RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

Man, where to even begin?  Let’s start with big.  Fallout New Vegas is mind-bogglingly big, easily outpacing Fallout 3 in terms of content.  With the hard work of engine development out of the way, Obsidian was free to expand on the template Bethesda provided; a long-awaited homecoming for many of the original Fallout developers.  The team clearly didn’t hold back, and there’s enough game here to overwhelm even the most industrious player.  While the results aren’t quite perfect, New Vegas is a clear improvement in most respects and easily one of the best RPGs this year.

The story departs from the usual Fallout rigamarole in several ways.  You play an unfortunate Mojave Express courier, robbed and seemingly executed by a loudly-dressed gangster at the onset.  Somehow you cling to life long enough to be dug up and rescued, and the questions hit all at once as you stagger out of the doctor’s office-slash-character generation sequence.  What starts as a search for your attacker and the stolen package – a mysterious platinum chip – has you wading into a complicated power struggle between various factions. The big three players are the expansionist New California Republic, the brutal Caesar’s Legion, and the reclusive Vegas bigshot Mr. House.  The prizes are the Vegas Strip and, more importantly, the still functioning Hoover Dam, and most of the game either sets the backdrop or concerns the struggle for control over it.

Being one big Fallout 3 redux, New Vegas controls identically to its predecesor: an FPS/RPG hybrid with the VATS mechanism for pausing in battle and making targeted attacks.  Obsidian made a few additions to account for new gameplay elements, but for better or worse it handles way you remember it, which is to say “Oblivion, but more refined.”  Shooting is tighter, iron sights work better, and melee weapons now have special attacks based on your skill, but the engine still lacks the responsiveness of dedicated shooters.  The HUD and Pipboy menu are basically unchanged, and while they’re serviceable, they have the same issues as before.  Case in point, maps annoyingly show multi-story locations all at once, and the compass never makes it clear if something is in front of you or above you in the same direction.

Let’s face it, without the cowboy hat this is just some dork in leather armor who can’t find the post office.

One noticeable improvement is the companion control wheel, which lets you give basic orders, switch inventory, and apply stimpacks without needing a dialogue window.  Companions each have their own questline and bonus perk: highlighting enemies in combat, boosting detection range, and so on.  You’re limited to one human and one robotic companion, but they’re all worth talking to and will be assets in combat. The sniper Boone, in particular, can handily destroy enemies at a distance.  However, your partners have trouble grasping the big picture and will sometimes gleefully march into melee range with a deathclaw if not supervised. Pathfinding has improved over the last game, but they still won’t jump over inch-high obstacles to follow you.

Character building is mostly untouched, though there have been minor tweaks.  You start off in Doc Mitchell’s office in Goodsprings, going through the usual motions of setting physical appearance, SPECIAL statistics, and primary skills.  It gets the ball rolling quickly, and New Vegas brings back optional traits. A series staple prior to Fallout 3, traits offer bonus/penalty trade-offs, such as a lower rate of fire for better accuracy.  Small guns and big guns have been consolidated into one skill, with the extra slot taken up by Survival; used for getting more health from, and creating, food and drink.  Perks have seen minor alterations and additions, such as same-sex counterparts to existing opposite-gender damage and dialogue perks.  Some have been weakened, such as Grim Reaper’s Sprint giving a small portion of AP back per VATS kill, rather than a full recharge.  Perks are also now issued every two levels, making perk and skill selection more critical with the level cap at 30.

New features are worked into existing mechanics.  Crafting, for instance, retains the use of workbenches and other fixed locations, though in addition to weapon building you can now convert ammunition, and cook up drugs and special food.  The system has many practical uses, and helpfully lists all the recipes you know, but crafting components aren’t sorted in your inventory and can be a hassle to lug around.  Guns can be modded from the inventory screen, adding functions ranging from sound suppression to expanded magazines.  One of the best new additions is faction reputation.  Factions are now distinct groups that react to what you’ve done and who you’ve buddied up to, and this can manifest in several ways; most commonly as quest solutions, letting you tell a friendly “Hey, it’s me, I’m good for it.”  Good rep also doesn’t cancel out bad rep, and the system accomodates for mixed behavior.

Conversation is much more fluid and complex, and at its best it rivals anything in the series to date.  Skills and stats have considerable effect on your options, and several fetch quests can be shortened with the right speech, repair, or barter ability.  Even low intelligence sometimes grants you unique options.  In one of the endings you can literally talk the boss into submission, and unlike previous games this involves several speech checks of increasing complexity and persuasiveness.  Bolstered by versatile quest scripting and four distinct paths to the end, the writing and character interaction are among New Vegas‘ strongest aspects.  You’ll still want a weapon or some help when things get dicey, but dedicated negotiators can get very far with little bloodshed and backtracking.

I’m telling you, there’s something moving in here, and it ain’t us!

