This review contains spoilers
Some say he tore through the Mojave, a revenant hellbent on destruction. Others claimed she burned with righteous glory, a beacon of justice scorching the unjust, and others still claim they were just a kleptomaniac out to have a good time. Hell, I’ve heard they fell through the earth and woke up in D.C., that their mere presence would make you feel like your brain would stop processing, that they could carry a thousand pounds and run faster than the devil. End of the day, the trivia of the how and when barely matter as much as the “who”.
A decade ago, a batch of couriers set out with cargo bound to New Vegas. The whole lot of them carried worthless trinkets across the sands, a batch of diversions and a single Platinum Chip. Five couriers made it to New Vegas unscathed. Lady Luck must have had it out for the last poor bastard; the only package that mattered was signed off with two shots to the head and a shallow grave. That should’ve been the end of it, another nameless body lost to wasteland, but be it by fate, fury or spite, the dead man walked. Wasn't even two days later that the thief in the checkered suit was gunned down, 9mm justice ringing red hot. Within a week, President Kimball lost his head, the Followers of the Apocalypse were a smoking crater, the Brotherhood of Steel suffered a fatal error, and Caesar himself fell to the knife's edge. Crazy son of a gun even took the Strip by siege, running some police state ops under the table. Or at least, that's how I've heard it told.
When all is said and done, the devil's in the details. The Courier was just as much a sinner as a saint, but anyone could tell you that. Hell, I'd go as far as to say the moment-to-moment minutia doesn't matter; who cares that she traveled with a former 1st Recon sniper, or a whisky-chugging cowpoke? Will anyone remember the ghoul mechanic, the robo-dog, the Enclave reject, or the schizophrenic Nightkin?
No, even as the figurehead of The Strip, no one can really pin down the story in a way everyone can agree on. You'll hear a thousand stories, and the only two consistent factors are that some poor delivery boy got his brains blown out, and that when the dust settled, the Mohave was never quite the same. But listen to me rattle on… you know all of this. After all, that's exactly how you wanted it, right?
When you picked that platinum chip off of Benny, riddled with holes, you knew what you were doing, didn't you? How could you not; it wasn't the first time you shot the boy down. Last time, it was a Ripper to the gut, this time his own gun to the back of the head. Did everyone every figure out how Maria was in your hand and in his back pocket? When the mighty Courier crushed the Great Khans beneath their heel, did you so much as flinch, or was this just another quest in your wild wasteland? Even with cannibals licking their lips with you in their eyes, you smiled, like this was an old joke reminding you of better times.
A decade ago, you woke up in Doc Mitchell's practice, head like a hole with a big iron on your hip. Now, you're back in Goodsprings. Everyone acts like this is new, fresh, like you haven't done this a thousand times over. I know this story, you know it even better. Still, it's hard to stop yourself from doing the same old song and dance, isn't it? For as much as patrolling the Mojave can make you wish for a nuclear winter, you keep coming back. It's not just war; nothing about the desert ever changes. But that's just how you like it, isn't it, Courier?
Vegas never changes. You never change.
A decade ago, a batch of couriers set out with cargo bound to New Vegas. The whole lot of them carried worthless trinkets across the sands, a batch of diversions and a single Platinum Chip. Five couriers made it to New Vegas unscathed. Lady Luck must have had it out for the last poor bastard; the only package that mattered was signed off with two shots to the head and a shallow grave. That should’ve been the end of it, another nameless body lost to wasteland, but be it by fate, fury or spite, the dead man walked. Wasn't even two days later that the thief in the checkered suit was gunned down, 9mm justice ringing red hot. Within a week, President Kimball lost his head, the Followers of the Apocalypse were a smoking crater, the Brotherhood of Steel suffered a fatal error, and Caesar himself fell to the knife's edge. Crazy son of a gun even took the Strip by siege, running some police state ops under the table. Or at least, that's how I've heard it told.
When all is said and done, the devil's in the details. The Courier was just as much a sinner as a saint, but anyone could tell you that. Hell, I'd go as far as to say the moment-to-moment minutia doesn't matter; who cares that she traveled with a former 1st Recon sniper, or a whisky-chugging cowpoke? Will anyone remember the ghoul mechanic, the robo-dog, the Enclave reject, or the schizophrenic Nightkin?
No, even as the figurehead of The Strip, no one can really pin down the story in a way everyone can agree on. You'll hear a thousand stories, and the only two consistent factors are that some poor delivery boy got his brains blown out, and that when the dust settled, the Mohave was never quite the same. But listen to me rattle on… you know all of this. After all, that's exactly how you wanted it, right?
When you picked that platinum chip off of Benny, riddled with holes, you knew what you were doing, didn't you? How could you not; it wasn't the first time you shot the boy down. Last time, it was a Ripper to the gut, this time his own gun to the back of the head. Did everyone every figure out how Maria was in your hand and in his back pocket? When the mighty Courier crushed the Great Khans beneath their heel, did you so much as flinch, or was this just another quest in your wild wasteland? Even with cannibals licking their lips with you in their eyes, you smiled, like this was an old joke reminding you of better times.
A decade ago, you woke up in Doc Mitchell's practice, head like a hole with a big iron on your hip. Now, you're back in Goodsprings. Everyone acts like this is new, fresh, like you haven't done this a thousand times over. I know this story, you know it even better. Still, it's hard to stop yourself from doing the same old song and dance, isn't it? For as much as patrolling the Mojave can make you wish for a nuclear winter, you keep coming back. It's not just war; nothing about the desert ever changes. But that's just how you like it, isn't it, Courier?
Vegas never changes. You never change.
it fucking rules when you kill chandler bing
I would like to apologize to Fallout New Vegas. I have 499 hours sunk into this game over the course of several years. I bought it when I was a teenager and played it all the way to Uni and beyond.
And yet, after all those almost 500 hours of play I cannot go back to it, every attempt petering out shortly thereafter from the realization that I have seen it all, experienced every nuance and perspective from a game that only wished to enrich my life through its myriad of systems, characters and masterful roleplaying design. "He wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer".
This is not meant to be an insult to FNV, far from it. I am not the kind of ridiculous child that gets made fun of on social media for giving a low score to a game cause "after doing the main campaign and the sidequests and achievements etc there's nothing to do! unfinished game". Quite the opposite. I apologize because in playing FNV so many times from so many angles and perspectives, uncovering every single layer of a legendarily dense game I have stripped it away like a hunter salvaging every organ and resource from a deer.
Its darkly ironic that the very same process which has allowed me to fully appreciate just how diverging, rich and wonderfully replayable this modern classic in RPG design is exactly why I can never go back to it. FNV is to me now like a fully solved problem, a series of understood systems, of known interactions and characters which are transparent in their every function. In short its completely stripped of the illusion of being a world, of being on an adventure with real people with goals and hopes and dreams and fears.
This maybe comes off as overblown and for sure, its no great tragedy, all good things come to an end and FNV has given me more than is reasonable to my life, but after going to back to revisit and old favourite and being unable to enjoy any of it, I felt a profound sadness. I think completionism is bad in general, and semi relatedly FNVs spiritual successor The Outer Worlds feels very much designed to court the enjoyment of completionists and is worse for it. This is perhaps why for how much it frustrates me I still come back to Commonplace, a game concept founded entirely on contempt for the very urge of completionism, of allowing all of its secrets to be revealed (even if in practice they can all be found out with enough time and effort but still).
I could have pulled away at 50 hours, at 100, at 200 and still allowed New Vegas to exist on its own terms, but I didnt. And for that I am deeply sorry.
And yet, after all those almost 500 hours of play I cannot go back to it, every attempt petering out shortly thereafter from the realization that I have seen it all, experienced every nuance and perspective from a game that only wished to enrich my life through its myriad of systems, characters and masterful roleplaying design. "He wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer".
This is not meant to be an insult to FNV, far from it. I am not the kind of ridiculous child that gets made fun of on social media for giving a low score to a game cause "after doing the main campaign and the sidequests and achievements etc there's nothing to do! unfinished game". Quite the opposite. I apologize because in playing FNV so many times from so many angles and perspectives, uncovering every single layer of a legendarily dense game I have stripped it away like a hunter salvaging every organ and resource from a deer.
Its darkly ironic that the very same process which has allowed me to fully appreciate just how diverging, rich and wonderfully replayable this modern classic in RPG design is exactly why I can never go back to it. FNV is to me now like a fully solved problem, a series of understood systems, of known interactions and characters which are transparent in their every function. In short its completely stripped of the illusion of being a world, of being on an adventure with real people with goals and hopes and dreams and fears.
This maybe comes off as overblown and for sure, its no great tragedy, all good things come to an end and FNV has given me more than is reasonable to my life, but after going to back to revisit and old favourite and being unable to enjoy any of it, I felt a profound sadness. I think completionism is bad in general, and semi relatedly FNVs spiritual successor The Outer Worlds feels very much designed to court the enjoyment of completionists and is worse for it. This is perhaps why for how much it frustrates me I still come back to Commonplace, a game concept founded entirely on contempt for the very urge of completionism, of allowing all of its secrets to be revealed (even if in practice they can all be found out with enough time and effort but still).
I could have pulled away at 50 hours, at 100, at 200 and still allowed New Vegas to exist on its own terms, but I didnt. And for that I am deeply sorry.
Sorry, baby. I just don't love you the way I used to.
It's not you. It's me. You haven't changed, even though you really should have. You're still as much of a buggy mess as you were on release, with all of your crashes and non-functional mechanics, but those never bothered me. A couple community patches — you always did have a tendency to rely on others to make you work properly — and you're about as stable as you could have been. So why is it that I'm coming back to you over a decade later, with all of my fond memories, and I find that whatever spark we once had is now gone?
It's because you're boring, baby. That's the awful truth.
I really did think I was above such a petty complaint. I mean, your writing is excellent. You've got some incredibly strong characters and storylines, and you allow for a way more freeform approach to your narrative than most of your contemporaries could ever dream of. You've got a tone about you. Nobody could ever look at you and mistake you for anyone other than yourself.
But your moment-to-moment experience is just so boring. So repetitive. All I'm doing is walking. Walking and walking and walking from flat plain of dirt to flat plain of dirt, and then fast traveling between flat plains of dirt, while one of about five licensed songs play on loop. You've got the shortest playlist in the world. You've got spurs that jingle-jangle, you were always a fool for your Johnny, yippee-yay, I know it all. I could always turn off your radio and listen to the ambience of the areas around me, but your environmental sound design just isn't up to par. I don't blame you. You didn't even have a year to get ready. It's not your fault.
