Fallout: New Vegas Xbox 360 version

[Powerglove64]

Fallout New Vegas: Xbox 360 Version

There are games that withstand the test of time of being a cult classic, but what makes a cult classic? Is it gameplay? Is it the story? Is it the unique world building? What makes an almost fourteen year old game still to this day being talked about, possibly more than Skyrim? To find out more why that is, I think this deserves a deep dive look on how this game is a love letter to the old Fallout classic games, but also one of the best philosophical written game out of all the Fallout franchise. You can skip the summary if you want to read the deep dive thought of the review.

Summary of Fallout New Vegas

Story-wise I think is possibly better than Fallout 3, Fallout 3’s story wasn’t that it was bad, it was good in its own separate category, for New Vegas’s story it was written more for the classic Fallout that Interplay used to own the rights of the franchise. In fact the writers of New Vegas were former employees of Interplay, so some of the writing behind the game was from the old employees over at Interplay. It felt like a true Fallout 3 trilogy because many of the events from Fallout 1 and 2 transition to New Vegas so there will be a lot of references from the old games which is why I said, this game is a love letter to classic Fallout fans. Now how’s the gameplay?

The gameplay, if I be honest, has not changed much from Fallout 3 to New Vegas. I think it is mainly because Obsidian took the same resource assets from Bethesda’s studio who made Fallout 3 and just made it basically the same for time reasons. Why fix it if it is not broken right? Sure, they added some new mechanics obviously like the workbench, new perks, weapons, new difficulty setting that enable the player to be thirsty, hungry and easily get their bones broken. It is something to build on top of what already works in Fallout 3, so again not much to talk about at least in this summary version, but is good yet buggy as classic Bethesda is.

Score Chart

I Have Gain Enlightenment SEAL OF APPROVAL
Worth Every Penny to Buy
Could Have Been More Wait Till Price Drops
Tolerable to Play Wait for Big Sale
My Brain is Fried Don’t Buy it

Ain’t That A Kick In The Head: Story Analysis

You, the courier, unfortunately have a brush of death by getting shot at the head, you somehow survive the shot and by a string of events you have to decide the fate of the Mojave Wasteland. Why specifically you? Because nobody has plot armor but you kiddo. The entire Wasteland rests on the courier’s shoulder, there are three factions to decide who you give power to. NCR or New California Republic, Caesar’s Legion Mr. House or if you feel like none of them works in your favor you can run the Wasteland yourself by going for the Mr. Yes route. The whole power structure runs on the balance of who controls the Hoover Dam, that’s the main drive of the game, whoever controls the dam, controls the electricity to run cities, which controls how they run things around the Mojave Wasteland if not the whole western coast of the USA.

Is a battle of essentially ideology and morality really, what really is interesting about this game is how deep this game can be with its writing. Depends on your playstyle and how much you know about the classic Fallout games, you can come this game as fresh and new to the franchise and still know exactly what is going on, with some outside context that only old fans of the Fallout 1 & 2 would understand like character cameos or old factions from the old games.

You can play however you feel it fits your playstyle, like some people just want to go in and just shoot things and find it fun. Some people just play the game casually with nothing deep in mind but just see it as what it is on the surface level, which is fine. Then there are some people like me that had not only played the old games so I get the context, but philosophically I entertained myself through the story alone and it delivered it hard. Why do people keep talking about this game for so many years?

I believe part of this besides the modding community is the writing in general. There is so many stuff still talk about to this day that is almost like a ethic’s class that you not only see the action you’ve done in the Wasteland which is typical Fallout fashion, but you notice certain groups of people have their own beliefs and ideas of what they think about the factions that are running in their daily lives.

“Freedom, justice, and democracy, those are just words. What matters is who controls the guns.” Which is funny because words do matter when the game is trying to convince you to give control to who.The aftermath well that all leads on who you point the gun barrel to. Each faction believes in something and I think people find it interesting for how it relates to today’s world, whether it is actual politics or philosophy study.

At first playthrough you might not see it and might not care. In your second or multiple playthroughs you will see each faction’s side of how they think and what they believe in. You will start knowing why and how these groups of people have certain ideas of how they want to run the Mojave Wasteland. You can decide to give that power to them, or if you think you can run it better you can control the Wasteland yourself. The more you play the game including the DLCs the more you realize how organic feels like in real life where people want to run it or how they implement their ideas.

The NCR: The faction is basically a restart in the old world government trying to rebuild what was lost in the old world. Trying to implement laws, a stable community, a stable economy, just any sense of normalcy that Tandi the founder of the NCR would have wanted. She was a minor character turned into a major character from Fallout 1 & 2 who tried to build the government branch from the ground up. Now that she passed away after the events of Fallout 2, the NCR wanted to spread their influence all across the west coast, where you will find interacting people of the Vegas Strip either positive or negative depending who you ask. Their stability of power is spreading thin and all they have left is the Hoover Dam. There are pros to siding with the NCR but there are cons for either they have become like the old government or stray away from what Tandi would have wanted.

