Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas is yet another case of Obsidian Entertainment being commissioned to make a sequel to a game. It is also bit special in that because several of Obsidian's founders had worked on the original Fallout games. And maybe because of that, New Vegas is a whole lot better than Bethesda-developed Fallout 3 -- at least in my opinion.

New Vegas did not receive as great of a reception from the critics as Fallout 3 had, however. That was probably due to the game's countless bugs and stability issues at launch. Although its metacritic score of 84 does not sound too bad, it was still one off from reaching 85, which was the requirement for Bethesda to pay a bonus for it. That one point almost caused Obsidian to file for bankruptcy later on.

Currently New Vegas is in a completely different state. I played the game over 70 hours without encountering a single crash. The Anti-Crash and Unofficial Patch mods might have helped a bit. However, after I had completed the Lonesome Road DLC, I started to get terrible stutter issues while indoors. Something apparently had gone wrong with the FNV Stutter Remover mod -- ironically enough -- because fiddling with its .ini file got the game running properly again.

Sadly it also made the game unstable and it started crashing. Not more than Fallout 3 and Skyrim have done for me but it was a clear change from the previously perfect 70 hours. Maybe I should have tried adjusting the values more but I did not bother since it seemed that there was not that much of the game left. I finished the game and all its DLC at 92 hours according to Steam.

Instead of a vault dweller, like usually in the Fallout games (as far as I know), you play a courier. You were shot due to some platinum chip and left for dead. Finding the shooter and the significance of the chip gives you a clear goal to reach. Following the main quest line takes you counterclockwise around the Mojave Wasteland and finally to The Strip just a bit north of Goodsprings where you start your adventure.

Visiting the Vegas Strip and its casinos right from the start is tempting for a power gamer to get that +1 intelligence implant. (Having it early maximizes the skill points you get from the increased stat.) I ended up doing just that as I was playing a more researched and min-maxed character build this time (Charisma 1). I did get invested in the Ghost Town Gunfight quest though and did not get the implant until I had already leveled few times. Getting to The Strip alive so early is also a challenge as the area between is crawling with deathclaws. Luckily a stealth boy can be found in Goodsprings to get you past the most dangerous bits.

After getting the implant, I continued following the main quest and thought the game felt much like Fallout 3 in regards to the amount of quests available, i.e. not very many. But then, after I had gotten my revenge, quests started popping up left and right, and I had suddenly a bunch of things to do. That was also the point I lost what exactly motivated my character. So I killed the guy who tried to kill me and now I should start supporting some faction for the control of New Vegas? Why exactly? What drives me to do that?

In the end, 'No Gods, No Masters' was the ending I went for. Mr. House would have been another option but his personality was not quite to my liking, even if killing him caused my generally good character to lose karma. With Gun Runners' Arsenal DLC installed, there is a "challenge" called A Slave Obeys that involves killing Mr. House with a golf club. It is a reference -- a really neat one, in my opinion -- to BioShock whose Andrew Ryan is partly also based on the real-life person Howard Hughes like House is.

The Republic seemed like a good faction too but every character I talked to, especially the companions, said that even if the NCR mostly means well, they are not that successful at keeping order. The Legion I of course did not even consider as they were obviously not the correct faction for a character of positive karma to help.

In addition to the number of quests, Fallout: New Vegas improves many other Fallout 3's features as well. There are things like Speech checks simply requiring certain rank instead of being chance rolls (and thus no need for save-scumming). Most important improvement can be found in the combat, however, as gunplay in New Vegas is a whole lot better. For instance, you can aim down sights -- with or without reticle. I decided not use the true ironsights as everything being brown and gray again made telling enemies apart from the environment difficult with the gun covering so much of the screen.

Third person camera cannot be zoomed as far as in Fallout 3 -- probably to make aiming possible. Shooting in 3rd person still felt floaty and inaccurate, though. But in first person I liked real-time shooting so much that I only used V.A.T.S. couple times. Once purely for an emergency when a deathclaw got too close.

I am not so keen on all the different types of ammunition the game has. Not only is there a bunch of new kinds for new guns but also many different types for the same guns. The interface is far from best at tracking what kind of ammo you have.

New Vegas's difficulty was much more tolerable than Fallout 3's -- no hundreds of super mutants in Mojave. Scorpions were not as bothersome to kill either. The hardest setting adds new rules to the game but I did not bother with it and played on Normal. Having needs like drinking and eating sounded too much of a hassle to me.

The most challenging fights I had were against the Legion assassins that started chasing me after I decided to immediately punish the faction for burning Nipton. The assassins got annoying quickly, appearing without failure every single time I fast-traveled to a non-settlement location. And since they are scripted to initiate dialogue, you cannot even hide from them. I got a moment of respite when the plot reset my reputation with the Legion at some point but I managed to anger Caesar's boys again soon enough.

The soundscape of Fallout: New Vegas is pretty cool. I liked all the random noises you hear while exploring the desert. The new music -- again by Inon Zur -- was neat as well. I wish they had not re-used FO3's tracks, though. They did not really fit Mojave and reminded me of FO3 too much.

The voice cast for the game was to my liking too. I recognized quite a few names on the list: Ron Perlman, René Auberjonois, Michael Dorn, Wil Wheaton, Courtenay Taylor, Steve Blum, and Felicia Day as Veronica. The last one was quite unexpected and unfortunately broke my immersion constantly. I could not imagine Veronica sounding like Ms. Day and kept seeing the voice actress reading the lines instead.

New Vegas's story DLCs are long -- Old World Blues alone took me 9 hours to complete. Lonesome Road was fairly all right, mostly due to its cool final battle, but the rest were not that pleasant experiences. All of them are also rather detached from the main game's story. If not for the powerful items you get from them, I do not think there is much reason to play them for a second time. The DLC do increase character level cap and add new perks, though.

Obsidian also (re-)introduced traits from the first Fallout games. Up to two can be taken upon character creation for a positive and a negative effect each. I took Small Frame for that +1 agility and Skilled for the many skill points. With Skilled's -10% experience received I reached the maximum level of 50 just before talking to the Legate to end the game after having visited every location available. Quite well calculated if you ask me.

Updated 2018-12-13: Improved grammar.