You take way too long to get going, and by the time we get there, I've seen everything you've had to offer me a hundred times over. I'm sure some people would say that I'm not treating you the way that I ought to, and I'm just being unfair because I've played too much of you. Maybe. But I've visited old favorites that I've been with a lot longer than you, baby, and none of them bored me the way that you do now. I can't keep feeling like the burden is on me to make you more fun; like I need to be the one going out of my way to get all of these mods and patches for you when keeping me entertained is your job.
I know nobody ever came to you for the gameplay, but you keep insisting on putting it front and center. I can't get away from it. If there was about 50% less "game" in this game, it would still be too much for what it currently is. It's borderline vestigial. I know that you care a lot more about your story, and so do I. I wish that you could have just focused on what you were good at. Your environments aren't pretty enough to get lost in, and they're not enough of a traversal challenge to be engaging; all I'm doing is walking forward and popping the occasional enemy, and it's just not enough.
What more can I say? I've fallen out of love. A classic needs to hold up to be a classic, and the twelve years since your release have left me unsure if you ever even qualified. You were novel once, and now you're not. You could have been more, but neither your publishers nor your developers were keen on that idea. You were rushed, and it'll always show.
I got carded trying to buy this at a Gamestop in 2011 and was refused because I didn't have my ID on me.
It's not you. It's me. You haven't changed, even though you really should have. You're still as much of a buggy mess as you were on release, with all of your crashes and non-functional mechanics, but those never bothered me. A couple community patches — you always did have a tendency to rely on others to make you work properly — and you're about as stable as you could have been. So why is it that I'm coming back to you over a decade later, with all of my fond memories, and I find that whatever spark we once had is now gone?
It's because you're boring, baby. That's the awful truth.
I really did think I was above such a petty complaint. I mean, your writing is excellent. You've got some incredibly strong characters and storylines, and you allow for a way more freeform approach to your narrative than most of your contemporaries could ever dream of. You've got a tone about you. Nobody could ever look at you and mistake you for anyone other than yourself.
But your moment-to-moment experience is just so boring. So repetitive. All I'm doing is walking. Walking and walking and walking from flat plain of dirt to flat plain of dirt, and then fast traveling between flat plains of dirt, while one of about five licensed songs play on loop. You've got the shortest playlist in the world. You've got spurs that jingle-jangle, you were always a fool for your Johnny, yippee-yay, I know it all. I could always turn off your radio and listen to the ambience of the areas around me, but your environmental sound design just isn't up to par. I don't blame you. You didn't even have a year to get ready. It's not your fault.
You take way too long to get going, and by the time we get there, I've seen everything you've had to offer me a hundred times over. I'm sure some people would say that I'm not treating you the way that I ought to, and I'm just being unfair because I've played too much of you. Maybe. But I've visited old favorites that I've been with a lot longer than you, baby, and none of them bored me the way that you do now. I can't keep feeling like the burden is on me to make you more fun; like I need to be the one going out of my way to get all of these mods and patches for you when keeping me entertained is your job.
I know nobody ever came to you for the gameplay, but you keep insisting on putting it front and center. I can't get away from it. If there was about 50% less "game" in this game, it would still be too much for what it currently is. It's borderline vestigial. I know that you care a lot more about your story, and so do I. I wish that you could have just focused on what you were good at. Your environments aren't pretty enough to get lost in, and they're not enough of a traversal challenge to be engaging; all I'm doing is walking forward and popping the occasional enemy, and it's just not enough.
What more can I say? I've fallen out of love. A classic needs to hold up to be a classic, and the twelve years since your release have left me unsure if you ever even qualified. You were novel once, and now you're not. You could have been more, but neither your publishers nor your developers were keen on that idea. You were rushed, and it'll always show.
I got carded trying to buy this at a Gamestop in 2011 and was refused because I didn't have my ID on me.
New Vegas and Morrowind have a shared, magical little quality that I think has gone mostly unnoticed even after all these years, something that’s been in plain sight but critically under-discussed. And that is:
Their titles.
… Not that the words themselves are what's particularly special, but how their respective titular locations actually do define the entire game. Morrowind was so interesting because it, for the most part, bucked the fantasy trend of having an unambiguously defined hero, and players instead had to prove themselves to all the various societies in the region. Each group interprets the role of the Nerevarine differently, in a way that reflects their values, conveying an understanding to the player of Morrowind and its people. New Vegas works the exact same way, with a similarly undestined hero slowly learning about all the conflicts that shape life in the Mojave. The opening hours of the game are genius for how they introduce the daily struggle of the wastelanders, the cruelty of the Legion, the ineffectual bureaucracy of the NCR, the brutal lives of the urban Freesiders, and finally, the resources of the strip that they’re all counting on to save them. Making it to the strip is only where the game begins, and even by then, the player has already been fully integrated in the setting. Choices have been made that had the weight of consequence, not just from the mechanical standpoint of NPC reputation, but from the knowledge that those choices could impact the future of New Vegas. You know an RPG is something special when you could take out all the skill points, character attributes, and traits but still have a compelling roleplaying experience, and that’s why I think it’s stuck in people’s minds the way Morrowind has. Gameplay systems may age, but a thoughtfully constructed world with relatable characters in a conflict you’re invested in has a timeless appeal.
Addendum on the DLC (includes some spoilers):
The date listed for this completion is for a replay, which was also the first time I played the DLC, so here’s the DLC for the review.
Firstly, Dead Money was an odd lurch in tone, but it’s probably my favorite of the bunch. It’s an interesting post-apocalyptic story that could honestly stand on its own, but its themes actually do tie back into the main story in an elegant way, coloring the player’s view of each faction with an understanding of how dangerous a fixation on the past can be. Just wish there were fewer bear traps.
Honest Hearts feels like a Yin-and-Yang companion piece to Dead Money, with societies that are trying to start without the baggage of the past. However, while obsessing on the past is dangerous, you can’t escape from its influence. In other ways, it feels like the rest of New Vegas in miniature, including its problems, most notably having a half-baked villain. A little bland as an expansion but basically ok.
Old World Blues is… a thing? I heard it was the best for years, but I found the dialog to be so painfully unfunny that I nearly stopped playing. Apparently there has been quite the heel-turn on how much people like it now though, and it’s been slowly sliding down the ranks. I just don’t have a feel for what this DLC was trying to say, other than “stupid sci-fi is fun”.
However, Lonesome Road might actually be my least favorite for other reasons. While Old World Blues is painful to listen to, I think this one actually hurts the narrative of the main game, which is hard to forgive. It attaches mythological significance to your character at the very last moment, and suddenly defines a specific backstory that robs players of the history they built with their character. While the rest of the game hinted at what Ulysses was like, it never went so far as to actually set up a conflict with him, so he had to patiently explain your own backstory to you in order to manufacture enough drama for the final showdown to occur. After all that, you can still just convince him to just bury the hatchet and walk away, which seems like an unusual option. As much as I hate forced combat in a game that lets you focus on speechcraft, I think that the game let slip a beautifully tragic theme of irreconcilable differences. Metal Gear Rising put it in a way that's oddly fitting for New Vegas:
Standing here, I realize you are just like me, trying to make history.
But who’s to judge the right from wrong?
When our guard is down I think we’ll both agree that violence breeds violence, but in the end it has to be this way.
I’ve carved my own path, you followed your wrath, but maybe we’re both the same.
The world has turned and so many have burned, but nobody is to blame.
Yet staring across this barren wasted land, I feel new life will be born, beneath the blood stained sand.
I think if Ulysses was more of a perfect devil’s advocate, who would always rationally and passionately stand for everything you stand against, killing him would be an incredibly emotional moment. If the series’ theme is “War never changes”, the courier’s final challenge being the most basic human violence of brother against brother, courier against courier, it would have been a perfect parallel to the past, to Romulus and Remus, and to the future, to the Bull and Bear. I imagine that this idea was the original concept, but sadly, it didn’t quite shake out.
Sorry that addendum went on longer than the actual review, thanks for making it all the way down here, I hope you're having a great day.
Their titles.
… Not that the words themselves are what's particularly special, but how their respective titular locations actually do define the entire game. Morrowind was so interesting because it, for the most part, bucked the fantasy trend of having an unambiguously defined hero, and players instead had to prove themselves to all the various societies in the region. Each group interprets the role of the Nerevarine differently, in a way that reflects their values, conveying an understanding to the player of Morrowind and its people. New Vegas works the exact same way, with a similarly undestined hero slowly learning about all the conflicts that shape life in the Mojave. The opening hours of the game are genius for how they introduce the daily struggle of the wastelanders, the cruelty of the Legion, the ineffectual bureaucracy of the NCR, the brutal lives of the urban Freesiders, and finally, the resources of the strip that they’re all counting on to save them. Making it to the strip is only where the game begins, and even by then, the player has already been fully integrated in the setting. Choices have been made that had the weight of consequence, not just from the mechanical standpoint of NPC reputation, but from the knowledge that those choices could impact the future of New Vegas. You know an RPG is something special when you could take out all the skill points, character attributes, and traits but still have a compelling roleplaying experience, and that’s why I think it’s stuck in people’s minds the way Morrowind has. Gameplay systems may age, but a thoughtfully constructed world with relatable characters in a conflict you’re invested in has a timeless appeal.
Addendum on the DLC (includes some spoilers):
The date listed for this completion is for a replay, which was also the first time I played the DLC, so here’s the DLC for the review.
Firstly, Dead Money was an odd lurch in tone, but it’s probably my favorite of the bunch. It’s an interesting post-apocalyptic story that could honestly stand on its own, but its themes actually do tie back into the main story in an elegant way, coloring the player’s view of each faction with an understanding of how dangerous a fixation on the past can be. Just wish there were fewer bear traps.
Honest Hearts feels like a Yin-and-Yang companion piece to Dead Money, with societies that are trying to start without the baggage of the past. However, while obsessing on the past is dangerous, you can’t escape from its influence. In other ways, it feels like the rest of New Vegas in miniature, including its problems, most notably having a half-baked villain. A little bland as an expansion but basically ok.
Old World Blues is… a thing? I heard it was the best for years, but I found the dialog to be so painfully unfunny that I nearly stopped playing. Apparently there has been quite the heel-turn on how much people like it now though, and it’s been slowly sliding down the ranks. I just don’t have a feel for what this DLC was trying to say, other than “stupid sci-fi is fun”.
However, Lonesome Road might actually be my least favorite for other reasons. While Old World Blues is painful to listen to, I think this one actually hurts the narrative of the main game, which is hard to forgive. It attaches mythological significance to your character at the very last moment, and suddenly defines a specific backstory that robs players of the history they built with their character. While the rest of the game hinted at what Ulysses was like, it never went so far as to actually set up a conflict with him, so he had to patiently explain your own backstory to you in order to manufacture enough drama for the final showdown to occur. After all that, you can still just convince him to just bury the hatchet and walk away, which seems like an unusual option. As much as I hate forced combat in a game that lets you focus on speechcraft, I think that the game let slip a beautifully tragic theme of irreconcilable differences. Metal Gear Rising put it in a way that's oddly fitting for New Vegas:
Standing here, I realize you are just like me, trying to make history.
