Today I bring to you the holy child of Fallout games, the greatest invention of mankind, the so called “greatest fallout game ever made since fallout 3” “fallout 3 but good” “fallout done right” “fallout when not made by Bethesda” and so on.
Basically... This game is pretty cool.
This was the second Post-Apocalyptic RPG FPS game to come out in the Fallout series, the first being Fallout 3. It meant a lot to people once news of it came out because it was being made by the people who originally worked on the series (Fallout was sold to Bethesda once the company it belonged to went bankrupt) and after release it was considered a superior version to Fallout 3, mostly because of some technical improvements but sometimes people like to say that just to spite Fallout 3 players.
What followed were a series of long (extremely long) rants about how Bethesda sucks and about how Obsidian (the guys that worked on it) were gods in comparison to those plebeians. (In case you haven’t realized yet, people like to pick on Bethesda)
But I’m not here to talk about that! I’m here to talk about the greatest game ever made: Fallout New Vegas.
This beautiful baby may be old but to this day is considered one of the greatest games that exist, simply because of how many people end up re-installing it over and over again. People are making mods despite its age, good ones. A big one was just released recently too, which brought even more people to reinstall Vegas.
Fallout New Vegas takes place in the fictional land of “The Mojave Desert” a land of mutated geckoes and sand which has some other fictional places like “Las Vegas” called "New Vegas" probably because of the apocalypse, which is where the name of the game comes from, probably.
The story is about a person that gets shot in the head (that’s you!) and their quest for vengeance (or for whatever it is you end up doing) that makes them go up and down the Mojave.
You start the main quest by looking after your aggressors but eventually the story puts you in the middle of a war between three factions (and an extra) for Hoover Dam and control of the Mojave, for he who controls the water controls the wastes!
This is one of the biggest points of Fallout NV’s and something people still argue about, the big factions of the game that you can help or attack and the endings associated with them.
You may be asking “But Guub0, how does a single man/woman/human/person get shot in the head and end up going to war?” I’m glad you asked citizen. You see, the Mojave is filled with incompetent idiots (no, really), which creates a perfect opportunity for one random guy from the street (that’s you!) to help one of said idiots to tie up their own shoelaces and then lead them to war!
The three (four) contenders for this fiasco are as follows: (Disclaimer: This part doesn’t explain the whole of the factions, so experiment on your own when you play and see which one you like best.)
NCR (New California Republic): Also known as America V2.0, also known as political corruption V2.0. It’s pretty much a bunch of people trying to build a government resembling USA’s in the post apocalypse, with all of the goods and bads that means. Probably the best choice, despite all of the other bad juju they have going on, the downside is that choosing this forces you to file taxes, which no one likes.
Mr. House (Big Brother): An old dude in a machine, a really old dude in a machine. He just wants Vegas to be honest, that and to develop a lot of technology to bring humanity to an even higher position that what it was before the big war, why? Because the man owned Vegas before the war and wants to keep it this way, he also likes developing technology and being smart. He has the technological edge and the only reason he didn’t really kick everyone out of his backyard (The Mojave) is because his pirated copy of Windows 98 was rebooting from the mother of all bluescreens and needs an OS update.
Choosing this kinda makes you his protégé, which means you get a bunch of money to spend on Vegas of all places, probably, maybe, don’t count on that.
Caesar’s Legion (Pronounced Kai-ser if you’re a Legion nerd): This faction would have (probably) not survived development were this game made in the current times, as it pretty much stands against the principles of the average internet person.
The armor their men wear is football equipment, which serves as a way to explain how incompetent NCR is in comparison, given that they have actual armor and guns and yet still lose to the LARPers.
The men here are led by a Roman LARP-er guy named Caesar (disclaimer: not actually his name), who says that women are icky and forces them to cook, clean and breed.
So yeah, choosing this one is pretty much the evil option.
You (The Bonus Contender): It’s you! Instead of following any of these losers you can instead choose to take the Dam for yourself. Because let’s be honest, you couldn’t possibly do a worse job than what they’re doing… Unless you want to that is.
In addition to all of these factions and weird endings, you also affect the fates of the smaller towns and factions you visit with everything you do there. So yes, that child you killed? It’s going to affect the ending and it’s going to tell you how much of a horrible person you are.
New Vegas historians still argue to this day which one of these factions is the one that will lead to the “Good” ending for the Mojave as a whole, although the argument eventually winds down to people calling each other idiots. Truly, the one thing that most New Vegas fans can get behind is that no one really knows what the best ending is, that and that everyone agrees that Caesar’s Legion is the worst ending.
There’s also a bunch of DLCs too, four of them are story-based and have a lot of content and the other two simply add some more weapons, I’ll quickly go over them…
- Dead Money: Download it, play it, regret playing it, dread playing it again. It’s a mixed bag but most people consider this the bad one. Somewhat of a “Rite of passage” for everyone who loves New Vegas.
- Honest Hearts: It’s pretty cool. There’s tribals and Mormons and they shoot each other, that’s pretty much all you need to know. It’s considered boring to a lot of people at I completely understand why, but it’s good on its own way.
- Old World Blues: The funniest of them all, also considered the best one because of its atmosphere. The best part of it all comes when you get rid of all of the humor and realize that it’s probably one of the darkest pieces of the entire setting.
- Lonesome Road: The endgame. It’s somewhat lackluster. It’s the final story DLC so it’s fairly linear, but you get a lot of challenges from it.
- Courier’s Stash: You get cheat items as soon as you start the game. ‘Nuff said.
- Gun Runner’s Arsenal: Gun vendors sell quality Guns and Gun accessories.
Needless to say, the DLC is pretty much a must have. All of it, it’s good, give your money to Bethesda and I swear you won’t regret it (Okay, you’ll probably regret Dead Money, but everything else is good.)
This is a game that makes people come back every so often, so trust me when I tell you it’s good. That said it’s not for everyone and since we’re all grown-ups I’m pretty sure no one’s going to be angry or offended if someone feels that the game isn’t good or that it’s overrated.
You also have to keep in mind that this is technically a game based around on Bethesda’s engine so expect a trillion different bugs to happen, experience has told me that different people experience different issues in this game so if you have a lot of problems try to get some mods to make it more stable.
Which brings me to modding... All you need to know is that there are still people making more mods for this 10 year old game, with several levels of quality, but there's a lot of great stuff out there.
I would talk about modding in depth but this is getting somewhat long now so it’s time to end for now. With that said, I hope you enjoyed my ramblings on this game.
All photos are screenshots taken by yours truly during his own gameplay.
I don't have any idea about it but it's good to have you back. 😊