Just a short after-midnight blog to share my fascination with Fallout: New Vegas.

TL;DR - If Bethesda games are a great girlfriend to travel with and have fun (and they sure are great), FNV is the girlfriend you've been waiting for who can actually talk to you, interest you, intrigue and satisfy you.

People were not joking when they said Obsidian wrote stories like Steve Vai played the guitar! I was late for the Planescape: Torment party, found Alpha Protocol's gameplay too cumbersome to endure for storytelling, and only played a handful of hours of Neverwinter Nights 2 because I was young back then and RPGs weren't my thing.

But this game, is blowing my mind. Makes me regret not investing more in those games, in a way.

There's just so much heart, thought and intelligence put delicately into every plot line and event. The dialogue can go on forever, it can spiral anywhere, and it's a treat to listen to and engage in, word after word. I still very much enjoy the richness of the worlds Bethesda creates which Fallout NV evidently lacks, but for someone who's invested hundreds of hours into a few Bethesda titles, this game totally hits a spot that was in dire need for hitting.

I actually feel like I'm talking to people in this game. They have personalities, interests, shame, pride, hostility and so forth. The occasional sense of humor is also very surprising and satisfying, I'm loving every word I'm hearing. The King's theory about his headquarter building formerly being a house of "worship" for one man (turns out to be Elvis Presley when you expect it to be Jesus, and then their style and look starts making sense :D) deserves some sort of award, it had me grinning and laughing, it was just so brilliant.

Just when I thought The Witcher series' storytelling couldn't be topped, Obsidian manages to create storytelling miracles in the last place I expected - a Bethesda brand. And they do it without any fancy technology or fantastical mumbo jumbo, just straight up premium Hollywood writing.

21 hours in and everything feels perfect. The story is elevating so naturally, everything is coming together beautifully, and I can't wait to own New Las Vegas.

The PC mods are making the experience surreal! Here is a list of the mods I'm using:

Gem... gem makes you think of something worthy, something of value. I think NV is more like a lost button, or maybe some pocket lint.

That's awesome, I'm glad you're enjoying it. There were things I absoloutely loved about New Vegas, but my damnable compuction to play it in third person stripped a lot of the immersion out of it for me, I can't wait for the day Bethesda announce they've built a new engine from scratch. Obsidian could have done even more incredible work with a better frame to build on.

Also have you met Lily yet? Good times.

I played through this game for the first time myself this spring. It truly is an amazing experience, and mods improve its looks drastically. If you'd like I can recommend you some. I dove pretty deep into mods for NV, and I've done the same for Skyrim (how they work etc.). Post your current mod list so we don't muck up your game with conflicts ;)

Glad to see some one else enjoy this fantastic game. One of my favorites.

It was alright.

I'm one of the weirdos that liked 3 better, but New Vegas is still a great game.

Fallout 3 was better, and it had that trademark Obsidian touch of being half finished. Still a fine game, but mods have to be applied, and don't even think of playing it on a 360 (can't say for PS3, I assume the same) unless you're fine with spending the next 30 hours staring at load screens.

If cornered in a dark alley, I may be convinced to say that New Vegas is secretly Obsidian's best game, but for now I'll stick with Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer.

It's a fantastic game. Obsidian have a great talent for managing to keep a sense of charm and soul in their games, which is a pretty rare among western studios these days. I'll take that -rought edges n all- over the polished mediocrity most studios churn out any day.

Cannot wait for Project Eternity.

The jury's still out on whether or not New Vegas is my favorite game of all time. It's eternally locked in mortal combat with Skyrim and Oblivion.

@arbitrarywater: @jimbo: @reisz: So I'm not overreacting by being very heartwarmed and overwhelmed by how vibrant and believable these characters are, and how real (at least hollywood-real) the story is? The greed and the betrayal, so realistic and delicious! Even having beaten both Witcher games multiple times, I never had such an organic experience.

reisz I haven't met Lily yet, I just now confronted Benny in his casino, got ambushed by him, and had a LONG talk with his Yes Man robot upstairs. Shit is gonna get serious now :)

@fetchfox said:

I went bananas with Skyrim mods, but NV doesn't have as many as Skyrim does, so I only installed graphics mods and gameplay enhancers.

I added the mods I'm using to the OP. How about you?

I'm loving New Vegas. It's great to see Black Isle vets working with the Fallout IP again :) installing the classic fallout weapons mod made it all the better.

Also, try some of the DLC. Stuff's good.

it wasn't half finished. They cut some stuff, but not nearly as much as KOTOR 2, and most of the stuff they cut was stuff added in the DLC.

also fallout 3 crashes way more than new vegas did, and I got every achievement in that game (including the DLC ones).

