Fallout: New Vegas - Review @ Second Letter Gaming

Second Letter Media sent in their review of Fallout: New Vegas. There's no score but the article subtitle of "the neverending fetch quest" sets the tone, although I found the short piece left far too much unexplained. Here's the summary:

I guess I can stop hating long enough to be objective and say that Fallout New Vegas is a good game. There were several concepts introduced that would have been outstanding had they been fleshed out a bit better. The concept of Caesar's Legion, I thought, was particularly awesome. That was easily the best storyline to me. I could never give a fetch-quest marathon like this "RPGOTY" honors (*looks at Risen review and tries to avoid calling self a hypocrite*), but it can be a very enjoyable experience for folks that like the "choose your own adventure" style of the Fallout series. If you loved FO3, go for it. You'll probably feel, as I did, that it's not quite as good as its predecessor. However, if you couldn't get enough FO3, this is more than capable of scratching your itch until a proper sequel is made.

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More information.

That review reflects my feelings about FNV pretty well. I was actually a pretty big fan of FO3 and was often confused by the MANY reviews that told me I should hate it. The FNV love-fest, however, is not an orgy into which I'm willing to fling my naked, David-esque (as far as you know) body.

It all depends on what you want from your RPGs... if like me you love choice and consequence, writing and exploration then Fallout: New Vegas is about as you can get, really. If you focus on other things like combat, theme park design or character building then it's not so good.

For me FNV was probably the best RPG this "generation," to use a console term.

I forget that there are many new console-only gamers here... people who think Fallout 3 was the first game in the series. ~sigh~

countingdown7 said:

I forget that there are many new console-only gamers here… people who think Fallout 3 was the first game in the series. ~sigh~

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~sigh~ yourself. I play on PC. I played the original Fallout, Fallout 2, and Tactics. Pre Trilogy. I've been playing computer games since the mid-1970s. Hardly "new" I think. None taken.

Anyway ... I get the allure of exploration and consequences, and that's what I liked in Fallout 3, whatever your opinion of its execution was. I'm not big on combat either. So, yes, FNV is good for exploration and choices, but perhaps I just got my fill of that in Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Morrowind. I'm not saying that's a problem with the design of FNV -- it's just my experience with it. No big deal - only an opinion.

I'm not trying to be a FNV hater. Truly I'm not.

DoctorNarrative said:

It all depends on what you want from your RPGs… if like me you love choice and consequence, writing and exploration then Fallout: New Vegas is about as you can get, really. If you focus on other things like combat, theme park design or character building then it's not so good.

For me FNV was probably the best RPG this "generation," to use a console term.

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You bring up a great point about expectations and desires while playing RPGs. FNV does do a good job of providing the player with Choices and Consequences. I probably could have touched more on that in the review.

For me, the whole "Choice and Consequence" theme in RPGs is a bit too parochial for me to enjoy it at this era of game development (or maybe I'm just playing the wrong games). Once devs can make it a bit more robust and not so cut-n-dry, I may begin to like it better.

Exploration was good and I also love exploration. But I often didn't feel rewarded for doing so, so my motivation to do it was stifled a bit.

The writing in many cases was dope. I really did like the lore surrounding the cities and the NV world at large. For me, that made up a bit for the overall plot being dull.

TSL said:

For me, the whole "Choice and Consequence" theme in RPGs is a bit too parochial for me to enjoy it at this era of game development (or maybe I'm just playing the wrong games). Once devs can make it a bit more robust and not so cut-n-dry, I may begin to like it better.

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Well that's one of the reasons a lot of people love The Witcher, because it was good at the more subtle and gray moral choices. You might not even realize you're allying yourself with crazy racist cultists until you do it! I thought Fallout: New Vegas was more heavy-handed yet also good at it. Sure, the Legion was evil and the NCR was good no matter what J.E. Sawyer says, but within that there were some nice subtleties.

Much more so than a Bioware game anyway.

TSL said:

The writing in many cases was dope. I really did like the lore surrounding the cities and the NV world at large. For me, that made up a bit for the overall plot being dull.

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Yeah, the overall plot had a lot of weaknesses and suffered from being somewhat aimless for a long time, but the actual lore, world and dialogue was all excellent I thought. For me, and this is an opinion, the key to a good open world RPG is to have a well created and interesting world to mess around in... New Vegas achieved that for me. If it was a more linear or cinematic game like say Mass Effect then I would be more worried about the core narrative.

TSL said:

Exploration was good and I also love exploration. But I often didn't feel rewarded for doing so, so my motivation to do it was stifled a bit.

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Hmm. I find this idea a little strange, as it was completely the opposite to my experience.
The locations in the game often contain their own individual back stories and pursuing these to their conclusion usually brought the reward of a unique item or a stronger weapon of some kind. (Think of Vault 11 and the 'dungeony' Vault 38, which was a alot of fun to explore.)
Thus, I can only say that I felt very compelled to explore. But I guess this experience is relative to how and where exactly' one explores too.