There’s an evolutionary sameness to the graphics, and despite refinements to the engine New Vegas doesn’t feel too far removed from Fallout 3.  The face maker takes a lot of fussing to get right, animation occasionally looks weird – though poses now accommodate for changes in elevation, like stairs – and your visual range often exceeds your computer’s ability to process it.  That said, Bethesda knows how to use its assets to create atmosphere, and Obsidian does justice to the Fallout world here.  Areas are more distinctive and less reliant on prefab structures.  The Mojave setting adds an Old West vibe to the post-nuclear retro future setting, and at times you’re far enough on the frontier to forget there was a World War III.  Locations have their own unique backstories, and some vaults invoke genuine tension and  dread as they reveal their secrets.

Audio is strong across the board, counting Fallout veterans alongside other well-known actors in the cast.  Some voice repetition and flat performances pop up on occasion, and you’ll hear people make odd throwaway comments; “I wish I had a First Recon guy looking after me,” remarks a First Recon guy surrounded by First Recon guys.  Still, the main cast is strong, with literally too many good performances to single out examples.  Suffice it to say everybody you recognize (and some you might not) does a great job with their characters.  The radio makes a welcome return, with the charming Mr. New Vegas spinning a likeable selection of period music – Dean Martin, the Ink Spots, Bing Crosby, etc. – and a rival station run by mutants is an absolute stitch.

Sadly, the radio is also kind of a letdown from Fallout 3.  Nobody steals the show quite like President Eden; in fairness, few could.  The main stations draw from roughly the same pool of songs, and you’ll have heard them all a dozen times over by hour ten.  Worse, certain songs are weighted to appear more often.  By the end of the game, this reviewer developed a Pavlovian impulse to punch the speakers when Johnny Guitar started.  Background and combat music fare better, and go a long way in setting the tone for the adventure.  The somber western twang that accompanies Goodsprings is a fine example, and tracks from previous Fallout games – even strains of Tactics – are generally used well.  However, sometimes the area and the song are mismatched, such as a military drumbeat for exploring a cave.  It’s not common, but it’s jarring when it happens.

Balance and stability are also recurring issues.  While it’s a given that deathclaws are dangerous, it’s a little too easy to wander off the beaten path and get brutally murdered.  One of the new critters, giant flying insects known as Cazadors, can move quickly, hit hard, and often attack in groups.  Getting cornered by more than one of these is the game switching to Screw You Mode, and they’re all over the place.  The damage threshhold system works well with ballistic weapons, but renders energy guns practically useless even against a guy wearing sports equipment.  Technical issues aren’t surprising, given the series’ (and companies’) reputations, but they are problematic: crash bugs, quest glitches, saving problems, people falling through the environment.  It’s being ironed out, but not nearly quick enough for such a major release.

Luck 1 and Luck 7 characters look at this town very, very differently.

What’s harder to patch out is the difference in atmosphere from Fallout 3, one of the few areas where the predecessor has an edge.  While fighting through metro after metro got old after a while, the Capitol Wasteland’s smaller details really stood out: a ghoul survivor describing shadows on concrete, skeletons entangled on a musty bed in a bombed-out suburb, a hijacked radio tower pleading for assistance 200 years too late.  By contrast, it’s a plot point that Vegas was spared a direct nuclear strike, and the focus is less on the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust and more on staking a claim in wild territory.  Fresh water is in abundance, mutants are rare, and the Vegas Strip is three small sections you can cross in minutes.  New Vegas definitely captures the Fallout feel – 50’s paranoia is alive and well in the form of cheery euphemisms for nuclear horrors – and the Mojave certainly has its memorable moments, but the DC ruins had something special to them that seems missing here.

That said, the above feels like quibbling in light of the broad, deep content featured here.  You could easily spend up to fifty hours exploring before you get within shouting distance of the Strip.  The number of ways to deal with people is extraordinary, and the ability to use faction disguises adds a new dimension to stealth and subterfuge.  Characters almost always manage to distinguish themselves, with complex opinions and relationships to match a complex world.  Even the guy leading the gang of literal Elvis impersonators isn’t blind to what’s happening outside his ghetto enclave.  The new hardcore mode just duplicates the radiation meter for food and sleep, but its changes to how stimpacks work can substantially alter a player’s usual approach to combat.  The finales might not match the thrill of watching Liberty Prime go to town, but the plot more than makes up for it with better variety and closure.

New Vegas sets the stage not just for a great Fallout game, but a great game, period.  It takes the formula set by Fallout 3 and expands on it in the right ways.  The setting is convincing and all the little details are in place: NCR posters mimicking WWII propaganda, the glow of the distant Strip from deep in the Mojave, people grumbling about politics back home as fresh-faced recruits are sent into a meat grinder.  Callbacks to previous games reward longtime fans, but Vegas stands well enough as its own adventure.  Having the brains behind Fallout 2 back at the helm has been a long time coming, but if this is what we can expect then Bethsidian need to team up more often.

It’s a huge world with sharp writing, brilliantly dark humor, and roleplaying options that beat most contemporary games by a country mile.  You’ll dig it, baby.  It’s the tops.

This game was played to completion and reviewed using a retail copy.