Christopher Buecheler

• Platform: PC
• One Word: Sprawling
• Two Words: Vegas, Baby!
• Worth It: Yes
• Scale: terrible | poor | fair | good | great

As a reward to myself for finishing Blood Hunt, I finally got around to buying and playing Fallout New Vegas. I forced myself to wait because I knew it wasn’t going to be a six-hour first-person shooter, or even a 25-hour game like Mass Effect 2. No, I knew I was going to drop 70-plus hours into the game. That’s how I am with RPGs, especially open-world RPGs like Bethesda’s become known for.

I haven’t in fact “finished” or “beat” the game because I’ve only seem one sequence of innumerable possible endings, but there are certain stories I’ll never see (siding with Caesar for example), and certain other ones that I’m saving for an inevitable replay sometime down the road, so for the most part I feel finished, and won’t be going back to it for a while. With about 79 hours put into the game, and every single location on the world map visited (including exploring all the caves and buildings, not just getting close to them so that the map marker highlights), I think I’m at least qualified to write my review.

So here’s what’s weird: I’m not sure whether to complain about the game’s highly derivative aspects first, or laud the things it does far better than Fallout 3 first. There are plenty of both, and although I clearly enjoyed the title it’s a bit hard for me to give it a “great” because of all the ways it could have improved on Fallout 3 but didn’t. On the other hand, it succeeds so spectacularly on certain levels that … you know what? Let’s just start with what it got right.

(note: I’m not going to explain the plot here. I hate reviews that do that, not because of spoilers but because it’s a waste of space and time. You can find out the plot from the millions of previews on the web.)

The Good

Fallout: New Vegas had a few people working on it – most notably Feargus Urquhart and Chris Avellone, who were major contributors to the original two Fallout games. While I felt Fallout 3 did a fine job of nailing the “feel” of the Fallout universe and presenting a compelling story, I think New Vegas does a superior job of following in the footsteps of the originals. The overall storyline is more convoluted with no “right” route or goal clearly highlighted. There’s a “good vs. evil” sideline, but only if you believe the NCR is good, and there is plenty of compelling evidence placed within the game to show that they are not.

There also way more marked side quests (a lack of which bothered me in Fallout 3). Many of the characters are directly related to people you met or worked with in Fallout and Fallout 2, including at least one possible companion. You also get to learn more about some of the well-established pre-war companies like RobCo. In general, it all adds up to feeling just a bit more like Fallout than Fallout 3 did, which works for me as a huge fan of the first two games (Fallout remains on my ten best games of all time list).

The concept of managing your reputation with various factions has been reintroduced, and might actually be stronger than in any of the three previous titles (I don’t really factor in the non-RPG spin-off games when thinking about the history of the franchise — just the RPGs). While there are still some extremely obvious karma choices, there are many interactions which are intertwined, and helping one faction can hinder your reputation with others. It’s actually quite possible to gain “mixed” karma ratings where people are mildly bewildered with your actions. I tend to play a heavily light-side character, and I still had a couple of factions (and not necessarily the evil ones) who were a little sketchy in their opinion of me. The “bad guys” – Ceasar’s Legion – hated my guts, of course.

Another thing that New Vegas does better than Fallout 3 is packing more punch into a tighter area. The game map for New Vegas seems slightly smaller than Fallout 3′s Washington DC metro area (especially when you account for the large amount of inaccessible mountain area), but there are fewer “filler” locations and a total lack of “oh my god where the hell am I?” subway stations (thank you, Obsidian). With the noteable exception of a few parts of New Vegas, everything is open to the outside world. When you do find a filler-esque location (such as a cavern, or a mine), many of them are tied into side quests and have a reason for existing. Those that don’t are kept mercifully short. There are very few multi-map cavern/bunker crawls, unlike in Fallout 3 where often a cave system would often have three or even four separate areas. While this gaves Fallout 3 a bit more breadth than New Vegas, it didn’t really add much depth, and it added a ton of repetition to the game. In fact, the last three Bethesda RPGS — Oblivon, Fallout 3 and New Vegas — have gotten progressively better about this. I’m hoping the trend continues in the upcoming Skyrim.

New Vegas also gives you optional companions who have a whole lot more depth than the companions in Fallout 3 did. They’ve got lengthy back-stories, each companion has an entire quest-line that allows you to choose between different upgrades to their abilities and change their endings, and they have a lot more to say about the places you visit and the movement of the plot-line. The revamped companion interface wheel is also a million, billion times nicer to use than navigating through dialog trees, and I applaud whomever designed it.

