Fallout: New Vegas isn't the first time a game's main character starts out by "dying." I do think it is the first to have you get shot in the head and buried, however. This opening also serves to let us know exactly where it stands in relation to it's prequel/parent game, Fallout 3. While Fallout 3 starts with your birth, New Vegas starts with your death. And while Fallout 3's story kind of forces a more positive karmic alignment on your character, since, no matter how evil you act, you still activate the water generator and defeat the evil Enclave, even if you take all of the non-humans down, you still end up doing something more or less for the good of the Wasteland.
New Vegas makes it hard to be an outright angel. You have to pick a side. You have to eliminate the other factions, either through destruction or rendering them helpless. You can keep doing good deeds, save the right people, kill the wrong people, and all of that, but in the end, you are working for the good of a faction, never for the good of all the wasteland. Do you help expand the New California Republic, by rendering all of the Mojave into the pseudo-bureaucratic monstrosity that is the NCR's government? Do you help the heartless Caesar make all of the people of New Vegas either bow to his name or get crucified, all in the name of unity? Or do you help the entrepreneurial Mr. House play essentially every faction against each other, even eliminating some based on their projected future actions, in order to make New Vegas an economic powerhouse? You cannot go through the Mojave Wasteland and make everyone revere you as a saint. Innocents will get hurt.
This shades-of-gray morality is really what differentiates New Vegas from Fallout 3. Although the gameplay of the two games is nearly identical, the often clear cut choices between good and evil in Fallout 3 are replaced with a sense that no matter what you do, someone will end up losing. Let me tell you my experience of the story to get a sense of what I mean.
The beginning quests of New Vegas serve to introduce you to this games theme: politics. Each faction wants control of Hoover Dam, and thus the Mojave. You see the consequences of the NCR forces being spread too thin, you see what happens when people cross Caesar's Legion, and you see the natives of the Mojave and New Vegas just living day by day. At a certain point, you are introduced to the three factions through three separate quests (There is a fourth option, but I will leave that for your discovery): The NCR, the Legion, and Mr. House. Thinking that freedom of the people is what would be best for the Mojave, I sided with Mr. House. It turns out that Mr. House gives you a bit more free reign, rather than bettering the people. Still, seeing the mess the NCR was in, I though Mr. House would pay off in the end. Inevitably, I crossed a few factions that hadn't necessarily done anything wrong, and found myself straddling neutrality. Even with knowing that Mr. House's reign turns out as it does, I am definitely not convinced that the NCR would end up being the "good" option (the Legion is the clear cut evil faction).
I lost some companions, I killed people that had not necessarily done anything wrong, and I played backroom politics with the factions. I was not the messiah I generally try to be when I first play games like the Fallout series. But I suppose that was the big theme of New Vegas. This is a land of sin. You can dip your toe in it, or you can jump in headfirst, but inevitably, you will perform something less than saintly.
I suppose that's what you can expect from a setting like Las Vegas. Fallout 3 took place in the ruins of the Washington D.C area. As the former seat of government, it can be expected that the battle will involve ideals: equality vs. rule by the elite. You do get the choice in the end to deny life to a group of people, but ultimately, even if millions of non-humans lose their lives, the wasteland will be better than before you began. Fallout 3 is a game about ideals. Fallout: New Vegas is a game about realities. You cannot be the messiah. You have to choose who is the best to run the dam, to run Vegas. You can't leave these people absolutely free to run their own lives. Someone will end up controlling them. The NCR government, the Legion empire, or the Mr. House conglomerate will end up ruling. Even though the games feel very similar in playing them, this is ultimately where New Vegas comes into its own. Fallout 3 wanted the player to help individuals, while New Vegas wants you to help a People, not all people.
I respect the different tack this game takes, and applaud it for it. I found it a bit difficult to play Fallout 3 as a neutral character. You could manage to play through the game as an angel or a devil, but it was hard to hit in between the two. New Vegas challenges you to be an absolute, always in between. I can see a few people disliking this shades-of-grey approach, but I liked it.
Moving beyond the story, I found some good and bad in the mechanics of the game. New Vegas, as I have said, is essentially a clone of Fallout 3. the V.A.T.S. system is back, the first/third person perspective, the leveling system, most of the graphics are the same as well. Most of what changed in these was small, but it worked for me. The few new monsters they added worked for me, as did the world's color shade change from green to amber. Maybe that made it a little more upbeat for me, which always helps. The fewer traits, one every two levels instead of every level, made it a bit more challenging to pick how I would play and worked for me as well.
Where this game failed me, I am going to come right out and lay the blame on Obsidian. There were so many bugs in this game, it almost, not quite but almost, ruined it for me. I had been playing the game for about 12 hours when one of my companions disappeared. Not died, mind you, but essentially became invisible. I couldn't replace them, I couldn't find any trick to get them to reappear. I had to restart my game. This really upset me. I had a few more experiences of enemies coming out of nowhere, suddenly being hated by factions, and at least a dozen instances of freezing.
I have read a few editorials asking if developers are getting lazier with their games now that they can just update them after release. Usually, I give the developer the benefit of the doubt. A '1' in some programing code was switch with a '2' and now your enemies float when they die. But in my experience, it happens so rarely, it's not worth mentioning, unless its exploitable, like Pokemon's infamous MissingNo cheat. In New Vegas, I was thoroughly upset with Obsidian. It would have been one thing if the game sucked all the way through to its core. Then I would have stormed to the store and demanded my money back. Instead, I was actually very pleased with the (admittedly long) stretches I played the game with no problems. I guess I was more disappointed than anything.
GRADE: B+
Great story, an immersive world that rivals some of the best open-world games to date, and great gameplay. Those bugs, though...
High Point:
The (pictured) confrontation with the crossdressing supermutant Tabitha
Second Place:
Bloody Mess perk. It never gets old watching a man get shot in the arm and having all of his extremities suddenly explode.
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