Retrospective Review: Fallout New Vegas

Fallout New Vegas

Fallout New Vegas was developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda. A lot of the developers on the team came from Interplay and worked on the first two Fallout games, so they have a lot of history with the universe. Fallout New Vegas follows a Courier who gets caught up in a battle for control of the city of Las Vegas, now New Vegas, and Hoover Dam. It’s an open world RPG with optional survival elements and a very flexible storyline.

The Good

·       The World: the open world of the Mojave is so much fun to explore. You can hang around the city, which is full of casinos, prostitutes and bars. You can wander the Mojave desert hunting legendary monsters. Head up to the mountains to visit some friendly Super Mutants. Go for a swim in the lovely, and radiation free, Lake Mead. Run for your life from the terrifying cazadores.

·       Freedom of choice: a factor that most fans of New Vegas claim is the best part about it, and it is. In a lot of quests, you have options for how you handle them and the outcome will depend on your choices. The main story has four possible endings, but the results of each ending still vary with how you handled other parts of the plot.

·       The reputation system: Like Fallout 3, New Vegas has the karma system where you gain or lose karma for doing good or evil things. However it also has a reputations system with a bunch of factions in the game, both major and minor factions. Working against a faction will cause them to refuse to work with you or even attack you on sight. Working with them gets you benefits from useful items, discounts, to even access to safe houses in the wasteland where you can rest and regroup.

·       Skill checks, SPECIAL checks and Reputation checks: when tackling various quests and conversations, you can find yourself with special options if you have the right skill, perk, SPECIAL stat or reputation level with a faction. This means that the outcome is affected by decisions you’ve made earlier and you can find yourself with an unexpected advantage.

·       Enemies: Fallout New Vegas brings a few iconic enemy types back such as the deathclaws and molerats but it adds a few new ones too. The Cazadores are terrifying and dangerous giant tarantula hawk wasps. Having a bit of variety in the enemies you encounter keeps things interesting.

·       The Story: the main story transitions from a personal issue to a major societal issue as you progress, and it allows you to side with three different factions, or maintain Vegas’ independence. It’s a really interesting one and you get to spend some time getting to know each of the factions before making a choice – you can even kill the leader of two of them and still work with them!

·       Companions: There are eight companions you can have with you in the game. You can have one humanoid and one non-human at the same time. Each of them has a companion story and quest you can unlock by having them with you and doing certain things. You can then improve them in some way by encouraging them to go down a specific path in their development.

·       Weapons and Unique Weapons: Fallout New Vegas adds a ton of new weapon types to the game, as well as a bunch of unique variants. There’s even more if you have Gun Runner’s Arsenal. Melee and unarmed combat adds new special moves you can use in VATS as well. Iron sight aiming for guns also makes the combat a little smoother than Fallout 3. Some weapon-specific perks give you plenty of options for different character builds, although there are still issues with that system.

·       Soundtrack:  honestly, I adore the music choices for the radio in Fallout New Vegas. It’s a shame they couldn’t get the rights to use any of Elvis Presley’s music, but the music they do have really works for Vegas and it’s fun.

·       The Lore: all the lore is well connected, both to previous games and within the scope of Fallout 3 and New Vegas. This is especially apparent when exploring the DLCs and learning about how things came to be. All kinds of details are woven into the narrative of the game in a perfect way. World building is on point.

 

The Not So Good

·       Bugs and glitches: listen, I know it’s not a new issue. It’s part and parcel of playing a Fallout game, or Bethesda game in general. This game was made in the same engine as Fallout 3, which is why the popular mod Tale of Two Wastelands, that lets you play both games at the same time with one character, exists. At launch, Fallout New Vegas was basically unplayable for a lot of people due to the bugs: it has improved and modders have also helped massively to mitigate the issue. However, it’s still important to save regularly and use several save files to prevent losing hours of progress. Be prepared for regular crashes, especially on loading screens.

·       Missing content: it really feels like there was supposed to be more content in the game, especially around the Legion stuff. The game definitely suffers a bit from the short development cycle, as a lot of stuff had to be cut from the game. Some of it was added via DLC, such as Ulysses. The content that is there is great though, and it’s impressive given how little time was given for the game to be made.

·       Charisma 1, speech 100 issue: the character build issue can be fun but it’s also extremely broken and unbalanced, so it can be massively exploited. As Jon from Many A True Nerd highlights, the difference in speech checks between both games is a problem. Here’s why. In Fallout 3, you had a percentage chance of success in speech checks, which was calculated based on your Speech skill AND your Charisma stat, which acted as a multiplier. In New Vegas, the Charisma multiplier was dropped and success meant having a Speech skill that exceeded the threshold for that particular check.

The issue? You have literally no use for the Charisma stat in the game, even as a total pacifist who talks their way out of their problems. It only affects ‘companion nerve’ which I’ve never seen an issue with in the game. Yet you can max out Speech at 100 and pass every single check in the game, talking down the Legate who famously refuses to back down from a fight. With the lowest possible Charisma stat. Which makes no sense at all. You also would then miss out on some good perks because Charisma is the ’dump stat’ in basically any character build.

·       Exposition dump: Don’t get me wrong, I could listen to Ron Perlman for hours, the man’s voice is amazing. However, one of the common issues with any form of storytelling is the 'show, don’t tell’ principle. It’s okay to ‘tell’ sometimes, but opening with a massive exposition dump can be problematic. You sit through a long cutscene where you learn about the big players in the story. This could have been done differently, such as talking to the NCR in Primm to learn where the budding nation is at. Vulpes Inculta and his Legion buddies in Nipton would have been way more impactful if you didn’t already know that there was a group callec Caesar’s Legion who styled themselves like Ancient Romans. The fun of an RPG is letting the player uncover and learn the story along with their character. Massive exposition dumps are not necessary, there’s a better way.

 

My Thoughts

Let’s be clear. I love Fallout New Vegas. It is my favourite of all the Fallout games so far. It also has my favourite DLCs of all time. It’s a little flawed, sure, but it’s absolutely worth your time. It has great replay value as there are so many options and paths you can choose from, so you can play several times and have wildly different experiences depending on which side you choose.

Considering how quickly the game was made, accepted to be around 18 months of development time, it’s a well written narrative that is woven smoothly into the gameplay. All the little connections between the factions and everything, which is then masterfully integrated in the DLC stories so the whole world links together nicely.

It’s a work of art, and a compelling story. The biggest issue I have with Fallout New Vegas is some of the fans, who seem to think you cannot like Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 if you like New Vegas or classic Fallout. Which is ridiculous. None of the games are perfect, and that’s okay. A lot of the rhetoric I hear about the ‘Bethesda’ Fallout games is just not true. That said, New Vegas is my favourite. I visted Vegas once, about 16 years ago and it was so cool to see how the place was rendered in the game. I’ve seen Hoover Dam and Lake Mead from a helicopter, and it was so cool to see that in the game too.

Five stars from me, even with it’s flaws and bugs. Like Las Vegas itself, Fallout New Vegas is a glittering gem in the Mojave desert and if you haven’t already, you should play it. It seems likely we’ll be revisiting New Vegas in season 2 of the TV show, and I’m excited to see what comes next.