Fallout was started out at Black Isle studios in 1997 and was a huge hit. It was a turn-based isometric role-playing game back then and had quite the following. Fallout 2 hit a year later in 1998 and was even better. It then sort of got tossed around developers for a while making decent titles until the property landed in the hands of Bethesda and they released Fallout 3 in 2008. The game made the switch from isometric turn-based RPG to first-person RPG successfully. It was a critical and commercial success. Now two years later in the hands of Obsidian, a developer that harbors some of the developers that worked on the series originally at Black Isle now have a chance to get their hands on the property again. Will this reunion be a success or be a mere expansion pack?

You are a courier on your way to deliver a package to New Vegas when you were shot and killed. Saved by a robot, you start hunting down those responsible for your fate and why your package was so important. Along the way you’ll meet many people and factions. Some you’ll choose to help and others you may harm. The state of the area seems much more civilizable than those of Fallout 3. People are starting to settle down and little towns dot the world. The main story is very much weaved into the story of the world this time around. After the initial stages, it turns very political and the world essentially turns into putty for you to mold as you see fit.

One of the best parts of the story is how most of the factions aren’t purely good or evil. In Fallout 3 you had Brotherhood of Steel and Enclave which were clearly opposite sides of the spectrum of good and evil. In New Vegas you have Mr. House who wants to protect the sovereignty of New Vegas but tends to go too far to achieve those goals. Then you have the New California Republic (NCR) who are spreading democracy but are greedy and put their own interests above the people around New Vegas. Finally you have Caesar’s Legion who ruthlessly adheres to an ideal of strength and purity and whoever doesn’t follow them will get enslaved or die. Depending on who you side with, the world can end up quite different. Depending on how long you play each side can also change how difficult the latter stages may become. It works really well and you truly feel connected to the world this time around and that your choices matter. The main story is quite a lot better than what was in Fallout 3.

If you have played Fallout 3, you know essentially what to expect here. The game is still a first-person role-playing game. When you start the game you pick your name, gender, and characteristics. Then take a test to see which three skills you tag. A return from earlier games makes an addition here, traits. Similar to Morrowind’s astrological stars, these are perks with a drawback and you can choose up to two or just settle for none. So basically the beginnings are quite similar but come in different clothes. There is one new addition to the skills offered, survival. This will help you discover recipes to make food and medicine. Along with recipes, you can also use the expanded crafting system to make ammo. They are okay but unless you pay special attention to them, you’ll largely forget they are even there. The perk system is virtually identical except for a handful of new ones which is kind of disappointing.

Before you officially start, you’ll have the choice to enable Hardcore mode. This mode adds some extra challenges like dehydration, hunger, and make it harder to heal limbs without special kits or making a stop to the doctor but it’s largely superficial and doesn’t make the game much deeper or even harder than it currently is. Speaking of difficulty, the game has a much better arch than its older brother. In Fallout 3, once you learned the system you were taking on the world early on without much difficulty but in New Vegas at similar levels you feel weaker and have to flee sometimes. You don’t have access to such powerful weapons early on. Ammo will frequently be low and sometimes get depleted in the course of a long quest. It’s a much better balance this time around and your progression feels just right.

One of the addicting aspects of Fallout 3 was how they set up what I would like to call the rabbit hole. They send you on a quest that you think will take only 15 minutes and it somehow spirals out of control into a several hour ordeal. Be it by making the quest more complex than originally appeared or just by getting you to explore the world, you couldn’t play Fallout 3 for just a couple minutes. You had to dedicate some serious time to it and the same is true with New Vegas. The quests actually feel better here. They are well crafted and typically more than just killing or retrieving. The action-oriented ones often have a peaceful or stealth option. Those are balanced by a bunch of quests that require almost no fighting whatsoever that cover diplomacy and investigations. There are so many quests in the game that it’ll easily run longer than Fallout 3. It always feels like there are tons of things to do and explore.

