Gambling | Fallout Wiki | Fandom - top100.playrealtopmoneygame.xyz

To start, this should be a single player game. If Bethesda/Obsidian/MS can make it so I can play with 1 or 2 friends, I want that but understand it's not that simple.
So why it should be picked:
First, NY has an amazing history when it comes to Pre-Revolution, Revolution, the Civil War, and beyond. Major events like the battle at Saratoga (which is considered the turning point of the Revolution), the 1980 Miracle on Ice, and Woodstock (along with a whole lot more) all took place in upstate NY. So the rich history of the area is ripe for pro American stylizing and propaganda that gives FO it's unique take on American Atom-punk.
That along with more modern history of things like the Native Americans (The Oneidas) actually taking back their land and forming their own sovereign nation (basically they have their own gov. Pay no state taxes, and self govern with police, fire, and allow gambling which NY does not). So their modern government would not only be some great lore, but I honestly believe could be a basis for the main quest line. Things like their unique tribal leadership, philosophy, and gambling (hello 10 luck) could bring a very grey area to fallout that was kind of missed in FO3 + 4. Plus their mythology would make for a great weird scene that fallout has at least 1 of every game.
Also, for those who don't know, upstate NY is very country with major cities pocketed about. (Utica, Albany, Syracuse, etc). So if you liked NV style of wandering the wastes, or 3s style of city wandering, we've got both. Also, we've got two mountains areas, one in the Adirondacks and the Catskills are the other.
That said, one of the most important parts of fallout are the locations. Where can we go? For that I have a list:
Major locations:
Lake Placid Winter Olympics training facility - the winter olympics world be held in 2078 and if they still exist by then and to play into the game, LP could be the location of those games. Again, the miracle on ice where American Amateurs bested the Communist Russian Pros, was held there. The "Better dead than Red" sentiment would be full force. Not to mention one of a few great locations for a possible vault (80, in this case to house winter olympians). Plus, the weapons could be cool too. Hockey sticks, hockey skate blades on gloves, a goalie mask for armor, you name it.
Cooperstown Baseball HOF - Now when you think Americana, Baseball is one of your first thoughts, don't lie. Cooperstown is baseball central and very pretty. Another great place for pro-american styles and fun gear like baseball base mines, softball helmets (because fuck you "A League of Their Own" style pro-baseball league in FO sounds awesome), and of course bats and baseball grenades. Also a baseball Vault (Vault 4, 5, 7, or 9). Not my idea, but in this vault, there's 32 teams of mens and 32 teams of womens baseball (or coed teams, idk), all of whom are pro players. Vault tec test is simple, winner gets food and drinks, loser gets steroid infused food and drink (but they don't know it has steroids obviously). The idea is, test how good at baseball people can be if given monster amounts of steroids for generations. I'll make a separate post about this in detail if desired.
Canastota Boxing HOF - Another unique area for America. Canastota is pretty boring and empty, but for those of you old enough to remember Rocky when it came out, it basically revived Boxing as a major sport and also had a moment where America bested the Red Menace (Rocky IV). Maybe a spot for a vault or to learn unique unarmed moves. Pugilism Illustrated anyone?
Albany - NYs capital and an easy big city area along the Hudson. A great location for corporate greed, governmental corruption, and side quests. Can't say it'll be the focal point of the game since its very near the eastern border of it, but a good location for exploring and lore.
Buffalo/Niagara Falls - Ya ever gone over the falls in a barrel? Do ya want to? I think using Niagara Falls (which has an American and Canadian side, Canadas is the U-shaped famous one) as Fallouts first "Non-American" location would be fun. First, the falls are beautiful and are a major source of hydroelectric power. Second, in FO, America annexed canada, so it's technically still America! Third, right across the "border" are casinos! More gambling! Third and a half, it's another big city and buffalo is where the buffalo wing was invented (God bless buffalo wings). Besides the cool lore opportunity about the annexation and the city location, the falls could be a major location for the story if the main conflict was about powering the area, similar to NV.
Syracuse - NYs (literal) center city. The Salt City as it was formally known is a big city with some great old and new style. Again, not much about the city to say, but a great opportunity for corporate BS. The main attraction would be the Syracuse Dome (formerly the Carrier Dome). Due to its location and style, it's perfect as a central trading hub for the major cities and people. Think of Great Green Jewel style, people living, bars, shops, etc. BUT the really interesting part is what's right next to the Dome. SUNY ESF (Environmental Science and Forestry). This college is special because (A. I went there) it has very unique programs and with some future tech thrown in, could be a great location for a Fallout 3 Harold or NV vault 22-esq quest. The college already does experiments with major chemicals, evolution (FEV anyone?) and breeding plants for unique purposes. Again, I have a really cool idea for this area, but that can be a different post. Fun fact, ESF is actually working to bring back the North America Chestnut that went (nearly) extinct! Also, some asshole releases the fruit flies the genetics lab work with every year and it sucks.
NYC (Empire, 9/11 memorial, Statue of Liberty) - Yeah yeah, you can't have NY without the City, but frankly there's so much here to explore and deal with, I'd leave it to the pros to really do it justice.
Turning Stone Casino - Gambling, a hotel/restaurants like in NV, and a good spot for the main quest line.
Fort Stanwix - A real revolutionary war fort. HQ or major area for raiders. Safe, well protected and with plenty of history.
Fort Drum and Griffis Air Force Base: Two major bases that could be packed with guns, nukes, and power armor. Heavily guarded by turrets, robots, and security gates.
Main Quest:
Without too much detail, I figure your character will be hired to figure out the future of NY.
You'll be brought to the Turning Stone which is currently the HQ of the Oneida tribe. Your job would be to either work with the other tribes in the former Iroquois Confederation (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora [added later]). (Quick note: in my AU, some time after the bombs fell, the IC came to power because of their knowledge of living off the land and attempted to rebuild society. After some time rebuilding and establishing a post-war society, the tribes do the thing all humans do and bicker. Around 2200 the IC broke apart but the tribes retained power in their areas. They fight, trade, yadda yadda but no one is in control of everything.
Throughout your quest, it turns out that what is holding everyone back is a lack of power for things like lights and running water. Your job will be to determine where to get that power (Nuclear power plant in Oswego or the falls in Niagara?) And where to give it (one tribe? A few? Or all?). But that's not all, the tribes can't decide who should be in charge. One tribe wants to remain independent, don't help the outsiders and rebuild society in their image within NY, another wants to help others but would need to sacrifice their own people's safety and seclusion. Maybe another wants to be imperialist and expand their borders throughout America through way of force and fear while another agrees with taking land but wants it done through offers of protection for taxes. And each tribe has its own opinion on bringing the IC back together, staying separate, or taking over the tribes for themselves.
It's up to you character to decide who to help. Do you work hard to try and bring all tribes together under one banner or choose a side and execute their will as a paid mercenary/ambassador?
Other choices would be chaos by siding with raiders, or maybe a BOS path to take out all the tribes, idk, haven't thought it all out. Again, not a writer.
Mechanics:
So personally, I like the idea that if you choose to go with a single faction, there would a battle/war mechanic where you and an army (or alone if you really wanna try) take over and lay claim to areas similar to Nuka World where you fly the gangs flag. Nothing complicated, normal fallout fights, don't die and kill the leadehis troops to win.
Karma is back. You will garner good or bad rep with each tribe depending on what you do. I'd like an armor system like in NV but I can live without it.
There is an ending. Once you beat the game you can continue doing side quests for armoexperience/ammo but only for the tribes left in power. Occasional rebellions will rise up as random events that need to be put down.
Settlements are limited. Like skyrim, but a plot and build. No need to build one everywhere and you don't even need to do it if you don't want to.
Radio host? Gimme a Mr. New Vegas type guy. I don't want an eccentric 3-dog, I want a smoothed voiced person wishing me lady like luck.
Also, smarter AI.
Otherwise, typical FO mechanics. Weapons degrade, can upgrade weapons and armor, etc.
Main problems with NY:
No real borders to the south. Invisible walls would like be necessary which is stupid. Same to the East, but the Hudson could theoretically be used as a border if you put crazy strong mirelurks or something to kill the player if they tried to cross (or more invisible walls)
Don't want to disrespect the tribes. This is an issue with using each tribe as a possible faction. You're bound to piss off or disrespect one. So it'll be a task to make sure it's as limited as possible.
What to do with the city? It's a huge area that can be used for so much, but as a part of NY it's actually pretty seperated. It's a commercial hub now, but there's nothing there that would really be a reason to go down there. So do you make it one or do we just make it a glowing sea type area that's completely decimated from the bombs? That's my personal choice honestly, but it's a tough one to please as many as possible.
Conclusion: NY is rad.
I'll be taking questions as long as they do not involve Canadian trivia. Thank you.

Fallout 1 and 2 are absolutely still worth playing

This game is a masterpiece. (long post)

I love this game so much. I have been paying for this game for 5-7 years and my opinion has never changed. Everything is just so good. I am not going to put a section about side quests because I cover a few side quests in a few sections. I will briefly cover the main parts of the base game. ( maybe I will make a post covering the amazing DLC) SPOILERS AHEAD. I apologize in advance for tangents, grammatical and spelling issues.
TLDR at the bottom
START/TUTORIAL
The way NV starts is a pretty good. It teaches you about the aspects of the game in the small town of Goodsprings. In "Ghost Town Gunfight", the game teaches you about skill checks. To convince Chet to help you pass a barter check, to convince Easy Pete, you pass an explosive check, Trudy requires a speech check, and Doc Mitchell requires a medicine check if you choose to do "Run Goodsprings Run". It also teaches you about the reputation with the two quests I just mentioned. If you help the Powder Gangers, they will like you, at the cost of wiping out Goodsprings, and if you choose to help the town, the Powder Gang hates you, but Goodsprings likes you.

MORALITY
Morality is not black and white in NV for the most part. For example, in the quest "The White Wash", you are asked to investigate the case of NCR Corporal White, a soldier who went missing. You face a dilemma at the end when you find out that a Follower Of The Apocalypse is taking water from the NCR to give to the people of Westside who really need it. He tells you that he killed White to hide the secret about the water, and he feels bad about it. So you have to choose what you think is the best option, do you (A) tell the NCR that their water is being stolen so they can use it, or (B) do you keep the secret at the cost of some NCR working peoples livelihoods? There is no clear good or clear bad, it's all grey. Of course there are some obviously evil people in NV like the Fiends, especially Cook-Cook. But there is a lot, and I mean a LOT of grey.

MINOR FACTIONS
The minor factions are really great in NV. You obviously have the Brotherhood of Steel, the tech hoarders themselves. But there are also other small factions, like the Followers of The Apocalypse. They are a group of scientists and doctors whose purpose is to help people (I believe they debuted in the original Fallout. Can't remember if it was the first or second one.) You also have the Great Khans, a group of nomads who are modeled after the Mongolians. They raid, take chems, sell chems, and kill anyone who gets in their way. But as I said earlier, the morality is not black and white. The Khans hate the NCR because of the Bitter Springs Massacre, an incident in which the NCR slaughtered Khan women, elders, and children. There is also the Boomers. The Boomers are a group of former vault dwellers who stay at Nellis Airforce base and shoot at any outsiders. This is because they do not trust them, but you can help them to prove that outsiders are not as bad as they think. The last minor factions I will cover are the Families of the Strip. The Omertas are an old school mafia inspired group that run the Gomorrah casino. They have shady business that ranges from abusing the prostitutes to killing everyone in the Strip for Caesar's Legion. The White Gloves are a society of people who see themselves as above everyone else in class. They run the Ultra Luxe casino. But there are a handful in the society who want to bring back their old tribal tradition of cannibalism. The Chairmen run the Tops casino and they are the "coolest" family. They use old school slang and are the most laid back family.

Companions
The companions are great. Although I want to cover every single detail about every companion, I will limit myself to brief explanations on my 2 favorite companions (I love the other but do not have the time to cover them) and why I like them.
I will cover Arcade Gannon first. I love Arcade so much as a character. He is a Follower of The Apocolypse and he has an interesting origin and great writing. He has an intense hatred for Caesar's Legion. You trigger his personal quest by siding with anyone but the Legion (and maybe House. I have never tried siding with House while Arcade was in my company). He pulls you aside at certain places and, depending on how you reply, makes him like, or dislike you more. When you reach max affinity, he pulls you aside and reveals his story. He was born in the Enclave and he wants you to reunite the remnants that he knows to fight against the Legion at Hoover Dam. You can tell Arcade to stay in Freeside as a doctor to help people in the aftermath of the battle or you can tell him to fight with the remnants. If you tell him to stay in Freeside, he will give you his fathers Enclave tesla armor. If you tell him to fight, he will wear the armor at the battle for the dam. You will be rewarded with power armor training and remnants power armor. This will affect (effect?) his fate in the ending slides.
The other companion I will cover is Boone. He is former NCR First Recon sniper who participated in the Bitter Springs Massacre that I mentioned earlier. You meet him in Novac and he asks you to find the person who sold his wife into slavery. You can either find who did it or you can make him kill a random person of your choice. By doing things he like and asking him about his past, Boone will open up about the Massacre and you can take him to Bitter Springs. After killing Many Legion bois, you can tell Boone to let go of the past and he will finally move on, or you can tell him to become vengeful and more aggressive. This will affect(effect?) his fate in the ending slides.

MAIN QUEST LINE SUMMARY
To keep this very short, the main plot is to decide who should win the second battle for the Hoover Dam. Your choices are the NCR, Caesar's Legion, Mr. House, an independent Vegas with the help of Yes Man.

THE NCR
The New California Republic is a, well, a republic whose goal is to recreate the government of the old world, like the U.S government. It is a bureaucracy and has the positives and negatives of one. The characters in the NCR are diverse and very well written. Like how Colonel Hsu is a sensible and calm man who can resolve violent situations, as seen in the "Kings Gambit" quest where if you go to Hsu, he offers Freeside extra food and water to stop the violence. But in the same quest, you can tell Colonel Moore about the Freeside situation. Moore is a no nonsense lady who will not hesitate to fight violence with violence, which is what happens if you tell her about the Freeside situation. She sends a squad of soldiers and you to the Kings school to give the King an ultimatum. In conclusion, the NCR is an army that wishes to use the governing methods of old world America. But they also have the flaws of that system, like corruption.