But who’s to judge the right from wrong?
When our guard is down I think we’ll both agree that violence breeds violence, but in the end it has to be this way.
I’ve carved my own path, you followed your wrath, but maybe we’re both the same.
The world has turned and so many have burned, but nobody is to blame.
Yet staring across this barren wasted land, I feel new life will be born, beneath the blood stained sand.
I think if Ulysses was more of a perfect devil’s advocate, who would always rationally and passionately stand for everything you stand against, killing him would be an incredibly emotional moment. If the series’ theme is “War never changes”, the courier’s final challenge being the most basic human violence of brother against brother, courier against courier, it would have been a perfect parallel to the past, to Romulus and Remus, and to the future, to the Bull and Bear. I imagine that this idea was the original concept, but sadly, it didn’t quite shake out.
Sorry that addendum went on longer than the actual review, thanks for making it all the way down here, I hope you're having a great day.
"Here's your chip."
actually infects Mr House with Bonzi like a boss
actually infects Mr House with Bonzi like a boss
Almost everything about this game is pure Kino.
The writing slaps, the world you explore slaps, all the characters you find and talk to slap (besides that Mic and Ralph kid I hope he dies in a blitzkrieg), almost everything about the game slaps, besides the controls which can feel a bit floaty at times but I put that blame more on Bethesda with there shitty engine rather than obsidian who tried there hardest to make the best game possible. This is without a doubt the best Fallout game, and maybe one day I'll return to play it again. But not today since I kinda have a life, kinda, sort of, not really.
The writing slaps, the world you explore slaps, all the characters you find and talk to slap (besides that Mic and Ralph kid I hope he dies in a blitzkrieg), almost everything about the game slaps, besides the controls which can feel a bit floaty at times but I put that blame more on Bethesda with there shitty engine rather than obsidian who tried there hardest to make the best game possible. This is without a doubt the best Fallout game, and maybe one day I'll return to play it again. But not today since I kinda have a life, kinda, sort of, not really.
Dark confession: I just don't have a lot of fun once I start dying over and over and I will do anything to avoid that feeling.
So, you know, maybe I used a lot of console commands to make it as easy for me as I could manage it. I got to enjoy some incredible writing and world-building and maybe I permanently ruined some quests with my faction manipulations, and I don't think that lessened my own experience or enjoyment. Game good.
So, you know, maybe I used a lot of console commands to make it as easy for me as I could manage it. I got to enjoy some incredible writing and world-building and maybe I permanently ruined some quests with my faction manipulations, and I don't think that lessened my own experience or enjoyment. Game good.
Fallout: New Vegas is one of my favourite games of all time and I truly believe - one of the best games ever made. I say this whilst being acutely aware of its very obvious flaws. It's not a nice looking game at all, even for 2010. It's riddled with glitches and bugs that can cause extremely unnecessary deaths or even set you back an hour or so of progress, and the game has about 6 voice actors.
And yet...None of that matters at all in the face of storytelling and core gameplay as good as this. New Vegas's main story is one of the most unique and engaging I've ever experienced in a videogame. A breadcrumb trail of clues alluding to the game's central mystery is laid out to you from the very start and information is slowly dripfed to you with such masterful pacing that you're always satisfied with what you've learnt, but never entirely out of questions. You'll have questions right up until the end of the game, but fear not - they'll all be explained and they'll all make perfect, beautiful sense.
The characters and dialogue in this game are fascinating, and as an adolescent growing up and playing for the first time they genuinely taught me a lot. Mr. House educated me about the concept of autocracy, Caesar makes an earnestly compelling case for dictatorship as the ruling form of government in a post-nuclear war wasteland. I would quite literally rather listen to these characters talk than many of my real life family members! I would pay good money just to have new voice lines for characters such as these added to this game.
That's the thing about New Vegas, it has a culture in its writing that other Fallout games don't. Where games like Fallout 3 and 4 largely tread the same ground talking about survival and patriotism with the occasional interesting little nugget thrown in here and there, New Vegas dives into politics, history, psychology and so many other topics and almost always surfaces with something interesting to say, or even teach. Even the most insignificant of NPCs in this game might just say something that sticks with you for a long time, and while the game never forces you to - it encourages you to talk to everyone with writing of this calibre.
And as far as gameplay is concerned, New Vegas may seem like just an average-at-best shooter on the surface, but as a role-playing game? It nails everything. Think of so many recurring mechanics throughout the Fallout games and by extension - most Western RPGs, I promise you, Fallout: New Vegas quietly has some of the absolute best iterations of any of them. New Vegas ditches Fallout 3's awful % based skill checks and "good/bad" karma system for far more clean-cut "do you have this stat at this number" skill checks and a "reputation" system with each of the game's many fascinating factions that makes you far less limited in your role-playing than "am I a bad guy or am I a good guy?"
Because of this far more nuanced way of handling morality, you can role-play as - get this, a complex character with complex motivations! New Vegas gives you so many tools to be so many different kinds of character - you'd be surprised at how much the game is willing to let you commit to being a cannibal! Maybe you're a fucking idiot? New Vegas has got you covered! By giving you exceptionally stupid dialogue options specifically for when you catastrophically fail an Intelligence check, New Vegas not only lets you lean into role-playing, but it also makes failure fun! Something else that Fallout 3 and 4 practically never achieve.
On top of all of this New Vegas is a great open-world game. None of this half-hour intro nonsense that Bethesda RPGs put you through. Within 10 minutes of starting a new file you can have been given the setup, built your character and BAM, you're out in the world ready to do what you want. Pursue the main quest if you wish, but the world isn't at stake! It's not engineered to feel super urgent like so many other open-world games of its kind and so you can feel very valid to just be having fun out in the badlands. One of New Vegas's most important locations is a tall, glowing tower, shining a light that can be seen from almost anywhere in the game world and - particularly when you're out in the desert at night, beckons to you like a siren calling for a sailor. When playing this game, this and so many of the game's other monolithic landmarks filled me with a sense of wonder that I wouldn't feel for another 7 years, when Breath of the Wild came out.
Fallout: New Vegas was developed over the course of 18 months. This explains the repeating character models, often unsightly textures and litany of bugs. It doesn't explain how it's such a fucking masterpiece. Obsidian made this one Fallout game in 18 months and it absolutely blows anything Bethesda have ever done out of the water. New Vegas is funny, dramatic, tragic and insightful. I'm sorry, but if you truly think 3 or 4 are superior experiences to this, I have to seriously question your taste. After over 10 years of playing this game for the first time, nothing has yet topped it for me.
If you've never played it before, you owe it to yourself to do so. Let yourself experience it all for the first time spoiler-free. Just, do yourself a favour and pick "Wild Wasteland" as one of your starting perks. You'll thank me later.
And yet...None of that matters at all in the face of storytelling and core gameplay as good as this. New Vegas's main story is one of the most unique and engaging I've ever experienced in a videogame. A breadcrumb trail of clues alluding to the game's central mystery is laid out to you from the very start and information is slowly dripfed to you with such masterful pacing that you're always satisfied with what you've learnt, but never entirely out of questions. You'll have questions right up until the end of the game, but fear not - they'll all be explained and they'll all make perfect, beautiful sense.
The characters and dialogue in this game are fascinating, and as an adolescent growing up and playing for the first time they genuinely taught me a lot. Mr. House educated me about the concept of autocracy, Caesar makes an earnestly compelling case for dictatorship as the ruling form of government in a post-nuclear war wasteland. I would quite literally rather listen to these characters talk than many of my real life family members! I would pay good money just to have new voice lines for characters such as these added to this game.
That's the thing about New Vegas, it has a culture in its writing that other Fallout games don't. Where games like Fallout 3 and 4 largely tread the same ground talking about survival and patriotism with the occasional interesting little nugget thrown in here and there, New Vegas dives into politics, history, psychology and so many other topics and almost always surfaces with something interesting to say, or even teach. Even the most insignificant of NPCs in this game might just say something that sticks with you for a long time, and while the game never forces you to - it encourages you to talk to everyone with writing of this calibre.
And as far as gameplay is concerned, New Vegas may seem like just an average-at-best shooter on the surface, but as a role-playing game? It nails everything. Think of so many recurring mechanics throughout the Fallout games and by extension - most Western RPGs, I promise you, Fallout: New Vegas quietly has some of the absolute best iterations of any of them. New Vegas ditches Fallout 3's awful % based skill checks and "good/bad" karma system for far more clean-cut "do you have this stat at this number" skill checks and a "reputation" system with each of the game's many fascinating factions that makes you far less limited in your role-playing than "am I a bad guy or am I a good guy?"
Because of this far more nuanced way of handling morality, you can role-play as - get this, a complex character with complex motivations! New Vegas gives you so many tools to be so many different kinds of character - you'd be surprised at how much the game is willing to let you commit to being a cannibal! Maybe you're a fucking idiot? New Vegas has got you covered! By giving you exceptionally stupid dialogue options specifically for when you catastrophically fail an Intelligence check, New Vegas not only lets you lean into role-playing, but it also makes failure fun! Something else that Fallout 3 and 4 practically never achieve.
On top of all of this New Vegas is a great open-world game. None of this half-hour intro nonsense that Bethesda RPGs put you through. Within 10 minutes of starting a new file you can have been given the setup, built your character and BAM, you're out in the world ready to do what you want. Pursue the main quest if you wish, but the world isn't at stake! It's not engineered to feel super urgent like so many other open-world games of its kind and so you can feel very valid to just be having fun out in the badlands. One of New Vegas's most important locations is a tall, glowing tower, shining a light that can be seen from almost anywhere in the game world and - particularly when you're out in the desert at night, beckons to you like a siren calling for a sailor. When playing this game, this and so many of the game's other monolithic landmarks filled me with a sense of wonder that I wouldn't feel for another 7 years, when Breath of the Wild came out.
Fallout: New Vegas was developed over the course of 18 months. This explains the repeating character models, often unsightly textures and litany of bugs. It doesn't explain how it's such a fucking masterpiece. Obsidian made this one Fallout game in 18 months and it absolutely blows anything Bethesda have ever done out of the water. New Vegas is funny, dramatic, tragic and insightful. I'm sorry, but if you truly think 3 or 4 are superior experiences to this, I have to seriously question your taste. After over 10 years of playing this game for the first time, nothing has yet topped it for me.
If you've never played it before, you owe it to yourself to do so. Let yourself experience it all for the first time spoiler-free. Just, do yourself a favour and pick "Wild Wasteland" as one of your starting perks. You'll thank me later.
