Fallout: New Vegas Lag Woes

That's not my reflection, lusting after my game character. Creep alert!

Ever since my brother introduced me to Fallout 3 two years ago, I've been obsessed. Still haven't played 1 or 2, but I almost I feel that I know the characters.

Last week, I finally downloaded the fourth and final DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, Lonesome Road. It's been out for a good while, but with school and two kids, time to play video games, and spending money, is at a premium.

I was disappointed almost as soon as I wandered past the Canyon Wreckage and onto the lonesome road, when the game continued to lag and freeze on me. The lagging, the freezing, the not being able to aim, walk, access the Pip-Boy, pick shit up, open doors...

I did some research. Found a page containing a sort of interview/chat between gamers and an Obsidian programmer. He said that the bigger your save file gets, the more the game lags. After it reaches 10 mb, it starts getting serious. No memory cache-clearing or save file restoration thing will work, because it's INHERENT IN THE GAME ENGINE. The more shit you discover, the more the game has to load in all that data, and the less the game can concentrate on being smooth.

And I can't find the gosh darn article from last night, but I did find this, an article from 1up.com, which basically summarizes the problem I'm attempting to describe in the first few grafs.

All images by me. With my camera. All right?

So basically, the only thing you can do to stop the lag is start the game over, not do so much shit, and go back in.

So that's what I did. I'm fucking waiting to do Lonesome Road until my brand new character reaches level 25 or thereabouts. Fucking aggravating. It'll be my third time playing through the game. I thought I was almost done with my second.

Oh well. Some may say I should have done my research before even buying New Vegas at all. But nothing could have kept me from that baby. All I'm saying is Bethesda/Obsidian had better use a different game engine to make Fallout 4.

Yes my character's name beats yours any day of the week.

I hear Skyrim is lagging the fuck out too? Damn, that's a shame, especially because I'm going to have to buy it even before I play it. Damn you, Bethesda/Obsidian. You make such beautiful, vast, sweetly-made games, that LAG SO GODDAM MUCH.

You bring us to heaven and then you make it shitty! YOU MAKE OUR DREAMS AND THEN CAUSE THEM TO SHIT ON US!

I'm sorry, I'm nitpicking, and making a big deal out of one thing. But it is a big thing. It made the $10 I spent on LR a purchase to be gained over time, not immediately, in my particular case. From a certain point of view, it makes my money worthless. And that's not a smart move to pull.

I mean, some warning could have accompanied the games. Something like, "When save files reach <10MB they lag, be careful." Simple and easy. Right? You could have put it in the instruction manual.

Ol' Aphro and J-Graham sneakin' the streets of Zion

This problem, for mostly PS3 users, makes what could be the sweetest game experience a lot of us gamers have ever had, which is indeed a compliment and testament to your sweet game-making skillz, B/O, become a frustrating waste of time, money and resources.

Take the necessary months. Fix the problems. Re-release the games. ... wait, you'd be wasting money that way. Find a way to do it cheaply! You have to make it happen, B/O! And take back our old copies in trade. That's an order.

How can I order y'all around. You rule my face. Thank you for the good games. I'm not gonna stop playing them, after all.