CAESAR'S LEGION
Caesar's Legion is more than a faux Roman Empire. Caesar is a man who is educated on the old world, on old world government and was even an NCR citizen and Follower of The Apocolypse. Caesar thinks that the best way to lead is through dictator control. He tells you this when you ask him about President Aaron Kimball. He says that democracy slows down progress. He actually has an amount of respect for Kimball. The Legion is made up of 86 tribes that Caesar has conquered. These tribals are stripped of their identity and are indoctrinated into essentially worshipping Caesar as a living deity, as Arcade Gannon said. The legion does not believe in modern medicine. They only use "natural" sources of healing like powder. Which is not great when (plot twist) you find out about Caesar's brain tumor. Lets talk about how women are used in the Legion. Woman are used as slaves and mates for the men. When tribes are conquered, the women are forced into slavery, while the boys and young men are made into Legion soldiers. The Legion see's women as less than men. The men are trained to fear their leaders rather than their enemies, because if they fail, they are killed, like what Caesar attempted to do to Joshua Graham when the Legion lost the First Battle for Hoover Dam. The Legate Lanius, who probably has the best voice in the game, is a figure of fear. He kills anyone that gets in his way and has been a full member of the Legion since he was a child. Caesar says that Lanius has no care for the men of the legion. In conclusion, the Legion is a slaver group that is led by an educated warlord who has interesting philosophies.

MR. HOUSE
Robert Edwin House is the founder of RobCo, the company responsible for many of creations in Fallout including the Pip Boy. He predicted the Great War and prepared to survive it, through weird means. The platinum Chip was running late for delivery while the Great War started, so House did not get it. House is very interesting. He is very smart, yet makes very risky gambles, like trusting you (a stranger) in not destroying his secret army of robots. He single handedly saved Vegas from the war and built it up again. He wants you to help him fulfill his wishes for the future. He thinks he deserves the Dam because of what he can do for Vegas. His plan is to remove the Legion and lower the influence of the NCR in the Mojave so that he can bring back the glory of pre war Las Vegas. As another redditor said on the fallout subreddit, House seems to be the only one with long term plans for the future, whether they are good or bad is your opinion. In conclusion, Mr. House is an ambitious man with ambitious plans for Vegas and the Mojave. He is very confident in himself and his ability to predict the outcome of situations.

YES MAN/ INDEPENDANCE
This is going to be the shortest description. Benny had help reprogramming a securitron to help with anything, most notably taking over Vegas. You choose what factions you like and which ones you do not like and you kick both the Legion and the NCR out of the Mojave wasteland to establish independence.
FREEDOM AND DETAIL
This game is a game where you have complete freedom. You don't like Caesar, go ahead and kill him. There's no quest to do it, but you can still do it. You can kill anyone you want and you can make many decisions that impact the world. If you allow the NCR train to blow up, or if you do it yourself with the Legion, people will talk about it. I made a post showing Legate Lanius's reaction to you confronting him while wearing Legion faction armor. Obsidian has done such an amazing job putting so much detail in this game. Another example of detail is wiping out Camp Forlorn Hope. The NCR will talk about that if you do it then talk to the troopers. There are more examples of this that you will see during your own gameplay.

THE WORLD

The games world is so good. The world is great, especially from a 2010 game. The locations are great. The unmarked spots like the Sarsaparilla sign where the Lonesome Drifter is are pretty cool. The spot where you find a dead person with remnants power armor is a pleasant surprise if you just find while exploring. I also feel very immersed in the world when I'm just walking around and see a legion patrolling or NCR patrolling.
SOURCES
https://www.reddit.com/Fallout/comments/3izps8/lets_talk_about_why_mr_house_is_the_best_option/
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Caesar
https://www.reddit.com/falloutnewvegas/comments/klc6ff/in_my_near_57_years_of_playing_this_game_this_is/
A few Oxhorn videos

TLDR: I love Fallout: New Vegas.

Why I hate fallout new vegas

My NC feedback (Prologue and Raider-Walkthrough, All Human Companions, Spoilers)

TL;DR: I would recommend giving the entire game as much content as the prologue, and rework some of the storytelling, which can be a bit confused.

Hello all, I just played New California and was very enthusiastic about it. Because I also saw some negative and mixed reviews, I thought I'd write down my own thoughts on what I think can be improved. I haven't finished all of the mod, but I'm almost done doing the Shi Raider walkthrough and also dipped my toe in the waters of the NCR walkthrough. So I think I got the most important parts of the mod.
First of all, I was extremely impressed by how far a free, fan-funded project has come. I think the negative reviews were too harsh in just expecting everything to go perfectly right in a free spin-off of a near-perfect game made by a great developer at its peak. I just focus on improvement because listing positives is tedious.
That being said, I do agree the mod has some big problems, but I don't think any of these are fundamental. In my opinion, most of what is needed is getting the entire story up to the level of the prologue. I'm mostly interesting in storytelling myself, so I'll go through the combat quickly and then get to what really interests me: character development, lore, tone, pacing, etc.
COMBAT
I think the combat is a mixed bag. On the one hand, there is the grindfest of lag, random bombardments, and enemies spawning in waves, that often makes it very frustrating to go through. I had to slog through many battles by endlessly reloading saves, and I wonder how tolerable it is without combat mods. Artillery bombardments and escaping fort daggerpoint would be infuriating without a sprint mod. Without mods causing AI to miss sometimes the waves of enemies that snipe you from 100 meters are completely ridiculous. On the other hand, the combat can also be spectacular, like when you escape the Raiders in your underpants, loot an NCR corpse for weapons and clothes, and singlehandedly turn around the battle for the highway in a few minutes. I'd limit the wave spawning, make the engagements smaller, recommend combat mods, and limit artillery bombardments and the random foes with rocket launchers that you get later on.
COMPANIONS/STORY/QUESTS
This is what really interests me. I think the main problem of the mod, which you also see in disappointed reviews, is that the prologue is much better than the other parts of the mod. I'd say that's because the prologue includes characterization, well set-up plot conflicts, a fleshed out world and companions that actually react to what is going on with many different dialogue options. Up until the end of the prologue, we live the story of Vault 18 of which the Star Player is an important part. Afterwards, it's more and more the personal story of the Star Player killing mooks with his silent death squad. Your companions get the Fallout treatment: sometimes they give a scrap of a comment about something that happens, but they feel more like robots than persons.
A good story has character development and plot-tension. Characters have goals, with obstacles put in their path, and change during the story and show new sides of themselves. There is also a 'story goal', something the protagonist(s) seek to achieve, that shapes the overarching plot. For example, in New Vegas this is control of the dam for whichever faction you choose. I think your personal story at least has some tension: you want to find out what happened to you while you were young, you find out more about yourself, and eventually you confront your past. But that's not what MC 'markets' itself as in the prologue. In the prologue, it seems you will enter a new world with your friends, which none of you know, and which you will have to tackle as a group. It seems to be a 'group-story' with the story goal of common survival, to be achieved by cooperating with some faction, which is what you prepare yourself for. This 'promise' holds up until you reach the lodge outside, and you give your speech. Then your companions lose most of their content. How do they react to a bizarre world they never experienced before? How do they cope with new dangers? How well do they stick together? Even at the lodge, they hardly remark on how it is to be outside.
I don't care that the characters are a bit one-dimensional. Most people aren't that complicated either. But even if they are largely archetypical, they should express aspirations, ideas, and interpersonal tension. As it is, the game sets up tension: you have a band of traumatized, divergent personalities behind you that only hang on by your leadership. They have to be forged into a coherent group. They have problems with each other and with themselves. But this is all left undeveloped. Kurtz (a name that is a little on the nose, come on, we've all seen the movie) is edgy tribal guy and stays exactly the same from the moment his true nature is revealed. Kira is a horrible person and there doesn't seem to be a way to help her deal with her Aspergers. Jenn could have an emotional breakdown that has to be resolved, Matheson has his drug addiction. That is to say, there are a lot of potential side-plot problems to be resolved.
CONFUSION
There were a few aspects of the storytelling that I didn't like. These are just some snippets, focusing on the raiders:
-Ben is edgy tribal guy who looks down on the civilized NCR and at some point calls 'power its own justification' or something like that. Even then, he is completely unwilling to work with the raiders, even though they have many tribals in them.
-On that note, the nature of the raiders is confused. The companions absolutely refuse to work with them, seeing them as completely evil. But if we go down the Revanchist path, we find out that most of the Raiders are fairly decent. The Old Guard, Vikings, Mexicans, and Shi have a strong sense of honor and will not betray you as Ben claims. Confusingly enough, he seems to accept later on that the real problem is Elsdragon, as he will follow you even after you betray him if you have the Revanchist perk.
-Continuing there, it doesn't make sense how the companions die after your first raider mission. It is explicitly explained to you (I think by the machine god guy) that raiders respect ownership and rank. Your companions are more or less implied to die resisting rape, but why should that happen if the raiders respect ownership? Even if that is rectified, why is there no option to buy some protection? It's perfectly plausible to ask the Old Guard leader that captured you for a guard in front of the barracks, as he feels he owes you. Or you could be able to beg Elsdragon for some protection, as you are more useful to him if you depend on him completely. Your companions are, of course, a sort of hostages.
-It doesn't make sense that your companions reject all possibility of working with the raiders. This makes the 'group-story' too railroaded towards the NCR. If you are able to buy them some protection, killing Elsdragon and reforming the tribal confederation should be a legitimate alternative to escaping; there should be a possibility to convince them of this (for example promising them to kick out the Vipers and Psychos). The mod even somewhat accepts this as plausible by having Ben follow you if you choose to be Revanchist. Both plans are huge gambles anyway, and your 'escape plan' involves rape, so it isn't the best.
I could go on more, but I've rambled enough. If someone ploughs through this wall of text, I'm curious to know what you think!

Why the NCR will be the Most Likely Canonical Victor of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.

Given the recent news that Microsoft has acquired Zenimax in addition to the fact that a direct sequel to Fallout: New Vegas could very well be in the works, I've been inspired to make a post detailing my thoughts as to why the NCR ending of F:NV will most certainly be the canon ending of the game. Let's start from the top, shall we?

The NCR are irrevocably the heroes of the story.

Love them or hate them, the NCR, despite its numerous problems and burdens, are the obvious good guys of the game. This stands in direct contrast to the Legion (who, despite their upsides, are the clear-cut villains of the story regardless of how you try to spin it), Mr. House (who's more of a neutrally-aligned character, if anything (though, in my opinion, he's every bit as evil, petty and vindictive as Caesar himself)) and Yes Man (who's honestly only just there to ensure that the player can finish the game).
None of whom are even remotely close to "good", at the end of the day. And given that the good guys have ALWAYS emerged victorious in EVERY canon Fallout game regardless of whether or not it came from Interplay or Bethesda, it's more than safe to assume that the NCR (which has yet to be given the shaft by any Fallout game, so far) has the canon ending.

The NCR ending is without a single doubt the best ending in the game.

While I honestly believe that even those who either don't like the NCR or just flat-out hate the NCR are forced to admit it regardless of whether they like it or not, the NCR ending is easily the best ending of the game from a purely objective point of view. Not only is it the only ending in the game where EVERYBODY benefits and even flat-out prospers (though, admittedly, it's not all cupcakes and rainbows as the citizens of Goodsprings and Primm can attest to), it's also the only ending where EVERYBODY can survive (provided that one's willing to work for it, of course), as well.
Indeed, even the best Legion ending still sees a huge portion of the local population enslaved or murdered under Caesar's brutal rule, almost every other faction killed off or enslaved and what essentially amounts to a genocidal, mass-murdering, slaving, massively savage totalitarian utilitarian military dictatorship taking over the region, for instance. Meanwhile, even the best House ending still sees Mr. House effectively abandoning everything and everyone outside of the New Vegas Strip and leaving them to fend for themselves whereas a shitload of innocent people still get killed due to his negligence.
As for an Independent Vegas, even the best Yes Man ending (which, admittedly, is easily the second best ending in the game) still sees New Vegas devolve into a completely anarchic, Hellish shithole that becomes completely overwhelmed with skyrocketing crime, massive drug abuse, chronic shortages of even the most basic of necessities and utilities and a total collapse of any semblance of law and order all while the Courier gets rich off of the New Vegas Strip's gambling and resort operations. Either way, the NCR ending is clearly the best ending possible.
And as all canon Fallout endings have ALWAYS been the absolute best ending possible, this further reinforces the notion of the NCR canonically winning the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.

The NCR always wins.

If there's one thing that we can all agree on in regards to the NCR, it's that it ALWAYS seems to win. It won in Fallout 1 when it was founded and very quickly expanded across all of southern California and it won in Fallout 2 when it eventually gobbled up the rest of California and expanded both its territory and influence across all of Oregon, all of the Baja Peninsula, all of Nevada and even as far East as Utah and Arizona (most particularly in Bullhead City and all of its immediate surrounding areas) by the events of F:NV. Something tells me that the NCR is about ready for a third victory in F:NV.

Chris Avellone is gone.

With that prick Avellone gone, any and all remaining anti-civilization nonsense within Obsidian is also gone, as well. Meaning that there won't be any second Apocalypse from the Sierra Madre, Tunnelers, the nukes of the Divide or any other stupid bullshit that Avellone dreamed up. Furthermore, an Independent Vegas just seems incredibly unlikely now that Obsidian is back on track and actively in full support of the eventual full return of civilization to the Wastelands. Something that an Independent Vegas ending would completely contradict. Meaning that a canon NCR ending is quite frankly the only logical choice.

The NCR is by far the most popular out of the 4 main factions.

In every opinion poll that I've ever seen, the NCR ALWAYS either has a commanding lead, a general lead or is tied with an Independent Vegas. The Legion, on the other hand, is always dead-last and often doesn't even get so much as a SINGLE vote (for obvious reasons, of course), Mr. House is either 3rd place with only a few votes or tied for dead last with the Legion (often due to the fact that 1. he's entirely dependent on the player to get anything done, 2. really doesn't do anything in his incredibly boring ending and 3. we're left without even the slightest clue as to whether or not he intends to follow through with his grandiose promises, which is VERY anti-climactic) and an Independent Vegas is always either neck-to-neck with the NCR, barely behind the NCR or just second place (everybody is quite frankly thrilled with the often false notion that they can "rule" New Vegas as their own, after all).
Given the NCR's popularity, which is the direct result of the NCR being the good guys who at the very least TRY to help everyone and actually do a far better job than they're often given credit for not to mention the above fact that their ending is objectively the best ending possible, it's very safe to say that they'll most definitely have the canon ending.

