Opinion// Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout 3 was my GOTY in a strong year. It had a lasting impact proving that Bethesda could turn its corporate hand to a previously adored franchise by blending the best of the originals with their own engine creating a killer RPG.

Now Bethesda have handed the game to Obsidian, pleasing original Fallout fans because the original Fallout devs have their hands on it again. It’s a full game, keeping the same first-person viewpoint and a lot of the features from Fallout 3 such as the engine, SPECIALS, VATS weapons system, trading and, I’m afraid, the dialogue option system.

Fallout 3: New Vegas leaves me in trouble as a reviewer though. It’s not a dip-in, write-up type of game. Hence, this is your insight into my review. It's a pre-review. It is, like Fallout 3, one that you lose yourself in; totally immersive, impressive and somehow important. Because of that (and here comes my admission) even though I’ve levelled up three times and played a good couple of evenings’ worth, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Rad Free
It just makes me feel a bit guilty. What if New Vegas is like GTA IV and the first few missions are great before it steadily grinds itself down into meaninglessness? Hence the admission. I’ve not got out of Goodsprings yet, but I want to tell you all what I’ve seen and, hopefully, let you finish the story yourself.

The town of Goodsprings is named after the pure, rad-free water flowing just a short distance from the town. It is clear and restores health readily: highly important when, if you play in Hardcore mode as I did, not even Stimpaks can save you. The medicinal water is also completely free! Well, if you can kill the posse of mutated geckos which, like little raptors, are utterly bloodthirsty and not nearly as cute as they would at first appear, it is.

Goodsprings is your Megaton if, I suppose, you didn’t blow Megaton up, you sick fuck. It has a saloon, which is open 24/7 and unmanned for half those hours (I’m just saying!); a kindly doctor with some useful and unattended medical supplies (what?) and a supplies store with a good selection of guns and bullets and 800-odd caps available in return for such seeming trash as mandibles, glands and hide. What he does with them, I’m not asking. So long as you keep a neutral reputation there, it seems, you’ll have a bolt hole should it all go tits up on the strip.

Blue Sky Thinking
In terms of appearance, there’s not much to comment on until you get outside of the doctor’s house where you’ve woken up. But when you do...there’s...I don’t know how to tell you this...blue sky! Grass! (albeit in patches) cacti and flowers! You can collect them and make food for yourself by the campfire!

It is strikingly different from the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3. Thus the spray-painted messages in empty caravans declaring the loneliness and desperation of their erstwhile occupants seem weirdly melodramatic in a way that they didn’t in the ruins of DC. Sympathy is harder to come by when basking in the daylight, drinking pure water, knowing that a few miles away are casinos, law and order (of a sort) and electricity.

Although the game systems are reassuringly familiar, there’s plenty to reinvigorate that anxiousness to get exploring: a chance for a new character with a new skill set (particularly useful for my friend Loki who’d fully skilled up in melee and had to quit soon after he met his first super mutant with a Fat Man); new traits such as Small Frame which makes you agile, but more likely to be limb-crippled; Four Eyes which gives heightened perception whenever you wear glasses; and Wild Wasteland, unfolding the bizarre and silly elements of the game (the one I plumped for).

Graphical Shame
Unfortunately something has been lost in the quality of the graphics. Textures on buildings look fine from a distance but are a mess close up, the cutscene at the beginning seems to be acted by Action Men, and everything in the wasteland looks weirdly superimposed. This is a shame, but not enough of a problem to make Fallout 3: New Vegas unplayable by any means.

Roaming can start pretty quickly and in Goodsprings alone there are some interesting finds: a theme park over-run with convicts; gang members you can kill, purloin their clothes thereby infiltrating yourself into the larger gang; a caravan with a new radio station set inside and numerous new and old creatures to kill including coyotes who, while not friendly, won’t attack unless threatened.

When I reached the cemetery on the outskirts of town I climbed the hill and saw the lights of the Vegas strip for the first time. The sun was setting and streaking the sky with pink and purple and a few sarsaparilla bottles tinkled at my feet, indicating that, not long ago, a group of teens sat on this hill, partying silhouetted against the neon, or perhaps a young couple sat in this spot to hold hands and dream of moving to the big lights of the city. At any rate, when a game gets you like that, it must be worth playing. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.