The crafting system has also been greatly expanded for people who love turning raw ingredients into usable stuff. As someone who ignores crafting as much as possible in every RPG he’s ever played, I … ignored it as much as possible. But it was there, and I’m sure I could’ve saved a whole lot of money on ammo and other goods if I’d used it. Also, if you’re insane enough to play the game in hardcore mode, where it tracks your sleep, thirst, and hunger, then you will absolutely need a high survival skill, and all the crafting abilities it bequeaths. Otherwise the crows of the Mojave will be picking your bones clean in short order.

Strong voice acting has always been a hallmark of the Fallout series, and this is still the case with New Vegas. Many of the major characters (and a few minor ones) are played by Hollywood actors, and the rest are fleshed out by talented and experienced voice actors who do a good job of giving life to the supporting dialog.

The Less-Good

I’ve heard mention that many people felt New Vegas seemed like “a glorified mod” and I understand why. A massive amount of art assets are recycled from Fallout 3, from bunkers to burned-out sheds. Even in character creation, I don’t think so much as a single new haircut or beard style was added, which was more of a bummer than it seems because it means all of the characters you meet in the world look identical to residents of post-apocalyptic Washington DC, despite the fact that Nevada is frankly much further ahead in the “restoring the world to order” department than the Northeast is. A lot of new content was made for the game, most noticeably in the various casinos and other areas around the New Vegas strip, but it’s sometimes hard to differentiate the two games.

Another frustration, for me, was that the game makes an extreme effort to prevent you from overpowering your character. Perks have been reduced to once every two levels, so you only get 15 total instead of Fallout 3′s twenty (on the plus side, you do level 30 times, so you can still max several skills if you have a high intelligence). For those of us who want to play a game where our character eventually evolves into a super-powered cyber-genius whose skill in combat is matched only by his stealth and silver tongue (and who think Perks are the single greatest thing about Fallout), it’s frustrating not to get as many of them. Of course, the original game only gave you one every three levels, so I guess every two is still better.

If you do the side quests as they come along, you’ll hit the level cap long before you have visited every point on the map. I did; in fact, I hadn’t even entered New Vegas proper until somewhere around level 26 or 27. When I hit the cap, continuing to do quests just felt pointless to me, so I downloaded a mod that set it to 50 instead of 30. Problem solved. I beat the game at level 38. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have wasted two early perks on the “10% extra experience points” set.

I also preferred Fallout 3′s somewhat more open approach to enemy strength. In New Vegas, there is a definite path the game tries to lead you on (roughly: south along the western border, then east along the southern border, then up towards Vegas). Trying to deviate from this route lands you rapidly in areas stocked with brutally powerful deathclaws, and gigantic wasps that hit like a mortar shell. In many cases it seems you may be able to sneak by on the borders but — SURPRISE! — invisible walls abound in the Mojave desert. There are areas of incline that you absolutely should be able to scale, but can’t, and in some cases you can even hit invisible walls on flat planes. This is a game design tactic that needs to die a quick, merciful death, and I was sorry to see it show up in this title.

The casinos in the game are kind of a let-down. They’re fancy and fun to wander, but many of the areas are remarkably empty — amusingly, one will often hear background noise indicating a huge crowd despite there being only two dealers and one other gambler in the room with you. I understand this is probably due to performance limitations, especially on the consoles, but it was still a bit of a letdown to walk into Gomorrah for the first time and find a gigantic and mostly empty room full of tables. Oh, also, the “choice” between blackjack, roulette and slots at the casinos isn’t really much of a choice. Blackjack’s the only game where the odds don’t overwhelmingly favor the house (and let’s be honest – they still get a sizable edge). A version of poker would’ve been nice, though I understand that would’ve involved a lot of AI coding. Craps would’ve been pretty great too, just because it usually takes at least a little longer to burn through 200 bucks.

In Summary

In the end, New Vegas ends up being a lot like Fallout 2: it uses essentially the same engine, recycles a LOT of art assets, but is a somewhat more complicated game than its predecessor. Also there’s more gambling and whores than in the first game.

While New Vegas is by no means perfect, it’s an impressive title with an intricate story, characters you grow to have feelings about, and an unbelievable amount of stuff to do. I think Obsidian did a great job in a fairly limited time of creating an interesting and enjoyable game world that’s populated with outstanding characters, and fits very well into Fallout canon. I don’t know where the series is going from here, and whether the task of planning it out will be given to Bethesda’s core team or to Obsidian, but either way I’ll be happy, because both have proved that the franchise is in good hands.

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Note 1: New Vegas is currently available on Steam or at various retail outlets for around twenty bucks. If you haven’t played it yet, it’s a steal at that price.

Note 2: With rare exceptions, I don’t do DLC. By all indications the New Vegas DLC is very good, so this game might be an exception once all the stuff is out and packaged together into one purchase. Maybe on the next play-through!