The NCR ending is by far the most flexible ending.

The NCR ending is really the only ending that leaves room for a sequel and paves the way for a logical, realistic route towards continuing the Fallout saga in the American Southwest. The Legion ending doesn't make any sense at all as we all know for a fact that 1. the Legion will inevitably collapse once Caesar dies and effectively cease to exist as an entity, 2. we already know that the Legion doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell against the NCR in a total war (meaning that even if the Legion wins the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, they could NEVER win the war against the NCR, which will eventually wipe them out) and 3. the Legion would have a hard-enough time just holding and defending NEW VEGAS ALONE as it is and would eventually destroy itself just TRYING to do so, all but ensuring that a direct sequel to F:NV wouldn't be practical with a canonical Legion victory at Hoover Dam.
The House ending doesn't really work either in that it's extremely boring, highly anti-climactic, completely uneventful and ultimately doesn't leave any room for a sequel. Nothing really happens and everything just more or less stays the same albeit with several minor changes. Something that makes a canonical House ending impossible as a sequel based on that just wouldn't work. In regards to the Independent Vegas ending, while it is far from inflexible (unlike the Legion and House endings) and is actually a very interesting ending (I personally wouldn't mind an Independent Vegas ending myself), I really have a hard time seeing a direct sequel to F:NV emerge from an Independent Vegas ending.
Not only does it directly contradict the pro-civilization aims of Obsidian, but it also just comes off as more of a fail-safe to ensure that the player can finish the game in the event that they both piss off the NCR and the Legion and kill Mr. House, if you ask me. The fact that Yes Man is completely unkillable and the fact that the player can still pursue an Independent Vegas even if they've blown up the Securitron Army over at Fortification Hill (making an Independent Vegas completely pointless, but I digress) definitely helps to support that notion. Either way, the NCR ending is the only feasible ending that would make a direct sequel to F:NV possible.
And that's a wrap. Now before I conclude my post, I'd like to point out that this is pure speculation and could very well be completely incorrect in the grand scheme of things. This is, after all, just my opinion. Do feel free to share your own opinions, if you wish. A penny for your thoughts?

DLC ideas that I think would be awesome to play (Spoilers for the endings of the game)

Estranged for 17 Years, Considering Allowing Limited Contact

Hello, everyone. I have reached the point in my life where I have now been estranged from my mother for a longer period of time than when I had a relationship with her. I cut her off shortly before I turned 17 so many years ago, and now 17 years later I am 34, married, and with two children.
First, I'd like to share my story, which starts in the city of Dallas one July morning when I was born. My mother and father had married when they found out they were having me, but that marriage only lasted until my first birthday. Following the divorce, my father joined the US Navy and fought in Desert Storm, while my mother spirited me away first to Arizona for a year, and finally to Las Vegas, NV to attend college at UNLV. Shortly thereafter, I was three years old with a step-father and a new baby half-sister, and two more half-brothers would come in the coming years.
My earliest memory living in Las Vegas also happens to be the only happy memory I had of living there. When I was five, my dad took leave and visited me, and we spent the whole week together including a trip to Circus Circus. It was a theme that would be constant for the rest of my child -- the only times I ever felt happy was when I was not in Las Vegas with my mother and the new family that she started.
Even from early on, I never felt like I belonged with the family that I was living in. I had a different father who lived on the opposite coast, and I was treated far differently as if I was an inconvenient child that nobody knew what to do with. I was not my step-father's son, and unlike my sibling my interactions with him usually ended up explosive in temperament, including having objects thrown at me, with my mother doing little to stop it. In fact, my mother often reinforced the behavior which only led to fights and arguments with her as well, fights which would only subside when my dad calmed me down over the phone.
While my half-siblings did like me and looked up to me, I also never felt as strong a bond with them as they did with each other, or with their parents. I had my own room, and my own stuff, while they had to share among themselves. They received care and affection from both of their parents, while I had a tumultuous relationship with the one we shared and a long distance relationship with the one we did not. When my step-father's family came over, it was my half-siblings who were showered with attention while I was just the other child from their in-law's failed marriage. From very early on in my childhood it was clear to me that I did not belong with this family.
Then there was the effect that Las Vegas has on many adults living there. I remember being nine years old witnessing screaming arguments between my mother and step-father. You see, my step-father had a gambling addiction where he would receive his paycheck and swiftly deposit it into the slot machines at the grocery store hoping for a payout that would never come. There was also the work schedules. Since Las Vegas is a 24/7 town, it is not unusual for people to work odd shifts including evenings and into the wee hours of the night. I was often left to entertain myself while my mother was asleep all day with the blackout curtains drawn.
As a means of coping, I applied myself academically at school because it was something that I actually felt that I could do well. Unfortunately, my July birthday meant that I was always the youngest kid in all of my classes and that, coupled with my small frame, meant that I was often picked on and bullied with nobody at home that I thought would really support me.
The only times that I ever felt happy were when I flew to Dallas for the summer to visit my grandparents and the rest of my dad's side of the family, and my dad would always organize his leave to meet me there too. I have several cousins who are close to my age living there, and I have many fond memories of summer pool parties every Sunday afternoon at my grandparent's house. I looked forward to flying out every summer because I felt like it was where I belonged.
At nine years old, shortly after finishing the fourth grade, was when I hit my first breaking point with my mother. I don't remember at all what we were fighting about, but it became so intense that it ended with my mother packing away all of my things and sending me to live with my dad within the week. I was that child that she didn't know what to do with and she just sent me away, and I was thrilled. My dad had just been stationed in Oklahoma City for shore duty, a mere three hour drive from Dallas, and I would live with him for the next three years through fifth, sixth, and seventh grades.
The change was great for me, and I think that those three years were the golden years of my early childhood. While my dad does not speak much, and he occasionally had to leave me with a babysitter when he was on duty, with him I felt like I was listened to and that I belonged. We often took weekend trips to Dallas and I developed a strong bond with my grandparents and all of my cousins. I remember him taking me camping and fishing, teaching me how to shoot a gun, letting my twelve year old self drive the car on some old country roads, building a go-kart for me to drive around the neighborhood, and all kinds of experiences that I never had in Las Vegas. My school life was much better, too, and I had a good group of friends at the time.
My relationship with my mother was limited to phone calls from time to time and brief summer trips to Las Vegas. Ironically, fate made the phone calls very rare when our WebTV internet service ended up charging up an $1800 phone bill leading our phone to be disconnected for over a year. Since it was a bit of a hike to walk to the convenience store to call my mother from the pay phone, it happened less frequently and that is probably a good thing as she was also going through her second divorce while I was living in Oklahoma.
Unfortunately, my time with my dad came to an end when his shore duty tour ended and he was assigned to an aircraft carrier that was about to deploy. In the eighth grade, I moved back to Las Vegas to live with my mother. At the time, she was dating another guy who had two kids of his own, and they had moved in. My half-siblings were living with their father as he had the family support network in Las Vegas whereas my mother did not. All of the same problems that we had in early childhood existed now, except with a new guy in the house and a new set of kids that I had no bond with whatsoever. I was going to a new school, too, but it was not a very good school and I was always isolated and bullied there.
I didn't even make it through the school year before I hit my second breaking point. Our constant fighting probably led to her boyfriend from breaking things off with her, and I always felt like she was blaming me for it. One day, we got into an argument so intense that she drove me in the middle of the night to admit me into a mental hospital where I would spend two weeks being told how much of a terrible child that I was until I would admit that to the doctor and my mother in a consultation. It was easily the most humiliating experience I had ever gone through in my life. A month after I had been discharged I was given the option to move in with my dad in Virginia Beach, VA, and I took the opportunity without hesitation.
During that year, my dad married the woman who he had been dating. She already had a toddler child out of wedlock and was expecting a child by the time that I moved in. It was a little weird, because here I was a 14 year old entering high school with a step-mother who was 23 years old, but I was just so happy to move away from Las Vegas and the toxic relationship that I had with my birth mother.
My poor relationship with my step-father before, however, certainly affected me in my relationship with my step-mom. She was young and unfamiliar with what to do with a teenager step-son who is not that much younger than her, and I was conditioned by previous experiences to be distrusting of her. We had some growing pains during my teenage years for sure, but nothing ever got as bad as what I experienced in Las Vegas. I also formed more of a bond with my toddler step-sister and the two half-brothers that would be born because I was trusted with the responsibility of helping to care for them as infants given our large age gap, and I do believe that made a difference. While there may have been times that I felt that maybe I didn't belong in this new family, I think that was remedied by my dad and step-mom keeping me involved and trusting me.
I also felt like I had direction in my high school years. I had joined the school's NJROTC unit, made some close friends that I still talk to today, and really enjoyed those years. I spent my freshman and sophomore years in Virginia Beach, and I felt like I had a clear path forward into adulthood all laid out for me.
Unfortunately, that all came to an end when my dad was deployed again during my junior year. With my dad being out to sea for nine months, my step-mom wanted to move back to Georgia where her family could help to take care of my step-sister and my first infant half-brother, a decision which I fully understand. My mother decided that it would be best for me to move to Las Vegas to live with her, however, and I didn't have a say in the matter. During this move, she couldn't even be bothered to fly me like during past moves, and I embarked on a three day Greyhound bus adventure across the country where I feared I was going to be kidnapped or raped at any moment. to live with my mother in Las Vegas.
This time I was not only living with my mother, I was also living with her mother and drunkard brother because she could not afford to live on her own. I wanted to just emancipate myself right then and there, and I would have tried to do so if I would have qualified to do so. The only difference was that we did not fight as often, it was more of a silent treatment. She often worked all night, or went out to party and go to concerts, and slept all day with the blackout curtains drawn anyways. I have memories of her being dumped by some guy and then closing herself in her room to eat bowls of straight powdered sugar, and I felt nothing but shame that she was my mother. As before, I had no friends in Las Vegas although my junior year at school wasn't as bad as previous experiences in earlier childhood. I felt isolated and alone, and was just biding my time to move back with my dad for my senior year. When I finally moved back, taking another greyhound bus across the country, my last works to her were, "I don't ever want to see or speak to you again." and for 17 years I had followed through on that.
She certainly tried to contact me at first. All through my senior year she tried calling the house frequently, but I never accepted the phone call. When I was 19 I had moved out on my own and also moved back to Dallas, so she would try to reach me through my grandparents with no success. For the first four years I was also inundated with unwanted letters from her trying to justify herself through emotional sob stories, never once acknowledging what she had done to push me away. She even tried to show up at my work one day, an event that ended with me denying knowing her and having security escort her off premises. Eventually the attempts to recontact stopped until about five years in it was as if she did not exist to me.
In the time that I was estranged from my mother, I had graduated high school, obtained my drivers license, joined the US Navy and served for six years, obtained a college degree all while serving, met my beautiful spouse, and had two children (4 years old and 4 months old), and got my dream job as an engineer living and working in Japan. I do not regret walking out on her at all because she was not a positive influence in my life at all and I just feel like she would have kept me held back.
My only regret in cutting off contact was actually cutting off my half-siblings as well. While I never felt like I belonged with them, they did look up to me dearly and I do feel like I have betrayed them in a cruel way. I just could not allow myself to have any ties to my mother or to the city of Las Vegas, because my time there was too much to bear, so my relationship with them ended up being a casualty of my fallout with my mother. I stalk them online from time to time, though, and I am happy that they are doing well. My half-sister followed her dream and became an event photographer for a local radio station in Las Vegas, my older half-brother just finished his Associates in accounting and got picked up for a pretty good job also in Las Vegas, and my younger half-brother is just figuring out his early 20s. I'm sincerely happy that they are all doing well and I am sorry for any pain that I caused them from severing ties with our mother.
That brings me to the present day, where I have just turned 34 years old meaning that I have been apart from my mother for longer than I have had any association with her, and I am considering restoring limited contact with her for a few reasons.
First, and this is the main reason, I had checked in on her FaceBook page and it seems like she has become a different person than I remembered before. Her posts are generally positive and she is often spending time with her other three adult children. I looked through her entire Facebook feed to 2008 and I did not find a single post where she laid out the self-victimization sob stories that were in the letters she sent when we first broke contact. When she did mention me, it was her posting a message wishing me a happy birthday every year where she apologizes for hurting me and is praying that I would recontact her one day, or an old photograph with her commentary on what was a happy time to her, or posts where she is expressing happiness for what I have achieved in my life when she hears about them. It actually makes me cry because I believe she is actually sincere since these kinds of posts go back for the last nine years and I never had any idea.
Second, while I resent what she has done to me in my childhood, now that I am a parent myself I can appreciate the impossible situation she was in given that appeasing me may very well have been alienating to her other three children. There were times when I treated her unfairly, and I am willing to take responsibility and apologize for those times if she is also willing to take responsibility and apologize for how her actions hurt me.
Finally, I do not want to deny my children the right to get to know their grandmother, especially since she seems to have changed over the past 17 years. I am considering extending an olive branch and allowing her to visit her grandchildren here in Japan as soon as all of the travel restrictions are lifted.
If she has changed for the better, and is willing to take responsibility for her actions, and is willing to come to us to meet, then I can see our relationship being reconciled. To be honest, though, I am scared to reach out. I got her cell phone number and put it in my phone, but I have not yet found the courage to hit dial. I also fear what my half-siblings must think of me, but I do think it is finally the time to make the move and try to reconcile.
Thank you if you took the time to read my story. Mostly it helps me to just get it all written down, but I hope it is a change since there are so few stories on this subreddit of estranged adult children actually talking about reaching the point where reconciliation may be an option.

