Fact: Fallout 3 is my favorite open-world Bethesda game, and I never got on with any of the Elder Scrolls series. Seriously, Oblivion I paid full-price for, played for a few hours, realized I’d accomplished nothing and put a whole city in hysterics then thrown in jail for accidentally picking up a spoon when I wanted to talk to someone.
This is Miguel, your friendly neighborhood ghoul.
Fallout 3 I just loved. The atmosphere, the occasionally kooky character, the fact that every location had its own story to find out (the Vault of Gary’s and the town of superheroes are my favorites), Dogmeat, and not being another bloody Tolkien rip-off RPG all added to my delight. Still, if there was one thing missing from the original games it was the black humor. The dialogue, the characters, the central story, they’re all not quite as memorable in Fallout 3 as they were in 1 and 2.
Fans were notably disappointed when the original version of Fallout 3 was canned by Obsidian Entertainment, who are made up of much of the Black Isle team that worked on the original games. So when Bethesda announced Fallout: New Vegas with Obsidian at the helm everyone (including myself) jumped for joy.
The first trailer was released late last year and offered our first tentative peek at the world, with several subtle clues as to the game’s story.
The person poking up from that shallow grave is you, and you’re about to be pulled out and put back together by Doc Mitchell, the friendly medic of Goodsprings near New Vegas. It’s quite a nice parallel to Fallout 3’s beginning. There you were born and grew up, while in New Vegas you start from the opposite – dead. After this you can customize your character, with Word Association, a Rorschach test and a cheeky Love Tester bar machine substituting for the G.O.A.T. exam. You’ll be quite confident that Fallout’s trademark dark humor is fully intact when you find out one of the options in the Word Association test after ‘Mother’ is “human shield”.
Geckos are back!
Each of these skill choices won’t just affect how you use them in the world, this time they will also affect dialogue options too. Early on in the game you need to persuade a Goodsprings resident with a stack of dynamite to help repel some bandits, and if your Explosives skill is up high enough an option will appear in your dialogue choices. Obsidian are really aiming to tie your Skills to a lot more than just combat in the game. In fact, there will be a lot more non-combative possibilities this time around altogether.
Not that combat’s been forgotten, though. Now you can add weapon mods to your gun, like scopes, extended clips, accuracy boosters, that type of thing. Melee combat is also getting a boost too, and will prove a lot more fun this time around. One of the first weapons you get is a golf club. ‘Nuff said.
And one of the most poorly realized elements of Fallout 3, the companions, is also getting a re-jig. Not that the companions themselves were bad, Dogmeat made the game for me, but having absolutely no control over them was exceptionally annoying. No more, thanks to Obsidian’s new Companion Wheel, a lovely little pop-up with all the orders you could possibly want to issue.
Melee combat is getting a fun boost. FORE!VATS makes a return, as does the Karma system, but are now accompanied by a ‘Reputation’ system too. A more local version of Karma, as you do good things for, say, the town of Goodsprings, your Reputation will go up and the townsfolk will like you more. Doing bad things in other towns won’t affect that, unless it directly affects Goodsprings.
New enemies include a return for the original Fallout’s Geckos and the Stealth Boy-addicted commandos called Nightkin. As the trailer suggested, the main enemy will be the large, powerful and bureaucratic New California Republic established in Fallout 2. New companions include Raul the Ghoul and new canine Cheyenne.
With the original developers on board promising to improve upon Fallout 3 in every area, there is no reason not to get very, very excited about Fallout: New Vegas. Personally speaking as we get closer to release it creeps up my Most Wanted list. It’s currently hovering in the top three between Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Splinter Cell: Conviction. We’ll be watching this one very closely.
