Fallout: New Vegas

The Good
The gang from Interplay return to add another addition to the Fallout Franchise. This is a great thing...

I admit that I don't really get in to the Sword and Sandal RPG games. So that's why the Fallout series is so cool to me.

The mechanics of the game are nearly identical to Fallout 3, which is a good thing in itself. However, The story is much more intriguing. You have several factions to contend with. Many of the goals will conflict with other factions and put you in trouble. Sometimes, You can unite them. Other times, you can antagonize them to your own benefit. No matter what you do, someone will love you for it and someone will hate you.

A lot of what you can accomplish is decided by how you spin your character in the beginning. It's compelling because you don't know what you can do unless you play it again.

The FPS aspect of the game is a little tighter, but you'll still often find yourself outmatched in most fights unless you recruit some friendly NPCs.

Getting an NPC is critical to winning the game. Each NPC comes with their own fighting style, skills and backstory. Unlike some RPGs, The NPC storyline unravels as you play so it become part of the game, instead of boring filler.

The voice acting is considerably improved from Fallout 3. There is a much larger cast of voice actors. A lot of them are famous and very good at bringing their respective characters to life. Your interactions would have consequences that also impact the game in the long run.

And the infamous kitchen sink approach that made the Black Isle games so great is back. Aliens? Vampires? Check... The game ending was comprehensive in its list of impacts you had on the game world. That was a nice touch.

The Bad
Starting off, There are no immediate plans for a sequel by Obsidian. The DLC will have to do.

Otherwise, I have no real complaints.

The Bottom Line
Play it if you are tired of Sword and Sandal RPGS.

The Good
There's quite a bit of writing in New Vegas, much of which is decent--a huge improvement on Fallout 3. The places one visits and the characters one talks to are more realistic. There are more choices to make, and the choices are more ambiguous. At least some attention was paid to making characters with real motivations for their actions

Gameplay was improved on Fallout 3 - the game is harder, the level scaling less apparent and the combat more satisfying. There are many skill checks in dialogues, making pure combat characters less attractive.

Thanks to the old engine, the game runs very well in Linux through Wine.

The Bad
The characters and their animation still look terrible. And I mean terrible. There are PS2 games that look ten times better. Shadows are non-existent and objects tend to pop-in out of nowhere as you're running through the desert. Performance degrades significantly if you look at the direction of several NPCs. The UI continues to be cute, but barely usable.

Some of the dialogues are poorly written and accompanied by inappropriate voice acting. Many of the skill check lines in dialogues are unconvincing. The game is poorly balanced against energy weapons and there are really only two sorts of enemies in New Vegas: the sort you can outrun, which are trivial and the ones that are faster than you, which are more difficult.

There are many elements of the game that break immersion. The clever quest names, for instance. the ding sound accompanied with You've Gained Karma! when you kill raiders, the ominous sound effect together with a list of quests you've just failed when you kill some significant NPC, the animated experience bar that appears whenever you do something which the game deems significant, the red colored text informing you that what you're about to do illegal, the all-knowing quest compass, the slow motion decapitations that sometimes play, etc. All of this just gets in the way. Clearly Obsidian has never heard of 'less is more'.

In attempting to make the game morally grey, Obsidian may have gone a bit too far. None of the three main factions you can choose to support are any good. House is an Objectivist abomination who clearly needs to go outside more, the NCR is a corrupt, ineffective republic with naive grunts and cynical leaders (closely mirroring the contemporary US government), and the Legion are evil slavers. A steam poll showed that most players chose the fourth--comedy--faction. It's not hard to see why. Maybe they should've made the Followers one of the factions.

Most of the companions are particularly annoying personalities and are much too powerful offensively to the point where they can handle all the enemies themselves. They also have infinite ammo. And they automatically heal. And the all the experience points for their kills go to you. So why should you bother? Together with the quest compass, it's like the game plays itself, really.

The hardcore mode's eating and sleeping requirements add nothing to the game. You randomly find food and water every few minutes in boxes, it's just a matter of a few annoying extra clicks. The lack of depth is disappointing. Even if you're about to die from starvation you can't ask anyone to spare some food, for instance. I guess voice acting all those lines wouldn't been too expensive. Such are the disadvantages of voice acting.

The Bottom Line
It's a lot like Fallout 3, which was a lot like Oblivion. There was a bit of hope that the staggering decline in quality after Morrowind was temporary, but it looks like Bethesda is set to continue to push bad games forever. In view of this, I give New Vegas an F.

The Good
The guys at Obsidian certainly are a bunch of talented individuals with plenty of creative ideas; and, above all, individuals who really love RPGs. Not surprising, considering the fact this team was assembled by some of the leading RPG developers of the past, particularly those who did those classic games for Black Isle.

So far Obsidian has been more successful with sequels to existing franchises than with independently conceived games. After the troublesome Alpha Protocol they decided to go back to their old ways, creating an entry in an established series. The high status of the Fallout franchise was somewhat downgraded by the previous installment, which divided fans into warring groups and left many hardcore Fallout junkies unsatisfied.

The thing is, Bethesda doesn't really know how to do role-playing based on ethical choices. Their idea of role-playing is basically "do whatever you want, because whatever you do doesn't matter anyway". But what they certainly can do is create big, generous playgrounds. That's how Western RPG development split into two sub-genres: "exploration" and "story-driven" RPG. Bethesda kept doing their sandbox experiments (followed by Piranha Bytes with their Gothic), while the story-driven RPG started shrinking. And while people talked about how Dragon Age was big and interactive, they forgot one important thing: Dragon Age was the same old thing, only with 3D graphics. It didn't take any advantage whatsoever of its engine. It didn't have physical interaction, and its world couldn't be truly explored. We didn't see that endless, breathtaking landscape in front of us; we didn't feel the whole gorgeous world lying at our feet the way we did, for example, when playing Oblivion.