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Mar. 18, 2002

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUSLY:


1-7-2002	1-14-2002	1-21-2002	1-28-2002
2-4-2002	2-11-2002	2-18-2002	2-25-2002
3-4-2002	3-11-2002

Going into Wrestlemania 18, a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the WWF. While the return of the NWO managed to spike a big buyrate for No Way Out and Rock/Hogan is probably gonna be huge for WM buyrates, it hasn't really affected TV ratings in any meaningful way. And this is the big part of the year. That doesn't bode well for the usual decline in business that always comes after Wrestlemania. From here, Dave just spends paragraphs talking about how bad booking over the last year has tanked the company from the peak they were at the previous year and what they should be doing different. And he's not wrong. In retrospect, with 18 years hindsight, pretty much all of this is right on the money. Way back as far as late '97, Dave was pointing out all the cracks starting to form in WCW and was trying to sound the alarm. Here in 2002, he's trying to do the same with WWF and sure enough, he ends up being right. The next two decades have been one continuous slow decline in popularity, for pretty much all the reasons Dave is warning about here. It's all really interesting, but it's not news. It's just business analysis.
Which brings us to next week's Wrestlemania. Dave says there's never in the past been a Wrestlemania where the world title match had so little buzz going into it. Jericho as the WWF champion has been rendered completely secondary to the Triple H/Stephanie feud. But as of now, that match is still expected to go on last, even though all the advertising and mainstream publicity for the show is built around the Rock/Hogan match. Even Steve Austin, the biggest PPV draw in company history for the last 4 years, isn't being heavily featured in the promotion of the show (and boy, was he salty about it as it turned out). The NWO angle has pretty much been seen internally as a flop and there's not much further for them to go as a group after the show. After Mania is the brand split, which in theory should freshen things up and lead to some developmental stars being called up. But Austin and Rock are supposed to anchor each show respectively and Rock is expected to take a few months off this summer to film another movie (The Rundown) so that's gonna hurt the star power on whatever show he ends up on.
More worrisome is that there have been pay cuts. Several wrestlers were approached this week and asked to take cuts to their downside guarantees. Dave talks about how Vince never wanted to pay anyone guarantees in the first place and only started doing so in 1996 when WCW forced his hand. So far, all the wrestlers asked were developmental stars or former WCW/ECW Alliance members who haven't been used on TV since the Invasion angle ended at Survivor Series. But it's expected more pay cuts are coming, especially for anyone who's contracts are coming due because obviously, no one has any negotiating leverage anymore. Chris Jericho is probably the biggest star who's deal is up for renewal soon and obviously, he's not exactly in a prime spot to play hardball. He's a much bigger star now than he was 3 years ago, so he'll probably still get a raise. But it won't be nearly would he could get if WCW still existed. (For this reason alone, I can't comprehend why anyone would want AEW to fail if you're a wrestling fan. And yet.)
The pay cuts seem to be about $25K-per-year each. So for instance, the guys making $125K per year are being cut down to $100K. Then $100K guys down to $75K. Or in the case of the lowest paid guys, the $75K guys are being cut to $52K. WWF tried to soften the blow by saying that if/when these guys start working on TV and working regular house shows, then they start getting merch money and house show cuts and so they'll probably make more than their downside anyway. But anyone who's ever gotten a pay cut knows that's some corporate doublespeak bullshit. With nowhere else to make a living in wrestling, most of these guys are pretty much forced to smile and take it, but needless to say, they aren't happy. These people aren't rich and a $25K-per-year pay cut makes quite a bit a difference. And it's not like WWF needs to do this. They're still very profitable and they just offered the NWO guys monstrously huge contracts. This is just what happens when you have a monopoly on the industry and you don't have to pay your employees fairly. You could. But fuck them, right? (Man, this sure feels prescient in a world where a company light years more profitable now than at any time in its history just fired a bunch of people when they didn't have to.)
Oh yeah, back to Wrestlemania preview. Dave runs down all the matches and what we know. Rock, Hogan, and Pat Patterson spent all day together at a gym in Florida last week choreographing their match. Apparently during his comeback house show match with Rikishi in Tampa last week, Hogan broke a rib and tried to keep it secret from everyone, but they found out. He's still expected to work Wrestlemania (he wouldn't miss it under any circumstances) but they're concerned about how much he'll be able to do. Also, because this is Toronto and he's so beloved there, WWF is expecting Hogan to get a huge reaction from the crowd (yeah, that's putting it mildly). Jericho/Triple H on paper should be a great match (they've had some classics together in the past) but the build-up has killed Jericho and the result is a foregone conclusion. Austin/Hall should be fine. UndertakeFlair has had the best build and for storyline reasons, Flair should win. But Dave ain't holding his breath. So on and so forth.
Yup, this is definitely a slow news week. Now Dave writes a huge piece on the history of major shows in wrestling and how that led to the birth of Wrestlemania. How Vince gambled everything on the first WM and how closed circuit was such a vital part of the success. Talks about the history of closed circuit with wrestling, with the first national pro wrestling-ish event being broadcast nationally on CCTV was the Inoki/Muhammad Ali match, which featured other wrestling matches on the undercard. The inclusion of Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper were critical to the success of the first Wrestlemania and Roddy Piper's racist promos to Mr. T turned him into an mainstream celebrity along with Hogan. And then WM2 and WM3 and oh god, I'm just realizing as I type this that Dave has written multiple paragraphs about each Wrestlemania. This is fascinating stuff to read as a history buff and I seriously can't recommend it enough if you're subscribed to go read this. But I ain't recapping all that haha.
More news on Jerry Jarrett's planned promotion, with the idea of doing $9.95 weekly PPV shows. Jerry and his son Jeff are now both fully involved with this, with the idea that they would be co-owners. Despite rumors, Jerry has denied that Vince Russo is involved in the company, but others are saying he'll be writing for them secretly (as mentioned last week, Time Warner execs only agreed to represent him in his lawsuit with Hulk Hogan if he doesn't work for any other wrestling company, so he can't openly be working with the company). The idea seems to be to pay the wrestlers $1,000 to $2,500 per show and run about 26 shows per year. In the meantime, the wrestlers would be allowed to work any other indies but wouldn't be allowed to work PPV or TV for anyone else. The problem here is the WWA promotion is still trying to gain a foothold in America and they want to use a lot of the same talent and Jeff Jarrett has involvement in both companies. Jeff is reportedly trying to work out an agreement where they can all share stars and get along but Dave says that's problematic when you have two companies using the same guys and trying to book different storylines and run separate PPVs. Jarrett's new company is looking to sign a core group of names to build around and Dave says you damn well better have them signed, because WWF will pluck away anyone who starts to gain any success. Jarrett is said to be interested in signing Scott Steiner, Eddie Guerrero, and Rey Mysterio for the new company. Anyway, Dave crunches the numbers and being very conservative, this new company would need to make at least $125,000 per week on PPV just to break even. And that's being optimistic. Once you take out the PPV company's cut, Dave estimates they would need to pull 31,000 buys at least to even think of breaking even. And again, that's being extremely conservative and assuming this company runs an extremely low-cost production. To have something with good production values that can be taken seriously as competition, you'd probably have to do double that. And even with national television, WCW and ECW weren't doing that many PPV buys by the end. So Dave is skeptical that this Jarrett promotion is gonna manage it without any TV. Not to mention, where are they gonna tape? Multiple cities? Gotta promote them and draw crowds. Dave thinks you'd have to heavily paper the crowd. And it takes months for PPV money to come in, which means Jarrett is gonna have to eat all these costs at the start. Basically, this idea is gonna be difficult to pull off (yup. If Panda Energy hadn't bailed them out, they were gonna be dead within the first 6 months under this plan).
Big story about how the Vitor Belfort vs. Chuck Liddell fight has been cancelled. Why? Well, Belfort's lawyers sent a letter to UFC officials claiming that the fighter was sick with a malaria-like disease (ended up being dengue fever) and due to the medication he was on, he wasn't able to train properly. Sounds reasonable enough, yeah? Well....turns out Belfort isn't too sick to collect a paycheck in other ways. Belfort is the newest cast member of a Brazilian reality show called "Casa dor Artistas 2" which is basically exactly like Big Brother, in which a bunch of people are locked in this house with no contact to the outside world and are on camera 24/7 online, with daily edited versions airing on TV. So Belfort has now committed to being locked in this house for the next 90 days for a TV show, which means he couldn't make the fight with Liddell, scheduled for May. The winner of that fight was expected to face Tito Ortiz later this year, and Belfort vs. Ortiz is the big fight everyone has been clamoring for, and has already been postponed or canceled two other times (don't end up getting Belfort/Ortiz until 2005, and it ends up being a controversial split decision win for Ortiz).
Former Memphis area wrestler The Dream Machine passed away of a heart attack at age 47. Dave says he was possibly the greatest talker of the last 25 years who never made it big nationally. Dave recaps his career in the 70s and 80s, with lots of quotes from Jim Cornette and Jimmy Hart. I pulled up a promo just outta curiosity.

WATCH: Dream Machine cuts a promo on Dutch Mantel from 1981

All Japan Women held its first ever show on PPV this week, while facing an uncertain future. AJW is the 3rd longest-running promotion in the world (behind CMLL and WWF) but they've been struggling financially for years. And at the end of this month, they're losing their TV deal with Fuji Network, which has aired their show for 25 years. Anyway, the PPV was fine but something was missing. Manami Toyota, unquestionably the greatest female wrestler to ever live, stole the show in an excellent match, but otherwise, nothing memorable.
Kiyoshi Sagawa passed away at age 79 this week. You probably don't know Sagawa's name, but he was the largest shareholder of NJPW and was the founder of Sagawa Kyubin, which is basically Japan's version of FedEx. Sagawa was a billionaire and owned the largest percentage of NJPW stock. He alone owned 40% of the company. It's believed Sagawa's shares will be bequeathed to Antonio Inoki, who currently holds 15%. This would give him Inoki a 55% stake in the company. But Dave doesn't expect much to change because Sagawa always backed Inoki anyway, so it's not like day-to-day is going to be any different.
Eddie Guerrero debuted on the latest NJPW tour, teaming with Minoru Tanaka and Black Tiger. It's interesting because several years ago, Guerrero portrayed the role of Black Tiger. This time, it was played by Silver King. During the match, Guerrero and Black Tiger turned heel on their partner and joined their opponents in a 5-on-1 beatdown of Minoru Tanaka. Word is Guerrero looked really good on this tour so far (yeah, he was on fire during this time. Guerrero only works about 10 shows for NJPW on this tour and then WWF re-hires him and the rest is history).
Hayabusa is said to have regained feeling in much of his body and can move his left arm somewhat, after suffering the career-ending injury back in October that left him paralyzed.
Speaking of, Atsushi Onita and former FMW star Kodo Fuyuki are working an angle together over the dead FMW promotion. At an indie show, Onita came out and accused Fuyuki and FMW general manager Sakichi Nakamura of mismanaging FMW and using the company's money to make themselves rich while allowing the promotion to die. Onita also talked about how they stopped paying Hayabusa's hospital bills and used the money to enrich themselves. This is all leading up to Onita vs. Fuyuki soon, and of course Onita is using Hayabusa's injury as part of his angle. Because Onita is the carniest carny to ever carny.
A made-for-TV movie about the life of Nobuhiko Takada and his marriage to TV personality Aki Mukai aired in Japan this week and was a huge ratings hit. Takada of course is a former pro wrestler turned MMA fighter who, frankly, should have stuck to worked fights because his reputation as a shoot fighter has been destroyed time and again in real shoots. He married Mukai, who is the host of a popular morning TV show (she's basically Japan's Katie Couric, Dave says) and she has been battling cancer recently. The movie was a tearjerker story about their inability to have children due to her cancer. The couple is looking to adopt a kid in the U.S. because adoption is apparently extremely difficult in Japan.
Dan Severn regained the NWA title from Shinya Hashimoto at a Zero-One show in Japan this week. NWA president Jim Miller was there and a NWA Jersey (and American) referee officiated the match. The match ended with a screwjob finish, with the American ref fast-counting Hashimoto to give Severn the victory, which the fans haaaaaated and Dave thinks pretty well tarnishes whatever legacy the NWA title still has, in the one country where fans still sorta respect that belt. Dave says the idea here is Hashimoto is such a bigger star than Severn that he couldn't feasibly do a clean job to him in his own promotion. But Hashimoto doesn't want to go to America and defend the NWA title on a bunch of tiny indie shows for 100 people either, so he agreed to drop it back to Severn this way.
Remember that Matrats promotion Eric Bischoff was involved in that sorta disappeared off the radar? It's not dead! Yet. Bischoff, who hates dirt sheets, thinks they're all lies, and has never confided in Dave Meltzer, did an interview with the Wrestling Observer website this week and talked about the plans for the company. It has been renamed Next Generation Wrestling and Bischoff talked as if they still plan to go into production for a TV series later this summer, but he admitted everything isn't yet finalized. Bischoff said the matches won't have pinfalls or submissions but will instead of have ringside judges awarding points for creativity and execution. Dave doesn't seem to be super on board with this concept (yeah, it goes nowhere).
WWA promoter Andrew McManus claimed after the PPV disaster in Las Vegas that he would never again advertise anyone for a show that he doesn't have signed to a contract. So needless to say, the upcoming tour in Australia has names like Sid Vicious, Jeff Jarrett, Road Dogg, Buff Bagwell, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Scott Steiner, Sabu, Juventud Guerrera, and others being promoted. Needless to say, almost none of them have contracts with this company (most of them end up working the shows, but several do not). Speaking of WWA, after claiming they didn't get paid for their appearances at the Vegas show, both Terry Taylor and Larry Zbyszko have now been paid.
Sid Vicious is in a commercial for an Alabama chain of restaurants called Jack's Hamburgers. The commercial shows a guy golfing when Sid comes in and slams him. Then it says "some things don't mix, like golf and wrestling" but then it says some things like the new Jack's bacon and cheddar do mix. The commercial ends with the golfer choking Sid with his golf club. I can't find this commercial, so I'm counting on you Wreddit. FIND THIS VIDEO! I need this in my life.
Remember the story last week about the confrontation at the WWA show between Bischoff and Juventud Guerrera about a petition in WCW that Guerrera signed to have Bischoff fired? Well Dave has more details. The petition wasn't actually to get Bischoff fired, necessarily. After the incident at Bash at the Beach 2000 with Hogan, naturally, Bischoff took Hogan's side and it led to a big blow-up argument between he and Vince Russo. As a result, Bischoff pretty much walked out and said, "Here, let Russo run it and watch him hang himself." Which, of course, he inevitably did. But the point is, when Bischoff walked out, it looked as if there was going to be yet another power-change in WCW. Several of the wrestlers were fed up with their bosses changing on a monthly basis and never knowing who was in charge. So they put together a petition to give to Brad Siegel, basically asking him to give Russo a fair chance to succeed on his own and to let him remain in power in the wake of the Bischoff/Russo split. Bischoff wasn't even mentioned in the petition, it was mostly just a "don't fire Russo yet" petition. Of course, in siding with Russo to be the one in charge, that meant they were siding against Bischoff being in charge, even if that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the petition. Anyway, it apparently worked. Russo got to remain in power while Bischoff went home again. And then Russo spent the next few months booking himself to be WCW champion and screwing up everything else and within a few months, all those same guys were wishing Bischoff would come back. Anyway, a lot of people at the WWA show thought it was funny that Bischoff lashed out at Guerrera over it, because several other WCW wrestlers at the time, including Scott Steiner, also signed it.
XWF's planned house shows for later this month in Michigan and Ohio have been cancelled. Everyone has pretty much been told to sit tight for now until September and have been given hints that a TV deal is imminent. But people have been saying that since this promotion launched (yeah, this obviously never happens. Unbeknownst to anyone, XWF is already dead at this point, they never ran another show).
The plan for now (and it could always change again) is that the brand split will finally take place on the 3/25 Raw the week after Wrestlemania. It was originally supposed to be the very next night but they once again pushed it back a week, so that's where we stand for now. Promotional material for the Backlash PPV is already out and references Vince owning Raw and Flair owning Smackdown (and funny enough, it ends up going the other way) and split house shows are already scheduled for April. Dave still hates the draft idea because when guys (like Hurricane, for example) get drafted 28th, that immediately establishes them in the fans eyes as lower-card nobodies. The idea of a brand split is that it will force them to push new people and create new stars, but they've spent so long telling fans that only 3 or 4 guys matter and everyone else is minor talent. Doing a draft where guys get picked way down near the bottom just hurts them more and makes it harder to rebuild them as major players.
Notes from Smackdown: Flair had a brawl with Undertaker and during the fight, there was a "fan" played by indie wrestler Paul London who got punched. London also worked a dark match against Perry Saturn at the show. Rock returned, with not a scratch on him after being murderdeathkilled in an ambulance by the NWO a couple weeks ago. Rock challenged Hogan to face him right then and there, but of course that didn't happen because c'mon. Vince isn't crazy enough to take Hogan's first televised WWF match in 8 years and just give it away on free TV less than a week before Wrestlemania, right?