I thought this playthrough would help me collect my thoughts and write a proper review, but they're still scattered and swept away by the uncomplicated love this game pulls out of me. I live for dialogue. Speech checks are the ultimate power fantasy for an awkward nerd like me. I love the politics, I love going for an independent Vegas and figuring out how much to collaborate with the various flawed factions around me. I love the audio logs, I love the terminal entries, I love the exploration, I love the looting, I love the sheer number of factions, I love the companions (especially the gay ones I love the gays), I love the silly generic voicelines, I love the music on the radio, I love hearing about major events on the radio, I love playing along with my own moral compass, I love the positivity buried under the bleak setting (bless the post-post-apocalypse), I love the little environmental stories, I love the Followers they're just so sweet, I love those ghouls on their rockets, I love the super mutants, I love the voice acting, I love every god damn silly throwaway joke or reference, I love "obsidian's gay cowgirl" in the credits, I love retrofuturism, I love all the love in this fucking game, I love making weighty choices, I love getting the gang together for hoover dam, I love Fisto, I love Christine, I love Arcade, I love No-Bark, I love Marcus, I love Veronica, I love Chris, I love Julie, I love the King, I love Dala, I love ED-E, I love the mods, I love the physics bugs, I love kicking Caesar's ass, I love kicking House's ass, I love Yes Man, I love the appliances in owb, I love the ambient music, I love each and every god damn thing about this god damn video game!
Played through Proton on Linux. I'm going to start putting this message on things unless/until an option is added to Backloggd.
Played through Proton on Linux. I'm going to start putting this message on things unless/until an option is added to Backloggd.
I often come back to… uh… Backloggds Resident Coke Whore's review on Persona 3 (their bio has changed less than their username so that’s what ima go with lmao) and reflect on how incredibly formative that game’s narrative was to me as a burgeoning 14 year old. When asked what media have had the biggest impact on me I often become lost. Only over time have I realized that Persona 3s themes of mortality, loss, and maturation resonated with me to the point where I feel like I understood myself and the world better at a time when I needed it. When I played it 10 years ago it changed me and my understanding of the world for how I would handle my highschool lifestyle, and even further for what types of media I became to seek out. Eventually though it faded to the background as something that was important but no longer so when I hit my late teens.
The line "no other game I would readily recommend to a high schooler than this" from the above review made me understand how much it meant to me more deeply than I knew possible. What I found in Persona 3 was understanding, a gamification of social interaction that aided me in combating my massive Social Anxiety, and a better understanding of what I wanted and needed in my social relationships. Flaws and all there are aspects that lie at the heart of Persona 3 that I needed and changed my life for the better, even if I don’t feel like it applies to me now.
I find that the context of phases in our life affecting our perception on media is a thought process we often discard in favor of hot takes about “good and bad taste” with some abstract idea of objectivity to which we assign value. The subjective element, and furthermore the context of consumption, is often disregarded in this sort of discussion. My taste in media is different from what it was 10 years ago, and it’s different from what it will be 10 years from, I don’t think there will be a truly objective cornerstone of my taste to carry between these eras. Twilight is an absolute banger especially for a young tweenage American girl trying to understand why she doesn’t feel like she fits in while exploring her new found romantic desires. Often though most people will become to reject as it is merely “for tweenage girls”, and dismiss it as invalid. Really though it’s a banger for me as a 24 year old straight cis man. Of course my love of the twilight series is a discussion for another day.
Of course if you're still somehow reading this review you should recognize that this emphatic endorsement of both Persona 3 and Twilight is very out of place on a Fallout New Vegas review. What comes as no surprise, however, is that I played Fallout New Vegas first about 10 years ago during my early teens. My relationship with New Vegas began to grow and transform over those next 10 years. Oftentimes since I began facing the “favorite game of all time” question from my peers I have used New Vegas as an uninvested “yeah probably that one”. It was very formative for me in a very diverse way. Still I lack a strong emotional connection to it though. While many of the themes of Persona 3 made me feel empathized with, New Vegas never really tries for that. The core narrative is a political litmus test to decide who gets control of New Vegas, built upon famously strong worldbuilding and writing. The game doesn’t try to grip you with character drama. It doesn’t shoot for romance or complex relationships between your character and npcs. It never tries to directly empathize with the player, though it does give the player tools to express themself in a wide and complex world.
Even with that said, I felt understood by New Vegas. From the beginning of the game New Vegas said I could be whoever I chose to be. I felt so understood by it I felt like I needed to understand it in return. I played it 4 different times to completion (not counting the various times I did not play to completion) each time choosing a different method of play and ending. The playthroughs ended up Unarmed/NoGodNoMasters, Guns/NCR, Melee/Legion, and finally Energy Weapons/Mr. House. Each of these provided fascinatingly different experiences while also expanding my understanding and appreciation of the world that Obsidian crafted. What’s important is that all of these different styles I played (though mostly distinct through weapon of choice) felt completely valid. The world reacts differently to the political path you choose, but it’s nice how you can be successful and rewarded regardless of your build. All skills feel valid to invest into at pretty much every point of the game (except maybe big guns). I struggle to find games that just let me choose to punch people instead of the more common combat style. There’s something special about a world run through guns that you as the player reject and just punch people instead. New Vegas said that I am valid in my desire to make faces explode with pure force of fist, and I have yet to find a game that gives me quite the same acceptance and joy.
I could reminisce about all the good details and qualities that the world has much like many before me, but I don’t think there’s much for me to add to the discourse. I love so many jokes, characters, monsters, towns, quests, etc. All that really matters to me though was that this was a game that didn’t treat me like a child when I needed it. It was a game that taught me more about politics than I had ever conceptualized at that age. A primary belief I have about politics is that given communities and peoples should have a higher priority to regulate their day to day then any overarching government. I did not find this because the game told me it was correct, but when it asked me who I wanted to side with I chose the people who lived there, not those who coveted it. It's what I discovered then, and I still carry with me today (particularly in local politics). The piece never told me I was necessarily wrong, but it challenged me. There is a very wide breadth of opinions expressed in the game and a choice never feels confidently correct. Everyone likes and dislikes each group for the valid and complex reasons reflective of the messy old world groups trying to improve the new era. I understand now far more than I ever did when I first argued with my friend Max about which ending is the best at age 16.
With all this said, there’s only one other game I would more readily recommend to a teenager than Fallout New Vegas. Even if you just stick to the game as is, don’t experiment, specialize in guns and pick the NCR, I still think you will both be understood and challenged in a way that will only help you grow throughout your remaining years. It’s a dynamic text, ready to accept any odd playstyle quirks you wanna throw its way.
And that’s something special. Games have the unique element of interactivity, and it’s hard to find a piece of art that so readily gives a person open choice with rigid decision making that shows clearly how your actions have consequences. Once you have enough life experience I don’t think that’s as meaningful, but for a budding adolescent that could mean everything as they find themselves.
The line "no other game I would readily recommend to a high schooler than this" from the above review made me understand how much it meant to me more deeply than I knew possible. What I found in Persona 3 was understanding, a gamification of social interaction that aided me in combating my massive Social Anxiety, and a better understanding of what I wanted and needed in my social relationships. Flaws and all there are aspects that lie at the heart of Persona 3 that I needed and changed my life for the better, even if I don’t feel like it applies to me now.
I find that the context of phases in our life affecting our perception on media is a thought process we often discard in favor of hot takes about “good and bad taste” with some abstract idea of objectivity to which we assign value. The subjective element, and furthermore the context of consumption, is often disregarded in this sort of discussion. My taste in media is different from what it was 10 years ago, and it’s different from what it will be 10 years from, I don’t think there will be a truly objective cornerstone of my taste to carry between these eras. Twilight is an absolute banger especially for a young tweenage American girl trying to understand why she doesn’t feel like she fits in while exploring her new found romantic desires. Often though most people will become to reject as it is merely “for tweenage girls”, and dismiss it as invalid. Really though it’s a banger for me as a 24 year old straight cis man. Of course my love of the twilight series is a discussion for another day.
Of course if you're still somehow reading this review you should recognize that this emphatic endorsement of both Persona 3 and Twilight is very out of place on a Fallout New Vegas review. What comes as no surprise, however, is that I played Fallout New Vegas first about 10 years ago during my early teens. My relationship with New Vegas began to grow and transform over those next 10 years. Oftentimes since I began facing the “favorite game of all time” question from my peers I have used New Vegas as an uninvested “yeah probably that one”. It was very formative for me in a very diverse way. Still I lack a strong emotional connection to it though. While many of the themes of Persona 3 made me feel empathized with, New Vegas never really tries for that. The core narrative is a political litmus test to decide who gets control of New Vegas, built upon famously strong worldbuilding and writing. The game doesn’t try to grip you with character drama. It doesn’t shoot for romance or complex relationships between your character and npcs. It never tries to directly empathize with the player, though it does give the player tools to express themself in a wide and complex world.
Even with that said, I felt understood by New Vegas. From the beginning of the game New Vegas said I could be whoever I chose to be. I felt so understood by it I felt like I needed to understand it in return. I played it 4 different times to completion (not counting the various times I did not play to completion) each time choosing a different method of play and ending. The playthroughs ended up Unarmed/NoGodNoMasters, Guns/NCR, Melee/Legion, and finally Energy Weapons/Mr. House. Each of these provided fascinatingly different experiences while also expanding my understanding and appreciation of the world that Obsidian crafted. What’s important is that all of these different styles I played (though mostly distinct through weapon of choice) felt completely valid. The world reacts differently to the political path you choose, but it’s nice how you can be successful and rewarded regardless of your build. All skills feel valid to invest into at pretty much every point of the game (except maybe big guns). I struggle to find games that just let me choose to punch people instead of the more common combat style. There’s something special about a world run through guns that you as the player reject and just punch people instead. New Vegas said that I am valid in my desire to make faces explode with pure force of fist, and I have yet to find a game that gives me quite the same acceptance and joy.
I could reminisce about all the good details and qualities that the world has much like many before me, but I don’t think there’s much for me to add to the discourse. I love so many jokes, characters, monsters, towns, quests, etc. All that really matters to me though was that this was a game that didn’t treat me like a child when I needed it. It was a game that taught me more about politics than I had ever conceptualized at that age. A primary belief I have about politics is that given communities and peoples should have a higher priority to regulate their day to day then any overarching government. I did not find this because the game told me it was correct, but when it asked me who I wanted to side with I chose the people who lived there, not those who coveted it. It's what I discovered then, and I still carry with me today (particularly in local politics). The piece never told me I was necessarily wrong, but it challenged me. There is a very wide breadth of opinions expressed in the game and a choice never feels confidently correct. Everyone likes and dislikes each group for the valid and complex reasons reflective of the messy old world groups trying to improve the new era. I understand now far more than I ever did when I first argued with my friend Max about which ending is the best at age 16.