I don't know how it's competing with those games for you. I love both TES games, but each of the the games you mentioned (FNV on one hand, Skyrim and Oblivion on the other) delivers something the other lacks. TES has a rich world with weak plots, NV has a weak (empty) world with a grade-A plot, so they're kind of opposites.

I guess what you're saying is "This one has such a good story, but that one has such an immersive and packed world, I can't pick!" In that case, I get it :)

Enjoyed my time with it, but my experience was plagued with bugs and near game breaking glitches.

good thing i have both of these complete for only ten dollars! :dance:

everything i'm hearing makes me think i'll appreciate new vegas more, even with it's jankiness.

I felt this way at first, but now that it's fixed I'd say New Vegas is better in just about every way.

Same, I got to a point is spent a week to get one of the final missions to work...no go. Even if i I load that save up now...no go.

In the end to me NV just a total conversion mod with the same level of QA as a mod team.

I would go so far as to say I enjoyed my time with Fallout 1 more than NV. I loved Fallout 3 and Fallout 2 is passable. NV rendered itself almost unplayable to me.

Ps I love Alpha Protocol. I hate Kotor 2. Alpha Protocol is the only obsidian game that doesn't bring seething hatred from me.

Hardcore mode is the way to play (if you're not already on it)

@jouseldelka: Yeah, that's pretty much it. Skyrim and Oblivion both gave me a great sense of exploration, but were accompanied by boilerplate stories and lore I don't particularly care much about (case in point, the very last thing I did in my 200+ hour adventure in Oblivion was play the main quest, and I only did it to get the achievement). Fallout, on the other hand, while being almost linear in its world progression (and, like you said, kind of barren), is a fantastic example of freedom of authorship. While I wouldn't call it an amazing story by any stretch, the amount of choice it gives the player in how events play out is really extensive and organic. I really hope Fallout 4 or TES6 (whichever comes first, I don't have a preference) manages to properly marry those two different senses of choice, because it would be a fucking landmark title if it pulls it off.

You should play KoTOR 2, by far the game that saved Star Wars as a franchise in my heart. I don't think I'll ever love a cast of characters like I did in KoTOR 2. Also, as an added bonus, both restoration projects are nearing their final days, I think it's a great time for people who never played it to play it now.

I haven't said it in this thread yet so, let me just say Chris Avellone can write like no man in the industry. I may be straight, but I have nothing but pure unadulterated love for that man, and everything he writes.

Regardless of my personal issues with it, I believe NV is a fine supplement to Fallout 3. I say supplement instead of successor since they are still fundamentally the same game on the same engine and no amount of crazy features could change that. The environments are pretty much the same between the two games but with different colour palettes. The real difference is the charm that Obsidian was able to bring with it's writing and story development to New Vegas. I would really like to see more Fallout related content from Obsidian in the near future.

Did you guys hear I worked at Obsidian?

@rorie: Could you do me a favour and contact everyone what worked on this beautiful, wonderful game and all of its DLCs, and tell them that they've done nothing short of craft a masterpiece?

When I played NV I enjoyed it as much as I remember enjoying Fallout 3, which in my mind makes it a bit better in order for it feel the same quality 2 years later. I fucking love Fallout: New Vegas and it was the game that even more than 3 really made me fall deep in love with that universe. (For full disclosure I played it like a year later, which by that point NV was stable and had no issues playing it).

If you're loving it so far, then you absolutely need to play Old World Blues. It's a piece of content that is kind of jaw dropping in how good the writing is and easily of the best DLC content I've ever played.\

@rorie Really? I didn't know that. Tell me more.

If you have not done so already, go to Vault 11

That game was a buggy mess on the 360 and I still loved the hell out of it. It's a fantastic game.

Even through the plethora of bugs and glitches, including probably a couple dozen hard lock-ups, this game was incredible and I loved the couple hundred I hours I poured into it. The Dead Money DLC alone is one of my favorite experiences from this generation, actually. New Vegas overall is probably the most fun I've ever had really "role-playing" in a game. The malleability in the story and dialogue options is wonderful.

Fallout 3 does have a few things over NV though, namely a more dense world with interesting locations. A lot of the random locations you came across in NV were usually small with nothing of interest or value, whereas Fallout 3 had tons of awesome places to explore with unmarked quests and rewarding treasures.

@bacongames: I'm pretty sure that there is a E3 (or maybe it was PAX) Bombcast with @rorie as a guest repping for Obsidian.

@thunderslash said:

I'm not blaming you at all but this is why sarcasm doesn't work on text-based internet. I felt compelled to anyway. Kinda was wondering if any fish would catch on that one.