WATCH: Perry Saturn vs. Paul London - 2002

Notes from Raw: Dave calls it Raw Is Dog Shit. Oh, this should be fun. Turns out it was literally dog shit. The show was built around Triple H and Stephanie fighting for custody of their dog Lucy and at one point, it pooped on the floor. Stephanie ordered Jericho to walk the dog, because ya know, gotta build up the world champion for his Wrestlemania main event next week. The rest of the show was built around Vince and Flair in a boardroom arguing over ownership of the company with the board of directors. Jericho (while running another errand for Stephanie) accidentally runs over the dog. Riveting television here. They said the dog had a broken leg, which leads Dave to point out that Rock got practically murdered by the NWO a few weeks ago and we never got a medical update on his condition (he just sorta returned and was fine), but we found out about the dog's medical condition just minutes after it happened. As a result, Triple H came out and started attacking Stephanie, pretty much committing spousal abuse while the crowd cheered wildly, leading to Jericho attacking Triple H's quad with a sledgehammer, which would have been a fine angle if it hadn't been proceeded by weeks of making Jericho into Stephanie's whipping boy. And the main event was the 3-on-2 of the NWO vs. Austin & Rock. So yes, turns out Vince is crazy enough to book Hogan's comeback WWF match on a throwaway Raw 6 days before the biggest show of the year on PPV with no buildup whatsoever. It's the first time ever that Hogan and Austin have ever squared off against each other in a match (and it never happened again). Crowd was way into Hogan and Nash as well, since they were in his hometown.
There's a Divas special airing on UPN this week and if it does strong ratings, UPN is interested in doing a whole Divas series. Dave suspects that won't hold up long in the ratings. But for what it's worth, the original idea for Smackdown waaaaay back when it was originally conceived was for it to be an all-women's show based around Sable (who was drawing monster ratings for her segments at the time). They even held auditions for new women before scrapping the idea and making it a second show like Raw.
WWF's recent show in Japan was supposed to air on the TV-Tokyo network but it got canceled and then the network announced it was cancelling all WWF programming on the station. Turns out there was a big misunderstanding. The entire show was filmed by the network and they planned to broadcast it (with Keiji Muto doing commentary). WWF was under the impression that the show was being filmed only so they could air highlights of it as part of a sports recap show or highlight package (basically just a quick few minutes of clips on the news). WWF didn't approve for this show (a house show without all the bells and whistles) to be aired on TV in full, and when they found out, they contacted the network and said.....hey, uh, no. The network was pissed and in response, they canceled ALL WWF programming, effective immediately. This was the channel that aired Raw and Smackdown and this cancellation completely eliminates WWF's only television exposure in Japan.
Speaking of that show, before the event, Antonio Inoki told the media that he hated what WWF had become and expected the show to be a flop. He specifically talked about the Vince McMahon kiss-my-ass club angle, with Jim Ross and William Regal kissing Vince's ass and said that sort of product would never get over in Japan and thus the show would be a failure. As we learned last week, it was actually a HUGE success. In response, Inoki has admitted he was wrong and says that he has lessons he needs to learn from WWF and maybe he shouldn't have been so dismissive of their style. Dave is flabbergasted. He talks about when AAA came to the U.S. in 1993 and outdrew both WWF and WCW by a huge margin for several shows. Can you imagine if Vince McMahon had looked at that and admitted that maybe he could have learned something from it rather than ignoring it? ECW and WCW sure learned from it, and those Lucha Libre stars became a huge part of their success in later years, while WWF still hasn't learned anything from it 9 years later.
Nash and Hall are pushing hard for X-Pac to be included in the NWO and most people in the company figure it's inevitable that it will happen because Nash is pretty much undefeated in backstage political battles. He always gets what he wants somehow. Last Dave heard, X-Pac was expected to interfere at Wrestlemania in some fashion and then join the group the next night on Raw (didn't quite happen like that, but close). Lots of people in the locker room aren't happy about it because, for starters, it proves that Nash is still there to politic for his friends. And also, prior to his injury, X-Pac had fallen to a lower-card nobody status. So there's a lot of people not happy that he's expected to return and leap-frog the entire locker room and be put in the main event faction ahead of everyone else because of who his friends are.
Mick Foley signed a book deal to publish his first fiction novel, which will be titled "Tietam Brown." It's expected to be out in early 2003 and it's not about wrestling. That's all Dave seems to know so far. Foley is also now the full-time host of TNN's Robot Wars show. Foley was also involved in a TV project that was being shopped around in which he would play a former pro wrestler adjusting to real life now that he's retired. Barry Blaustein, who directed Beyond The Mat, was involved and ABC was interested, but they eventually passed and the idea seems to have died (this is basically what that new Big Show show is on Netflix. The Observer Rewind Curious Timing Effect™ strikes again.).
An idea that was pitched for Wrestlemania was for Stephanie to reveal she had been cheating on Triple H with Chris Jericho. Of course, that didn't happen. Dave talks about the Triple H/Kurt Angle storyline from a couple years ago where that almost happened but Triple H nixed it because it wouldn't be "believable" that Stephanie would cheat on him with Kurt Angle....a goddamn Olympic hero and the most legitimately bad ass athlete in the entire company. So of course, it wouldn't make sense for her to cheat on him with Jericho either. Sure, why not?
On OVW television, they hinted that Ric Flair will be coming in soon to team with his son David against Prototype and Sean O'Haire. Looks to be scheduled for next month (indeed, this does happen but for the life of me, I can't find video of it).
Another note from Eric Bischoff's interview with the Observer website, a dirt sheet website ran by a guy who he definitely never would talk to. Bischoff seems to be angling for a WWF job, saying contrary to popular belief, he wouldn't even ask for that much money to do it. He just wants to do something fun. He said they made him an offer last year, right when the Invasion angle was starting, but said he turned it down because he wasn't in good shape and didn't want to appear on TV. That's the story now. At the time, a year ago, Bischoff denied that he was ever given an offer and said he would never consider working for WWF. Dave says, in Eric's defense, the storyline they pitched last year was horrible and Bischoff was right to turn it down (they wanted him to come in and work a match with Vince at the Invasion PPV, get his ass beat, lose, and then that would be it). Adding Bischoff to the NWO angle now would be the obvious idea, but Dave says "invasion" angles never work in WWF because Vince McMahon doesn't commit to them, so adding Bischoff would likely just be another disappointment added to an already disappointing NWO return.
WWF confiscated a "Nash is horrible" sign at the TV tapings this week. Dave doesn't get it. In the past, WWF used to criticize WCW like crazy for "censoring" fans and violating their freedom of expression and all that shit. But then they started doing it too. At first, it was anti-Rock signs that were being taken away, which Dave can kinda understand because he's a top babyface. But Nash is a heel. Don't you want people bringing signs trashing them?
Scott Steiner's WWF physical showed several health issues that still need to be addressed before they sign him. The deal isn't dead yet and Steiner could still come in eventually, but that's the situation right now.
WWF has reached out to both Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio and talked to them about coming in for the new cruiserweight division. Eddie has been busting his ass on the indies in hopes of getting re-hired while Rey has been working in Puerto Rico as of late.

WEDNESDAY: Fallout from Wrestlemania 18, the Hogan/Rock match, Steve Austin walks out (the first time), Vince McMahon talks about failed plan to bring Bret Hart in for Wrestlemania, and more...

Leveling, Scaling, and Narrative Impact on Assassin's Creed Progression

Since Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed has been gradually adding more RPG mechanics and part of that has been leveling. While it wasn’t too bad in AC4 where it would rarely ask you to grind a tiny bit to get a better ship, it became a bigger nuisance in more recent titles, Origins, and Odyssey. While the leveling of Origins and Odyssey are very bad, and I will go into that more momentarily, the biggest reason appears to be due to the poor definition of the genre that Ubisoft have confined themselves to.
Assassin’s Creed’s Genre at its core is an action-adventure title, which is a very broad genre to be fair. Ac1-Syndicate are all Action Adventure Sandbox titles though, whereas Origins and Odyssey attempt to be open-world action RPGs. They are not open world though. Sandbox and Open World seem very similar, and they are, but despite many people blending them together are distinct genres and styles of world design. An Open-World is the idea that your game’s world is completely open from the beginning or very near to it. While Zelda Breath of the Wild is called “Open-air” it adheres to this very well. As soon as you get the paraglider, you can go anywhere at all. There is an easier way to do things due to weather conditions, but the tools to succeed are always available regardless of the direction you go in. Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas, are a few more popular RPG examples of an Open World. After you complete the tutorial, you can go anywhere. Some areas are easier than others, but you can go anywhere.
A Sandbox, however, does restrict your movement based on narrative progress. Assassin’s Creed 1-3 all do this where certain districts and cities can’t be explored until certain points in the game. Every Borderlands does this too, with more areas becoming available as your progress narratively. Think about GTA IV how you can’t cross a bridge until certain story moments. I do want to quickly say that you may also hear sandbox be used as a way to describe weapon pools in video games, which is an accurate term, and while AC’s weapon/tool sandbox is ripe for criticism, for the purpose of this post, sandbox will only be referring to an open vs narratively linear structure.
So why am I saying that Origins and Odyssey aren’t really open world? After all, after beating the tutorial you can go anywhere on the map. This is true but only technically. During my first playthrough of Origins right after the tutorial, I turned around to head up the black mountain because I heard there was an achievement up there. On my way up a random large cat spawned from nowhere and one-shotted me on easy. The same happened in Odyssey where I was trying to explore some of Greece before continuing the main story and while I was just riding my horse down the road a random bobcat jumped from the bushes and killed me in 1 hit, on easy. The game doesn’t present physical barriers anymore to prevent travel, but instead a soft one. If you go somewhere before the game wants you to, you will be punished by characters 4 or more levels higher, because once something is about 4 levels higher than you, you literally have no effective way to combat it, even on easy. You do next to no damage to them while they do far more damage to you.
Think for a moment about other good games with similar structures to AC. Was there ever a point where you can’t progress in dark souls because of the level? No, players do Soul Level 0 all the time. What about Skyrim? Nope, enemies can be killed just as easily at level 1 vs 81, or even more so if you don’t reset your combat skills in Skyrim.
But it’s okay in Assassin’s Creed. The leveling system isn’t that bad. Just don’t explore outside the designated areas and focus on the main quest. Except that you literally can’t just focus on the main quest because side missions and PoI are required to be a high enough level at multiple points. This was especially apparent in Episode 7 of Odyssey which had a 4 level jump between sequences and was such a long grind that so many players complained it had to be patched to be fixed mildly.
The grind was annoying in Origins for sure, but it was dialed up to 11 or actually 99 in Odyssey with over doubling your max level while adding next to no extra content. After 100%ing all main content (obviously not radiant quests but all DLC, POI, actual side missions, story, etc.) I was in the mid-60s. I used boosts from the new story mode to get to level 99 which subsequently got me banned from using story modes. Oh no, how dare I try to make the most of my experience by using the tools you provide to reach max level and gain some money because it takes literally a million XP to level up and over a million of a single currency to level up some items and you need a ton of different currencies for every item and upgrade. Gotta have that 1.5 million drachmae, 250,000 wood, and 125,000 metal to upgrade a 3ft sword. Cause that economic system makes sense.
People would constantly complain about how annoying the optional collectibles for old AC games were. But they offered very little in terms of rewards if anything. You didn’t have to collect all the chests or feathers unless you wanted an achievement. But now, beyond just achievement hunting the optional bandit camps aren’t optional. In odyssey, every mission takes you to at least one of the 730+ POI. To stay leveled you’re constantly having to do copy/pasted bandit camps raiding the same camps, killing the same enemies. Now the collectibles just require a little more effort than before. This forces players to play the game for longer than they would normally because they have to do these areas to progress, allowing the leveling system to pad the game time and give Ubisoft a reason to say their game is successful. Sure players are logging 100+ hours in odyssey but a similar percent of players is actually finishing the campaign when compared to AC2, which we can get good numbers on based on the % of players with certain Xbox achievements. I just checked and Odyssey’s story completed achievement was obtained by about 26% of the players; Origins was 27%; AC1 was 27%; and (original release) Brotherhood was nearly 40%.
The unfortunate reality is that beyond good talking points for Ubi execs, the leveling system has another major issue, being that it is inherently shady and addictive. It’s clear that Ubisoft designed the leveling in Origins and odyssey to sell MTX and be addictive. You level up quickly at first and slow down a lot towards the end, which is normal at first glance until you really notice how much you slow down. By that point, the leveling system has you addicted. The bright flashing lights, loud sounds that drown out everything else, this is a regular psychological tactic that slot machines use. While it doesn’t make a lot of sound for losing, you suddenly get a big loud noise and bright colors and flashing for winning. This triggers a reaction in your brain to create a sort of happy high similar to cigarettes and alcohol. So when players see they get rewarded for completing another copy/pasted bandit camp, they care less about the quality and more about the high they’re getting from leveling up. Compare this to the far more user-friendly system in Skyrim which has a medium-sized notification below your compass but decently above your crosshair so it’s not in your direct line of sight, and a single note/tone to denote the skill level up. Dark Souls only gives a basic audio cue for leveling up which has to be done manually in menus at a bonfire where it’s very possible and easy to lose the ability to level up prior to reaching the bonfire. Instead of figuring out innovative ways to level up like in other critically acclaimed games, Assassin’s Creed decided to look towards gambling psychological tricks, and when that leveling high slows down, you can always just buy a permanent boost for actual money. What’s that, you found a way to level up fast without buying our microtransactions? Ban them from using part of our single-player game where they can only impact their own experience.
All this comes at the cost of a sense of real progression. How do you know you progressed in Odyssey? Well, ease of killing enemies isn’t it since all enemies are scaled with you. The best way to know you’re progressing is because the level of enemies is higher and the damage text you hit them with is now saying it’s over 9000 rather than that measly 8500 you hit with previously. New enemies aren’t introduced, and if anything now that grunt that you handled at level 1 is level 99 with you and hits just as hard at level 99 as he did at level 1. New weapons aren’t introduced. Armor more or less looks the same except not it has a gold background instead of purple. Oh boy, really innovative and exciting there.
In the old games, all this progression was tied to the narrative. You want better gear, kill the next target, watch Ezio’s story unravel. You get to see new factions, characters, enemies, and situations that you’re put into. Your skills progress too, with new items like a poison dart or a second hidden blade at your disposal. You feel your arsenal and everything getting stronger as you progress through the story, which makes sense due to the animus having us relive memories. It makes sense that our ancestor would get better over the decades of his life that we spend with him. In Odyssey, though our progression is based on how many bandits and mercenaries we kill. Nothing new is unlocked by progressing the story in Odyssey except more story, which is extremely padded because we gotta have more leveling and go to more forts and camps. This cheapens the narrative impact on the character development in gameplay and story which was intertwined in previous games as a cohesive unit.
I understand if Ubisoft wants to keep AC as an open-world RPG, but it needs to do that right, and completely re-evaluate the leveling system and how it ties to the narrative progression. The current system has less weight in both gameplay and story, and just pads game time rather than helping create a unique experience like Dark Souls or Skyrim do. Players should feel more powerful through gameplay and not because text is telling them they’re doing more damage, and it should scale up at a reasonable extent to not create the toxic relationship Odyssey has with its leveling system. I sincerely hope that the rumors for Kingdom are true in regards to creating a Skyrim based level system where individual skills are leveled up based on use and do not affect your ability to explore the open world.