With all this said, there’s only one other game I would more readily recommend to a teenager than Fallout New Vegas. Even if you just stick to the game as is, don’t experiment, specialize in guns and pick the NCR, I still think you will both be understood and challenged in a way that will only help you grow throughout your remaining years. It’s a dynamic text, ready to accept any odd playstyle quirks you wanna throw its way.
And that’s something special. Games have the unique element of interactivity, and it’s hard to find a piece of art that so readily gives a person open choice with rigid decision making that shows clearly how your actions have consequences. Once you have enough life experience I don’t think that’s as meaningful, but for a budding adolescent that could mean everything as they find themselves.
I can't believe I waited this long to play this game. The world Obsidian created has so much depth, giving the player so much agency to explore consequences, but the game operates outside of the realms of explicit good and evil. I never felt truly, fully satisfied with the morality of all of my actions, and I don't see that as a bad thing - quite the opposite, really. Every single decision you make really does have far-reaching positive and negative effects on the world, and more than that - you have so much freedom to approach quests however you like. I have so many stories about my first playthrough that I know are going to stick with me.
I feel like Bethesda will never be able to outdo what Obsidian achieved with this game, and it's a shame it was rushed. Even with the depth of its world, it could have been so much more, which is hard to believe in its own right. The combat might not be anything too amazing, but the exceptional amount of player freedom, dialogue options, and layered complexities to its world make it one of the best RPGs I've ever played. I'll likely be playing this game again someday, and I'll cherish my first playthrough forever.
I feel like Bethesda will never be able to outdo what Obsidian achieved with this game, and it's a shame it was rushed. Even with the depth of its world, it could have been so much more, which is hard to believe in its own right. The combat might not be anything too amazing, but the exceptional amount of player freedom, dialogue options, and layered complexities to its world make it one of the best RPGs I've ever played. I'll likely be playing this game again someday, and I'll cherish my first playthrough forever.
There should be an international investigation into how a game that, after playing for long enough will crash consistently every 15 minutes, continues to lord over every other game in it's genre
People circlejerk a lot about this game, and for a good reason. It is just fucking fantastic. Got all the achivaments too. Wish I could somehow just experience this for the first time again.
One of the best RPGs ever made. The graphics are dated but passable in 2023, and the writing is some of the best that has ever been in a game. It has the role-playing and humor of the original Fallout games and a 3D world like Fallout 3 and 4. I'll be very surprised if we ever get a Fallout game on this level ever again. Until then, I'll be prowling the Mojave desert.
In twenty or thirty years, if the world's still around by then, I strongly suspect that Bethesda RPGs will exist in that particular space where those of us who lived through them insist to a skeptical audience of video game history enthusiasts how important they were. "You have to understand," we'll say, "I know they're unbelievably glitchy and they play like a bicycle with hexagonal wheels, but these were huge. EVERYONE played these." For all their flaws, these games defined a particular ideal of gaming experience not so much by what they were as by what they aspired (and inevitably failed) to be.
Of course, New Vegas isn't a Bethesda game. It was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and it has a distinctly different design sensibility. At the same time, it clearly is a Bethesda game: the expectations created by Fallout 3 and the constraints imposed by the engine itself make the moment-to-moment experience of playing much more alike its siblings than it is different. And so it exists in the liminal space of the cover artist, stuck with a song but still given the freedom to put their own spin on it.
New Vegas's spin is grand political struggle. Although other Bethesda games have their obligatory world-altering main quests, none extend so deeply through the vast game world or make it seem so much like a real place where real people are struggling with and against one another to make the best of a bad situation. The way it seeks to breathe life into the Mojave Wasteland is the heart of what sets New Vegas apart. Proper Bethesda games grasp desperately at an ideal of "realism" defined by interactive stuff: in the real world you go anywhere, talk to anyone, and touch anything you see, so the most realistic games must be huge maps littered with stuff you can pick up and people who will talk to you about arrows and knees.
My friend Bret and I call this approach "lumpy realism", after the mountain of discrete objects it engenders. And while New Vegas is beholden to lumpiness, it's mostly a trapping of its ancestry. It's more interested in what I'll call "decisive realism", the promise that the choices you make as a player matter in some deep sense. This is still an ideal whose shortcomings will always show the seams of artificiality, but it's also one that makes space for writing and plotting, the unsung heroes of the RPG genre.
For my money though, the most interesting thing about New Vegas is less what it tries to do and more the negative space left behind by what it doesn't try to do. Because it's less interested in leaving interactive stuff all over the place (and possibly because of development time constraints), it has a number of places that just exist. They're not part of a quest, they don't have lore, they're not meaningfully interactive in any way. They're just spaces and models and textures that exist for you to be near and look at. That's a sort of realism too, even if it's not intentional. After all, even though I could interact with anything in the world, in reality, I usually choose to just take it in.
Of course, New Vegas isn't a Bethesda game. It was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and it has a distinctly different design sensibility. At the same time, it clearly is a Bethesda game: the expectations created by Fallout 3 and the constraints imposed by the engine itself make the moment-to-moment experience of playing much more alike its siblings than it is different. And so it exists in the liminal space of the cover artist, stuck with a song but still given the freedom to put their own spin on it.
New Vegas's spin is grand political struggle. Although other Bethesda games have their obligatory world-altering main quests, none extend so deeply through the vast game world or make it seem so much like a real place where real people are struggling with and against one another to make the best of a bad situation. The way it seeks to breathe life into the Mojave Wasteland is the heart of what sets New Vegas apart. Proper Bethesda games grasp desperately at an ideal of "realism" defined by interactive stuff: in the real world you go anywhere, talk to anyone, and touch anything you see, so the most realistic games must be huge maps littered with stuff you can pick up and people who will talk to you about arrows and knees.
My friend Bret and I call this approach "lumpy realism", after the mountain of discrete objects it engenders. And while New Vegas is beholden to lumpiness, it's mostly a trapping of its ancestry. It's more interested in what I'll call "decisive realism", the promise that the choices you make as a player matter in some deep sense. This is still an ideal whose shortcomings will always show the seams of artificiality, but it's also one that makes space for writing and plotting, the unsung heroes of the RPG genre.
For my money though, the most interesting thing about New Vegas is less what it tries to do and more the negative space left behind by what it doesn't try to do. Because it's less interested in leaving interactive stuff all over the place (and possibly because of development time constraints), it has a number of places that just exist. They're not part of a quest, they don't have lore, they're not meaningfully interactive in any way. They're just spaces and models and textures that exist for you to be near and look at. That's a sort of realism too, even if it's not intentional. After all, even though I could interact with anything in the world, in reality, I usually choose to just take it in.
From the outside, the building looks fairly ugly. As you step inside, you realize that you've never felt so compelled to understand how something so mundane fills you with such joy. Upon closer inspection, you discover that the entire thing is put together with duct tape and chewing gum. This just leaves you more impressed.
Fallout: New Vegas is....... good! I can see the strengths and weaknesses comparing this to 3. Fallout 3, I think, has probably better area design, I can see that clear as day in Honest Hearts and Old World Blues. Like those areas are great set dressing, i will not deny, but I think Bethesda does a better job at the gameplay loop in this style of game. However, Obsidian does beat them out on dialogue, hard.
Besthesda NPC's kind of feel like they are there to serve you, the player. They give you the quest, maybe have lore stuff, but its all there to empower and enlighten the player. Obsidian decides to make the NPC's people. If you actually decide to talk to 90% of the named characters in this game, they will have dialogue how their thoughts of current affairs, or just give you their story that has nothing to do with the plot at all. On your journeys you will be able to get to know the people of this land, and what they think should happen, how they feel about this struggle thats beyond them. When they talk, they talk true, these are real beings alive in my computer. Possibly the most real i've felt with dialogue. Just borderline mundane dialogue with random people, accruing more worldly knowledge. Through your connections with the lands and its inhabitants all really help you decide what you want to do. Do you think these people would benefit from the cold, uncaring touch of a foreign nation who just want to control them, but give them protection? Will you find that these people don't deserve anything, and should be put under the boot of strength? Maybe the luxury of the high life will tempt you, kicking out all outer forces so that you may life it up while a man past his prime runs everything. You could find that the corruption runs deep in both major parties, better to just nuke them both and wipe the slate clean, maybe someone else will build a nation that doesn't repeat the same tired tropes of the old world. Maybe, fuck it, you think this whole land is squalid and should be wiped out under a genocidal cloud. Point is, the flavours of the interactions and the tangibility are really fucking good.
Besthesda NPC's kind of feel like they are there to serve you, the player. They give you the quest, maybe have lore stuff, but its all there to empower and enlighten the player. Obsidian decides to make the NPC's people. If you actually decide to talk to 90% of the named characters in this game, they will have dialogue how their thoughts of current affairs, or just give you their story that has nothing to do with the plot at all. On your journeys you will be able to get to know the people of this land, and what they think should happen, how they feel about this struggle thats beyond them. When they talk, they talk true, these are real beings alive in my computer. Possibly the most real i've felt with dialogue. Just borderline mundane dialogue with random people, accruing more worldly knowledge. Through your connections with the lands and its inhabitants all really help you decide what you want to do. Do you think these people would benefit from the cold, uncaring touch of a foreign nation who just want to control them, but give them protection? Will you find that these people don't deserve anything, and should be put under the boot of strength? Maybe the luxury of the high life will tempt you, kicking out all outer forces so that you may life it up while a man past his prime runs everything. You could find that the corruption runs deep in both major parties, better to just nuke them both and wipe the slate clean, maybe someone else will build a nation that doesn't repeat the same tired tropes of the old world. Maybe, fuck it, you think this whole land is squalid and should be wiped out under a genocidal cloud. Point is, the flavours of the interactions and the tangibility are really fucking good.
Let me tell you a tale of the wasteland. The Courier was wandering, as she is wont to do, and stumbled upon Vault 34. She made her way through a cave full of geckos and the irradiated hallways of the vault full of feral ghouls, all the while uncovering bits and pieces of the story of what happened to the vault dwellers. Too many people, too many guns, a struggle for power, and a broken reactor. A tragic story but stories like that come a dime a dozen in the wasteland. Eventually, the Courier made it to the bottom of the vault and found a suspicious terminal that allowed her to do one of two things: reroute the vault's controls or close the reactor vents. No one had told her to do anything about either of them and she wasn't sure what doing either would actually do. So she pushed a button and left to continue her adventures elsewhere.
This was what a large chunk of my experience with New Vegas was like: stumbling backwards into an area or a quest, getting a fraction of context on what is supposed to be going on, and then being asked to make a Grey Moral Choice™ to decide the fate of some strangers. I looked up what was up with Vault 34 and it turns out you can either let some people who are trapped in the vault out or close the vents so the nearby NCR Sharecroppers would have less radiation coming out of the vault and messing up their crops. It maybe would've been an interesting choice if the game had ever indicated that to me or found some way to communicate that to me. But instead I just tripped on into the last objective in the quest and pressed a random button. This quest was basically incoherent and it happened with enough other quests that I encountered that entire swathes of the game felt incoherent.
