It’s really amazing how much of a difference this one little adjustment makes. New Vegas, which is often criticized for its outdated graphics, suddenly became visually spectacular. It was truly a sight for sore eyes; nearly every frame of gameplay was visually elegant and vivid enough to look more like a painted landscape than a conventional video game—it was a revealing observation that the visual design of the game was doing something right this whole time that the HUD was clearly interfering with.
On top of that, it became infinitely more interesting to play. Without the HUD effortlessly labeling almost everything in the game world, every little gameplay decision became a more interesting endeavor. Would picking a bottle of Nuka-Cola off an unoccupied table be considered stealing? Was that lone, armored warrior in the distance a hostile raider or another friendly guard? I would have to approach them and find out. Without the exhaustive on-screen warnings that the Fallout interface provides, I had to make these judgments myself, planning carefully all along the way about the potential consequences. Without dialogue subtitles, I now had to look characters in the face and listen carefully. Navigating the desert without a compass involved noting the position of the sun against nearby landmarks (the glowing Lucky 38 tower became surprisingly helpful for this purpose.) Underground caves and vaults became terrifying labyrinths without the help of a map marker always pointing me towards an exit.