Disappointed by The Outer Worlds, an in-depth moan

Welp, I’ve finished The Outer Worlds after getting it at Christmas, and while I’d say I still enjoyed it – obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have finished it – it’s definitely been a mildly disappointing experience compared to what New Vegas served up. In fact, it’s been a step backwards in pretty much every respect except graphics.
I’m going to outline my thoughts here – feel free to ignore or argue or whatever. I just want to get it off my chest. Just kind of vaguely hoping that a dev will roll by here and perhaps take these thoughts on board for the future.
Guns & ammo
Someone on the New Vegas dev team was clearly a bunker-dwelling gun nut, because the range of firearms was absurd. Not just multiple shotguns, but multiple gauges of shotgun shells! Guns that could be chambered with multiple types of ammo! A range of crappy bargain-basement handguns that everybody ditched at the first opportunity!
But that was really useful in a gameplay sense, because it meant stockpiling any one type of ammo in the early game was difficult, and there was actually a reason to carry around multiple guns other than to make runs to the nearest trader. That .22 pistol is a piece of crap, but if it’s all you have…
In The Outer Worlds, you only have three types of ammo and for some reason people leave little yellow boxes full of the stuff just lying around unattended on the street, so it’s not long before you’re carting around thousands and thousands of each type of round. I didn’t shy away from too many fights and never bought ammo from stores and I still ended the game with something like 5,000+ of each type of ammunition.
And because the guns all share the same ammo pool (can a pistol use the same ammo as a machine gun? A machine gun the same ammo as a shotgun? Sure, why not?), and because so many of the guns are just (gun name) 1, 2 and Ultra, there’s no reason to have favourites or worry too much about your choices. Just pick whatever does the most DPS and suits your skillset and roll with that.
Gun mods are theoretically useful, but really a corrosive heavy machine gun got me through 90% of the game, until I picked up Phineas’s N-ray assault rifle and carried that through Tartarus (which was about the only point where the game felt challenging and tactics seemed necessary).
Speaking of which…
Tactics
New Vegas didn’t have the greatest AI ever, and the gunplay was janky as shit, but at least having grenades/dynamite, rocket launchers and mines allowed for some variety of defensive and offensive action, and the environments you fought in allowed for decent tactics.
In The Outer Worlds, practically every fight is either in a big open plain, or a big open plain with some boxes in it, and beyond an initial bit of sniping (unless you have a scope good enough to keep the enemies at bay for the duration) there’s not much for it but to machine-gun/shotgun/melee through the chaos while your companions suicidally run in. No clustering people to hit them with a bomb, no luring them into traps, no hiding in a disused room and shanking them as they run past. It’s irritatingly samey.
Oh, about those companions…
Companions
The companions in TOW are a step down from NV’s in both function and content.
Functionally, NV’s companions had specific play styles/talents and their passive skills actively changed the way players interacted with the game (eg. Boone’s spotter perk, Rex highlighting nearby items – even Cass and Arcade’s less interesting perks helped the player change up the consumables that they used).
In the field, TOW’s companions are all more or less the same (except SAM, I guess, who at least has unique attacks). As far as I can tell there’s no compelling reason not to just lump the best armour and weapons on them, and let them go charging in. And their perks are minor stat boosts that can be helpful in certain situations, but are basically “invisible” in terms of gameplay. So there’s no real reason to pick any two companions over any other two, since you can just load them out with the same gear and have basically the same experience.
In terms of content – well, TOW has some good characters, but they’re very limited in what they say or do with regard to the overall plot. Aside from a couple of little comments here and there, and those endlessly looping interactions on the Unreliable (oh look, Nyoka is teaching Pavarti to shoot again!), once you’ve got through their subplot there isn’t much to them. Pavarti voiced some concerns in Edgewater, for example, but then didn’t say much else during the missions after that point, and mutely went along with whatever I chose to do.
Meanwhile, in New Vegas, most companions had unique dialogue for various settlements and locations, they could involve themselves (or be involved) more directly in the story (eg. selling Arcade to Caesar, or having Boone open fire automatically if you took him to Nipton before you’d triggered the massacre). Their own arc stories also played out over the course of the game, with Boone opening up and revealing his story, and earning some degree of redemption after “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”. In TOW, all the character development for the companions (eg. Ellie learning to trust people) happens in the post-game epilogue cards.
Character creation and stats
TOW looks like it’s got plenty of ways to customise your character at first, but they’re practically all meaningless. The speech checks are basically the same thing split three ways (and most of the time it's just a way to get a free bit of XP mid-conversation, rather than having substantial uses); hack and lockpick are obviously situationally useful but limited to those specific areas. With the exception of science weapons the guns all act more or less the same, as do the melee weapons.
The lack of things like barterepaimedicine/science/survival means that your ways of interacting with the world are severely limited – and restricted largely to engaging in combat (or avoiding it). There are no skill checks for side missions or alternative routes beyond the speech/hack/lockpick ones. None of those little interactive moments that NV (and even the F4 DLC) had. The little background histories are cute, but they don’t really affect anything about your character in-game – I don’t think there’s even a change to the dialogue options, just a small stat boost.
Hacking and lockpicking
Call me mad but I liked the hacking and lockpicking minigames in the 3D Fallout entries. And increasing the skill level to make them easier actually made it feel like you were actively improving your character, rather than meeting an arbitrary stat check.
Here, it’s just – hold down a button and wait. Boring, unrewarding and rote.
Quests
You’ve all seen the Beyond the Beef flowchart, right? If not, just type those words into Google and marvel at how great the design of this (minor, skippable) sidequest was in NV.
There is nothing in TOW that comes even vaguely close. Probably the most complex quest is Slaughterhouse Clive, but that basically just gives you a few alternative routes up to Clive, and then a few options for how you want to resolve the quest. Like almost all of the quests in TOW, it amounts to GO TO X, KILL Y, TALK TO Z, RETURN. There’s not a great deal of exploration, nor many ways to vary that experience. The limited range of weapons means that even the combat becomes very samey.
Worldbuilding
One of the things I loved about New Vegas was how real and interconnected everything felt. Goodsprings was under threat from escaped prisoners because the prison was overrun. That was because the guards were distracted and overworked. That was because the NCR was stretching itself too thin. That was because it was trying to hold the Dam against Mr House and Caesar. That’s because the Dam is the last foothold the NCR has in the region – and a source of power for the other two competitors.
You started off with something very small, and gradually scaled up through escalating conflicts until you saw the whole picture.
Here you have something similar, but for most of the game you’re experiencing basically the same story over and over: the corporations are failing their duty of care, the people on the ground are barely scraping by, and the working stiff is being exploited. That only really changes in the very last quarter of the game, when you find out about the Board planning to freeze everyone, and Earth doing silent. But both of those feel incidental to everything else, and come across more as a last-minute attempt to ratchet up the stakes than a cohesive part of the world.
Also, the game is kind of repetitive in its themes and humour. Basically everything boils down to “corporations are psychopaths and the working classes are fucked”, which is true but gets kind of old by the time you’ve read your 1,000th passive-aggressive memo from HR. NV had Old West, 50s Vegas/gambling and survivalism vs civilisation as its aesthetics/themes, which made for a richer and more varied game.
Storyline
Like a lot of modern RPGs, TOW's overall story follows the structure of sending your character off on a mission, then having that mission bleed into a bigger, more urgent problem around the midpoint, if not before. In NV it was “Find Benny” (for the chip, or revenge, or whatever reason you cared to invent) but became “Decide who will seize the Hoover Dam”. In Fallout 3, it was “Find your father” but became “Foil the Enclave’s plan to commit genocide”. In F4 it was “Find your son” but became “some bollocks about replicants and the railroad” (I didn’t bother finishing it).
TOW has “Help Phineas free the Hope’s survivors” as its initial objective before becoming “Foil the plans of the Board to freeze almost everyone”. But that switch basically happens in the last mission, while you’re already in the middle of freeing Phineas from the prison. So the story as a whole feels like a long slog not really getting very far, only for everything to suddenly speed up and finish the moment things seem to kick into gear.
It reeks of a last-minute rush to finish the game, and a quick compression of about half the story into a single mission. Why else is Chairman Rockwell going to happen to stumble by the prison in time for your break-out attempt, and be present only for a brief conversation? Why else is the deadly labyrinth just a big, easily navigated warehouse? Why else do the Earth revelations come so late and basically affect nothing? Why else would Akande be elevated from a barely-seen-before minor character to the BIG BAD MASTERMIND, with Phineas desperately claiming in post-battle dialogue that she was a “psychopath” to retroactively justify her presence at the end of the game?
Set design
Just kinda sucks. Why are there all these identical crates and boxes lying around with ammo and weapons in them, in the middle of a street (which company is manufacturing those boxes, BTW, and why are all the corporations so eager to buy them rather than making their own)? Where are all the little dioramas and miniature stories that were all over New Vegas? I know there’s an in-game reason for all the buildings to look exactly the same (and an out-of-game one, in that it reduces the amount of time devs have to spend making rooms), but surely a bit more could have been done to customise them?
Consequences
In NV, if you help one faction you’ll likely just piss off another – and that makes the entire map more deadly, cuts off missions you could have had, and upsets individual characters. There are reasons to think carefully about what you do, and how you do them.
In The Outer Worlds, every place is basically self-contained (even those places within Monarch, the biggest map), and other than occasional skirmishes between human NPCs and wildlife, there’s not much of a sense that doing something in one place will affect anything anywhere else. I kept pissing off the Board, but it didn’t mean much of anything. I could still turn up to Byzantium and run around freely without trouble. I wasn’t forced to skulk around in the sewers or put on a disguise to get by.
And yeah, I got MSI and the Iconoclasts to pal up. Big whoop! Didn’t affect anything other than a bit of Akande’s dialogue and a little bit of help in the Pit at the end.
Basically, I was able to ride roughshod over everything, and by the end I just didn’t care about what my “character” would or wouldn’t do, because it never really seemed to matter.
Conclusion
Look, I’m not saying TOW is a bad game. Obviously it isn’t, or I wouldn’t have finished it. But it’s a big letdown after the depth and creativity seen in NV, and I do hope that future Obsidian games will be a little bit more ambitious.

