Dhruin
SasqWatch
Edge Online's "Still Playing" column turns their attention to Fallout: New Vegas, explaining the allure the game still holds:
More information.I’m always averse to finishing stories in games when the world you’re presented with is far more enticing than any tale playing out within it. A lot of this is down to my lack of enthusiasm for vanquishing evil forever and ever until a sequel appears, and my inability to suspend disbelief when narrative events allow me to single-handedly decide the fate of entire societies locked in endless, self-sustaining wars. Personally, I’m much happier finding my own path to zen by wandering a game’s geography and exploring the limits of its mechanics.
Fallout: New Vegas is about as perfect an example of this sort of game as you could hope to find. I’m still playing it precisely because I refused to take a role in its prescribed endgame, where the gritty world unfurls a host of gritty decisions to make over which gritty faction gets control. Having been through Fallout 3’s cartoony wrap-ups, I don’t think there’s going to be a satisfactory tying up of the game’s narrative strands. Some might say that choosing the most palatable conclusion from a bad bunch is the point of New Vegas, but having spoiled all the endings for myself (to no overall loss of satisfaction), I decided to define my own endgame by taking to the wasteland as an agent of justice, creating an endless, noble quest of subsistence that'll last as long as my actual, natural life.