[Introduction]
Fallout: New Vegas is a casino gambling game with an optional ARPG element.Like Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas is an open world ARPG, except this time, it's set in the post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert instead of a ruined Washington D.C.
Gameplay is going to be so similar that you'd be forgiven for saying it's identical. This also means that, like 3, NV is another Bethesda Game. It's gonna be buggy.
[First Impressions]
Same start, but somewhat quicker to get through and doesn't keep you cooped up for as long. Some changes you'll notice almost immediately is how the Small Guns and Big Guns skills got rolled up into just plain old Guns and there's a Survival skill now. Traits have also been reintroduced, having been on hiatus between Fallout 2 and now (although it was called Outdoorsman then).
You may also notice that the game is very... brown.
Get used to that.
[Development]
Announced in 2009, only a year after Fallout 3, and released in 2010, New Vegas is something of a spin-off in the series. Some might even argue it's really just an expansion for Fallout 3 in all but name, but I would disagree. My reasoning is primarily based on the fact that it wasn't developed by Bethesda at all, but Obsidian Entertainment. Moreover, director Josh Sawyer and writer Chris Avellone were involved, both of whom worked for Black Isle Studios and were involved in the Van Buren project.
This is significant, not only because of the tie to the original creators of Fallout, but also because several elements from the Van Buren project was recycled for New Vegas. The conflict between the New California Republic and the Brotherhood of Steel, Joshua Graham, Caesar's Legion, the Powder Gangers and the Van Graffs, to name some of them.
Other, more background-relegated things were used as well. For example, Denver is mentioned, same with New Canaan, the Hangdog and Blackfoot Tribes, stuff like that. The same is true for some characters, such as Arcade Gannon, and even more obscure things like circumstances. The Van Buren quest where Blackjack, a friendly super mutant, has been cornered probably influenced the quest where friendly super mutants led by Marcus have been cornered in Jacobstown.
That aside, New Vegas was, of course, created using 3 as a base. They run on the same Gamebryo engine and incorporate the same game mechanics, but more on that later. Some progress was made using the engine, however, as Obsidian managed to improve the source code and graphics rendering, largely to accommodate the frankly busy environment on the Vegas Strip. Other fine tuning mostly involved art assets (many of which were reused from Fallout 3) and general streamlining.
Notably, due to inexperience with the engine, Obsidian actually brought Jorge Salgado from the Oblivion modding community aboard due to his extensive Gamebryo experience. Even so, there's a limit to how much a team can accomplish in a mere 18 months, and even with the assistance from Salgado, a great deal of bugs were left unfixed on release.
[Game Mechanics]
You know the spiel: it's like Fallout 3, but with some changes and improvements.
Perhaps most significant is the fact that your character can no longer pick up any old weapon and expect to use it proficiently. There are now stat and skill requirements that apply to certain weapons, such as miniguns, meaning that even though you could try to use them, you're really not gonna accomplish a whole lot unless you meet the requirements. You do still receive a bonus for a high skill level, but it's no longer optional.
Some weapons now also have proper iron sights on them. Not really a crucial change, or really a particularly necessary one, but it doesn't detract from the game in any way that this feature was added. Most weapons are now also moddable to some extent. Expanded mags, reduced weight, adding scopes, that sort of thing. Also not a crucial change, but it does allow you to make a weapon your own, although one can argue that it makes unique weapons less unique, particularly considering that some unique weapons are almost identical to a weapon with all its mods installed.
In a similar vein, New Vegas has a much greater focus on crafting than its predecessor, especially in the form of consumables. You can also make your own ammunition now, as well as convert some types of ammo into others. That's not to say you can turn 10mm bullets into microfusion cells, but you can turn energy cells or electron charge packs into microfusion cells. You can even turn regular microfusion cells into overcharged ones, which is handy if you care more about damaging your enemies than damaging your weapon. Similarly, any cartridge can be broken down to its base components, which can be used to load new cartridges of a different calibre.
Companions have seen some changes in the form of a "companion wheel" being added, which is essentially a quick-select menu that allows you to issue certain commands without needing to do so through dialogue, although that's still an option.
Reputation has been expanded upon, so much so that wearing a faction's armor will affect how you interact with other factions. For example, it's inadvisable to approach NCR soldiers while dressed as a Legion soldier. There are also a lot more factions, some of which are borderline irrelevant, but it's neat to be able to track your standing with individual groups in the wasteland.
And to address the elephant in the room: yes, there's a "hardcore mode" which serves as a sort of survival mode. Your character now needs to eat and drink, but I never found it particularly alluring. It adds a number of new factors that need to be taken into account, such as ammo having actual weight, so it should definitely not be written off as just a gimmick. Hardcore mode certainly makes for a more engaged playthrough - I just prefer not having to worry about inventory weight more than I already do.
[Graphics]
It's Fallout 3, but in a desert and with a warm filter on the lens.
I'm not even kidding, that's pretty much it. It's big, it's open, it's brown. It's the Mojave Desert. Like its predecessor, it's not an ugly game, but it's not gonna be winning any beauty pageants either. In some regards, it's better than 3. In others, worse. For example: there are much fewer instances where you're likely to run into something the devs didn't expect you to run into. Exploration almost never results in discovering something that looks unfinished.