Item Ideas

Yeah, im not good at art or making game clips because i suck at the game. And i also suck at coding but i have lots of ideas for items! How about i share some? Also lotsa typos since im half asleep
Item Name: Inkwell
Subtitle: "whos laughing now?"
Item Type: Passive
Item tier: D
Description: "A inkwell once used by an artist on the gungeon who went by the name of harry, he had the wonderful ability to create living things out of ink. Where he went now is a mystery, but this inkwell holds a bit of his magic. Mostly because it seems to be an infinite source of wink, just try not to get it on any of your clothes! Maybe even bring an axe.
Look out behind you, try not to slip"
Item effect: leaves a trail of black goop behind and under the player wherever they walk, the goop heavily slows enemies who walk in it and enemies who are inked take extra damge, x0.5 damage actually. The goop lasts five seconds before it starts to dissapear. The "Inked" effect lasts for eight seconds after the enemy steps out of the ink.
Insperation: Ball Of Tar (effect, binding of isaac), and Henry/Joey Drew Studios (name, description, and subtitle)
Synergies: Inkwell + Fortunes Favor "Ink Machine" Along with fortune favors effect, activating Fortunes Favor will cover the entire current room with black goop/ink for as long as fortunes favor is active, the ink has the same effect as the inkwells ink, slowing enemies and making them take extra damage.
Inkwell + Camera "The Silver Screen" Enemies hit with camera will become tempratily stunned and covered in ink making them not be able to move and for them to take extra damage, this effect last very shortly though, about three seconds. Reduces cameras charge rate by 50% to prevent hit stun abuse.
Inkwell + Cursed Bullets "Ink Demon" Hitting an enemy that is inked three times will summon a big inky gand to punch them knocking them far away and dealing a good amount of damage. Enemys also have a chance of egtting feared whenever walking in ink.
Inkwell + Remote Bullets "Shared Suffering" If more than one enemy is inked, hitting one inked enemy will deal damage to all inked enemys for the same damage.
Dissynergies: Sponge, it makes the ink not appear at all. So avoid picking it up.
Notes: inked effect can stack with poison and burning but NOT electrucity. If enemys walk in water while inked they will immeadiatly lose the effect.
Item Name: Mateba
Subtitle: "You Are Unique!"
Item type: Gun
Item tier: B
Firing type: Semi-automatic
Firing rate: similar to the colt but a bit faster. So more like the magnum.
Damage: 50 (per bullet, idk how damage works though that could be too much as far as i know)
Clip Size: Eight Shots
Ammo Capacity: 250
Description: "The mateba is a semi-automatic revolver, it was first brought to the gungeon by a collector who specialized in collecting weird guns. He lost his life to the gungeon in his greed though.
The mateba is unique, what makes it unique? Unlike most revolvers the mateba fires out the bottom cylinder instead of the top one! Makes for less climb and a faster firing rate! Also you dont have to cock the hammer back because of some oressure valve syster it recocks automatically! But sadly jt was never widely produced because it was too much work to make. And now you hold it! Dont you feel special?"
Synergies: Mateba + I-Level (modded item) "You're S.P.E.C.I.A.L!" XP earned from killing enemys is doubled butnonly if theyre kied by the mateba, aldo incrwases the matebas clop size by a flat 50 totaling up to 300. (Reference to fallout new vegas where the Mateba 6 was an aqiirable weapon, maybe it was modded, i dunno dont @ me)
Item Name: A.D.S.
Subtitle: "Ammo Division System"
Item type: Active
Item Tier: C
Cooldown: 400 damage
Description: "The Ammo Division System or ADS for short was created by the elusive Vault-Tec company to help their clients. Now one hasmade its way into the gingeon to help you!
Halves the ammo of the current gun your holding and gives it to the next gun you swap to! If the gun has full ammo, or infinite, it skips over it and gives it yo the very next gun! If all guns have full ammo, then the item does nothing. Does not work on weapons that have infinite ammo"
Effect: read the description
Synergies: none (ideas heavily accepted)
More item ideas coming soon!
(Bonus Items! Cuz im bored)
Item Name: Gambling Chip
Subtitle: "NCR or Legion?"
Item type: Passive
Item tier: A
Item Description: "A red and white gambling chip with the number thirty eight printed on it, it feels lucky. The chip also seems to be made out of some sort of material, maybe platinum?
This chip was once seeked out by the famed Courier Six of the mojave. Though their story ended, their powerful items still live on in the gungeon"
Item effect: any time you purchase an item theres a 50% chance itll cost nothing and a 25% chance itll give you double your money back. So good!
Synergies: Gambling Chip + Battle Standard "True to Caesar!" Doubles the effect of battle standard and gives the player a 50% damage increase.
Gambling Chip + Mailbox "Walkin' A Lonesome Road" Grants a 25% damage increase, 25& fire rate up, 50% movement speed up, 50% increased ammo capacity, and 50% increased clip size as long as the user has no companions. (Such as ser junkan, super space turtle, and so on)
Gambling Chip + Fortunes Favor "House Always Wins" Grants the user one free B tier or higher gun each floor, all item effects are doubled, but fortunes favor has go always be charged for this to be active. And if fortunes favor is ever used the effects of the synergy will become null and void permanently.
Gambling Chip + Big Iron "NCR Recruit" Increases weapon accuracy by 50%, decreases reload time by 35%, and doubles movement speed. Also for each item you carry yiu gain a 25% damage up but you lose 25% movement speed, the damage caps whenever you retudn to your original movement speed.
Item Name: Piper
Subtitle:"good ol 090823"
Item type: Gun
Item tier: B
(Im too tired and lazy to type out stats right now, its an M15 so just compare it to that)
Description: "The gun of a military soldier known as Specialist Zach, a small arms repairman who never got the recognition he deserved. On his quest for more guns to learn about he and his best friend (and trusty companion) Mike traveled to the gungeon. Rumors say theyre still around.
Oh yeah zach also had a gun fetish. Just holding this gun lets uou know a lot more about them"
Item effect: With your newfound gun knowledge you reload all your guns 25% faster, fire 50% faster, and any time you reload you have a chance of getting a free magazine that uses no ammo!
Item Name: Vampire Teeth
Subtitle:"SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"
item type: active
Item tier: B
Cooldown: 500 damage
Item description: "A strange pair of dentures that have vampire teeth embedded into them, and somehow they fit in your mouth! Not for long though
Imbunes you with the power of the vampire and anytime an anemy walks near you theyll have their life drained. If you have these on that is"
Item effect: gives every enemy in the room the effect of the Blood Fountain, so anytime you walk near them you can take their life force and sometomes heal yourself! It only lasts 10 seconds though so act quick!

Audit client horror stories...

As auditors, we all know how difficult trying to get timely, coherent and complete PBC's is, and we all know the cycles of management blameshifting and pressure. But what happens when things go horribly wrong? Here's a fun story:
First, a little background:
After spending a couple years at a small PCAOB firm picking up an awesome breadth and depth of experience and getting hooked on travel, an FTN busy season at a great PwC office, and a solid remote manager gig at a high-quality crowdfunding-focused firm for another couple years, I was done with audit and ready to move on completely to IT and SEC consulting...or so I thought.
Being an auditor and SEC consultant in the small cap world, I have learned and become accustomed to standing up to pressure and tend to be cynical about management's "broad strokes" point of view. I simply don't care what people think of me - I strive to be good and friendly to the staff and clients, but I'm not going to cave to "can we file" or "is it done" pressure from partners or clients if they don't get us what is needed for an audit.
The Audit Begins
After a very, very long story, which I'll write about some other time, I agreed to help a friend who started his own PCAOB firm as a contract audit manager on a "knock it out of the park" two-year audit for a small revenue-generating pharma company that would be taken public. Well, that plan backfired and the deal fell apart, since the "go public" vehicle was run by a shyster, who destroyed a lot of inventory and siphoned millions from the company (in addition to millions in capital raised) to gamble in Vegas and live lavishly - a very colorful, very common, story in the small cap world, which I'll write more on another time. Needless to say, after countless hours spent, the audit was put on ice, as lawsuits flew.
A year later, the company felt it had recovered sufficiently and is now looking to be acquired by an already-public Canadian company. The Canadian acquirer wanted a 1-year audit just for the acquisition (not even for regulatory filings), but the partner felt the acquiree should have a 2-year audit and got a new engagement letter for it. Great, green light, let's go! Nope, the company's accounting was s***, and the new controller had spent the past year or two cleaning up the books, on top of dealing with audit requests and fallout from the previous deal. After all other accounting staff quit, the controller finally had enough and quit in the middle of the audit, and a new controller came on board several weeks later - mind you, this is still a revenue-generating, inventory-carrying company running on Sage 300 with a one-man accounting department!
At this point, audit requests were and have continued to be outstanding for months in a nice, organized, collaborative format the client had originally agreed to work with. Unfortunately, due to being overwhelmed, the original controller threw that format out the window and started throwing whatever he could find at us. We had a PBC list covering approximately 70% of the audit requests and even obliged to spending copious amounts of time organizing support received and manually updating the list for every time the partner asked where things were at (i.e., every time the CEO asked the partner where things were at.). After being asked by the partner several times "exactly where we are at" with no real progress getting anything and therefore no update to give, I got frustrated and tediously walked through the list item-by-item on several calls. The partner started to understand the gravity of the hold-up, the lack of progress and the amount of time wasted.
The Drama Unfolds
After the old controller quit, the CEO tasked the CFO of the acquirer with managing the company side of the audit. And a couple weeks later, the new controller was on board. There was at least some semblance of enough staff to get done, right? This is where the downward spiral really started accelerating:

The acquirer's CFO sent me an email telling us to "get creative" (i.e., throw audit procedures out the window) to get the audit done.
I deflected and had a call with him and the other manager on the team, and we seemed to come to an understanding as to the best way to tackle the PBC list - keeping in mind, no we're not throwing procedures out.
After follow-up, we finally start getting A/R confirms back from some customers. One was a large customer with a material balance on the books and was basically a vague non-answer without confirming any particular balance. Ok, fine, time to do alternate procedures.
I asked the controller to reconcile the account to whatever it should be. Silence for a couple days, then an "Are you really asking me to do this? Why don't you just select a couple invoices." I respond, and same silence, then pushback.
A week later, the acquirer's CFO steps in, calls me, I clarify the request, and he yells at me for 5 minutes. He told me he has 7 years experience at PwC, told us we don't know what we're doing, that audit standards REQUIRE us to select a small sample. After not caving, he starts threatening to sue and tells me I'm on thin ice and to talk to the partner and that the firm should talk to its attorneys.
I call the partner, and he doesn't care about the threats to sue. I get everyone on a conference call, during which we ask for a detailed, supported full collectibility analysis on that account, and they somehow oblige, and the other manager agreed to send an open items list every other day. On this call, the acquirer's CFO was nice as can be.
The partner sends out a new engagement letter for a LOT more money due to all the time waste and uncooperativeness of the client.
Over the next couple weeks, other than finding out the client signed and backdated a lease agreement the old controller previously said was verbal (face palm), we receive nothing we asked for and get no responses.
Apparently, the client is now non-responsive to the partner and has obviously not paid the additional monies, so everything is on hold.
Yesterday, I checked in with the partner on whether we can continue, and the client's attorneys contacted him asking about the hold-up and apparently gave him a copy of an audit standards guide (LOL).

TL;DR - This audit. Just. Won't. Die.
An acquirer's CFO, which is not affiliated with the acquiree, is a real ***hole and is meddling to the point that we can't get what we need to complete the audit even if the controller cooperated. If we give in on any requests, I'm 99% sure there will be a material misstatement, aside from the facts that the client's historical accounting being s*** and that the client isn't fact-checking anything before sending it to us. Internally, the firm partner seems to have cash flow issues due to tons of unnecessary overhead and full-time staff, and while I have been paid to date, it has been slow and makes me nervous, and the partner's commitment to quality - especially as a PCAOB firm - makes me equally nervous.
Hope you enjoyed reading about psychosis! Out of curiosity:

As a contract engagement manager committed to finishing the audit, what do you think I should do?
Given the acquirer CFO's actions, he seems to me to fit the profile of a fraudster or shady business and has made my life hell. Should I report him to the GA board of accountancy and securities regulators? Cast your vote!
Do you have any similar stories? I'd love to hear them!

Update: Got off this audit, thankfully. Apparently, the client's attorney told the partner the firm had to finish the audit for the original fee. I get the impression the firm is ultimately going to cave to client demands and pressure to throw testing out the window so they can finish the audit. I'm ecstatic to hand this back to the firm and not deal with it anymore.

Looking for a new game to play, but is lost due to being interested in several genres/themes from city management to action games. Listing some games that I've gotten addicted to, hoping it'll help narrow some things down.

Hello, hope this is the right place to ask; I have some extra money and is looking to spend it on a game that I can get lost in for hours. Only issue is, I will try just about anything, and every genre/theme has a lot of games. Researching games after games has been tiring so I'm hoping that people can help me find the next game to get lost into.

Major Games that I've gotten lost in:

Skyrim - (Steam says I had 600 hours in it, but honestly it feels like I've invested 1k+ into it) I love the variety of things you can do in there. Also love the fact that you can decide what kind of characters you are going to be. Be it a hunter, bandit hunter, or just plain old dragon hunter. The world is also pretty awesome to explore, sometimes I would just find a place to stay and just watch the virtual world go by.
Final Fantasy XIV - (Steam says I have 4,500 hours in it, which sounds pretty accurate) My first MMO, and according to many, I am lucky to have this to be my first MMO. Leveling in that game is super fun that I ended up creating 4 characters just so I can focus on leveling. I've tried the end-game savage contents but did not like the "voice chat is a must" mentality that made it harder to find a solid group. Which leads to frustuations (see below).
Kerbal Space Program - (Steam says 500 hours) The freedom to do whatever I want, as long as my computer can handle it, IN SPACE! I like how you decide the challenge to a degree, and the challenges are very challenging, which makes the rewards of achieving it super satisfying. KSP and FFXIV are the only two games that made me bit the bullet and upgrade my potato computer into a less potato computer (see below)

General Theme I would Like:

Open World - In addition to Skyrim, I've also played Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4 as well as Assassin Creed's Odyssey. From what I've been hearing (no idea if it's true or not) that a lot of developers often are being pressured by people to create an open world that it often comes out bland/boring/cliche. So this makes me a bit wary when I hear bad feedback from games that have open world.
Management/Building - Civilization 5 is pure cancer to me, in a good way. I try not to play it outside weekends because if I do, I'll end up pulling an all-nighter without knowing it and have to go to work with no sleep... and I absolutely love it! I've also played Gnomoria which is a super fun game, and a great shame that the developers of that game stopped working on it. I know Dwarf Fortress is much better than it, but I could never really get into the complexity of Dwarf Fortress. Banished is another game that I kinda like, but I feel like it doesn't present much of a challenge when you figured out how to survive winter. I know many people think this but the game would be a little bit better with hostiles throwing a wrench in your strategy.
Character Creation - If the game/program has a solid character creation and nothing else but character creation, I'd probably drop money on it. Games such as Sims 3 & 4 I keep finding myself getting lost either creating the Sims or (as stated by above) building a house. Black Desert Online is another with a pretty good character creation that I often find myself creating characters than actually playing the game. FFXIV's and Blade and Soul's character creation I also enjoy. I don't enjoy games that give you barely anything that you ultimately look like everyone else.

