I’ve played a little bit of Fallout New Vegas almost every day in short spurts since it launched about two weeks ago. My takeaway is that New Vegas is much truer to Fallout 1 and 2, in a very good way. The writing, environment and myriad of not-so-black-and-white factions and alliances feels like playing the original games, especially Fallout 2 where some quests had bleak outcomes no matter what choice one made.
I’m not going to comment too much on the infamous stability of the Bethesda RPG engine other than to say that I’ve played Fallout 3 on a Playstation 3 and late in the game suffered lock-ups, slowness, etc. I found my own workarounds along with the occasional console reset (something you should rarely do, if at all). New Vegas has the same engine and seemingly the same bugs, but it feels faster of the developers adjusted the timing on the UI for the better.
The game quest or script bugs are one thing (we’ve already had one patch with 200 fixes), the engine bugs are the worst part of the revisited Fallout games. Bethesda has probably developed itself into a corner by building a massive system that never got a good foundation. From what I’ve read it appears that New Vegas PC users have had the worst experience so far. Fallout 3 left the PS3 users in turmoil, so something changed with this port. My PS3 experience has had two hard locks-ups, one during loading and another early in the game when I was about engage in combat with Powder Gangers for the first time. A few cosmetic glitches have existed with some of the character meshes, but nothing that has stopped me from playing. Here’s to more patches, especially if it’s true that New Vegas has already sold 1/3rd more than Fallout 3.
On to the game itself; I’ve seen some comments on forums that the story/scenario isn’t interesting because there are no historical landmarks (other than the Hoover Dam). What we do have, and what is so much like the original games, is a lot of long walks with surprise locations that have more connection to micro quests and characters than Fallout 3 did. I’m OK with that after exploring far too many Fallout 3 metro tunnels and buildings that felt the same and had no point other than to extend gameplay without adding anything to the story. Fallout 3 was still a good game but here we have a sequel that isn’t dropping the ball.
This isn’t an urban map. New Vegas is the most urban area in the game (so far) and is much smaller than the Washington D.C. area. The shacks, buildings or camps that you stumble upon in the Mojave desert are more special or interesting — or they seem that way — simply because there is more space in this game. It’s still more of the same Fallout 3 mechanic of collecting trash to sell or use, but the sameness has a bit more going for it because of the details with the added concoctions you can make from picked flora and fauna. There is less useful junk out there too, though some of it can be used to make something useful if you’ve got the know-how.
The side quests seem plentiful as well and so far there seems to be less backtracking when doing small quests. Granted, I’m really playing this game by jumping all over the place because it’s harder to get past the combat-specific quests than Fallout 3 was. It didn’t take long for me to become an invincible badass in F3, but so far I’m having a hard time keeping decent armor or ammunition for more than a few game days due to the changes in New Vegas. Sure I can make ammo or repair what I have, but you gotta have built up stats to do this, so you have to level up more even if you are toting some kick-ass weapons.
I have found some great guns early on but ammo just isn’t easy to come by so I’m using more melee attacks to get out of sticky situations such as entering an abandoned motel room only to find it full of Bark Radscorpions. As such my favorite weapon so far is a freaking huge heavy super sledge simply called “Oh Baby!”. And it is. I was about to sell that because I thought melee combat in Fallout was a joke, then I got attacked when I thought I was somewhere safe and had no ammo to speak of. Out came “Oh Baby!” and seconds later I was victorious like never before. So perhaps the melee combat is worthwhile now. There are new perks associated with it so I may give that a shot if I ever play through the game again.
Getting “Oh Baby!” came after walking a long, long way up into the mountains to deal with what seemed like a minor quest. In typical Fallout fashion this minor quest triggered several others, all in a remote area that seemed like it had little to offer. The walk was epic in first-person-shooter terms, I got attacked very little for the amount of game time I was traveling by foot – there were plenty of side paths I could have explored but I was literally miles from anywhere so I wasn’t keen on stumbling into a hidden vault filled with ghouls, especially since my best armor is a spacesuit. Somehow this was satisfying, but I know many gamers are probably hating this sort of thing (to be fair you only have to do this once). The sensory deprived long walks are really great for pacing and it’s not like you’re doing nothing, there are tons of natural ingredients to discover and you’ll need them to make chemicals.
So New Vegas is harder, which is good. The extra challenge isn’t all combat related – the quest choices aren’t easy to make sometimes. I’ve racked up more unfinished quests because I’m not always ready to commit, as if I’ll get over the thought of siding with somebody I detest later on just so I can say I completed the game (I probably will). Also, many quests get hard suddenly and have to be put on hold while you work out more than one requirement, often related to stats you didn’t think you’d need. This was true in Fallout 1 and 2 as well, so I’m feeling the love.
It’s been fun so far – bugs aside.
And one last thing, the mentions of previous Fallout 1 and 2 events are great fun, my favorite being the Deathclaw that is locked in a shed in Fallout 2 that you find early in that game and (hopefully) kill. I won’t give this away, but the explanation for that Deathclaw being there is revealed and it’s a pretty funny little story.
Thanks.