Under normal circumstances the release of a patch is not a noteworthy event. However, the amount of bugs hiding in the crevices of Fallout: New Vegas at the time of its release would frighten even the most unflinching New York landlord. For that reason every patch implementation since last October has been met with dances around bonfires and such.
It’s satisfying as a customer to know that Obsidian have not prematurely severed ties with their lovely, but oft monstrous, creation. More good news then, from the Bethesda Blog this week: sometime, likely in the middle part of this week (the apex of which, according to my watch, happens in about thirty-two minutes), a substantially massive update is coming down the pipes of Bethesda’s/Obsidian’s servers, through some intermediary pipes, and then right into the pipes of your house, thereby then accessing the more miniature pipes of your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or personal computer.
They’ve done a fine job of listing, and trying to explain wherever possible, the ins and outs of this latest patch. There’s a lot of changes, some tiny, some, to quote the blog, “extensive.” Behold them for yourself here. A few of the most remarkable lines, to my eyes, went something like this: “Extensive optimization in McCarran, Vault 19, and Westside.” Seasoned wastelanders would indeed recall that some of the most terrible performance issues occurred in places such as McCarran and the whole vicinity of Westside, including anything near it.
One can only hope that these claims of optimization hold true!
Some other notable fixes include stacked inventory items now showing their gross weight, rather than that of a single piece (that’s more a matter of preference than a fix really); weapons firing multiple rounds of ammunition (burst-weapons, in other words) in one shot will now have their damage in VATS approximated correctly; finally, hold onto your butts, Caravan players: opponents will now use the dirty tactic of laying face cards on your stacks, just as you no doubt previously did to them, impervious to retribution.
Email the author of this post at xtal@tap-repeatedly.com.
Excellent! I too really applaud Bethsidian for not just loading the game with DLC but keeping up with the patches. Xtal, if I recall correctly you had downright horrible problems on your PS3 playthrough.
I haven’t been to New Vegas in a while, but between this and some of the DLC I’ve been scrounging, I’ll head back posthaste.
I encountered a pretty amusing bug within 5 minutes of New Vegas on the PC. The picture cards that the doc asks you about during the character creation options were all replaced by giant pink squares.
“Tell me what you see here. A cat? A broken chair? An angry storm? A gigantic shocking pink cube?”
I only ran into a single bug in New Vegas but it was a doozy. I can’t remember the name of the quest but it was in one of the casinos, the one with all the masked people, in the swimming pool area. Total hard lock at one point. Turned out you to pretty much had to stand on a specific pixel while talking to the NPC or the game would freeze.
The rest of the game ran great though.
Seems that it was a crapshoot for everyone, Scout. If you read my first impressions way back when I didn’t give much page space to bugs and crashes. That’s because when I’d played only 15-20 hours I hadn’t encountered any. It was around 25 hours that my game just want haywire and, ultimately, crashed somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 times.
That sucks, xtal. I remember you writing about your frustration. I think I was sort of blessed with this game bug-wise. I know a lot of people were tearing their hair out trying to get it to behave. The list of fixes in your link is pretty staggering. It is great that Bethesda is staying on top of this fantastic game. It’s pretty much GOTY for me.
I haven’t bought any of the DLC for NV yet, I’m hoping they’ll bundle them all together so I can get them in one hit. Like you guys are saying, it is great that Bethesda have such good follow-through on their products.