The game has come a long way since the early betas of last year. It's been a rocky road, and we still have a long way to go but if the team can keep up with adding content as well as evolving the game with this "community first" attitude they've stuck to. I think this game will have a long future ahead of it.

Of course this game isn't going to "kill COD" but as a nice alternative I can see it developing quite the devoted fanbase. Mark and his team need to remain communicative now that the game is out tho.

"Truth is - game was rigged from the start"

Blam! Our character gets shot in the head and one of the strongest game openings ever kicks us off on the adventure. Amusingly enough the first time I played the game on release I was so invested in this premise that I stopped playing the game entirely AFTER I got my revenge because at that point - hey, job done right?

Well, like the best Obsidian games (okay maybe its just this and Pillars 2, but those are the best ones!!) the main personal narrative is woven into the larger conflict of the region you're in. In the Mojave Wasteland there are several factions vying for power and they all swing around you and what you think is the best path forward. And, even within those routes you have quite a bit of wiggle room on determining who you are and why you're doing all this wandering around and rootin and tootin and shootin... But ultimately it comes down to - are you the message, or just the messenger?

The Good:
-Damn, where to start
-The roleplaying!! From the very beginning quest you get to use your skills to define what you're good at and.. not so good at. Corral people to help defend a town from bandits, but didn't take explosives? Pete won't lend you his dynamite because he doesn't want you to blow everyone up on accident. This carries on pretty far through the game all the way to the end where you can use the BARTER skill to talk down the Big Bad at the end because Supply Lines and Capitalism or some shit.
-In addition to that there's a lot of ways to sneakily complete quests or do them in a roundabout way and the game will notice and credit you for it. You can also do things like string the major factions along and then betray them only at the very very end (like I did. Sorry General Oliver!) . Just superb amounts of choice and consequence here.
-Adding to the writing: the companions are all strongly defined and very memorable. I used Arcade and Cass for this playthrough who I had never really used before, loved em both - Arcade especially.
-Gunplay is a solid step up from 3. Aim down sights and a much broader variety of weapons (non-gun categories especially, Energy/Melee/Explosives are much more usable here from the get-go)
-DLC quality ranges from "pretty darn good" to "excellent". Small open world exploration of a beautiful and lush region with great characters, mad science opera, The Tomb of Horrors but for video games.. we've got it all, baby!
-The mod scene is still healthy and excellent. I did one of the more 'basic' collections on Nexus that installed nice and easy on my steam deck - it was mostly QOL upgrades but it made a big difference with extra animations, some extra guns and rebalancing for survival mode


The Bad:
-Even with nearly15 years of mods its unstable. I actually had a pretty good run for the first 40~ hours but the last ten I had at least one crash per hour of gameplay. My mods were pretty minimal too

The Ugly:
-The color palette for the game is too much samey brown. It is of course a desert and there are several exceptions but overall... too brown!
-And I never actually include this category it just fit well with the cowboy/western theme and my usual good/bad categories I use. Sue me!

The Meh:
-The DLC, while excellent pretty much across the board, throws the power curve out of whack. Everything in the wastes gets notably tougher when you return from each to the point where there was literally half the game (if not more) for me to do and I was rocking 200+ DPS weapons + in the best power armor + fighting exclusively the toughest enemies. AND I had the JSaw mod which lowers XP gain too!!
-Monster/enemy variety is a bit low. There are the occasional odd enemy but its 90% recycled from previous fallouts.
-The POIs on the map feel a bit less meaningful compared to other Fallouts. There's a lot of small stuff that gets its own marker for not much reason
-The companions, while VERY well written, very rarely have much to say about what you're doing.

The Hmmm:
-Voice acting. It's pretty much all high quality, HOWEVER it is very clear they got the Oblivion levels of funding for their VO work from Bethesda so you will hear the same... 7-8 voices? For 90% of the NPCs. It's a bit annoying but honestly at least its good? Can't complain too much.