What I want to say is that the writing was strong enough and that individual stories worked well enough that I didn't need it to all fit together nicely and be presented in a way that was comprehensible but honestly I'm not sure I can really say that. I visited nearly every location and did every quest I could find but so much of the writing is relatively bland. The game is so chock full of uninteresting characters and stale stories that I found it hard to maintain interest beyond the most basic level of "I guess I should be paying attention so I have some idea of the larger plot." Maybe time is a factor and ten years of other games and other stories make this game feel a bit more stale now but I can't imagine that would effect every bit of writing across the entire game, right?
I'd like to end this with at least one positive note, though. I think this game does a much better job at connecting back to the roots of Fallout 1 and 2 than 3 does. This is mostly due to New Vegas's proximity but just the simple act of having people be like "oh, yeah, I grew up in Shady Sands" or whatever makes the franchise feel much more like a singular whole whereas F3 is just like "I dunno, this ghoul you might know wandered across the entire country and turned into a tree or whatever".
Oh, and the game only crashed to desktop twice and corrupted saves four times which is much lower than I was expected considering how monumentally broken and barely functional the engine is! So, good job on that one, New Vegas.
This was what a large chunk of my experience with New Vegas was like: stumbling backwards into an area or a quest, getting a fraction of context on what is supposed to be going on, and then being asked to make a Grey Moral Choice™ to decide the fate of some strangers. I looked up what was up with Vault 34 and it turns out you can either let some people who are trapped in the vault out or close the vents so the nearby NCR Sharecroppers would have less radiation coming out of the vault and messing up their crops. It maybe would've been an interesting choice if the game had ever indicated that to me or found some way to communicate that to me. But instead I just tripped on into the last objective in the quest and pressed a random button. This quest was basically incoherent and it happened with enough other quests that I encountered that entire swathes of the game felt incoherent.
What I want to say is that the writing was strong enough and that individual stories worked well enough that I didn't need it to all fit together nicely and be presented in a way that was comprehensible but honestly I'm not sure I can really say that. I visited nearly every location and did every quest I could find but so much of the writing is relatively bland. The game is so chock full of uninteresting characters and stale stories that I found it hard to maintain interest beyond the most basic level of "I guess I should be paying attention so I have some idea of the larger plot." Maybe time is a factor and ten years of other games and other stories make this game feel a bit more stale now but I can't imagine that would effect every bit of writing across the entire game, right?
I'd like to end this with at least one positive note, though. I think this game does a much better job at connecting back to the roots of Fallout 1 and 2 than 3 does. This is mostly due to New Vegas's proximity but just the simple act of having people be like "oh, yeah, I grew up in Shady Sands" or whatever makes the franchise feel much more like a singular whole whereas F3 is just like "I dunno, this ghoul you might know wandered across the entire country and turned into a tree or whatever".
Oh, and the game only crashed to desktop twice and corrupted saves four times which is much lower than I was expected considering how monumentally broken and barely functional the engine is! So, good job on that one, New Vegas.
Best $2 I've spent in my life
This is a really weird one for me to review. I went into this with the knowledge that it’s a very old game and that part is 100 percent true. The gun play and general feel of this game just isn’t great. It all feels held together with loose tape. It’s a super difficult game to actually play with the controller.
NOW as an RPG game with an interesting story and side quests with good characters and role playing systems, that’s where this game truly excels. I found myself fascinated with the factions and the world and the RPG systems that were put in place.
I know most people say this is their favorite Fallout and it’s a 5 out of 5 and I can totally see that. I just can’t say it’s a perfect 5 though. I found it so so hard to physically play this game after a while and the shoddy technical performance just yanked me out of any immersion I was building.
I’m walking away from this game with only one thought….THIS NEEDS A FULL BLOWN PROPER REMAKE. Keep the amazing RPG elements and story but overhaul the gameplay and technical side and you’d have an all time 5 out of 5 game there.
Until then……I can’t call it a masterpiece.
NOW as an RPG game with an interesting story and side quests with good characters and role playing systems, that’s where this game truly excels. I found myself fascinated with the factions and the world and the RPG systems that were put in place.
I know most people say this is their favorite Fallout and it’s a 5 out of 5 and I can totally see that. I just can’t say it’s a perfect 5 though. I found it so so hard to physically play this game after a while and the shoddy technical performance just yanked me out of any immersion I was building.
I’m walking away from this game with only one thought….THIS NEEDS A FULL BLOWN PROPER REMAKE. Keep the amazing RPG elements and story but overhaul the gameplay and technical side and you’d have an all time 5 out of 5 game there.
Until then……I can’t call it a masterpiece.
One time 3 years ago my brother-in-law asked me what my favorite Fallout game was and I said "New Vegas" and he said "ah, I can't play something that old" and now once a week I spend like 5 minutes imagining a version of that day where I ruin my dad's birthday dinner by giving a detailed explanation of why that betrays a deep lack of appreciation for games as a medium. Anyways I feel pretty confident saying that New Vegas is the only consistently fantastic and interesting Bethesda-published RPG that came out after 2003 or maybe ever
One time the girl in that one city said horny and my little sister asked my mom what it meant
Minha primeira experiência com Fallout, e sem dúvidas a melhor que eu vou ter. Eu amei muito esse jogo e fiquei horas e horas jogando ele, fazendo muita missão secundária, explorando essa wasteland enorme e me divertindo de mais com os ragdoll, armas maneiras, armaduras iradas e interações muito fodas. Obsidian, te amo
2012.
Imagine a young preteen boy living out what was one of the worst years of his life. Puberty was settling upon him, causing massive changes to his body and mind, a torturous calamity the result of aging in the physical sense. This kid was a dumbass clown, never taking the right things seriously, never taking the right things jokingly.
An amoeba of borderline incel like emotions, harboring feelings for every pretty girl he'd lay his eyes on regardless of if their character was good or if he was even being reasonable in his attractions.
During one of the most emotional and terrible times of his life, the man who would eventually become his brother in law got him several Christmas Gifts for the Xbox 360 he had gotten maybe only a year or two prior. There were many games, Gears of War, Batman Arkham City, etc.
But chief among them was Fallout New Vegas.
2009-2010
Jump back a few years to when the boy was younger. He had recently left public school to enter what would be a hellish and depressive 3 year stint as a homeschooler. His half brother had recently returned into his life after mostly being out of the picture. At this point of his life, the boy was losing connection with his social life, becoming an isolated little shrimp who dare not speak to others in complete social fear. Alone, every day in his house, learning propagandist Christian homeschool work. Just him, and his brother, a recovering alcoholic.
One day, the boy and his father go to the basement where the brother lived his days out. He was playing a particular game on his Playstation 3, wearing this Abe Lincoln hat in game and wandering this devastated yet familiar landscape. The brother talked about it being the third entry in the Fallout series, and mentioned that a new game would be coming out called Fallout New Vegas.
2000-2009
The boy is born, his life shaped by his parent's love for old media. His dad really loved old music like Frank Sinatra, and once in a Blue Moon, the boy and his dad would watch an old picture together, something that made the father very happy.
The boy spent a lot of time with his mom in this time, his parents were divorced around his second to third year of existence you see. The boy would visit her work place and her parents frequently, the D.C. area was very familiar to him.
It felt like home.
2009-2010
The boy recognizes the setting of this third Fallout game to be a destroyed version of his home, with music playing that reminded him much of songs his father and him would listen too.
2011
The brother would leave and join the military. The boy never felt so alone before in his entire life.
2012
The boy returns to school, his social awareness crippled by years spent languishing on Youtube alone and being brainwashed by the Christian agenda.
He meets friends he would keep for what is currently the remainder of his life.
Which brings us to Christmas of 2012 once again.
At first the boy was not interested in this Fallout New Vegas, his cousin had ruined first person shooters for him, constantly tearing away his freedom from his own devices in order to play schlock like Modern Warfare 3.
There was a trauma that happened, we won't go into the details, but it severely impacted the boy for the rest of his life, even now.
Fallout New Vegas is what carried him through it.
It's what carried me through the difficult times in my life.
Fallout New Vegas is a game that is so heavily focused on showing both the consequences of your actions while simultaneously telling you to move on from the past and keep living.
Despite its post apocalyptic world, the people of New Vegas are always trying to keep going, with the backing track of songs like Jingle Jangle Jingle being very much about continuing forward through life, while other tracks like Blue Moon and Ain't That a Kick in The Head show the positive consequences that showing affection to another person can bring.
All of these songs brought together by the calm yet caring voice of Mr. New Vegas, who despite not being real in both the game and in real life, comforted me greatly and made me feel like I was wanted. That I belonged somewhere in this twisted awful place in my life.
I spent a lot of time with my companions, one in particular being Craig Boone, the soldier who lost his wife to slavery. Even to this day I sympathize with his character. This is a man who has had to suffer so much pain, even outside of just his wife and unborn child being enslaved and him mercy killing them. He's killed innocent people under orders, despite not wanting too, and at the end of the day he can atone, and be loved.
Many of the companions fit with this central theme of moving on from the past and embracing the choices you make. Veronica, Raul, Cass, Rex, ED-E, Lily, Arcade, and that's not even getting on the DLC companions, all of them have to learn to either move on or accept the past.
I think that's why this game has the draw it has, and honestly why it's so beloved by the transgender community. I'm not going to speak for them honestly, I am a cis male, but I think I understand why they love it so much.
The freedom of being able to carve your own path forward, and leave that past behind, having the choices you make find you a place to belong, I get it.
I think a part of me is very sentimental over this game, despite its various bugs and gameplay issues, but you'll have to forgive me it's almost been 10 years that this game has been in my life.
Fallout New Vegas is very much about making a new chapter in your life, and honestly...
It saved mine.
Imagine a young preteen boy living out what was one of the worst years of his life. Puberty was settling upon him, causing massive changes to his body and mind, a torturous calamity the result of aging in the physical sense. This kid was a dumbass clown, never taking the right things seriously, never taking the right things jokingly.
An amoeba of borderline incel like emotions, harboring feelings for every pretty girl he'd lay his eyes on regardless of if their character was good or if he was even being reasonable in his attractions.
During one of the most emotional and terrible times of his life, the man who would eventually become his brother in law got him several Christmas Gifts for the Xbox 360 he had gotten maybe only a year or two prior. There were many games, Gears of War, Batman Arkham City, etc.
But chief among them was Fallout New Vegas.