I was waiting for a game that would combine those two approaches. A game that would have this kind of addictive exploration, but also add everything I loved in classic quest-driven RPGs. Fallout: New Vegas turned out to be exactly such a game.

I can't stress it enough: if anything I wrote above about my personal RPG preferences echoes in your heart, stop reading this review. Go and get this game. If you feel the same way as I did, you should be jumping and singing and performing religious rituals right now. New Vegas might not top Fallout 2, but it's as close as it gets in transporting its spirit into a gorgeous third dimension.

Essentially, New Vegas combines Obsidian's own charismatic personality and unwavering passion with the best of Bethesda. It is the fruit of continuous historical development, the logical conclusion that came so late. I won't talk much about the "Bethesda parts" of this game. New Vegas looks and plays (on a basic level) the same way as Fallout 3. It has everything the other game had; in my opinion - though the engine begins to show its age - its game world is more beautiful. The artists clearly had more inspiration when designing this world; it is more detailed and more natural. Gone are the monotonous subways and the endless piles of rubbish; the world of New Vegas is much more "alive", it is vibrant and versatile, with much more variety in location design than the previous game.

Though the basic gameplay system is the same as in Fallout 3, the playing experience is quite different: it feels much more like a flexible RPG. Typically for Obsidian, the game is ripe with clever setpieces and situations that call for choices - and this time, your ethical proclivities are harmoniously combined with a vast world you can freely roam. The game is absolutely non-linear, meaning that you can go wherever you want, behave in any way you want, do any quests in any order, etc. Of course, there is a main quest that must be completed if you want to finish the game; but the true experience of the game is in discovery, exploration, and flexibility of actions. The fusion of meaningful choices and physical freedom, which was so sorely missing from modern RPGs, is finally back.

I won't go much into details; suffice to say that the quests in New Vegas are very interesting, and you will feel compelled doing them. Moral choices and dilemmas pop out everywhere; in the best tradition of classic Western RPG, the "meat" of the game is deciding what to do, how to do it - from an ethical standpoint. I actually felt I truly created my own character. I didn't just assign a bunch of attributes to him, but shaped him as a human being, made him say things and commit actions that defined him from a moral point of view.

The game is full of exciting, varied, and challenging quests; you will be deeply involved in the intricate world of New Vegas, you will become part of it and determine its future. Those tired of BioWare's schematic "good-bad" moral structures are welcomed to a world that is rarely black and white, but mostly a dark shade of grey. It's not that there are only villains in this game, but this world is cruel, and you feel it. No matter whom you join, you will have to do something that will probably make you feel uncomfortable. The choices are anything but easy. This kind of approach to morals is involving, and it makes you face the consequences of your decisions.

The world of New Vegas is populated by many organizations and factions; three of them (Mr. House, NCR and Legion) play the largest role, and joining one of them basically determines the main plot of the game. But there are also so many other factions, groups, towns, settlements, locations, people, etc. The ending changes depending on what you have done. What is most interesting in this game is not the actual story, not the series of events that leads to an ending, but the way your choices push this story forward, often with unexpected results. The writing is also decidedly better than in Fallout 3, and there are more interesting characters.

The role-playing system generally works much better than it did in the preceding game, returning to the series' roots. One phrase: speech matters! So many quests (even including the final boss confrontation) can now be solved differently depending on the speech parameter. That was perhaps what I missed most in Fallout 3, and New Vegas is quick to fix it.

The shooting mechanics are as solid and as satisfying as they were in the predecessor; but even during combat, the game somehow feels more RPG-like. For once, the game is much more challenging; you can be on par with the enemies, underpowered or overpowered, and this constant evaluation of your skills and character growth feels just right. The balance is perfect for the most part: underpowered characters are bound to take a serious beating near the end stage of the game, since many enemies are extremely dangerous, and V.A.T.S. is your friend much more so than I found it to be in Fallout 3. New Vegas also has a cool "hardcore mode", which opts for realistic elements such as the necessity to rest, serious damage from radiation, limited usage of stimpaks (instead of the magical "instant healing" items they have become), etc.

The Bad
It must be noted that New Vegas wasn't exactly developed from scratch. It became possible thanks to Fallout 3, and we mustn't forget that. That game re-invented the Fallout universe, New Vegas would have never seen the light of the day if Obsidian hadn't had the engine and basic gameplay at their service, so that they could devote their time and energy entirely to creative content.

That said, it is a bit perplexing why bugs weren't ironed out of the tested, solid engine. New Vegas has quite a few weird occurrences. Since the freedom of actions here is nearly unlimited, you can certainly stumble across occasional strange and illogical dialogues, especially if you do everything you can to stay away from the main quests. Sometimes representatives of factions which are supposed to hate you behave nicely for inexplicable reasons; another time people attack you without any provocation on your side, etc.

The whole idea for the main plot is somewhat questionable; I, for once, could never understand why the protagonist of the game suddenly decided to get involved with high politics. I always imagined him as a regular guy, someone who tries to stay away from all this stuff. You'll have to choose sides, volens-nolens; you can't just walk away from the political struggle if you want to complete the game. I'd prefer to retain the option of not allying with any of those ethically dubious factions and get to the "neutral" end without the hassle of double-crossing all of them.

The Bottom Line
New Vegas is the only modern RPG that comes close to the early Fallouts in role-playing flexibility and quality of quest design, at the same time offering a large, fully explorable, interactive 3D world. It is the first attempt to create a rich role-playing game rooted in diverse traditions since the genre split into morally indifferent sandboxes and contained cinematic rides, and it deserves praise and recognition for that.