What a way to end an year!
Its Main Strength
New Vegas only became more popular with time and it is not hard to see why. Writing, character designs, quests make this game memorable. It provides a huge world to explore and there is always just another mystery to discover and solve just around the corner. It ticks so many boxes of good open world so well that it could be used as an example, a default template of how to construct a good open world game.
The crap which no one will tell you about
However, while it has good writing, there is little replay value in hearing same stories and doing same quests over and over again. Factions are not well established, their motivations are very poorly explored. Thus there is very little incentive to replay game for them. Game does not have replayability value due to its poor combat mechanics. Starting location quickly gets tiresome. World itself is too static, predictable and is too small and too poorly made to be enjoyed over and over again. Game runs like crap on any system and it is barely stable even with all the modding and optimisation support of the modding community.
What makes New Vegas so beloved?
Writing
The single best strength of New Vegas is its writing and world building which makes this game timeless. Writing in this game is one of the best I had seen in video games and quests, damn, they sometimes just hit so hard.
- There is one quest called One for my Baby. In this quest you get to know that one of guard’s wife was taken into slavery. You have to figure out who did it and lure it in front of a statue that her husband could have his revenge. Through investigation you get to know the victim.
- There is a quest about restoring power to a region and having to decide where power would go. It makes you think what is the best choice might be.
- As you enter vault, you see it being very into politics. However, instead of people trying to get elected, they do their best not to get elected. Eventually you come into a woman who did everything in order for her husband not to get elected as president. She slept with everyone on elector’s committee. When she was betrayed, she murdered everyone, wanted to get caught in order to be elected as a president. As you descend deeper into vault, you discover its secrets. It hit me hard, everything terrible what was done was done by us to us and world was terrible only because we would not let it to be any other way. You have to play it in order to experience it.
- Turning in Chief Hanlon was legitimately the saddest moment in my gaming history. It starts as a mundane quest trying to find who is giving false reports to a radio, only for you to find a broken, old ranger. There were no good solutions to that quest for me and quest just hit like a wall.
Writing in this game sometimes hits you very hard. Stories like these make the game and some quests here are amongst the best what video games had ever managed to produce. All characters are brimming with personality, Mr.House, Benny, The King, your followers. Ironically enough, world and side stories are so good that main plot is being overshadowed by them. Caesar and NCR official comes as a distant second to charisma of those people. Even Mr. House at times comes off as childish and unexplored. Major factions in this game are the weakest part of in game exposition.
What holds this game from becoming a classic?
Starting location
- Start of a game is phenomenal. You will be spending a lot of time until game opens up at Nipton or even at New Vegas. This is good at first one or two playthroughs, but you quickly become bored by it. You can’t really go to any direction you want, because in the north, way is blocked by late game enemies. Your sides are sandwiched by mountains and you are led through 1/3 of in game map until it opens up properly. It is a well crafted tutorial which soon becomes tiresome. There are shortcuts, but using those undermines all early game quests which you will still need to do for the best ending.
Lack of in-game assets - Game is asset poor. This means that game reuses assets which it uses in wasteland where they do not fit. For example, you can see same ruined filing cabinet in ruined factory in wasteland, in someone’s home and in most prestigious and exclusive hotels in an entire region if not whole of USA. This re-using of assets make everything feel dirty and unrealistic. It is a thing which constantly pesters you and breaks immersion.
Small open world - Game world is too small. Game does not feel realistic, because you could observe entire in-game world through Blackrock mountain. It is too small and this is where modern open world games have an edge. In order to feel like realistic world, you need size. This game lacks that and its various locations of interests are put tenuously close to each other. Wasteland might seem like a desolate place, but in reality it is packed tight with locations of interests.
Flawed action - Game has poor aiming mechanics. Your shells do not travel far enough until they disappear. Your shells do not have any feedback and they can just disappear and not connect for no apparent reason. This game does its combat poorly and it is a relic of Fallout 3 combat system when it was revolutionary for an RPG. It is better system than of another RPGs of that era like Mass Effect, but boy it did not aged well.
Distinct lack of content on a radio - This game has its own radio broadcast. However, it is far too limited. There are very few songs for such long game. Host, while fantastic, it does not properly relay news about changing world. Primm is destroyed, you go in early game to discover that it was destroyed by the legion. However, for the rest of your playthrough which can take up to 100 hours, you will still be hearing same broadcast that something might be up in that town. Broadcast tends to pick up minor quests you did, but is strangely hesitant to report major news like on primary questline. Content of radio broadcasts is simply amazing, however it is way too little and does not properly reflect your own actions.
Inventory - Inventory management in this game is an absolute crap. There is no way to properly manage your own inventory. You will be scrolling and scrolling through low sensitivity pit-boy screen and searching how to manage your own inventory full of crap. Neither this game has its own housing system. Outside of taking an apartment, a good ones have boxes for storage. You can’t put your items on display, you can’t organise them properly in boxes. Game incentives you to drag everything back from wasteland, because you do not know when random junk will prove to be key ingredient in a very valuable recipe or when a random piece of clothing will be needed in great quantities for a questline. A lot of this game is just about dragging back, selling and managing junk in the worst possible way and this is a big part of why I do not want to replay this game.
Crafting - Another issue is that crafting absolutely sucks. You can craft only at special stations which often are far away from your apartments and items. Then you will simply get a list of most in game recipes no matter if you can or cannot manufacture them. You will have to scroll through them and see what kind of skills and parts you need. Silly items like ectoplasm against ghosts are next to serious items. You won’t be able to craft silly items if you do not have special mode enabled in this game. However, all of this results in a massive mess of an interface where I resulted in using pen and paper to write down important recipes and gather materials in wasteland and pick up what I need before going to manufacture anything at the workbenches.