Taking your hit game and re-using its carefully constructed systems and graphics for a quick sequel is a tale nearly as old as computer games. One of my most memorable early game experiences was with Boulder Dash II, frequently indistinguishable from the first game in screenshots. The earliest chart #1 I found for this project was Jet Set Willy, which is Manic Miner with a change of setting and a top hat. The change of setting is not just cosmetic, though, opening up from single screens to an interconnected mansion. Even if the moment-to-moment gameplay is the same, their creator Matthew Smith took the same framework and turned it to a whole new impetus and way of playing.
A decade and a half later, Nintendo quickly followed up the incredible success of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by transporting the same Link into the world of Majora’s Mask, and made a similar transformation of it. The result was a game that rivals Ocarina of Time for how loved it is, in intensity if not frequency. Which brings us to Fallout: New Vegas, a side-branch from Fallout 3 farmed out to a different development team, with a widespread reputation as being the standout game in the 3D era of the series.
Fallout 3 is a game where any freedom is always very hard-won. In my time with it, the bit which I enjoyed the most was making my way between places, navigating and surviving its defined routes. The aspect which reminded me of a radiation-poisoned Pokémon Red. For Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian worked from a starting assumption that its players have already done that stuff, and downplayed it considerably. You can still go for it if it’s what you really want — I spent a fun hour trying to break into the heavily guarded Vault 34 — but it’s rarely necessary. In place of the closed-off rubble and tunnels of the ruins of Washington DC, they use the wide open Mojave Desert. A total philosophical shift follows along with it.
In the story of New Vegas, your character is a courier who had the misfortune to be carrying something very valuable and got shot in the head as a result. The first section of the game involves figuring out what happened, getting to the bright lights of the New Vegas strip to do so. From there, the main quest opens up impressively, showing you an inevitable oncoming conflict and inviting you to pick a side. Some degree of flexibility in plots is also nothing new, not least in harking back to the original Fallout games, one of them by Obsidian’s predecessor company. Still, applying such a range on this scale is impressive.
It’s not a simple question of good or bad, either, but a chance to decide which of the competing factions has the least horrible philosophy. This is a perfect fit for the established mechanics of the series, of course, where you’re always trying to decide whether to drink that irradiated water, whether to eat that iguana on a stick, which unusual character to distrust a bit less: a succession of least bad options.
Having played and loved Disco Elysium recently, I couldn’t help but think of the politics in its terms – the fascist Legion, the ultraliberal Mr. House, the moralist New Californian Republic committed to spreading centrism by force. Unlike Disco Elysium there is no communism as a fourth option, though. Instead there is the chance to screw them all and take over New Vegas yourself, with the motivation left as a big question mark. The story pulls its threads together in such a way that you are forced to go between the different factions, and seeing the impact of your choices as you play them off against each other works really well, whole quest lines appearing or disappearing as the impacts of your actions hit.
The implementation of choices in New Vegas works really well in general, in fact. The scene was set for me early on when I had to find a town a new sheriff, and rather than heading off to find someone suitable I instead selected to program a robot to do the job. There are many inventive chances to work things out through dialogue options, and some smart use of the game’s other mechanics alongside them. I gained former soldier Boone as a companion by tracking down what had happened to his wife and alerting him to the culprit. This meant getting her to follow me and then going to the menu and putting on his beret, the signal for him to shoot her in the head. There is something silly about the process and visual alike, but it was no less arresting an experience for it.
This being a Bethesda RPG, even if they didn’t make it themselves like Fallout 3 (or Starfield), the openness of choice leads to some points where the game’s pileup of mechanical systems interact in unpredictable ways. Many of those relate to the companion system. It was great having someone following me around and shooting stuff for me, but at one point he managed to get left behind on the Strip. No problem, as I was just fulfilling an invite to go to the Legion’s fort to have a friendly chat with their leader. Except the Legion started shooting at me, and best as I can tell it was because they were objecting to my being accompanied by Boone even though he was at the other end of the game’s map.
In an opposite parallel, there was something very funny about his presence as I infiltrated the Brotherhood of Steel in their secret bunker. There I was being stripped of my clothes and weapons and made to wear an explosive collar, and having tense negotiations in their space, and meanwhile Boone continued to amble along behind me unacknowledged, rifle and beret and all. The provision of player choice comes with an associated player responsibility to suspend disbelief of all of the bits which inevitably don’t make sense.
It mostly feels like a worthwhile trade, and that’s not just down to the strength of the narrative philosophy but that of its execution. It’s not difficult to see that it’s written by the same team as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords, not when so many of its most memorable characters are likewise robots with interesting personality quirks (nor when it has the same pervading atmosphere of light casual sexism). The ambition and quality of the writing is a level further up, though. It has to be flexible but still shines through however you choose to approach things.
First of all, it is often delightfully funny, with a potent line in twisted logic and surrealism. There’s the confident scientist with a degree in theoretical physics, or at least a theoretical degree in physics. At one point an old man talks about his conviction that livestock have been falling victim to a chupacabra, and mentioned that fellow villagers respond by pointing out that the bodies were filled with bulletholes. You know what this means we’re dealing with, he asks? A chupacabra with an automatic weapon.
Elsewhere, the humour combines with repeated themes of desperate faith and the deception that it can enable. A normal human has been convinced that he is a mutant ghoul because he went bald. Most people you encounter are involved in one con or another, as victim or perpetrator. People without a lot are all the more willing to gamble it all. For the reveal of the self-appointed leader of New Vegas, Mr. House, you have to first push through a tattered curtain to get to his room, where you meet not a person but his face projected on a big screen. The inversion of The Wizard of Oz adds an extra layer to the discovery.
Fallout: New Vegas has its share of murdering and inventory management to do alongside the conversations and tricks, and scenarios like having a fight to the death with machetes in an ersatz Roman arena. It doesn’t completely dispense with the things which made Fallout 3 what it was. How could it, when it’s visibly built on top of its foundations? Still, its change of emphasis does a spectacular job of showing an alternate set of possibilities for the freedom that was already there.
Top of the charts for week ending 23 October 2010:
