I had been waiting for this review and was very impressed with Vince's critique of Fallout: New Vegas. The overall areas of mention that Vince addresses proves to me that he's played the game longer and more thoroughly than most (if not all) of the other reviewers who have 'assessed' the newest Fallout game (not the 2nd Fallout title, you see...). I feel personally validated that the game's (lack of) difficulty was brought up at so many junctions as I find it to be central to the playability of any self-labeled post-apocalyptic title.
In fact I played New Vegas on Hardcore mode (I kind of laugh at this misappropriation of terminology) and just finished the game last week.
My reaction to the abundance of resources, from ammo to ingestibles, was that there needed to be a far greater scarcity. Indeed Vince was right on the money with his critique of this. Keeping in mind that I played on Hardcore mode, I never needed to manufacture my own ammo or medicinal aides to stay alive or complete certain objectives requiring additional quantities that I could not supply through other means.
I must mention however that there was one point in my journey where I forgot to carry food with me and I began to suffer the effects of starvation, the first of which was becoming over-encumbered as I had already been at my carrying limit. For the life of me I could not find anything that I could part with to fast travel back home. So there I was, at Bitter Springs, stealing food from a local refugee to bring my Strength stat back up a point. This was the only time in the game where I really felt the survivalist sensibility (and charm
) It only lasted a few minutes but I couldn't help but wish that the entire game could be like this. Unfortunately, as soon as I went back to my apartment I was confronted with loads of mindlessly strewn-about Blacmo Mac 'n Cheese.
There are 10 additional areas of interest during my play-through of Fallout: New Vegas that I did not spot in Vince's review that I thought deserved a mention.
(1) Weapon modifications - a simply brilliant addition, or transfer from Fallout 2, that deserved a mention. It wasn't perfect in its execution (e.g., uneven/random availability meant that I couldn't find any mods for my hunting rifle until I already had a more powerful and effective replacement weapon).
(2) The Vaults and the writing for the vaults was, for the most part, fantastic. They were essentially rabbit holes within the larger world that became enacted short stories - always involving you as a sort of detective. Vault 11 deserves its own mention among the lot as
the standout.
(3) True Iron Sight may seem like a remedial addition to an already archaic, wonky, and unnatural combat system, but it actually did make combat outside of VATS a plausible option compared to Fallout 3... and it was actually pretty entertaining because of this basic workability. Vince did mention this.
(4) Gambling was integrated successfully and meaningfully in the game world and wasteland economy (e.g., useful means of attaining/loosing wealth). The casino's are limited in nature but hey - it's not so bad playing the tables that are available. Caravan is actually great fun. Although far too easy against NPC's. I accumulated over 20,000 caps at level 10 because I found Lacy @ Mojave Outpost who remains a high roller every time you visit. Near the end of my adventure she would put up a starting bid of nearly 4,000 caps.
(5) Fallout 3 had one excellent consideration for gamers with the 'post-game completion' achievements that led your character to the discovery of nearly the entire map. The closest New Vegas comes to this is the snow globe challenge which does not require the character to travel to the obscure locations Fallout 3's 20 bubbleheads did. Hence when you are level 30 in New Vegas and still have 40-50 undiscovered locations on the map, there are no incentives to explore them.
(6) This may seem petty but much like the abundance of ammo and aide that destroyed any sense of survivalism and subsequent emersion in a post (post) apocalyptic world, there were far too many 'home bases' provided for the player. After learning that all companions can converge at Lucky 38, did anyone go back to the presidential suite at The Tops? I was rewarded with a room at the Atomic Wrangler at one point and didn't use it once (simply out of lack of necessity to do so).
(7) Again, Vince's comments on companions for use in times of combat support and assistance were right on point. It would be complimentary or compensatory for certain character builds (e.g., smooth talker, high sneak, high melee, low guns, low endurance) but was ultimately unneeded (and therefore in my case, unused) due to the games lack of difficulty.
(8) (needlessly) invisible walls: They are perhaps the worst part within the game engine design in terms of practical nuisance and frequency of occurrence. Fallout 3 has nothing on New Vegas when it comes to being stopped while walking up an ant hill.
(9) With the amount of freedom in the rest of the game (so much so that I felt as if only I knew what I was going to do regarding The Strip) the overarching narrative becomes stubbornly rigid once you reach a very specific point within the story.
In Fallout, I could talk to the Master, Kill the Master, join the Master, hit on the Master for God sakes. I understood that the Master
probably (but not certainly) had to die, which is an ultimately unmalleable questline, yet the illusion remained intact that my ideological position towards the Master could be enacted upon through my own choices (whether it be dialogue or combat). And I could really only deduce the ultimate rigidity of 'the Master must and will die no matter what' questline as an end-game certainty
after completing the entirety of the Fallout story.
In Fallout: New Vegas, however, it felt like my decisions were being made for me after a very specific junction in questing is reached; one where I am inevitably ostracized from all other factions except for the one I am working for (ja, natuurlijk!). Then I simply follow through with three quests for that path, get the achievements, and put the game away. The benefit to this is that it is very conventional: I save the game before this obvious junction within the game story and I simply reload from that point and play the other three paths. The disappointing aspect to this is that the freedom I thought I had 2/3 of the game becomes explicated at this junction as being just an illusion, as my character's narrative capabilities will eventually be funneled into 1 of 4 major, overarching ending sequences. My issues with this is not with the underlying set of questing options, but rather that the game has a way (mostly through dialogue, obviously) of informing you that your choices are now limited to 1/4 pre-determined structures or you simply... fail. It absolutely transitions from freedom of personal choice (e.g.,
my plotting and
my planning) to being one of the game's power figure's employee - up to the very end of the game (e.g., now you follow through on
their plot that
their concerned with by following
their plan). The illusion of freedom vanished by
how this was done on a design level, not that it
was done.
What Vince mentioned about certain skill requirements being explicated and specified (aka instructional) in dialogue, again, is analogous to this point because it only helps break emersion and expose any illusion of freedom of choice and consequence.
(10) Weapons and their availability: Bravo (compared to Fallout 3). Sniper rifles cannot be found within your first 15 minutes of play and you have to pay up to possess some of them really purdy ones. I couldn't get my hands on a decent weapon until I had enough money and/or power. That sounds right.
Anyway, well done Vince. Both your review of fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas have been largely spot on in my opinion.
Not only that – we prevailed! And lived another day to be killed by hillbillies... Heh... Man I'm really pissed about that kind of stuff, but I digress...