2009-2010
Jump back a few years to when the boy was younger. He had recently left public school to enter what would be a hellish and depressive 3 year stint as a homeschooler. His half brother had recently returned into his life after mostly being out of the picture. At this point of his life, the boy was losing connection with his social life, becoming an isolated little shrimp who dare not speak to others in complete social fear. Alone, every day in his house, learning propagandist Christian homeschool work. Just him, and his brother, a recovering alcoholic.
One day, the boy and his father go to the basement where the brother lived his days out. He was playing a particular game on his Playstation 3, wearing this Abe Lincoln hat in game and wandering this devastated yet familiar landscape. The brother talked about it being the third entry in the Fallout series, and mentioned that a new game would be coming out called Fallout New Vegas.
2000-2009
The boy is born, his life shaped by his parent's love for old media. His dad really loved old music like Frank Sinatra, and once in a Blue Moon, the boy and his dad would watch an old picture together, something that made the father very happy.
The boy spent a lot of time with his mom in this time, his parents were divorced around his second to third year of existence you see. The boy would visit her work place and her parents frequently, the D.C. area was very familiar to him.
It felt like home.
2009-2010
The boy recognizes the setting of this third Fallout game to be a destroyed version of his home, with music playing that reminded him much of songs his father and him would listen too.
2011
The brother would leave and join the military. The boy never felt so alone before in his entire life.
2012
The boy returns to school, his social awareness crippled by years spent languishing on Youtube alone and being brainwashed by the Christian agenda.
He meets friends he would keep for what is currently the remainder of his life.
Which brings us to Christmas of 2012 once again.
At first the boy was not interested in this Fallout New Vegas, his cousin had ruined first person shooters for him, constantly tearing away his freedom from his own devices in order to play schlock like Modern Warfare 3.
There was a trauma that happened, we won't go into the details, but it severely impacted the boy for the rest of his life, even now.
Fallout New Vegas is what carried him through it.
It's what carried me through the difficult times in my life.
Fallout New Vegas is a game that is so heavily focused on showing both the consequences of your actions while simultaneously telling you to move on from the past and keep living.
Despite its post apocalyptic world, the people of New Vegas are always trying to keep going, with the backing track of songs like Jingle Jangle Jingle being very much about continuing forward through life, while other tracks like Blue Moon and Ain't That a Kick in The Head show the positive consequences that showing affection to another person can bring.
All of these songs brought together by the calm yet caring voice of Mr. New Vegas, who despite not being real in both the game and in real life, comforted me greatly and made me feel like I was wanted. That I belonged somewhere in this twisted awful place in my life.
I spent a lot of time with my companions, one in particular being Craig Boone, the soldier who lost his wife to slavery. Even to this day I sympathize with his character. This is a man who has had to suffer so much pain, even outside of just his wife and unborn child being enslaved and him mercy killing them. He's killed innocent people under orders, despite not wanting too, and at the end of the day he can atone, and be loved.
Many of the companions fit with this central theme of moving on from the past and embracing the choices you make. Veronica, Raul, Cass, Rex, ED-E, Lily, Arcade, and that's not even getting on the DLC companions, all of them have to learn to either move on or accept the past.
I think that's why this game has the draw it has, and honestly why it's so beloved by the transgender community. I'm not going to speak for them honestly, I am a cis male, but I think I understand why they love it so much.
The freedom of being able to carve your own path forward, and leave that past behind, having the choices you make find you a place to belong, I get it.
I think a part of me is very sentimental over this game, despite its various bugs and gameplay issues, but you'll have to forgive me it's almost been 10 years that this game has been in my life.
Fallout New Vegas is very much about making a new chapter in your life, and honestly...
It saved mine.
All in all a great experience. I really enjoyed the story, there was a lot of charm to the writing, and even though I knew the combat wouldn't be my favorite the variety of weapons and perks more than makes up for it. My one complaint - the quest log and quest markers would drive me nuts at time. Not every quest goes into your quest log. I walked around for an ungodly amount of time with a suitcase of drugs because I couldn't remember where the NPC said to take it and there was no quest for it. So I guess they are mine now. Other times there are multiple quest markers but no indication about which objective each one is pointing to. This got frustrating in places that felt too maze like on a first play through (The Gomorrah casino for example). I can see why so many people love this game and I definitely think it has been my favorite fallout experience so far.
Fallout: New Vegas is, to me, definitively the best RPG ever made. And it isn't close.
The Fallout franchise has a long and storied history that bares repeating for the sake of context. Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game was created by Black Isle Studios in 1997 as an isometric, tactical CRPG. The point-and-click, turn-based game was one of the first games to rely on clever dialogue and branching quest lines and while not very popular, set a new standard for these niche types of games. Just a year later Fallout 2 was released, using the same engine and graphics as the first game.
Interplay, the publisher, rented out the license to external studios to create two poorly received spin-offs, Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. These games attempted to spin the license into a pure overhead tactics game and an action game, but with their failure Interplay shut the franchise down and sold the near-useless Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks. The rest, as they say, is history; Fallout is now one of the biggest gaming franchises on earth. Fallout 3 was 2008’s definitive Game of the Year. Fallout 4, despite disappointing a lot of fans, is one of the best-selling RPGs of all time, topping Bethesda’s own Skyrim and sitting second only to the juggernaut that is Pokemon. While Fallout 76 holds the esteemed title of “worst launch of all time,” the Wastelanders update has made the game playable and even pretty good. Essentially, Fallout games have a history of being all over the place.
Nestled comfortably in this complicated release history is 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas. Following the success of Fallout 3, Bethesda rented out the Fallout IP to a new studio called Obsidian Entertainment, made up of the very ex-Black Isle Studios employees that had created Fallout in the first place. Bethesda handed Obsidian the Fallout 3 engine and put them to work — and so it was that the planets aligned. All the best parts of the classic Fallout games and the Bethesda version came together to form Fallout: New Vegas, one of the greatest RPGs (and dare I say greatest games) of all time.
A quick cut scene establishes the world of Fallout: war between the US and China escalated in the year 2077 to the point of total atomic annihilation around the world. The bombs dropped and ended humanity as we know it, leaving the survivors to scrounge for food in a horrific wasteland. The Forced Evolutionary Virus escaped containment, transforming everything from scorpions to lizards to humans into grotesque mutants. Over a hundred years later, a courier travels through the Mojave desert to deliver a package. The Courier is stopped by Benny, played by Matthew Perry (Chandler from Friends), and is shot in the head when they refuse to give up the goods.
The player wakes up in the run-down home of one Doc Mitchell, a kindly old man who explains the situation and acquaints the Courier with the state of the world. He then guides you through a clever set of questions in a psych test to determine your optimal character build, but you can of course set your stats however you’d like. After point-buying from your seven S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck), you’ll select a few special skills for your character to have. You design your character in a subpar character creator (but hey, it was 2010) and then it’s off to the wasteland!
New Vegas was the first Fallout game I ever played, and I had no idea what the series was about before that. More than that, though, this was the first open world game I had ever played. And the first western RPG I’d ever played as well. This was all new to me, every piece of it. New Vegas eases new players in to the post-apocalypse by introducing a compelling cast of characters in Goodsprings, the starting town, and having them drip-feed you exposition through well-written dialogue. Sunny Smiles and her dog Cheyenne walk the Courier through the basics of shooting, VATS, item management and exploration if they choose; if the player is a veteran, they can simply exit Doc Mitchell’s house and begin wandering the waste in literally any direction they choose. New Vegas does a near-perfect job teaching new players how to learn about the wasteland themselves, rather than dumping exposition and calling it a day.
The premise of the story is that you, the Courier, were delivering something called the Platinum Chip to the mysterious owner of New Vegas, Mr. House. After being shot in the head the Courier has lost their memory, and remembers only Benny’s smug face as he pulled the trigger. You’ll set out from Goodsprings to track down Chandler and get the full story out of him, dead or alive. Meanwhile, a war is brewing; two huge armies are moving slowly towards the coveted Hoover Dam, the biggest source of power in the Mojave.
The New California Republic is the remnants of the governments of six West Coast States that formed a new union upon the destruction of the United States, while Caesar’s Legion is a tribe of barbarian sex-traffickers marching from the midwest, believing they are the chosen army to achieve the glory of Rome. This is to say nothing of the aforementioned Mr. House, sitting pretty in control of New Vegas and all the food, water, electricity, drugs and luxuries that come with it. The underground militia of The Brotherhood of Steel sits quietly in the dunes waiting for their moment while the drug-pushing Great Khans stake their claim in the deserts. The Boomers have taken control of an old Air Force base up north and claimed the weapons, but there are rumors that the husk of the American Government has formed once more into the Enclave. Each and every one of these factions have a relationship with the others, and your actions determines who allies together, who betrays each other and who ultimately is victorious.
It is almost impossible to understand the moving pieces of the world as they change around you in response to your decisions. Shooting one person at the wrong time could have ramifications that reach across the deserts and through to the end of the game. Dialogue choices become available to different players depending on how they’ve statted their character, so it’s unlikely any two people have played Fallout New Vegas exactly the same way. Dialogue is more clever than it has any right to be all the way through to the end of the game, and your dialogue choices can have very immediate ramifications if you say the wrong thing. A pleasant chat can become a shootout in a matter of seconds, but hey, that’s the wasteland, baby.
The shooting in Fallout New Vegas is not good. It does improve upon its predecessor, Fallout 3, by offering a much larger assortment of guns; however, the feel of gunplay has not improved. Guns continue to be hard to aim, and moving targets are almost impossible to hit without using VATS (the lock on mechanism). There are many action RPGs in which players will try to power through the dialogue sections to reach the action, however players will likely find the reverse true in New Vegas. Utilizing the correct weapons, armor, chems and skills will give you the edge in individual fights, but the overall war will be decided by how well you can play your character, whether its a max-strength barbarian or a lucky sonofabitch. The RPG mechanics of this game are deeper than most will care to dive into, but rest assured they are there.
The companions in New Vegas are for the most part well written, interesting people that have discernible goals and will join the Courier if they believe it’ll help them reach those goals. Cass, Boone, ED-E and of course our very good boy Rex are just a few of the great characters that will accompany you, each with their own specific set of powers and skills. Dialogue and interactions with other characters will change depending on who your companion is, but be wary that they’re also keeping an eye on you. If the Courier makes too many decisions in favor of a faction they’re not aligned with, the companion will leave your party or even try to kill you. If you’re trying for a Legion playthrough, I’d advise you to assassinate Boone as quickly as possible.
