Game Review: Fallout New Vegas

I’ve been waiting a long, long time to write this particular review. Everyone has what they consider a favourite video game. There are many factors that weigh into someone determining their favourite video game whether that be objective or subjective considerations.  Sometimes it can be the period in which you’re playing said game, it could be a game from your childhood that helped you through difficult times.  It could be a game which allowed you to immerse yourself in its world and become an integral part of it.  My main point is we all have our own unique reasons behind the game we proudly put on top of the pedestal as our definitive GOAT pick. My personal favourite video game has many reasons as to why I hold it in such high regard, all of which attribute themselves to the examples I laid out before you.  This game enamoured me with its world and its vast potential for defining yourself within it.  It’s depth and variety are so expansive that I can happily play it over and over every couple of years. This game developed such an intangible hold over me when I played it back in 2009 and I’ve never truly let go of it to this day.  That game is Fallout New Vegas

Let’s start at the beginning, how did Fallout New Vegas even come to exist? Well, I’ll try not to drag on too much here, but it’s worth highlighting that the rights to the Fallout IP wasn’t always owned by Bethesda.  Fallout originally was owned by Black Isle Studios and their publisher Interplay.  They developed and released the first two Fallout games on PC back in the 90’s and were primarily set on the west coast of a post-apocalyptic America. After some financial troubles and a failed attempt at a 3^rd entry called Van Buran, Interplay sold the Fallout rights to Bethesda Softworks in 2007 who in turn announced and released Fallout 3 the following year to huge critical and commercial success. With the majority of the Bethesda staff then moving on to develop Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Todd Howard had offered Obsidian Entertainment the opportunity to develop a full-fledged Fallout game to be released before Skyrim.  With Obsidian founded and filled with a lot of the core Black Isle team, the studio jumped at the opportunity and began development on Fallout New Vegas.

Now I would like to say that development on Fallout New Vegas was a fun and smooth experience for all involved, but I imagine you are well aware of the struggles Obsidian had from the start making this game.  The biggest pressure looming over them was the timeframe they were given by Bethesda to get the game to market.  Bethesda needed this game to release prior to Skyrim, so they put the stipulation in the contract that Obsidian had 2 years to develop and ship the game.  2 years may seem like a lot of time, but in game development terms, that’s barely any time at all.  You have to consider the team were not at all versed with the Gamebryo engine and the time it took them to learn the ins and outs eat quite a bit into the time they were given.  To say the team were ambitious with the design of the game would be an understatement, the design team and narrative team got to work on building their game on top of the already existing lore from Fallout 1 and 2, with vast narrative choices being considered.  It was noted that there was so much content left on the cutting room floor because of the limitations Obsidian were under with the 2-year timeframe and limited disc space for the current generational hardware.

By hook or crook however, Obsidian Entertainment met the deadline and got Fallout New Vegas out to market on October 19^th 2009. It was clear as day however that despite hitting that deadline, the end product was anything but fully realized.  The struggles and rush to get the game to market meant the game released in a poorly optimized state, with the worst performance being noted on PlayStation 3 hardware.  On a critical and commercial level, the game did considerably well though, with the game selling over 12.1 million copies across all platforms and aggregating a respectable 84 on Metacritic.  It was noted that despite its technical flaws, the games scope, atmosphere, ambitious narrative and RPG elements made it a game well worth diving into.  The sad irony however is despite their notable success on the game; Obsidian was just 1 point short of receiving a respectable bonus from Bethesda who stipulated in their contract that the game needed to average an 85 or higher to earn a bonus payment.  I get peoples arguments that it was an agreed upon number, but to me it’s a bit of an insult to not give it to them team when they were simply 1 mark short but I feel it’s a redundant point now 16 years later. 

Set 204 years after the great nuclear war between USA and China, Fallout New Vegas takes place in the Western Nevada region of the Mojave Wasteland which is home to the ruined city of New Vegas. It’s the year 2281 and the region is under strain as the democratic republic of the Northern California Republic is recovering from a full-frontal assault on the nearby Hoover Dam by the tribal militia known as Caeser’s Legion. Despite pushing back the Legion, the shadow of conflict still lingers over the region as both factions seek to reorganize and build back up their strength for a potential second assault.  As the two major factions push against one another, other key factions in New Vegas are all figuring out which side of the conflict they should land on.  In the midst of the heightened tensions, your player character is a Courier for the Mojave Express.  Given a job to deliver a mysterious package, you soon find yourself tied and gagged in a cemetery in a small town of Goodsprings.  Shot and left for dead in a shallow grave at the hands of your well-dressed attacker, you soon find yourself brought back from the brink of death by the local town doctor.  With a delivery still to be made, you begin a quest to find the men who left you for dead which will take you across the region and get embroiled in a number of situations which will have you influence the very fate of New Vegas itself.