Some honorable mentions:

Horror - I LOVE psychological horror games, which is why it pained me to say that I actually don't like the Amnesia series, I love the first half of those games, but once something starts chasing you and you having to hide, it kinda kills the mood for me and makes the game much less terrifying because I'm not focusing on the ambiance, I'm just trying to escape from something. Doki Doki Literature Club would fit into something like this, to a degree. At least it's the most memorable one for me in this theme. 7 Days to Die, at least the older version is another that I remember. The current version is very plain, every zombie is in very pre-generated building so you always know what you're getting into. While the older version the zombies are more "free-roam" which makes looting more intense/dreadful because you know they're getting closer since they can hear you looting (I know this clash with my previous statement, but I'm not sure how to explain it in an effective manner). Also it makes every decision a gamble: "There could be something in that building, but I don't have a weapon to defend myself. Should I risk it or not?"
Survival - Don't Starve deserves the top for me, I remember dying to everything except hunger in that game and I really enjoy it. I also modded Skyrim to make it into a bit of a survivalist theme and really enjoyed it. Subnautica is a very unique take on surviving as well, also love the building aspect in that game. Despite being kinda limiting.

Platform:

Playstation 4
PC (I don't have the best computer, it can't run any modern AAA games such as Odyssey or any demanding games like that, but it can play older games like Skyrim/Fallout very well)

__________
General Themes that I would rather avoid:

Frustuation/Severe Punishment for messing up - I've mentioned KSP because of its fun challenges; It can be frustrating sometimes but ultimately it doesn't punish you if you fail the challenge (to a degree), but there are games that do punish you if you make too much mistakes. Dark Souls I actually never played, but heard that it's very difficult and frustrating. Bloodborne is another game that I heard punish you severely if you die. I suppose I could consider myself as a casual of some sorts in these kind of regards, but if I find myself resetting and having to go through a bunch of challenges (or the lack thereof) just to risk getting reset again, I'm not going to be having fun.
MMOs - I know I mentioned an MMO as one of my top played games, but I've tried quite a few MMOs such as Black Desert, Blade and Soul, and TERA and they are all very cash-grabby or is very plain that it doesn't stand out.
Puzzles/Walking Simulators - There are a few puzzles/walking simulators that I kinda enjoy, but they are mostly horror-related. I've tried things as The Witness but never got too into it. Never really found the appeal in them due to their very short playtime.

I know this is quite a wall of text, but I figured the more information I give, then maybe someone can suggest a game that I'll end up getting lost in that makes it 100% worth the money. Thank you very much if you made it this far, and thank you again in advance if you have a game to suggest.

What A Day: Curious, Georgia by Sarah Lazarus & Crooked Media (04/23/20)

"Why don’t we just put everybody in a space outfit or something like that?" - Stephen Moore, economic advisor to the president and grown man

Mitch Better Have My Money

More than 4.4 million Americans filed new jobless claims in the last week, bringing the reported unemployment total over the past five weeks to 26 million. Faced with those numbers, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided it’s time to pump the brakes on any additional economic relief, and possibly force blue states and cities into bankruptcy, reminding us all why he's the most popular politician in America.

Members of the House returned to the Capitol to approve the $484 billion stimulus bill passed by the Senate earlier this week, modeling varying degrees of personal responsibility on the floor. The funding in that package is expected to be depleted within days: Banks have been swamped with small-business loan applications, and the bulk of the $310 billion being added to the program is already spoken for.
The House also voted to establish a select committee, led by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, to oversee the administration’s coronavirus spending. The text of the resolution actually gives the panel more far-reaching power than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initially indicated—it has the authority to investigate Trump’s larger response and U.S. pandemic preparedness, including internal administration deliberations. Pelosi said today that it won’t actually...do that, at least not in the near future.
As Congress shifts its focus to the next major piece of coronavirus legislation, McConnell has suggested that perhaps instead of lawmakers allocating more funds for state and local governments on the brink of economic disaster, those governments should just go fuck themselves? McConnell, who has bizarrely characterized that federal help as “Blue State Bailouts,” said he’d rather invent a way for states to declare bankruptcy than approve more relief, a proposal that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) today called “one of the really dumb ideas of all time.” More tellingly, McConnell is also at odds with President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who have both signaled that they’re on board with Democrats’ call to include that funding in the next bill.

In New York, preliminary results from antibody studies indicate that the state’s 250,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus may be just the tip of the iceberg.

Nearly 3,000 people across the state were randomly tested in supermarkets, and about 14 percent of them tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. In New York City the rate was higher: 21 percent of roughly 1,300 people tested positive. The lag in testing left New York in the dark: A new model from researchers at Northeastern University suggests that there were thousands of infections in NYC, and four other major U.S. cities, long before testing revealed there was a problem.
Further south, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) is forging ahead with his plan to reopen some nonessential businesses tomorrow, even after Trump abruptly threw him under the bus on Wednesday, saying he “strongly disagreed” with Kemp’s decision, a day after publicly praising him. (The coronavirus task force reportedly convinced Trump to reverse course.) Many business owners and workers in the state do not feel comfortable returning to work, but if they refuse, they risk losing their unemployment aid.

Even with unemployment numbers rising by the millions every week, an overwhelming majority of Americans understand that reopening the economy prematurely isn’t the solution. A Politico/Morning Consult poll from last weekend found that 76 percent of respondents felt social distancing measures should continue for as long as necessary. Kemp and reckless Republican leaders like him are ignoring public opinion in addition to national guidelines, and endangering public health.

Look No Further Than The Crooked Media

So far, 3,660 of you have used the call tool on https://votesaveamerica.com/call to get connected to your representatives in Congress and tell them that they need to include funding to make elections safe and accessible as part of their next coronavirus package. Keep them coming!
Now we want to hear from you: why do YOU need safer voting options this year? Whether you have a preexisting condition that puts you at risk, or don’t feel safe volunteering at the polls, we want to hear your story. Send in a video to us at 323-405-9944 so we can share your story and send a message to Congress and the state governments about how important this is →

Under The Radar

Florida has distinguished itself as a nightmarish place to be unemployed. The state is one of the slowest in the country to process its jobless claims, which means hundreds of thousands of unemployed Florida workers have been waiting weeks to receive their first checks, and many haven’t even been able to file their claims. The state agreed to start accepting paper applications this month, after its unemployment website broke down under the volume of traffic. Florida’s GOP leaders have intentionally weakened its unemployment system over the last decade, leaving its workers particularly vulnerable in this crisis: The state’s unemployment benefits max out at $275 a week.
Nearly all of the major battleground states in the 2020 election are experiencing higher-than-average layoffs. In addition to prying more relief funding out of Mitch McConnell’s cold bloodless hands, it will be on all of us to make sure those voters realize that this level of economic fallout, and the broken systems exacerbating it, were preventable.

What Else?

President Trump’s immigration executive order temporarily restricts some visas, but doesn’t contain the broad freeze on green cards he announced earlier this week.
China pledged an additional $30 million to the World Health Organization after Trump froze U.S. funding. If the U.S. wants to surrender its influence over a key international institution, China is happy to take up that role.
Elizabeth Warren’s eldest brother has died after contracting the coronavirus. Don Reed Herring, an Air Force veteran, died at age 86 on Tuesday.
Las Vegas, NV, workers have pushed back on Mayor Carolyn Goodman’s calls to reopen the city as a “control group,” to see what happens without social distancing. Goodman said she wanted hotels and casinos to reopen quickly, but doesn’t have jurisdiction over the Las Vegas Strip. Goodman also said she wouldn’t go to the reopened casinos herself because “I don’t gamble,” which is (chef’s kiss).
Leaked results from a clinical trial of remdesivir in China showed it carries no benefit for coronavirus patients, though the study ended prematurely because it had too few patients. Other studies are still in progress.
Two cats in New York have become the first U.S. pets to test positive for coronavirus. Health officials emphasized there’s no evidence that pets can transmit the virus to people.
Scientists in the U.K. think dogs might soon be able to sniff out asymptomatic COVID-19 cases. Labradors and spaniels have already been trained to detect malaria, and within weeks, some very good boys may play an important role in identifying coronavirus superspreaders.
The San Clemente, CA, plan to deter skateboarders by filling a skate park with sand has backfired by attracting dirt bikers. The wild BMX bikes have returned to the skate park. Nature is healing.

Be Smarter

In a New York Times op-ed this week, Dr. Richard Levitan described volunteering at New York’s Bellevue Hospital for 10 days. Levitan shared a new insight into what makes COVID pneumonia uniquely dangerous: Unlike most pneumonia patients with very low oxygen saturation (hypoxia), many COVID-19 patients don’t feel short of breath until they’re close to respiratory failure. That seems to be a result of the peculiar way the coronavirus attacks the lungs, and when patients breathe faster and harder to compensate for their “silent hypoxia” without realizing it, their lungs sustain further damage. That may explain why so many patients on ventilators ultimately die: They didn’t get to the hospital until their pneumonia was well advanced. Levitan recommended more widespread use of pulse oximeters to detect hypoxia early.
Since the op-ed was published, pulse oximeters have become impossible to find, which Levitan says is no cause for panic. (Hospitals don't use the same devices, so this isn't an N95 mask situation.) Think of it like a thermometer—something you should probably have in your home eventually.

What A Sponsor

Finding a watch that’s stylish, bold, and built to last can cost a pretty penny. Vincero watches is changing that. They believe you deserve to look good no matter your budget. With over 21,000 5-star reviews from verified customers, you know it’s stress-free shopping with fair and honest prices. Plus, shopping has never been easier with their sitewide sale - save up to 20% on any of their products for a limited time!

Is That Hope I Feel?

Publix has launched an initiative to purchase milk and fresh produce from struggling farmers, and donate it directly to Feeding America food banks.
Braskem America workers voluntarily lived at the factory for 28 days, producing tens of millions of pounds of the raw materials needed for PPE.
Ruth's Chris Steak House, Sweetgreen, and King Sushi announced they’ll return the small-business loans they received from the Payroll Protection Program. Yelling at companies on the internet works!
A federal appeals court ruled that Detroit students (and by extension, all children in the U.S.) have a fundamental right to a basic education.
Virginia has become the latest state to end prison gerrymandering, the practice of counting incarcerated people where they’re detained, rather than at their last known residence.

Enjoy

Geoff Lemon 🍋 on Twitter: "The Pope being schooled in theological biology by an account dedicated to bat PR is perhaps the best combination of things to happen on this website."

best way to gamble in fallout new vegas video

Always play black jack it gives you a better chance. you want 21 in black jack. hold at 18 with a luck of 9. thats really it this is a affective way to make money. and if you want the AMR (Anti-Matter Rifle) quickly this is the best way to do it. Good luck out there High rollers. Go to Black Mountain via Neil's shack and complete Crazy, Crazy, Crazy. The best way is to go into the storage hut and repair the robot. Make sure you pick up Annabelle from the nightkin sniper on... For Fallout: New Vegas on the Xbox 360, a GameFAQs message board topic titled "An easy way to gamble?". In fallout new vegas i like to gamble but its very hard and i lose a lot of caps. Can i please have some tips on how to get a lot of money and win.PLEASE? Answer Save. 12 Answers. Relevance. Anonymous. 1 decade ago. Favorite Answer. If you don't want to use Luck or your are using a mod which negates the Luck bonus the easiest way to win some (small however) amount of caps is to play Roulette Notes [edit | edit source]. The Tops and Sierra Madre Casino also have Craps tables, but the tables are just there for decoration, as Craps is not playable in Fallout: New Vegas.; To enable gambling at the Vikki and Vance Casino, one must complete the quest My Kind of Town and a scripted encounter with Layla and her men.; The player character's Luck attribute affects the probability of winning Fallout: New Vegas. All Discussions This is the best way by far to make money in the whole game. Last edited by Vassago Rain; Jan 1, 2016 @ 11:47am #4. red255 . Jan 1, 2016 @ 12:21pm You make Incindiary and HE rockets that way sure, conductors are heavy, hell rockets are heavy too. I generally get money from killing fiends myself. Jury rigging, its a whole host of respawning fiends and Gambling is a form of entertainment before and after the Great War. 1 Background 2 List 2.1 Blackjack 2.2 Caravan 2.3 Craps 2.4 Jungle Gym 2.5 Junktown boxing 2.6 Poker 2.7 Roulette 2.8 Slots 2.9 The Thorn 2.10 Gladiator Pit 2.11 Radroach Runs 2.12 Molerat Mambo The activities are derived from a set of artificial rules, typically with a known set of variables and outcomes to be reached The easiest way to get a lot of money in Fallout New Vegas is to win at blackjack until you get kicked out of each casino. Here are a few tips on how to get in and out quickly. Don’t be afraid to double down! If you are at 11-15 the double down option will often get you a 20 or 21 with high luck giving you bonus chips. Split the cards when you can. Splitting can make you win twice as much but also means you can lose twice as much. Always ALWAYS assume the hidden card for the dealer is a The best place to get cheats, codes, cheat codes, unique weapon locations, walkthrough, guide, FAQ, unlockables, tricks, and secrets for Fallout: New Vegas for PC. Fallout 3’s world feels like the 50s in every corner and crevice of the game. This shtick is what makes fallout so unique from other post-apocalyptic games, and Fallout 3 perfected this. Say what you will about Bethesda, but they really mastered this atmosphere, and New Vegas did not have as much of it. The World. Fallout 3 has by far the

best way to gamble in fallout new vegas top

The best way to set up your Character in fallout new vegas ...

Fallout new vegas bottle cap stash near to 10,000 capsYOU WILL NEED 100 LOCKPICK PLEASE NOTE: Installing NVSE is now a lot easier than it was when I made this video. Please watch THIS : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0prWgeGGnp8 to insta... Link to my Twitter:https://twitter.com/VinylicPumaHey guys! Back with another Fallout: New Vegas video and today, I want to go over 10 of what I think are so... Making money in Fallout New Vegas is easy. All you need to do is knock over all the casinos. Robbing the Tops, Ultra Luxe, and Gomorrah in one night is by no... This is how you get UNLIMITED 5.56 AMMO in FALLOUT NEW VEGAS!! THANKS TO MY PATREON MEMBERS: sc_human - (Plague Be Gone!) Teal - (Plague Be Gone!) Mr. Crowe ... In this short video I'll be showing you a great strategy to win at the card game Caravan in Fallout New Vegas. Detailed text guide below.Become a subscriber ... montage gun hacks "old skool" fallout new vegas, fallout new vegas quest help, fallout new vegas Quest guide, Fallout new vegas setting up your character, Fa... Welcome to a list of the most powerful energy weapons in Fallout: New Vegas! I talk about both their base damage, and their locations if you're looking to pi...

Gambling | Fallout Wiki | Fandom

best way to gamble in fallout new vegas

best way to gamble in fallout new vegas - win

Why NY and not just NYC would be a unique, interesting, and fun FO5 setting