New news from Game Informer. Taken from the gamefaqs board.
Here's a more thorough summary of the Fallout: New Vegas article in Game Informer, with lots of new information:
* There's a monorail station in the Strip.
* Mr. House is a mysterious man in control of the Strip, who lives in the Lucky 38. Nobody has been inside there as long as anyone can remember. House was inspired by Howard Hughes/ He is a laissez faire dictator, where it's "Everyone can do whatever they want as long as they follow my rules".
* J.E. Sawyer says: "Mr. House has families - tribes he brought out of the wastes. He's actually a pre-war person who specialized in robotics and research into extending human life. So he was in stasis for several hundred years, and then woke up. He has minions who control the Strip, and they help control what goes on there. (...) Mr. House is also the guy who engineered the fact that Vegas was not destroyed. The way he did that comes out through the course of the game, but because he is this sort of prodigy, he has a talent with machines and probability, he used that to his advantage to prevent New Vegas during the Great War from being destroyed."
In front of the Tops casino, a shady fellow known as Mr. Holdout offers the player concealed weapons, such as a razor or brass knuckles. The casino doorman asks the player to hand over all of his weapons before he can enter the casino, but with a high sneak skill, the player can keep one.
* The Tops is where you can experience Rat Pack-style Vegas, and listen to Frank Sinatra tunes. If you look hard enough, you might notice some familiar faces.
* The Aces nigthclub is home to the Rad Pack Revue and its manager resembles Sammy Davis Jr. He gives the player a sidequest to round up any musicians he can find in the wasteland and bring them to the club.
* The Gomorrah casino is the biggest den of sex and depravity in town.
* The Ultra-Luxe is the most luxurious casino in the Strip.
* Vault 21 is also a casino. As part of the Vault Experiment, all conflicts in it were resolved through gambling. "House decided he wanted to have it and he bet them for it, and House always wins." says Jason Bergman.
* Gambling is done through minigames, such as blackjack, roulette, slots. There is another game that they're not talking about yet. Each of the casinos has its home rules for e.g. the frequency that dealers shuffle the deck, etc. The Luck stat is the key to successful gambling.
* There are three currencies in the game - NCR dollars, Caesar's Legion money and bottlecaps.
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VasDeferens
Posted 5/12/2010 7:46:44 AM
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* Novac, home to Dinky the Dinosaur, makes its money by salvaging stuff out of a nearby rocket base. A pair of former NCR snipers use Dinkey's mouth as their nest.
* One of the two snipers is Craig Boone, a potential companion, whose pregnant wife was recently kidnapped by a bunch of slavers. Nobody else was captured, so he suspects it was an inside job. Boone says he wants to avenge Carla's death, not wanting to say how he knows she's dead.
Boone's plan is to talk to the residents of Novac, find the person responsible and lure them in front of Dinky. He gives you his red beret and tells you to wear it when you're with that person, so that Boone can shoot them.
* The Dino Bite gift shop is run by Cliff, who did not go along well with Carla. If you want to be evil, you can send anyone out there to be shot by Boone. As it turns out, nobody in town really liked Carla.
* In the hotel office, you can notice a safe in the floor behind the manager, Jeannie May Crawford. There you can find a document proving that she sold Carla to slavers for 1000 caps. After this quest is finished, Boone will join you as a companion.
* Each companion has his own storyline, they evolve and they unlock special features, becoming stronger, having lots of dialogue, and giving you bonuses.
* Caesar's Legion was defeated by the New California Republic at Hoover Dam and since that battle they retreated east. However, they are now starting to bleed back into Nevada. The Legion kills whom it can't capture, often by crucifixion.
* J.E. Sawyer says: "You start out sort of thinking 'Oh, the NCR is opposing Caesar's Legion, and Caesar's Legion are slavers, they absorb tribes they find in the wasteland, turn them into slaves, counquer other groups and crucify other people, and do all this nasty stuff. Clearly NCR must be the good guys. But then you start interacting with NCR and it's like, 'well, they're kind of strung really thing, they kind of abuse their power sometimes, they're really brutal in dealing with some of the locals. They do control the water supply kind of unfairly, and they don't allow the power to be distributed outside the Strip or McCarran.' So a lot of it is the practical realities of this very large bureaucratic military that's occupied the territory. And there are things you learn about Caesar's Legion, where Caesar's Legion are brutal and they are nasty and all that stuff, but they also conquered and civilized all these tribes that were just sort of killing each other. So they turned them into a cohesive fighting force and stopped all of this murdering out in the wastes."
* The NCR forces have retreated to Camp Forlorn Hope after their former camp, Camp Nelson, was overrun by Caesar's Legion, who killed the ones who did not manage to escape.
* A chat with Private Stone reveals that morale is pretty low. The camp commander reveals that people who were supposed to deliver a crate of supplies disappeared and he asks you to find them or the goods.
* As it turns out, they were killed by a bunch of fire geckos. You can take the crate and return to the camp.
VasDeferens
Posted 5/12/2010 7:48:03 AM
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* Sawyer says: "Skills can be shortcuts to completing a thing, but it would be nice if there was another way to do it. There are places in the game where if you have an 80 science, you can flip a switch and be done with no problem. IF you don't, thoigh, you can go and do it and it's going to take you a little more effort or it's going to cost you something".
* After delivering the crate, you are asked to help Doctor Richards in the medical tent. With high Medicine skill, you can diagnose and treat patients, but there are also other ways of completing this mission - you can lie about being a doctor or find a selection of supplies, such as surgical tubing and medical braces. Otherwise, a player can simply say that they don't have any experience and complete the mission.
* Then it is time to take back Camp Nelson with a bunch of soldiers. You have a choice of either attacking from the north or the eastern ridge.
* Instead of attacking Nelson, you can also go there for an audience with its new leader, called Dead Sea. He will then ask you to kill the officers at Forlorn Hope. You can either go postal or use C4 charges.
* Low intelligence dialogue options are back. However, instead of speaking gibberish, dumb characters now simply miss the point of things. "When there's a line that shows a bit of higher intelligence, your character just botches it and says something realy dumb and doesn't get it. That way we can tailor it a little ore, so we're not simply rewriting every single line of dialogue with a dumb version. When it's called for, the player says something extra dumb and the character responds to it. Sometimes it affects you negatively, sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it actually has a positive outcome."