I been playing a lot of New Vegas too lately, and I wanted to make a thread similar to this one, cos I'm not a fan of 'grey' RPGs either - I want to know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, and who are the neutral guys,not some bs where one character says one fraction is bad and then turns out the opposite (like it was with Benny and Boomers). I know I know Benny couldn't be trusted, but whatever. I crucified him and then headshot-ed him and took his suit as a souvenir.

Now I'm in same situation - I don't know whether to keep being and errand boy for Mr. House or for NCR.

I remember when Witcher was coming out, it's 'greyness' was advertised as a cool feature but to me uncertainty is never cool.

Its hard for me to really express why without spoiling the whole DLC. I just found your character's faction preference important in how you interpret the actions of 'one of the NPCs' in Lonesome Road. He seemed a stronger character when I was Pro NCR or CL, or at least playing a self interested tyrant.

But of course, but my point is - I want to know consequences of my actions. Like, if I will keep helping Mr. House now - at what point NCR will start to hate me and cancel my quests, and vice versa? Anyway that isn't a big issue for me, at some point I just stop caring and go with whatever choice, but I don't think that was the goal of game developers, was it?

-_-

NCR are well funded and well trained, and have access to their own gear and control the monorail system. I prefer them over the rapist and murders that is the Legion.

Then worry not, the game (sadly) does hold your hand to the extent that you get obvious warnings in your journal and even specific quests to make you aware that 'from now on x faction will dislike you'

Ie: the "Don't tread on the Bear" quest is a warning that you are operating against NCR interests.

They do cancel each other out at one point. But the brilliance of the game is that you can play many parties against each other for your own agenda. You can keep NCR on the good side up until the very last dialogue in the game, if you play your cards right. You can also alienate them at the first encounter after the tutorial.

Yeah, it's best to play NV with a roleplay in mind, a specific kind of character that influences your decisions and allegiances. It's much more of a roleplaying game than FO3, for better or worse depending on taste.

For example my first character was a standard guns and armor NCR loyalist and believer in democracy. My second character was a melee focused selfish sumbitch I originally intended to side with Caesar with, but he fell in love with someone in the game and couldn't kill her faction for Caesar so I ended up going rogue and getting the independent ending. Now I have recently started a stealthy sniper girl who is an agent for Mr. House and does his bidding, playing everyone else against each other.

That kind of gameplay is what NV excels at and what FO3 lacked. In FO3 you were a new Brotherhood moral avenger and that was all you could be, barring a silly evil choice at the very end. FO3 excelled in other areas though, I am not mocking the game.

Just make a choice. It's an RPG. Don't ask how to do it, it's your game.

What he said. Make a choice and see what happens. New opportunities my arise, while others may become unavailable. Something to keep in mind for multiple playthroughs.

I don't really like any of the factions on the game so I back-stabbed everyone in the end and went for the "independent" ending. The NCR gives you some cool missions though.

The main difference between NV and FO3 IMO is that FO3 gave you a completely linear main quest while NV lets you choose sides. However, I think NV can get confusing at some points. Even though you have quests which warn you if you are messing too much with a faction, when you are playing for the first time and you don't know this you can have a hard time deciding which missions to do first and how will they affect your relation with all the factions. This kind of ruined the game for me because I found it distracting,

Anyway I think Fallout 3 was vastly superior (It's my favourite Bethesda game). I loved the apocalyptic feeling of the game while NV seemed to be too "happy" for me with the Vegas city and those huge factions... Also it looses that 30's feeling which was really strong on Fallout 3.

Its kind of sad how CRPGs have reached this state. Where if you just 'stick with it', you're entitled to the ending of your choice. Surely you can see how limiting an experience this can be?

I get that a lot of people approach a game with the intention of playing it once. They want to get the 'whole story' and then put the game away; time is valuable. But its so limiting. It means there's one (or two at best) 'right' ways to play a game.

I like when games aren't afraid to let their players 'fail', and keep on playing. When the story is adaptable enough to let your 'wrong' choices effect the outcome. Why shouldn't getting the 'right' story be part of the challenge?

I hated the Legion, I went in their camp and brutally murdered everyone with my Sledgehammer.

It is very satisfying.