Caesar’s Legion: An interesting “return to the old world” faction group where the leader Caesar sees the NCR and anything associated with democracy as outdated ideas. That the NCR is a failed experiment of how the leaders over at New California are nothing but greed looking out for themselves, installing a totalitarian dictatorship or installing some sort of autocratic emperor to the new Rome as Caesar wishes he wanted. The methodology Caesar’s Legion focuses on in a philosophical sense is to rip out the old idea of a democratic system and just return to a more traditional imperial sense of running a country through mimicking the old Roman Empire.

Mr. House: Another autocratic individual but what’s interesting about Mr. House is that he is more viewing this situation as a business and not imposing his views morally speaking of how to run the Mojave Wasteland. He does not care so much about interfering in the lives of the people morally speaking, but wants to make a buck out of them, including making deals out of the NCR. He wants to view progress as another venture capital investment for his business growth, and wants to make New Vegas an oasis for business dealings, conquering the stars with his rocket ships when his empire has reached maturity.

Notice how I never mention there is an antagonist of the game, that’s because the game never establishes it has, because of how you want to view the game as or how your playstyle is. You might find the Legion a cool faction to be with, so it doesn’t matter their method of doing it, you can come on top as being “morally” good at the ending. Or perhaps you want to play the game base on your moral compass, perhaps you find the Legion’s way of running things as repulsive, you can side whoever you think is morally right as either Mr. House or NCR, or yourself if none of the options works! There is so much discussion morally speaking and so much stuff to read about the characters and faction groups you are sometimes wondering if you made the choice correctly or not; there is no good nor bad ending, is how you view it as a conclusion ending.

I have not even begun discussing the DLC characters like Ulysses, Father Elijah, the screen scientists, and my favorite Joshua Graham. He is possibly a perfect written character of how a good Old Testament preacher should be, both his philosophy and his conviction. There are videos about him and the rest of the DLC characters discussing their philosophy about their world view, there are endless discussion on dissecting points of Caesar’s moral viewpoint or Mr. House’s “libertarian” view on a hands off approach to citizen’s rights. The side characters and your partners are also some of the best, their side stories are well written and the small factions you go through are also good to know the world better.

Ammo Check, Radaway Check, Booze Check: Gameplay

The world around the Mojave Wasteland obviously has a cowboy setting because it is set in Nevada, Las Vegas or in this case New Vegas. The gameplay mechanics are the same as Fallout 3, the only additional stuff is the workbench, new difficulty mode where you can be hungry, thirsty and harder to heal your broken bones. You get to hear awesome western music and explore the desert Wasteland, the only downside to it is that I honestly prefer the Fallout 3 world setting than it is in the Mojave setting but that’s just preference not a flaw. I like the rubble city and how the whole city is just a torn down city, in the Mojave setting there is just nothing but rocks, desert, cactus etc, it gets a bit boring to see it after a while. The major city is just New Vegas and the towns you see are just small towns, which they are fine. You get cool new perk abilities and you have a lot of freedom to roam around like Fallout 3’s gameplay where you explore and find new locations. You can customize your guns, you can have a unique play set, you can essentially have what you got a similar experience as Fallout 3, but with cowboys!

Now, let’s address the elephant in the room, the game crashes and bugs. I still can’t believe even to this day that both Fallout 3 and New Vegas have not been patched to make the game more stable for people who don’t know about modding to play normally. Is just unacceptable and yes, modding has been so easy to fix that issue, but this is why originally many years ago I went to console versions because I didn't know about modding and was afraid at the time to mod my game. Now if I get a PC copy I’m sure it is very easy but it’s just frustrating still on pc that the experience to play vanilla it takes away the fun. Now, that being said, the other reason people still play this game are the mods. They have some of the best mods that improves gameplay and adds stuff to the game that makes it more fun or funnier depending how you wanted to play. Overall I think that’s all I got to talk about gameplay wise, now to final thoughts!

War, War Never Changes. Men Do, Through The Roads They Walk.

This game has more talk than Fallout 3, mainly through its sheer writing and how like wine, it ages very fine. Our culture keeps changing each decade, issues and problems might be different but philosophically speaking they are the same age old question, so people look back to this game and reflect how fictional characters face similar issues and feel related to their favorite characters. So people just like to discuss and talk about it because is not only fun, but also educational to discover new thoughts to study further or to admire the characters in a whole new way after not playing the game for so long, but replaying it or seeing videos that discuss their ideas give you a new perspective and founding respect of the characters you’ve talk too. Our ideas change so you might once like or dislike the character but you could change once you discover something new about them so you want to replay again.

The respect that New Vegas gives to old fans of the old Fallout games is also a major plus. Fallout 2 will be my top favorite game because New Vegas resonated with me because the characters and philosophy behind it was very good. You talk and feel conflicted about how certain characters question your morality and you can’t help but to think about it deeply. The choices you made reflect what happens after you beat the game, so in a similar way of playing New Vegas is the feeling of content in making the right moral choices to the characters in the game. Atleast, that’s how my play style is. I'm sure you got your own fun way of playing the game, for now this has been a long ride playing the game around 100+ hrs, so it is time to jump into Fallout 4 and see if it holds up to the old games!

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