The world of New Vegas and the narrative it provides is one of its strongest elements.  You can really understand Obsidian’s writing team were already familiar with the established lore with how easily they apply their world building throughout the course of the game.  The NCR were introduced back in Fallout 2 but their role in New Vegas is a lot more centralized.  I think for open world RPG games, it’s important to recognize the world in itself is as much a character than the people who reside with in it.  So much effort is given to define the Mojave’s political landscape so that you understand the NCR’s democratic over-expansion and the Legion’s brutal sense of societal justice. That attention to detail isn’t just afforded to the major factions either, New Vegas consists of so many societies and factions and Obsidian clearly went all out to make each of them feel distinct from one another.  With each faction having different perspectives and ideals, it’s even more impressive that Obsidian leans into the moral complexities of each faction.  No particular group is fully good or evil; they all feel realistically defined within the world because they each have good and bad elements that you have to consider. The only issue I have with the faction side of the world is with the Legion, which is where most of the cut content issues fall too.  A lot of content relating to siding with the Legion was cut from the game in it’s final release and it unfortunately puts the Legion in more negative, oppressive view as a result.  It was Obsidian’s intention to flesh the faction out to offer the same level of moral depth as the NCR, but alas the limitations of development led to their limited portrayal in the game.

With the world being so well-defined in terms of its politics and factions, it helps to make your presence in it all the more impactful. Obsidian smartly structured the course of the narrative to have you journeying through the region on an old fashioned, western-style revenge tale and has you experience multiple stories within the towns and camps you come across. Each quest you partake in is well-crafted to layer out important lore details while also giving you multiple means of influencing the outcome based on your own preference.  Your ability to go from a lowly delivery man to the king of New Vegas may seem silly but you feel the development of your role in the wider array of things and you become more and more entangled in the daily lives of the Mojave folk and factions.  Everything about the individual story you go on is dedicated to making your presence in the world integral to its progression and vice versa.  The tightness of the narrative because of this cannot be overstated, there’s so many intrinsic details that are missed because of how comprehensive the story is in reflecting your decisions big and small. It’s a testament to the writing team behind the game that even now, 16 years later I’m still finding surprising dialogue or details that I never experienced before. To say the narrative wasn’t 100% what Obsidian intended, what is here is miles and leagues ahead of anything Bethesda cooked up with Fallout 3 or 4.

That narrative core quality isn’t only attributed to the main game either, the four key DLC releases for this game are another key highlight on the narrative potential behind New Vegas.  Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road serve as individual narratives which each take you different locations like the Sierra Madre Casino, Zion National Park, Big Mountain and The Divide.  While each DLC has a well-defined individual story, there is a smartly woven thread that ties each of these DLC’s together as part of one key narrative.  That’s not even noting the fact each DLC has key connections to established elements from the base game too.  The biggest way to make a world feel real and immersive is to tie everything together, big or small.  The way the DLC is able to offer such unique narrative experiences but in equal measure reference to the big and small elements of both the base game and other DLC is something that impresses me beyond measure.  The narrative behind New Vegas is easily one of the best narratives you can find in an open-world RPG and I want to give major to credit to John Gonzalez and the rest of the writing team for overdelivering in all the best ways here.

From a gameplay perspective, there’s a lot to talk about as well, so let’s start off firstly with the world.  The Mojave Wasteland is a fairly large map with tons of terrain and locations to explore.  The game’s designers did a key job in capturing the expanse of the desert region surrounding New Vegas.  That open, countryside environment that you initially start out in works great for offering you so many explorative options to entertain yourself with.  In these kinds of games, there’s nothing more cathartic than seeing an undiscovered location pop up on your radar, because it invites you to brave the unknown and go and explore.  Each location in the game holds some embedded narrative within its confines too.  There are items and loot to obtain for sure, but it impresses me beyond measure than nearly every locale you find has some subtle element of storytelling to highlight its purpose both within the old world and the new.  Exploring has and always remains one of my favourite things to do in the game, I could happily lose hours travelling from I-15 to Highway 95 just going to whatever large camp or building looms in the distance. 

Obsidian clearly honed in on the environmental scale of the game too, the sense of variety behind the environment is just too good not to highlight. There’s a clear sense of progression behind the environmental design too.  The dry, barren desert waste works as a great contrast to the steel, bright lights of the New Vegas Strip.  So much of the world is designed to reflect that contrast of the wasteland encroaching on the last beacon of civilization.  When night falls the only light source you can really capture is the light pollution coming from the New Vegas strip, acting like a bug light to the wider world, luring in all who seek to make something of themselves.  There’s just so much intelligence behind this world’s core image, the way it’s able to offer you so much to explore but in turn give off such strong imagery which will leave a lasting impression. There’s a reason I can recall the layout of this games map way more than that of other games, what it may lack in scale, it more than makes up for in design and density.