There are some problems that remain from Fallout 3 though. The AI path finding will still find their way into a wall or just look unnatural. They are also still exceptionally dumb in combat. The karma system should have been just superseded by the new reputation system. With reputations, each faction will look at you different based on if you act in their interest or against it and works well. If you repair an unbound weapon with a bound weapon, you’ll have to go through binding it again. Bugs are also a prevalent issue with the game. Enemies will get stuck in walls and be invulnerable. Sometimes opening your Pip-boy to take that crucial stimpack takes several seconds. When it comes up, sometimes it can weirdly be too high or too low on the screen. If you’ve survived Bethesda’s previous games and their numerous bugs, this won’t be too bad but for a game that’s essentially on the same engine that was set in stone over two years ago, it’s a shame that it somehow has gotten worse rather than better.

Overall though, it’s just like Fallout 3 with some aspects that are better. Don’t fix what’s broken. It’s a very addicting experience. The quest design is great and surpasses Fallout 3 easily. There are still some issues and even some new ones but it’s a testament to how fun the game is that you look past all of those and just have fun.

When you walked out of the vault for the first time in Fallout 3 it was a beautiful moment. Despite all the complaints about how grey was boring, the team at Bethesda showed that it was not the colors that mattered, it was the art. When you walked around the wasteland, if you saw something in the distance, you could explore to see what was there. In New Vegas though, the years have not been kind to the engine. The wow moments just aren’t there and it can feel quite archaic at times. A lot of the art seems to be almost copy and pasted into the new world giving it a feeling that you’ve already been there. The bad animations are still ever so present. Some areas like those of New Vegas feel neutered because they cut it up into three small areas and considering the scope of the National Mall in the first game, it’s another disappointment. The game locked up on me a couple times at a specific point but once I walked around the area, it was fine. The larger issue is a memory leak of some sorts where the longer you play, the more random slowdowns you get. And it’s not a slowdown in the sense of a minor frame rate drop; sometimes your screen will freeze literally for a second or two or chug at a really low frame rate. Loading will start to take exceptionally long. The weird thing is this problem wasn’t present at all in Fallout 3. Rounding out the less severe bugs are enemies getting stuck in geometry, textures flickering, and several other things.

Considering there appears to be no engine upgrades, Obsidian did some interesting things with what they had. At night, the city of New Vegas glows in the distance. Dust storms bring fond memories of Morrowind back and look pretty good. Getting shelled by artillery for the first time was amazing. There are several other nice touches throughout the game that show creative use of what they had but it’s still disappointing after two years to see no decent upgrade to the graphics engine.

Fallout 3 was never a game that made you sit back and marvel at the soundtrack design. They always sat in the background and that’s the philosophy here. The ambient music is great and mixes the Fallout 3 tunes with a little old west and a little Lost and what you have is something that really adds to the experience. Turning on the radio lets you listen in to some great tunes and listen to Mr. Las Vegas and what’s going on in the world but similarly to Fallout 3, it gets repetitive after a while. The voice acting is better this time around which is a nice boost. The weapons and such have a nice weighty feel to them. Objects in the world are still exaggerated some they tap something. If you’ve played Fallout 3, except something a little bit better, but not by much.

Obsidian had some big shoes to fill when they took on the Fallout franchise but they created something even better than the folks at Bethesda. This is a living breathing world that feels just right. The main quest surpasses that of Fallout 3 easily just from the mere fact that you have to engage with all the factions and make tough choices which will change the landscape around New Vegas. This is further bolstered by the fact that most of the factions are morally ambiguous so there is no clear good or bad guys, they all fit on the spectrum somewhere near the middle. The gameplay though remains largely unchanged which is both good and bad. Good in the fact that it works and very addicting but bad that it feels like some things should have changed. The skill system still skews you toward guns, repair, and a combination of science and/or lock picking. The crafting and recipe system additions don’t feel fleshed out enough for anyone other than hardcore to use. There are only a few new perks. It would’ve been nice to see more changes for the better. The graphics are the worst aspect of the game. They just do not hold up to the test of time. It’s really starting to show its age, so much so that it appears to be buggier and slower than before. A lot of the art seems to be copy and pasted over. Animations are still an issue. Despite this, Obsidian shows some creative uses of the engine but it’s never enough to make it shine.

Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Overall

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