To say goodbye to New Vegas, I'd like to write a little recap on the game, highlighting a few things I wish I'd known when I started and some of the best characters and quests in the game. If you're reading this and haven't tried the game yet, maybe it will help you get the most out of it.
1. Play it on PC. I'm a pretty set in my ways console pesant and I had the GotY edition on PS3 lying around. I really don't like looking for community mods for PC games and I couldn't even get the Windows version of Fallout 3 to run past the title screen. Even I wish I had played New Vegas on PC, though. I can't fill you in on what the best bugfix and stability mods are, but as much of a hassle as finding them might be, it's worth it if it helps avoid the crashes, quest-breaking logic issues, and frame rate loss that I experienced on the PS3 version.
2. Don't put points in melee weapons. IMO, Fallout 3 and NV have better combat than Skyrim because Bethesda's melee combat engine sucks. Specializing in guns is just more fun, and it's also much more practical. I think it's best to only level one damage skill, and while guns are probably the best over all, energy weapons are fine too.
3. Do put points into lockpick. There are a few important quests that you can't really get through without lockpick, so after neglecting it early on I found I really had to pump it later.
4. Don't play on Hardcore mode. After the first few hours, it just doesn't really add much to the game, except the annoyance of having to watch your food and water meters. Turn it on at first if you want to give it a shot, but I wouldn't feel obligated to keep it on. I do like how it makes stimpacks work over time and that you can't just sleep to cure broken limbs, so maybe mods to tweak it would be nice if you're playing on PC.
I think those are the main things, so let me go over some of my favorite characters from this game:
Yes Man: This guy is just great - probably the funniest character in the game, imo. The contrast is a big part of it. He'll talk about murdering people in the most cheerful voice imaginable. It's also fun to do things he disapproves of and watch him back-handedly compliment your decisions because he's incapable of being anything but extremely nice. They manage to make him surprisingly multifaceted through things like that.
Caesar: A great antagonist. This guy kind of channels Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. You know he's the bad guy, he's just so blatantly cruel and brutal, but when you're in the room with him he can outline his ideas in such a rational, articulate way that you can almost doubt yourself - it's easy to see how he built such a cult of personality around himself. I guess it also helps that he's just so nice that it does become kind of charming. One of my favorite details is that you can get him to write you a letter which he signs "love, Yes Man."
Legate Lanius: As a "social boss," Lanius is pretty exemplary. Not quite as good as The Master, but I can easily see why people like him much better than Colonel Autumn. First of all, he has a very distinct personality and character voice that help give the exchange it's own flavor, but more importantly your dialog reveals new aspects to his character. Everything you hear about Lanius before you meet him is that he's a violent, merciless killer. It's almost surprising that he talks to you at all instead of just immediately attacking, but if you're careful you can get him to give away the fact that he can be rational, level-headed, and show respect to his enemies.
The King: The King and his posse discovered a school for Elvis impersonators and mistook it for a place of worship. That's funny enough on its own, but what really cements this guy as a favorite of mine is the complexity in his character. At first, The Kings seem like any old gang - my first encounter with one of them was a guy charging people to use the local water supply - but The King himself is a surprisingly moral person who wants to avoid bloodshed and is willing to cooperate with others. His quest-line is about de-escalating a tense situation and he does what he can to help you with that.
Dr. Mobius: I didn't go into it in my write-ups because it felt so disconnected from the larger plot that it was hard to work in, but I played the Old World Blues DLC. I'd say it's worth experiencing. It's really very dialog-heavy and maybe a bit more wacky than I like, but I had a good time with it. There are some really memorable parts, with the highlight being a dialog exchange between your character and his own brain. Dr. Mobius' case is kind of similar to The King's. At first he seems like an over-the-top comedy supervillain, and that's fun, but when you meet the real Mobius he turns out to be a kindly, half senile old man with a lot of good intentions.
Chris Haversam: This is the man at the REPCONN test site who's convinced he's a ghoul. It's a little unfortunate that the majority of the speech checks in this game are so easy. The other character comes in, you pick one dialog option that's telegraphed by the fact it has a speech requirement, and then they go away. If you want to convince Chris both that he's human and that he shouldn't take revenge on the ghouls, you have to slowly and carefully talk him down, which made an impression on me as something of a highlight.
And here are a few quests I recommend:
For Auld Lang Syne: This is Arcade Gannon's companion quest. It's about gathering up the Remnants, a group of holdouts from the Enclave (who were the brutal antagonists of the second game) for one last battle. The Remnants are all pretty interesting characters who are looking back on their lives and trying to find meaning in a pretty guilty past. It doesn't make the Enclave itself any more complex, but it does a lot to humanize some of the individuals within that organization. It also carries some pretty good in-game rewards, but the major downside is that Arcade, who I thought was the most likable companion character, permanently leaves once you complete it.
Beyond the Beef: This is the quest at the Ultra-Luxe in New Vegas. I don't want to spoil it, because most of what makes it so good is finding out what's actually going on there, but it's also just a very open-ended quest with good gameplay and lots of different solutions.
Vault 11: Another area I shouldn't spoil. The Vaults tend to be a highlight in this series, (though I'd say that was more true in the old games because they had a lot of importance and build-up in the story,) and this is definitely my favorite of the vaults in this game. Its lore seemed quite funny a first, but turned out to be really dark but also very interesting.
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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 12/129 Currently Playing: Super Meat Boy