The benchmark was set high when
Fallout 3 hit store shelves in 2008. An enormous open world with seemingly infinite potential was beset by buggy gameplay and somewhat lackluster storytelling in its prime moments. While
New Vegas never reaches to mind-blowing heights of its predecessor's groundbreaking debut, the storytelling and character interaction far surpass most of the elements in
Fallout 3 by a good margin.
In the promised land of sin and vice in the middle of the Mojave desert, you play a courier traveling to the New Vegas Strip to deliver a mysterious poker chip when suddenly... BANG! You are shot in the head and left for dead by a few gang members that have a bad reputation even in the post-apocalyptic wastes. Your fresh cadaver is dug up by a overprotective robot and brought to a backwater doctor to patch you up and get you on your way. After a quick fix-up, you set out to find the man that killed you and reclaim the mysterious poker chip that was stolen after your explosive cranial exam.
The world of the Mojave waste serves as the battleground for many different warring factions. The New California Republic (NCR) is a police state pushing its way East to claim the Hoover Dam for itself. Directly opposed to the NCR is Caesar's Legion (often pronounced as "Kaiser.") The legion is ruled by a tyrant with a bronze fist. The Legion often invades towns, captures the citizens as slaves and crucifies any resistance. While the NCR and Caesar's Legion are the two biggest factions battling over a valuable water supply, you will also run into cannibal casino owners, the tech-obsessed Brotherhood of Steel, at least half a dozen small-time gangs, and maybe a few extraterrestrial beings.
Not surprisingly, New Vegas follows all of the beats that create a traditional Fallout experience. Karma, S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills, perks, and a Pip-boy will jog your memory within the first hour of how much time can potentially be spent wandering the Mojave Wasteland. In short order, you will receive the necessary equipment and training to ensure your survival throughout your journey while also introducing you to some of the newer elements in New Vegas.
As if to say previous games were child's play, Fallout: New Vegas adds systems and feature to the gameplay that actually makes it DEEPER than Fallout 3. A more improved companion system allows for greater flexibility of your small adventure seeking party (that may or may not contain a cyborg-dog.) Weapons can be outfitted with custom mods that improve their accuracy outside of V.A.T.S. and true iron sights while aiming make all of the weapons much more useful to your play style. The biggest change is the subtle karma replacement, your reputation. "Reputation" is earned by assisting small towns or groups in their endeavors. Help one group too much and you lose reputation with their rival faction, making you a high profile target. While karma stills plays a role to some extent with particular individuals, it is nicer to see a big-picture scenario of your actions. Just because you might have told a little girl her stuffed animals didn't love her and died a horrible death doesn't make you a bad person when you saved the entire town from the brink of starvation moments before. Right?
The catch is that all of the new systems: companion orders, mods, survival skills, expanded repair skills, and reputation all feel loosely tacked on to the original game. The integration of all these choices and options is rather clumsy and the trial by fire approach to teaching you about most of the new systems means the enjoyment is directly related to how much you put in. Fallout fans are a patient and persistent bunch, but for casual audiences or for people who have a passing interest in what all the fuss is about will be downright intimidated by the litany of menu screens and dialog boxes briefly explaining the new features in the first hour alone.
Unfortunately, New Vegas also seems to follow a tradition set by Fallout 3 in that New Vegas is buggy as hell. Not everyone will experience the glitches and bugs the same way and some might not experience any at all after the most recent title update from the developers, but it would be wise to save often. Then save again. While this might also fall into the category of "How much will fans mind?," the problem with Fallout 3's glitches and bugs were performance related or visual in nature, New Vegas trades those for something far more annoying; missing quests and broken dialogue. Sometimes quests point you in the wrong direction, and sometimes dialogue trees start to loop back on themselves without a proper exit, but considering I have already poured 30-ish hours into a 100+ hour without losing more than fifteen minutes, you learn to adjust.