On that note I would love a supercut of Rorie mentioning he worked for Obsidian.

@bacongames: :(

@the_nubster: I doubt I could tell them more than they already know! Most of the feedback from the game was very positive, thankfully. It did have a fair amount of bugs, but the writing in that game was totally great.

Hell Yea I love Fallout New Vegas so much glad you gave it a shot.

I had fun with it... but in the end it felt like just more Fallout 3 which while Fallout 3 was good in its own right having played a couple hundred hours of it made me not really click with New Vegas as much.

@jouseldelka: Wow that's seriously got me excited now, cause i was just about to start my new playthrough! (I played a bit earlier, but then got stuck in a spot and then lost all my saves.)

Yesterday I just got a weird Fallout 3 itch (You know... you just feel like revisiting the bloody wasteland after a year or so) and so I thought I'd give NV a run instead, cause I left it largely undiscovered and incomplete.

I'd already got myself excited and now reading your blog has hyped it up even more! :D

I too, btw, love The Witcher series. The Witcher 1 EE is my favorite game of all time. Alpha Protocol was a lot of fun too.

Btw, what mods do you recommend for NV?

New Vegas is a really good game. I actually think I enjoyed it more than F3.

I really really enjoyed NV, put about 80 hrs into the game. If you're playing on PC definitely check out some mods, I installed a few graphic ones, feature ones and costumes. Played as deadpool from about halfway through to the end with my companions behind other super heroes, and my guy was a pure punching guy so it was even better.

It's outstanding if you get all the right mods, especially the bug fix mod. But it eventually became completely unplayable for me when I first had it on 360.

For me at least, that is exactly what makes it work. The weak and empty world delivers the perfect atmosphere and makes the game experience all the more enjoyable for me. Somehow the world in TES (mainly Skyrim) ends up feeling a lot more dead and empty by the time im 10 hours in.

But for Fallout, that's what actually works and makes the setting a lot more satisfying and believable :D

From what I played, you're write, the story stuff is freaking fantastic and I love all of the branching storylines and paths you can choose. However, the gameplay is still the same old Fallout, (with some noteworthy improvements, I'll admit) and it's not terrible by any means, but I had tried playing it fresh off of my late to the party enjoyment of fallout 3 and all it's DLC, so I was still pretty fatigued of the Bethesda game formula. I really should get back to playing it again, although I think I should probably start over to experience the story stuff again and maybe make some different decisions.

Too many games in my backlog that I want to get to before I really invest a commitment to this, because lets face it, it's Fallout... there is no play a bit here play a bit there... it's all or nothing.

I played Planescape Torment this year and it's far better than New Vegas, story wise at least. The games from that era baldurs gate and ect. are a little harder to get into, but once you do I think they still hold up today.

There are side missions with self contained stories that take an hour or two and can lead to other quest lines. Most other games would sell that shit as DLC, but you could miss it entirely in NV.

Awesome game!

@thunderslash said:

And this is double why sarcasm sucks because there's no way for me to say my end without coming off like some jerk. Man, communication on the internet is tricky sometimes.

One of my favorite video game NPCs is Veronica from the Brotherhood of Steel. She's the Felicia Day character and she is a delight. Well realized and handled with such tact that I can't think of too many other characters that match her. She's a gay character but she doesn't throw it in your face where other media--even film--would hold it as their primary characteristic. She's not "The Gay Character," She's not "The Loveable Scamp." She can't be whittled down to a single identity.

She has a history, she has goals, dreams, passions, desires. She is a well-rounded character, and it also helps that she is a BEAST with her gauntlet weapon! Fantastic companion, I wish she would return in Fallout 4.

I liked 3 far more, but I think that was because I played the ever loving shit out of 3 and was bored of the fallout gameplay before New Vegas even came out.

I loved the exploration in New Vegas.

It's scary how lonely that game can make you feel at times.

@tonyp2121 said:

I think that's the case for a lot of people. If you play RPGs for the writing, the themes, and the roleplaying elements (and you should be), then its very hard to recommend Fallout 3 over New Vegas.

I agree with your point completely, @jouseldelka: the characters were one of the first things I noticed about the game, and the thing that completely set it apart for me from Bethesda games. I felt like every character had a well thought-out place in that world. In a Bethesda game, most of the NPC's seem like cardboard cutouts, as if they just exist for one reason and that one reason is to make you feel like the center of the world. New Vegas is much more organic. I'm really glad you've seen the light.

You should play through Neverwinter Nights 2 again. After you're done, play the Mask of the Betrayer campaign. It's the best writing in a video game that I've ever seen.

I will say that Fallout 3 has one of the best beginnings of all time. The beginning of New Vegas is kinda shitty in comparison.