4 mafia families, distillery etc. etc.

If you really want to delve into that stuff...

Didn't they have trade routes set up with the NCR? Wasn't Reno much like the Hub, only focused on drugs, booze and gambling? And New Vegas (the game) is fucking empty -- sometimes it's an eyesore.

Fallout 3 was far more empty and open, than New Vegas. Then again, everyone has their own perception of content/characters involved.

True enough, but Fallout 3 being emptier does not mean New Vegas was logically populated, and comparing a bad game to a worse game does not make a bad game better. While this reasoning should be obvious to everyone, it's sadly as obvious that it apparently needs to be pointed out.

I can honestly say that the absolute majority of locations that I visited in New Vegas had zero infrastructure to explain their presence and a bare minimum population that was geared towards serving the player and not to fleshing out the game world. Walking into a ruined suburb that, with luck, has managed to keep 20 houses intact and in working condition, it's painful to find only 3 people keeping the "community" together -- one shopkeeper, God knows where the stock comes from, some shitty sidequest person and a generic "I have one single topical opinion" npc. I've seen Diablo clones do a better job -- hell, I've seen Korean pvp-centric mmo's do a better job. The first map of the Starcraft 2 campaign leads a better example, there's even a dog and some goats.