Fallout: New Vegas

I remember Fallout 3 so vividly. Fallout (and to a lesser extent, Fallout 2) is probably my favourite series from the PC RPG heyday, and in the leadup to a fully-realized 3D version of Fallout, I could barely contain my excitement.

And then nine years passed.

Fallout 3 took nine years to get made, mostly because of legal troubles surrounding the near-dissolution of Interplay, the rebranding and reforming of Black Isle Studios into Obsidian, and the acquiring of the rights to the Fallout universe (sort of) by Bethesda. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, work began on a 3D version of Fallout, which was then eventually scrapped, and nothing happened until Bethesda started work on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Finally with a working (sort of) game engine in place, work was about to begin on what would become the Fallout 3 that everyone played – everyone besides me.

Somehow I missed out on Fallout 3, mostly because I didn't own a console that I could play it on at the time, and also because of a fierce loyalty to the original creators of Fallout. I had seen Fallout 3 in action, but from all appearances, it looked like some of the charm and wit of the original games was missing in action. If the game hadn't been turned into a straight-up action game (the somewhat creaky and plodding Gamebryo engine from Oblivion kind of ensured that), it certainly wasn't the Fallout that I knew and loved.

These were all speculations, of course. And after playing New Vegas for well over thirty hours, I'm starting to realize the errors of my ways. I realize that some people may have problems with these games, but the fact remains that New Vegas is probably the most fully realized open-world game that I've ever played, and a true highlight in a year of thoroughly mediocre HD games.

My excitement for New Vegas probably started once I heard who was on board to develop it. Obsidian have made some pretty shoddy products in the past, but I enjoyed Alpha Protocol, and the team still has quite a few old Black Isle folks in their offices. Moreso than Fallout 3, New Vegas captures the essence of the original games (and I'd say specifically Fallout 2) in 3D, which is no easy task.

The plot of the main game isn't necessarily pushing any boundaries in the genre, though, even if the world surrounding the plot is unbelievably amazing and interesting. You play as a Mojave Courier employee who was sent on an apparently dangerous journey to deliver a computer chip, only to be shot and buried by a gangster named Benny. You're rescued by a robot and patched up by a doctor in the town of Goodsprings, which then leads you on a quest to find your "killer" and get revenge, all while investigating the strange Mr. House, who controls the town of New Vegas as a disembodied voice (shades of Atlas from Bioshock, perhaps?). At this point, you're allowed to then create your character, either male or female, using the same S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skill system that has been in every Fallout.

For the uninitiated, basically the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system allows you to put in points in areas such as Charisma, Luck, Strength and Intelligence, which then award different bonuses to your more specialized skills, such as Barter, Speech, Lockpicking, etc. Your primary skills are immutable, but you are allowed to improve your specialized skills as you level up. It's an old-school system that still works, mostly because it allows you to really choose what areas to focus on. Add in the Perk system, which gives you special attributes that can both help and hinder your character, and New Vegas (presumably like Fallout 3) has one of the most refined and sophisticated character development systems in gaming.

Once you set out into the Mojave wasteland, it instantly becomes clear that making a beeline for your intended objectives just isn't going to be possible, and this is really where the game shines. The cast of characters that you come across in the game are some of the best examples of writing in games this year, with characters that I actually cared about. Some of my favourites were Victoria, the lesbian Brotherhood of Steel member that I took on as a companion character – she's sardonic and insightful while also just being a really nice human being to have around. As well, there's a character in the town of Freeside named the King, and while I at first expected him to be a ruthless gang leader, it turned out that he was perhaps the most charming character in the game, affectations of Elvis Presley and all.

The characters in the game, for the most part, are what keep the action going. They're so well realized as distinct personalities that you actually want to help them out, or fight against the most dastardly ones. And most impressively of all, the game's dedication to characters can force the player into some real moral dilemmas. An encounter with an incredibly sympathetic ghoul where I had to, for one reason or another, shoot him, left me almost literally in tears. I know that this sort of stuff probably affects me more than with most people, but the fact that a game can do that to anyone is pretty amazing.

Having driven through the northern parts of Nevada, which basically is the post-apocalyptic wasteland depicted in this game, I have to say that despite the aging of the Gamebryo engine, the atmosphere of the area is captured perfectly. The original Fallout games are probably still the absolute kings of creating atmosphere, but New Vegas is likely the best example of a depressing tone conveyed in a way that is true to the game in the modern gaming era. The wide open expanses are just as effective as the claustrophobic interiors, and the fact that the game can support both of them is an accomplishment unto itself.

