Fallout: New Vegas or Failout: No Wages as I like to call it, is the worst sequel to any game I have ever played and it is clearly inferior to both it's predecessor and it's successor. Bethesda made a mistake when they handed over the golden gem that is the Fallout series to this group of nobodies and here is why:

The first thing that is absolutely unequivocally awful about this game is the dialogue. What's the problem with it you may ask? Well there is clearly too much of it. It has tons and tons of dialogue with everyone as if you care about the characters or the world. If you're a tad bit curious because you're a friendless virgin with no life, you might want to know about the details of a fictional world and what goes on in it. Well this game is the game for you ******* because these NPC's literally never seem to shut up. Any question you might have about the world or setting it's possible that somewhere somehow one of these NPC's can accommodate you with an answer. Who needs answers when I want to shoot random things in a subway? As if having a bunch of dialogue and characters to talk to wasn't a chore enough it also gives you a bunch of needless dialogue options. Fallout 4 fixed that for us. Dialogue wheels are for real men,

needing 80% medical knowledge to heal a wound is for sissies who want to "roleplay." Roleplay me being a dominant top and you being my subordinate bottom. You know the hole only gets deeper for these hacks, because like older RPG's they actually make it so that verbal encounters and roleplaying are more important than combat. They even made the mistake of giving you this option more often than they give you straight action encounters. Hey losers it's not 1997 anymore take your Infinity Engine game script back and give me some corridor action sequences followed by some one liners or get the hell out of this industry already.

Also it doesn't have a villain. What kind of ****ty game doesn't have a preset villain to hate? I mean it does have characters and factions you can side with but you have to actually think about what they represent and what repercussions they would have on the Mojave/Vegas area.

I cant hate on Ob****ian entirely here because Bethesda made this same mistake with their mostly forgettable and crappiest game Morrowind, but that is beside the point. It also didn't keep the importance of Bethesda's brilliant black and white morality system instead opting for a faction based system that relied more on your relations to certain characters or groups rather than a vague idea of morality. Which sucks because how am I supposed to know whether I'm a good person or not if the game doesn't give me good or bad points? It gets even worse when the characters and factions come to represent complex themes and ideas. You know like capitalism vs socialism, corrupt-democracies vs militaristic dictatorships, Keynsian economics (Bulls and Bears), Hegelian historical determinism represented by the conflict of factions vs the freewill of the player to change things...

This means that when they lost the various skirmishes in the mid east their options for plundering other states and empires large enough to be useful to them in terms of resource gain and wealth became rather short dooming the the economy to implode inward among a sea of other problems. What this all means in terms of the game is that NCR and Legion may seem different on the surface but their problems and faults mirror each other in certain historical lights and circumstances. The NCR's corrupt democracy is reminiscent of our own and the US's economy built on constant expansion is not just modeled on the Roman one of plundering resources at home and abroad but we also force countries to buy our products and use our currency. The US's empire also feels compelled to secure the middle east for resource gain and as a tactical fortress to further military excursions throughout other parts of the world.

The point is the two factions are mirrored opposition empires who might fall due to a desert quagmire over resource distribution. All of this historical context is again used not just to make the game seem more "heady" but was actively used in constructing the world and characters the games constituent parts rely on. It would be one thing to add all this and just have them say this in large exposition dumps, but the makers of New Vegas found ways to merge it into as many areas of game play and setting as possible. They even gave the clothes in the game a western and Vegas feel. From Strip inspired suits to cattle rustler clothing. Because Obsidian seems to have a holistic design philosophy, building things from the setting outward even small or minor details seem to add to the games overall feel and themes. I can go and on about this or I can compare it to another game that, did things... Well, differently to say the least.