One of the ways in which it's worse is that while, yes, areas are well put together, they're also frequently somewhat bland. It's not very difficult to make a long stretch of road going through a desert look convincing, but it's also not a terribly exciting environment to travel through.
Sometimes you do get some weird graphical glitches though. Here's an extreme one:
[Story]
Remember how I described Fallout 3 being pretty straight to the point? Well, New Vegas upped the ante and gets even straighter to the point. More appropriately, straight to the hollow point, because it takes less than 5 minutes from starting a new game to get shot right in the head. Twice. Off to a great start.
But you either have brains to spare, a thick skull or just an inordinate amount of luck, because you pull through with what amounts to a mild hangover. Naturally, the order of the day is to find the gentleman in the tacky suit who subjected your head to involuntary lead enrichment; not necessarily because you want revenge, but because you're a courier and the bastard stole the stuff you were supposed to deliver.
And so begins a mighty endeavor: delivering the mail. There's an alternative, however, namely NOT delivering the mail. Maybe you'll keep it for yourself. Maybe you'll deliver it to someone else. Maybe you'll just forget about the whole courier thing and go gambling instead. Really, there are a bunch of alternatives, and that's where New Vegas becomes interesting.
You see, while previously there was a choice between the Brotherhood and the Enclave, there's now a choice between like 4 different factions with distinct ending crawls depending on your actions throughout the playthrough and your interactions with various characters. Maybe you side with a faction, but its leader dies. Maybe you decide anarchy is en vogue and destroy anything remotely orderly. There's a surprising amount of variations, and it really improves the replay value.
Oh, and a lot of characters will interact with the player as though we oughta know a lot of things, but will nonetheless reiterate for our benefit. It makes sense. After all, the game opens up with a literal brain injury, which generally serves to explain why we start at such a low skill level with no prior experience, despite being a courier, who would have seen and experienced a great many things.
However, at the end of the day, the main allure of New Vegas' story is not necessarily the sheer amount of possible outcomes, but rather that the writing is just solid. For example, it's no secret that Caesar and his Legion have done terrible things. Like, pretty nearly objectively terrible things, such as slavery, cultural genocide and actual genocide. Now, before you say anything, there's a reason why I say "nearly objectively terrible," namely that you can talk to Caesar.
Caesar is quite open about his actions, and so will tell you exactly why he did what he did. I won't go into details here, because that's something you have to experience on your own, but the fact that you can have a dialogue with a tyrannical dictator endeavoring to establish a totalitarian, authoritarian, imperialist state built on slave labor and conquest is very telling. It even becomes philosophical at times. Caesar, after all, is a learned man. He'll not only justify himself, but also the underlying logic, using the writings of a 19th century German philosopher.
It's a very strong presentation, because the writing touches on fundamental ideological views, particularly whether the end justifies the means and whether something like the NCR is truly better for humanity than something like Caesar's Legion. It's thought provoking, with emphasis on provoking, which is what makes New Vegas such an engaging game. The characters involved in the struggle of the main campaign are presented as being invested for a variety of reasons beyond simply being "The Bad Guy" or "The Good Guy" as was largely the case in Fallout 3.
[SPOILERS]
The big reveal is that the courier was carrying a platinum chip, which is both a poker chip and a computer chip. It just so happens to contain both access codes to a bunker housing a big ol' army of killer robots as well as the software to upgrade them. Suffice it to say that being in possession of the chip opens up a lot of options.
In the grand scheme of things, the player has 4 options:
Side with Mr. House and deliver the chip to him, allowing him to upgrade and expand his robot army.
Side with Caesar and use the chip to access and destroy the bunker housing Mr. House's robot army.
Side with the NCR and use the chip to access Mr. House's private chamber and assassinate him.
Or side with nobody and use the chip to kill Mr. House, steal his robot army and use it yourself.
These endings can all vary drastically in outcome, depending on your choices. For example, Caesar might die, which puts Legate Lanius in charge instead, significantly changing the Legion ending. You might have destroyed the robot army, but you can still proceed with the Yes Man ending. By and large, the player is granted substantial freedom in doing whatever they want and still have an ending available to them. If you make enough stupid decisions, you get the appropriate ending, but the game still allows you to make those stupid decisions.
Beyond that, here are some fun tidbits:
A nightkin might offer to sell you some "wind-brahmin" at the low, low price of all your caps.
A gang of old ladies armed with rolling pins might try to mug you.
You can find the corpse of Johnny Five Aces, who incidentally also makes an appearance in Brigador.
You can acquire a toy gun from a kid. The toy gun is actually a target painter for an orbital weapons platform armed with a solar-powered laser.
And there's a vault where the dwellers democratically elected a person to be sacrificed.
[Pros]
- Flat improvement over Fallout 3 in almost every regard
- Power armor actually feels like power armor
- Good variety of side quests
- Decent leeway for different playstyles being viable
- Excellent story and character presentation
[Cons]
- Buggy
- Environment is very bland
[Conclusion]
It's Fallout 3+.
If it was in Fallout 3, there's a pretty good chance it's also in Fallout: New Vegas, but likely in some expanded or improved capacity. There are more quests, sidequests, unmarked quests, locations, companions, NPCs... you get the idea, there's more of everything. It even runs better, although not without occasional hiccups.
The only real problem with the game is the environment. Pretty much everything else is great.
No gods, no masters, moral compass optional.
/DUX
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