There are moments of true beauty in the game, too many of them to count in fact. Simply walking up the trail to the village of the Super Mutants was a breathtaking experience, but smaller things like successfully using your intelligence or speech proficiencies to avoid a bloodbath, or finding a way to save the life of a friend's dog – it all feels like a real, human, emotional experience, even if the game's systems are occasionally a little too prominent. Sure, I'd have preferred if things like your ability to barter were determined more by the actual words that your character says and less by a numeric figure that determines your absolute ability to pull something off, but I guess this is tossing modern gamers a bone who haven't grown up with the original Fallout games.

I'm quite glad that I managed to make my character a successful pacifist. I have a hard time having to play a role-playing game (or any game, really) that I don't identify with – unlike in books or films, disliking the main character of a game is, with very few exceptions, a bad sign for the quality of the game, especially since games are so good at making unlikable characters without any self-awareness – so the fact that New Vegas let me play the game as a skinny, glasses wearing intellectual with a penchant for defusing situations rather than blowing them up was intensely gratifying. The game is just so successful at creating a living world – even if it is one that is in a perpetual state of decline – that you want to keep living in it for as long as you can.

This is despite some glaring flaws in quest design that I found easy to overlook, but I'd be remiss to not mention. Quests like "Come Fly Away with Me," which took me well over three hours to complete, certainly involve a colourful cast of characters, including ghouls, Nightkin (hulking mutants with a penchant for stealing Stealth Boys, devices that turn the wearer invisible) and other beings, all living inside an abandoned rocket factory. As a favour to the nearby town of Novac, you're trying to get the ghouls to leave the factory – but they won't leave until the Nightkin leave. The quest certainly has an intriguing structure, with tons of well-written characters and a haunting conclusion that I won't spoil for you here. These elements keep pushing you through to the end despite that, well, what you're actually doing in this quest is pretty interminable when you actually think about it.

See, the quests offer you plenty of options – "Come Fly Away with Me" could just as easily be an all-out action fest as it was a diplomatic mission for me – but there are certain aspects that you just can't get around, and that's that too often, the quests involve far too much fetching. "Go here, meet this person, get that person some thing, talk to them again, reap benefits" seems to be the general progression of almost every side quest. The fact that the game is so successful at pushing you through these otherwise stilted gameplay sections is a credit to the writing team, who have really outdone themselves with this game.

This really applies to almost all of the sections of the game. Combat, for instance, isn't terribly interesting, and the game basically lets you avoid it as much as you want. In fact, I think you can play through the game without ever killing anyone. It's the same real-time/turn-based hybrid that was in Fallout 3, but if you think that you can actually play the game fully in real-time, then you're in for disappointment. The game plays OK as a turn-based shooter, but its mechanics aren't nearly as refined as the strictly turn-based systems of the original Fallout games. But there's still something about the satisfaction of either the killing – or in my case, the not-killing – that makes combat seem much better than it is.

In fact, you could say the same of the game as a whole. Yes, as has been recounted multiple times across the gaming press spectrum (and even here once), this is a hellaciously constructed product. Load times are obscene – they take anywhere from ten seconds to a minute usually – and really slow the pace of the game down to a crawl. The humans in the game are fairly ghastly and occasionally exhibit some very strange behaviour. Most of this has been patched by now, but the fact remains that it's a game built on a creaky foundation.

I of course couldn't give two shits about this sort of stuff unless it actively interferes with the game, and it doesn't really. That ambition is still there, and Obsidian is doing the sort of game design that only fools or masters are able to pull off. The game is completely compelling and that's because of the game's brilliant concepts and writing. Even if the gameplay is built on a rickety foundation, the game's world (taking place mostly around the same area as Fallout 2) certainly is not.

Perhaps my greatest concern with New Vegas, though, is that much like how Fallout 2 was less than the first game in my eyes, New Vegas can't help but look like the little brother to Fallout 3. Both Fallout and Fallout 3 blazed new trails for the series, and Fallout 2 and New Vegas offer only minor refinements. Sure, some of those refinements in New Vegas are really interesting (the faction system, with different groups liking and disliking you, is pulled off so much better than I've ever seen it done before; and Hardcore mode, if stupid in name, really puts the onus on the player to actually try to live in this world, with careful attention needing to be paid to thirst, hunger and sleep), but there's no getting around that what New Vegas is, basically, is more Fallout 3.

With a world that's this well-realized, and a game that still offers one of the most addictive experiences in gaming, there's no denying that Fallout: New Vegas is a tremendous achievement, despite its forebears. Combine this with the upcoming Fallout MMO, and the Fallout games could probably be the only games you need to own.