Exploring the Mojave Wasteland requires you to be able to meet its many dangers head on however and the gameplay element behind New Vegas meets those requirements exceptionally. The whole idea behind Fallout is player choice.  The player is given a blank slate and through the games many RPG mechanics they are able to define who they want to be both narratively and mechanically. Want to be an NCR ranger who relies on stealth and their trusty Anti-Material Rifle? Well pop some points into Sneak, Guns and Survival.  Want to be a smart but devious scientist intent on taking New Vegas for yourself? Well bank those points into Science, Energy Weapons and Speech. There’s so much optionality here to appreciate when it comes to building your own unique character.  The RPG mechanics in this game are truly one of a kind because they devote themselves to letting the player decide who they want to be.  That level of functionality is something sadly missing from modern day RPG’s and I wish more developers would recognize the player’s agency in these games like Obsidian did 16 years ago!  The game actively devotes itself to respecting your skills too, with active speech and situational checks which you can only meet if you have enough skill points in that particular skill.  The fact the game goes out of its way to both offer and lock you out of these scenarios based on your skill set highlights the key respect they have for the players choices and in turn offers more reasons to replay and experience different outcomes.

The skill mechanics also help influence combat notably.  While it is arguably dated by today’s standards, the moment-to-moment combat still feels really responsive.  The sense of variety on offer here too is worth respecting. The gunplay in itself offers so much versatility to play around with due to the range of weapons at your disposal.  Standard guns serve their purpose and will help you shoot your enemy stone dead with as much lead as you require.  Energy weapons offer the player a more extravagant means of disposing of your enemies and it looks mighty fine when you see them dissolve into a pile of goo or ash depending on whether you’re using a plasma or laser rifle respectively.  Melee weapons are here aplenty as well, with a lot of options for taking your enemies on up close and personal.  This time around I personally devoted myself to an explosive run which was a smart choice in retrospect, as the game offers so many fun explosive weapons to play around with.  There’s nothing more pleasurable than being able to wander into Quarry Junction and lay waste to the Deathclaw horde that resides there with a Fat Man and Missile launcher respectively. Taking the plethora of weapons the DLC brings to the game too, there’s just so much variety here to adore, Obsidian clearly respected the idea of player choice not just from an RPG perspective but also from a combat perspective too.

The visual and audio work are great too.  I know by today’s standards this game may look fairly dated, but in the environmental design at least, the game’s imagery is still able to leave a lasting impression.  Again, Obsidian’s devotion to rendering such iconic locations and imbuing the games colours with this bright, orange Western-vibe goes a long way to making it stand out from its fellow Fallout entries. There’s this warm yet dangerous aura to the world because of its visual tone, it’s a perfect way to encapsulate the Mojave Desert from a post-apocalyptic perspective. On the soundtrack front, where do I even start? Well let’s give credit to the actual score of the game first, Fallout’s modern composer Inon Zur does the ambient score for the game and his tracks help give the game a key atmosphere which reflects the relentless desolation the sun-stained desert holds.  It’s a fantastic score, but that’s par for the course with anything Inon Zur touches in all honesty.  The real charm of the game comes from its licensed tracks.  Like any other Fallout game, the games radio selection offers players a collection of classic songs from the 1940’s and 1950’s.  With the game being Vegas-orientated, its song choice is jazzier and more western focused too.  Again, it’s just another element which contributes to establishing the key tone and atmosphere of the game and I cannot tell you how many songs I happily sing along to whenever they come on.  Johnny Guitar is a good song by the way, don’t you dare dry critique it until you walk through the Mojave on a cold desert night with that track playing, it’ll do something to you!

It may seem like I’ve rambled on for around 3000 words here, but trust me, even now I feel like I’m understating on how much I bloody love this game.  Fallout New Vegas by all metrics should have crashed and burned.  The fact the developer was given such little time to deliver it and hit so many road blocks during development would have spelled disaster for any other studio.  Yet it’s clear from playing this game that Obsidian was not any other studio.  This team knew and loved Fallout just as much as the fans did and they wanted to deliver something truly special regardless of the boundaries they agreed unto.  As a result, despite it’s cut content and notable limitations, it says something that Fallout New Vegas has defined a legendary reputation as not only one of the best Fallout games but one of the best RPG experiences, period.  Fallout New Vegas is the benchmark for what any open-world RPG should strive to be like, it’s respect for the player’s role in its world and the sense of weight their actions have within it make playing it a true joy. There’s so many reasons why I consider this my favourite game of all time, but for me it all comes down to that first playthrough I had at 13 years old.  There really was no other game that captured my imagination quite like Fallout New Vegas did and always will do each and every time I step back into the Mojave Wasteland.