Went through a lot of New Vegas a while back, but PC went down, lost all saves. Now I finally manned up and decided to redownload it, start over and finish the bloody thing fully, because it's worth that.

My last playthrough character was speech and anything social heavy. He was also a goody do gooder. I'm wondering does being more narcissistic still offer an interesting experience? I've always seen being a shithead in games as a great way to miss out on content.

I made a biker dude that is really caring about people he love but really unforgiving when it comes to his enemies.

But I wouldn't know if that affects the game really, because it bored me after 10 hours. Like any other Oblivion-like game.

Well, I also played a good character, but with NV it isn't easy to define a good/bad guy dichotomy, as you have to take into account internal New Vegas politics, NCR vs. Caesar's Legion and general morality which shows up with other factions. It may be an interesting experience, but from what I saw in the various quests, you may get more options with a generally good character. Then again, this isn't Mass Effect so you don't need to be mother Theresa. I had that happen much sooner with Fallout 3, but the pacing, writing, characters, environments were enough in NV to keep me going for around 80 hours with the 4 DLC and not all side-quests finished. May I ask if you had the same issue with Morrowind?

New Vegas has a good main story. At last, because Bethesda RPGs have shitty stories, and that includes Morrowind. And I never got far with Morrowind too, sadly. It's because I don't care about the character, the story, I go on free roaming, go into ruins, dungeons, cities and search for loot.

But the freaking combat mechanics... I get bored of the game mostly because of the combat. In Morrowind or Oblivion it's

crouch, bow to the head, repeat.

In Fallout games it's like headshot headshot repeat.

Boring as hell. And I quit Fallout 3 EVERY TIME I really try to get into this game quickly after finishing quests in Megaton.

In short, it was the same for me with Morrowind. I don't give a crap about a story, go to roam for a bit, get bored, uninstall.

"Need"? ME was actually one of the few games where I felt that all "bad" decisions were treated with the same love as the good ones, I didn't feel like missing out on anything whenever I decided to be the bad guy.

Sounds like you could really benefit from some good overhaul mods. There are some good combat overhauls that make the enemies smarter and more aggressive. I never finished Oblivion because I got bored too quickly, now after a few mods I can't finish it because the open world is so much better. I have over a hundred hours in Morrowind and Fallout 3 thanks to mods.

I may think of that, I heard a lot of good things about Bethesda games mods.

It's like they made a very good engine (not graphically) to fill it with awesome things, but forgot to make a good game :P

New Vegas? Yeah. But I don't think you'll enjoy Morrowind or Oblivion with overhaul mods, as their combat is pretty much the least important aspect of them, so if you didn't find the rest appealing, well... Go play Darksiders II!

You can't say the combat isn't important if it's like the most part of the game... Wherever you go, you fight...

Yeah you can play as an egocentric character and still come out on top. Not all quests offer physical rewards, so you can skip those, and put points into barter so you can negotiate on better offers for those that do. The ending slides also suitably reflect the outcomes of smaller factions and major characters, depending on your character's actions.

There are, to my knowledge, 4 main factions for you to join, including the independent one. For a narcissistic character, that last one would be perfect.

Btw if you just want to play the game without anything fancy, get Sawyer's mod. It increases the difficulty by a fair bit. Of course you'll need all the DLCs.

Yes, I can. Morrowind is about exploration. Combat adds a bit tension to this, since you never know what you're going to meet behind the corner so it's kind of part of that, but its quality is fairly unimportant - I never really liked Morrowind's combat aside from a few aspects I though were kinda cool, I loved Morrowind's exploration (and lore, and story, and books, and character development... And stuff) and I have enjoyed the game immensely. So if the combat is important to you and the rest of those games wasn't sufficient to keep you interested, well, those games are clearly not for you.

What I wanted to say was that contrary to ME, you can also take some "evil" actions, without fearing that some path will be blocked for you. The only two factions that I remember that needed you to achieve God-like status in order to get the most from them for the final fight and that it was actually "difficult" in doing so, was the BoS and the Followers. The rest, you could go for a no-verbal character with some evil streaks. As I have said, since there are several elements to the conflicts found inside the game, there is no D&D or ME definition of what constitutes good or bad.

I've just managed to get into the first hour or so of Morrowind (Anachronox is eating what little time I have right now for RPGs) and you aren't the first person to recommend Morrowind for the lore. Did you have a similar experience with other Elder Scroll's games? I find myself unable to stomach Skyrim because of how "flat" or empty the world is. Any recommendations? I only installed the latest Overhaul mod, but the rest is vanilla.

I know what. Another monster to fight with.

Skyrim probably has got the most lively world of all elder scrolls games. Morrowind is ... Static, technically speaking. Completely and utterly static. Some NPCs can get shuffled around occasionally, but that's about it. Most of 'what's going on' in it's world is happening in your imagination, via information you get from dialogue, books, quests and whatnot. In that, it feels like a world that's full of life - I would probably recommend installing less generic NPCs mod to make random conversations more varied, but that's about it.

Nevertheless, if you don't want to use your imagination while playing the game (I'm not saying that in a negative sense, a lot of people just aren't willing to play 'make believe' while playing their videogames) you'll probably find the game's settlements static and boring. Dungeons and the world in general still has a ton of content and loads of crap to find, but that doesn't really make it come alive.

Anyway, about the lore... Yeah, it is deep. Very much so, in fact one of the better game lores I've seen (even tho it kinda feels like reading Silmarillion all over again. Not a bad thing per se.) Buut you have to look for it. You have to ask. You have to read. You have to carefully follow the story. Morrowind isn't a game which would hand you anything on a golden platter, but if you invest time in it and play by it's rules, it gets very rewarding in all of it's aspects.
Exactly why it's not a game for you :-P

In my opinion, New Vegas is worth playing but definitely not worth finishing because the ending seemed to be particularly heavy on bugs. It took me - I'm not exaggerating - two weeks to finish the last thirty minutes or so of the game (NCR path if that makes any difference) because whenever it wasn't too busy failing to load saves, failing to save, crashing or going buggier than a beetle colony, the instability and bugginess of it made me so frustrated I just quit of my own volition.

Apart from the last thirty minutes or whatever, I liked New Vegas a lot. Shame, really.

EDIT: Your mileage may vary, of course. If you had a bug-free run, good for you. Doesn't change the way the game worked out for me, unfortunately.

E2: Also, this was less than a year ago with whatever was the latest patch back then.