New Vegas is a titan of a roleplaying game and a superb achievement for a team who only had 18 months of development. It is very clearly just a deeply expanded "mod" for Fallout 3 with no huge leaps in the engine or gameplay but it just does everything better in terms of story and roleplay. You feel the weight of your choices for good and bad.. and its fun to blow things up into piles of goo, okay?

"Truth is - game was rigged from the start"

Blam! Our character gets shot in the head and one of the strongest game openings ever kicks us off on the adventure. Amusingly enough the first time I played the game on release I was so invested in this premise that I stopped playing the game entirely AFTER I got my revenge because at that point - hey, job done right?

Well, like the best Obsidian games (okay maybe its just this and Pillars 2, but those are the best ones!!) the main personal narrative is woven into the larger conflict of the region you're in. In the Mojave Wasteland there are several factions vying for power and they all swing around you and what you think is the best path forward. And, even within those routes you have quite a bit of wiggle room on determining who you are and why you're doing all this wandering around and rootin and tootin and shootin... But ultimately it comes down to - are you the message, or just the messenger?

The Good:
-Damn, where to start
-The roleplaying!! From the very beginning quest you get to use your skills to define what you're good at and.. not so good at. Corral people to help defend a town from bandits, but didn't take explosives? Pete won't lend you his dynamite because he doesn't want you to blow everyone up on accident. This carries on pretty far through the game all the way to the end where you can use the BARTER skill to talk down the Big Bad at the end because Supply Lines and Capitalism or some shit.
-In addition to that there's a lot of ways to sneakily complete quests or do them in a roundabout way and the game will notice and credit you for it. You can also do things like string the major factions along and then betray them only at the very very end (like I did. Sorry General Oliver!) . Just superb amounts of choice and consequence here.
-Adding to the writing: the companions are all strongly defined and very memorable. I used Arcade and Cass for this playthrough who I had never really used before, loved em both - Arcade especially.
-Gunplay is a solid step up from 3. Aim down sights and a much broader variety of weapons (non-gun categories especially, Energy/Melee/Explosives are much more usable here from the get-go)
-DLC quality ranges from "pretty darn good" to "excellent". Small open world exploration of a beautiful and lush region with great characters, mad science opera, The Tomb of Horrors but for video games.. we've got it all, baby!
-The mod scene is still healthy and excellent. I did one of the more 'basic' collections on Nexus that installed nice and easy on my steam deck - it was mostly QOL upgrades but it made a big difference with extra animations, some extra guns and rebalancing for survival mode


The Bad:
-Even with nearly15 years of mods its unstable. I actually had a pretty good run for the first 40~ hours but the last ten I had at least one crash per hour of gameplay. My mods were pretty minimal too

The Ugly:
-The color palette for the game is too much samey brown. It is of course a desert and there are several exceptions but overall... too brown!
-And I never actually include this category it just fit well with the cowboy/western theme and my usual good/bad categories I use. Sue me!

The Meh:
-The DLC, while excellent pretty much across the board, throws the power curve out of whack. Everything in the wastes gets notably tougher when you return from each to the point where there was literally half the game (if not more) for me to do and I was rocking 200+ DPS weapons + in the best power armor + fighting exclusively the toughest enemies. AND I had the JSaw mod which lowers XP gain too!!
-Monster/enemy variety is a bit low. There are the occasional odd enemy but its 90% recycled from previous fallouts.
-The POIs on the map feel a bit less meaningful compared to other Fallouts. There's a lot of small stuff that gets its own marker for not much reason
-The companions, while VERY well written, very rarely have much to say about what you're doing.

The Hmmm:
-Voice acting. It's pretty much all high quality, HOWEVER it is very clear they got the Oblivion levels of funding for their VO work from Bethesda so you will hear the same... 7-8 voices? For 90% of the NPCs. It's a bit annoying but honestly at least its good? Can't complain too much.


New Vegas is a titan of a roleplaying game and a superb achievement for a team who only had 18 months of development. It is very clearly just a deeply expanded "mod" for Fallout 3 with no huge leaps in the engine or gameplay but it just does everything better in terms of story and roleplay. You feel the weight of your choices for good and bad.. and its fun to blow things up into piles of goo, okay?