With the soothing sounds of Frank Sinatra floating out from one of the casinos, we find ourselves in the shining jewel of the Wasteland; New Vegas. However, this tale is not one filled with glitz, glamour and gambling – at least, not for now – no, this story has a much more tragic beginning.
On a hill overlooking the Mojave Wasteland, the Vegas Strip gleaming in the distance, a suave individual wearing a chequered suit steals the package I – a courier – was carrying and shoots me square in the thinker.
Now, ain’t that a kick in the head?
Awaking after being dug out by a pseudo-cowboy robot and being patched up by a friendly local doctor, I find myself confronted with the instantly familiar character creation screen. This handles exactly the same as Fallout 3’s creation process, in both the good ways and the bad. Aesthetically, there are enough choices and customisation options, but it’s still on the difficult side to make a character that doesn’t look totally deformed. The series’ S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system is back, this time using a vigour metre to set your character’s Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck.
When it comes time to put points into your desired skills, the good doctor asks you a few questions such as if conflict is in your nature to determine what skills your character will be good at – you can of course redo this selection once the process is over. Finally, this time you get to choose up to two traits (“perks” that you get at the start of the game and that always come with a downside), this requires a bit of tactical thinking on your part; do you want a character good with firearms? Sure, but that’ll come at the cost of your speech ability. You can choose to have no traits, but do you want to forgo that skill bonus? There’s one trait entitled “Wild Wasteland” that gives neither bonus nor penalty to your skills, instead it enables certain easter eggs within the game world that can give you some pretty nifty items – it warns that “serious players” should not take this trait, but when I found out that some of these secrets include a skeleton in a fridge with an Indiana Jones hat (take that George Lucas), I just had to take it.
In the end I settled for a charismatic male character that can definitely hold his own when in a firefight, named – in a western style game, what else – Roland Deschain.
The doctor told me to head south to a town called Primm to talk with the head of my courier service – the Mojave Express – about my missing package and the guys who attacked me. Emerging from the doctor’s house and allowing my eyes to adjust to the light, I find myself standing in the town of Goodsprings, an old and dusty frontier village named for the radiation-free water source in its surrounding hills. Upon entering the outside world, it’s worth noting that the graphics are not really improved over Fallout 3, with them using the same engine. They look somewhat better to me, but that’s because I only played 3 on the PlayStation 3, and apparently the Xbox 360 versions – which I am now playing - of both games are supposed to be a lot sharper.
I was instructed to venture over to the saloon and talk to a woman called Sunny Smiles, who could show me the ropes of living in the wastes. It was here I was introduced to one of the most sought after inclusions to the game – iron sights. For a game primarily played from a first person perspective, Fallout 3’s regular shooting mechanics were pretty dire, ending up with most players using the targeting system known as V.A.T.S. to make most of their kills. Not so in New Vegas, now the first person shooting aspect of the game has been greatly improved, especially with the ability to now look down the sights of the gun, and I now tend to use that more often than using V.A.T.S., thanks to improvements of the latter now making it more dependent on your stats and not just “God-Mode” in disguise.
Another new feature Sunny Smiles taught me was the ability to craft items, such as healing powder, at a campfire as long as you have the right ingredients and a good enough survival skill level. This works in exactly the same way as the workbenches from the previous game. There’s also the inclusion of reloading benches, which I believe is where you craft new, special ammo types (I haven’t tinkered with any yet). Yes, there’s now more than one type of ammo for any given weapon. Found a Super Mutant wearing armour with a damage threshold to high for your weapons to normally penetrate? Equip armour piercing rounds and see that health drain away.
Before I headed on my way, I was drawn into a feud between the locals of Goodsprings and a group of convicts known as Powder Gangers (named after their affinity for things that explode) over a man named Ringo hiding out in town who had gotten on their bad side. I talked to the guy and found out what really happened; his caravan was attacked out in the wastes by the Powder Gangers with provocation and he managed to kill a couple of them before getting away. Asking me to help him get rid of the Gangers once and for all, I used my high charisma and speech skills to rally some of the townspeople into revolting against them. After a gruelling firefight – again, mostly using non V.A.T.S. gameplay because it’s actually fun this time – the townspeople emerged victorious with no casualties.
At this point a message popped up, which deals with another new feature – this time an expansion of the karma system from 3. Now, each town and faction within the game has an individual opinion of you depending on how you interact with them; help them out and you’ll be accepted and eventually idolized, but piss them off and you’ll be vilified and attacked on sight. At this moment in time, I became accepted in Goodsprings, bringing with it benefits such as local shop discounts, while understandably vilified by the Powder Gangers.
With Ringo free to return to his travels and the town of Goodsprings now free from the Powder Gangers, I set off on my travels south, following the highway down to Primm. Walking through the wastes allowed me to reflect on my experiences so far. To this point, Fallout: New Vegas seems like much more of the same from Fallout 3, but with the inclusion of new features like the ones mentioned above it feels like a much smoother and fuller title. The writing and story is a marked improvement over Fallout 3’s somewhat lacking script and main quest – I feel a lot more interested in discovering why my package was stolen and who attempted to kill me for it than I was when finding out why my dad had disappeared for no reason. The introduction is also a lot more engaging than the drawn-out ‘growing up’ stages of the last title in the series. So overall, a double thumbs up from me and I cannot wait to see where my journey takes me.
Hearing distant gunfire and seeing smoke upon the horizon, in the next instalment Roland Deschain attempts to save the town of Primm from the now vilified Powder Gangers, and meets the two warring factions: the North California Republic and Caesars Legion.
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