One other point of disagreement is on Caesar's Legion. I definitely felt they were the weakest and least plausible faction when considering canon and well…they're Roman cosplayers. It's a general silliness that speaks for itself. There's a kind of demented (yet fun) lunacy about them as a faction which never sat quite right with me in terms of the overall plot plausibility.
I still enjoyed my Legion run through, but a slight disappointment was the balance of faction based quest content; it very much tended to favour the NCR.

I have to disagree with the good Doctor also on the label of NCR as 'good'. Perhaps yes, relatively speaking compared to the Legion, (which isn't too difficult!) but objectively? I don't think so. Too much overall corruption and stories of murder and abandonment (Bitter Springs for example) to see them so black and white.

The game was far superior overall as an experience for me tone and writing wise to Bethout, which really felt like an amusement park at times and was a disconnect from the wry black humour of Fallout 1/2. Perhaps I'm a tad biased though, as I have purchased all of Obsidian's games and have found something to enjoy about them all.

DoctorNarrative said:

Well that's one of the reasons a lot of people love The Witcher, because it was good at the more subtle and gray moral choices. You might not even realize you're allying yourself with crazy racist cultists until you do it! I thought Fallout: New Vegas was more heavy-handed yet also good at it. Sure, the Legion was evil and the NCR was good no matter what J.E. Sawyer says, but within that there were some nice subtleties.

Much more so than a Bioware game anyway.

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I desperately hope The new Witcher comes to 360. I've heard really good things about the previous title.

And yeah, I'd like to see more play in the grey areas of the choices versus decisions being so finite so quickly

DoctorNarrative said:

For me, and this is an opinion, the key to a good open world RPG is to have a well created and interesting world to mess around in…

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Could not have said it better myself. I think the enjoyment I was able to get from exploration is what helped me to put the extra hours into the game to flesh out the storylines.

Pessimeister said:

Hmm. I find this idea a little strange, as it was completely the opposite to my experience.
The locations in the game often contain their own individual back stories and pursuing these to their conclusion usually brought the reward of a unique item or a stronger weapon of some kind. (Think of Vault 11 and the 'dungeony' Vault 38, which was a alot of fun to explore.)
Thus, I can only say that I felt very compelled to explore. But I guess this experience is relative to how and where exactly' one explores too.

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True. I think the amount of work to travel in some cases just didn't add up to whatever that reward was. Exploration as a whole was not ruined for me or anything like that. It's the main reason I play games like Fallout. There were just times where I wish I could have felt like I got more out of doing so. And you are right about where to explore. I can honestly admit I did not see the whole world. I'm sure I missed some good stuff somewhere.

Pessimeister said:

One other point of disagreement is on Caesar's Legion. I definitely felt they were the weakest and least plausible faction when considering canon and well…they're Roman cosplayers. It's a general silliness that speaks for itself. There's a kind of demented (yet fun) lunacy about them as a faction which never sat quite right with me in terms of the overall plot plausibility.
I still enjoyed my Legion run through, but a slight disappointment was the balance of faction based quest content; it very much tended to favour the NCR.

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I can dig that. I think what I liked about the Legion was the comic relief and downright ridiculousness of grown men dressing up like people from centuries before and taking themselves seriously. lol

Pessimeister said:

The game was far superior overall as an experience for me tone and writing wise to Bethout, which really felt like an amusement park at times and was a disconnect from the wry black humour of Fallout 1/2. Perhaps I'm a tad biased though, as I have purchased all of Obsidian's games and have found something to enjoy about them all.

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I can definitely see where you are coming from.

TSL;1061050885 I can dig that. I think what I liked about the Legion [I said:

was[/I] the comic relief and downright ridiculousness of grown men dressing up like people from centuries before and taking themselves seriously. lol

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It's actually not even that. I like the legion anyway, since its still fairly well explained. Behind everything they do Cesar has a reason for. Completly ignoring that doesn't make it any better.

I actually have a little problem with how the legion is viewed as a comic relief. Moreso because they just aren't. For example their attitude towards women. Viewing them as nothing more than childbearing and housecleaning slaves was pretty much the standard of the world not even a millennia ago.

Also about the NCR. No, they aren't that good. I think its easier to explain another way. Go ask people in europe if the USA are viewed as the "good guys".

Ctera said:

I actually have a little problem with how the legion is viewed as a comic relief. Moreso because they just aren't. For example their attitude towards women. Viewing them as nothing more than childbearing and housecleaning slaves was pretty much the standard of the world not even a millennia ago.

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Hmmmm. Maybe it's the writing then. Their overdone bravado during dialog scenes made them corny to me, so i think that's why they came across as comedy in the game. In a real life situation, sure, what you said would absolutely be true.

But in the midst of all that, they were still the most entertaining to me. Along with the Ghouls and the Rocketship. lol

Some people just can't get over the whole Roman thing. It actually makes sense that a bright man would model a new empire after an old one that works, and symbols are powerful things in tribes and clans, but to a modern video game audience it's hard for some to get over the whole "har har they're dressed up like Romans" thing.

Personally I had no issue with it.