Fallout New Vegas takes everything that Fallout 3 brought to the series stretches it over the skeleton of the classic games, creating something much more elegant than it has any right to be. Aside from the numerous technical problems and impossible-to-aim guns, Fallout New Vegas is a flawless masterpiece. The player will continue to be astounded that the developers thought of one thing or another and prepared for it; your choices in both dialogue and action do truly affect and alter the world around you. And endless cast of well-written characters with overwritten backstories will carry the Courier through the wastes in search of the truth and land them in a very specific position to determine how the war plays out. Although the player is always in control, most repercussions of your actions are completely unintended and leave you scrambling to figure out how to repair an alliance or take a stronghold to remedy it. Obsidian has created the most intricately crafted game ever written with excellent DLC and well over a hundred hours of content — and I didn’t even touch on mods. Get it.
The Fallout franchise has a long and storied history that bares repeating for the sake of context. Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game was created by Black Isle Studios in 1997 as an isometric, tactical CRPG. The point-and-click, turn-based game was one of the first games to rely on clever dialogue and branching quest lines and while not very popular, set a new standard for these niche types of games. Just a year later Fallout 2 was released, using the same engine and graphics as the first game.
Interplay, the publisher, rented out the license to external studios to create two poorly received spin-offs, Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. These games attempted to spin the license into a pure overhead tactics game and an action game, but with their failure Interplay shut the franchise down and sold the near-useless Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks. The rest, as they say, is history; Fallout is now one of the biggest gaming franchises on earth. Fallout 3 was 2008’s definitive Game of the Year. Fallout 4, despite disappointing a lot of fans, is one of the best-selling RPGs of all time, topping Bethesda’s own Skyrim and sitting second only to the juggernaut that is Pokemon. While Fallout 76 holds the esteemed title of “worst launch of all time,” the Wastelanders update has made the game playable and even pretty good. Essentially, Fallout games have a history of being all over the place.
Nestled comfortably in this complicated release history is 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas. Following the success of Fallout 3, Bethesda rented out the Fallout IP to a new studio called Obsidian Entertainment, made up of the very ex-Black Isle Studios employees that had created Fallout in the first place. Bethesda handed Obsidian the Fallout 3 engine and put them to work — and so it was that the planets aligned. All the best parts of the classic Fallout games and the Bethesda version came together to form Fallout: New Vegas, one of the greatest RPGs (and dare I say greatest games) of all time.
A quick cut scene establishes the world of Fallout: war between the US and China escalated in the year 2077 to the point of total atomic annihilation around the world. The bombs dropped and ended humanity as we know it, leaving the survivors to scrounge for food in a horrific wasteland. The Forced Evolutionary Virus escaped containment, transforming everything from scorpions to lizards to humans into grotesque mutants. Over a hundred years later, a courier travels through the Mojave desert to deliver a package. The Courier is stopped by Benny, played by Matthew Perry (Chandler from Friends), and is shot in the head when they refuse to give up the goods.
The player wakes up in the run-down home of one Doc Mitchell, a kindly old man who explains the situation and acquaints the Courier with the state of the world. He then guides you through a clever set of questions in a psych test to determine your optimal character build, but you can of course set your stats however you’d like. After point-buying from your seven S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck), you’ll select a few special skills for your character to have. You design your character in a subpar character creator (but hey, it was 2010) and then it’s off to the wasteland!
New Vegas was the first Fallout game I ever played, and I had no idea what the series was about before that. More than that, though, this was the first open world game I had ever played. And the first western RPG I’d ever played as well. This was all new to me, every piece of it. New Vegas eases new players in to the post-apocalypse by introducing a compelling cast of characters in Goodsprings, the starting town, and having them drip-feed you exposition through well-written dialogue. Sunny Smiles and her dog Cheyenne walk the Courier through the basics of shooting, VATS, item management and exploration if they choose; if the player is a veteran, they can simply exit Doc Mitchell’s house and begin wandering the waste in literally any direction they choose. New Vegas does a near-perfect job teaching new players how to learn about the wasteland themselves, rather than dumping exposition and calling it a day.
The premise of the story is that you, the Courier, were delivering something called the Platinum Chip to the mysterious owner of New Vegas, Mr. House. After being shot in the head the Courier has lost their memory, and remembers only Benny’s smug face as he pulled the trigger. You’ll set out from Goodsprings to track down Chandler and get the full story out of him, dead or alive. Meanwhile, a war is brewing; two huge armies are moving slowly towards the coveted Hoover Dam, the biggest source of power in the Mojave.
The New California Republic is the remnants of the governments of six West Coast States that formed a new union upon the destruction of the United States, while Caesar’s Legion is a tribe of barbarian sex-traffickers marching from the midwest, believing they are the chosen army to achieve the glory of Rome. This is to say nothing of the aforementioned Mr. House, sitting pretty in control of New Vegas and all the food, water, electricity, drugs and luxuries that come with it. The underground militia of The Brotherhood of Steel sits quietly in the dunes waiting for their moment while the drug-pushing Great Khans stake their claim in the deserts. The Boomers have taken control of an old Air Force base up north and claimed the weapons, but there are rumors that the husk of the American Government has formed once more into the Enclave. Each and every one of these factions have a relationship with the others, and your actions determines who allies together, who betrays each other and who ultimately is victorious.
It is almost impossible to understand the moving pieces of the world as they change around you in response to your decisions. Shooting one person at the wrong time could have ramifications that reach across the deserts and through to the end of the game. Dialogue choices become available to different players depending on how they’ve statted their character, so it’s unlikely any two people have played Fallout New Vegas exactly the same way. Dialogue is more clever than it has any right to be all the way through to the end of the game, and your dialogue choices can have very immediate ramifications if you say the wrong thing. A pleasant chat can become a shootout in a matter of seconds, but hey, that’s the wasteland, baby.
The shooting in Fallout New Vegas is not good. It does improve upon its predecessor, Fallout 3, by offering a much larger assortment of guns; however, the feel of gunplay has not improved. Guns continue to be hard to aim, and moving targets are almost impossible to hit without using VATS (the lock on mechanism). There are many action RPGs in which players will try to power through the dialogue sections to reach the action, however players will likely find the reverse true in New Vegas. Utilizing the correct weapons, armor, chems and skills will give you the edge in individual fights, but the overall war will be decided by how well you can play your character, whether its a max-strength barbarian or a lucky sonofabitch. The RPG mechanics of this game are deeper than most will care to dive into, but rest assured they are there.
The companions in New Vegas are for the most part well written, interesting people that have discernible goals and will join the Courier if they believe it’ll help them reach those goals. Cass, Boone, ED-E and of course our very good boy Rex are just a few of the great characters that will accompany you, each with their own specific set of powers and skills. Dialogue and interactions with other characters will change depending on who your companion is, but be wary that they’re also keeping an eye on you. If the Courier makes too many decisions in favor of a faction they’re not aligned with, the companion will leave your party or even try to kill you. If you’re trying for a Legion playthrough, I’d advise you to assassinate Boone as quickly as possible.
Fallout New Vegas takes everything that Fallout 3 brought to the series stretches it over the skeleton of the classic games, creating something much more elegant than it has any right to be. Aside from the numerous technical problems and impossible-to-aim guns, Fallout New Vegas is a flawless masterpiece. The player will continue to be astounded that the developers thought of one thing or another and prepared for it; your choices in both dialogue and action do truly affect and alter the world around you. And endless cast of well-written characters with overwritten backstories will carry the Courier through the wastes in search of the truth and land them in a very specific position to determine how the war plays out. Although the player is always in control, most repercussions of your actions are completely unintended and leave you scrambling to figure out how to repair an alliance or take a stronghold to remedy it. Obsidian has created the most intricately crafted game ever written with excellent DLC and well over a hundred hours of content — and I didn’t even touch on mods. Get it.
I've heard the story in this game is amazing, but it's really hard for me to get beyond the frustrating mechanics (particularly karma and item durability), janky combat, and blocky graphics.
Fatherhood. It's the crux of the joke of this account, it's the glue holding together all the insanity and violence that the character of YourDadReviews portrayed through all of the reviews up until this point. While I'm sure there are many games that probably have better examples of fatherhood, I think Fallout New Vegas has ultimately become like the father I never had. Even to this point this game is always teaching me new ways to experience the journey, and on that journey we see a variety of fathers. Some are good, love their kids or are at the very least supportive of them, some aren't... I think the closest to YourDadReviews is Papa Khan, who is the patriarch of an entire clan of wastelanders. Much like Papa Khan, the character of YourDadReviews is haunted by his past. A past full of death, sexual gratification, drugs, and many other things. It was fun defining that past, making reviews and trying to tie it to the themes of YourDadReviews, but much like Papa Khan I wind up kind of stuck in a way.
I wanted to end YDR with a bang, something badass to wrap up the insane narrative I was weaving in my mind... but the more I think about it, the less I think such a character deserves such an ending. So, much like I do with Papa Khan in an NCR playthrough, I will silently kill YourDadReviews with this final review.
Thank you everyone for your love and support of YourDadReviews. Stay frosty.
P.S. The only April Fools joke here is that none of it is a joke.
I wanted to end YDR with a bang, something badass to wrap up the insane narrative I was weaving in my mind... but the more I think about it, the less I think such a character deserves such an ending. So, much like I do with Papa Khan in an NCR playthrough, I will silently kill YourDadReviews with this final review.
Thank you everyone for your love and support of YourDadReviews. Stay frosty.
P.S. The only April Fools joke here is that none of it is a joke.
The base game is good, but...
Install Project Nevada, get the module that allows you to rebalance everything. Install the Telekinetic Combat mod next. Max out all of the speed variables in the Mod Configuration Menu. Sell all of your DLC weapons and then pick up the telekinetic attacks.
Congratulations, you can now rush to Benny and immediately kill him without having to have ever done any of the tutorial quests, meaning you've effectively skipped more than half of the game without cheating.
It gets better, though: everybody being as fast as they are means their walking animations are absolutely BUSTED. NPCs will tell you that they'll meet you outside in a few seconds, and then they'll do it in less than half that amount of time. Combat is fucking impossible unless you pull off sneak attacks because the Speed multiplier in Project Nevada applies to everyone, which means that maxing it out makes everyone about as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog buying from Heisenberg.
I don't know about you, but crackhead New Vegas is better than the base game. Don't @ me.
Install Project Nevada, get the module that allows you to rebalance everything. Install the Telekinetic Combat mod next. Max out all of the speed variables in the Mod Configuration Menu. Sell all of your DLC weapons and then pick up the telekinetic attacks.
Congratulations, you can now rush to Benny and immediately kill him without having to have ever done any of the tutorial quests, meaning you've effectively skipped more than half of the game without cheating.
It gets better, though: everybody being as fast as they are means their walking animations are absolutely BUSTED. NPCs will tell you that they'll meet you outside in a few seconds, and then they'll do it in less than half that amount of time. Combat is fucking impossible unless you pull off sneak attacks because the Speed multiplier in Project Nevada applies to everyone, which means that maxing it out makes everyone about as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog buying from Heisenberg.
I don't know about you, but crackhead New Vegas is better than the base game. Don't @ me.