Fallout: New Vegas - Why It Felt Incomplete

Flaming Mac blog writer Emilio argues Fallout: New Vegas missed the mark by not embracing the same "Fallout archetype" with the protagonist. Here's an excerpt that encapsulates the point:

The first three major Fallout games follow a narrative that is the core of their immersion and satisfaction. This satisfaction transcends the weapons and action, the joys of “Bloody Mess”, the celebrity voices (Wayne freakin’ Newton!), and even the massive and detailed game world: there is an emotional involvement built on the player character’s background and decision making opportunities.
The essential element for this emotional involvement is a player character (PC) that is initially isolated from the wasteland and naive about its nature. The PC starts in a protected community with the support of family and friends, a familiar environment, and plentiful food and water. There may be tension and trials at home, but everyone knows their life is privileged compared to the wasteland outside.
This safe, stable home is then threatened with crisis: a dwindling water supply in Vault 13, a drought in Arroyo, and political instability in Vault 101. At the command of an authority, the PC must then leave this place – leave Eden – to face an unknown world alone with nothing but a small amount of equipment and resources.

Click to expand...

More information.

The game was too short and the game world was much smaller than the map seemed to make it look like, until you started reaching the edges of the actual play area. I'm tired of short games.

I didn't find it short, imo it lacked details contrary to what they say, and it lacked substence when taking certain approaches, which aren't so many .
I never finished it, first time got around to mr house, second i said, I'm gonna go to Caesar, he sounds like an interesting figure. Bull crap, so many stupid quests, just placed there to fill up space, too much fighting also
that sneak skill is f* worthless early on
that's why i don't like open world games , true open world, because they haavent got the resources to make something good . everything seems like a filler

Except Star Wars Galaxies which is a MMORPG, I have never in my 27 years of gaming history played a game longer than Fallout New Vegas while still discovering new stuff. It's probably the largest RPG I played.

Sorry, but if you feel the game is incomplete or short, the problem is your head.

120 hours+ for me, still going. Quite possibly my favourite modern RPG (depending on my mood) - brilliant game.

Yeah, it seems weird to claim that the game is too short. On the hardcore mode, which of course is the preferred option to old school RPG gamers due to its increased realism, it will take 100+ hours to do the main quest and side quests. And the side quests are story-driven with a lot of unique content, instead of being just "collect 10 wolf pelts" style missions.

My problem with the New Vegas was that I felt the visuals and map designs are kinda dull looking, and many of the monsters feel more cartoony than scary. Still, it's a really impressive game on many levels.

And yes, the main quest is a not very emotionally involving. But the wealth of sidequests, including some really big ones, makes up for it.

I've spent maybe 50 hours total in the game, based on 2-3 tries to get into it. I got to New Vegas at one point.

I think it was very dreary and bland, but it did represent an improvement over Fallout 3 in terms of the mechanics (Hardcore mode specifically) and the writing. The mechanics can be fixed in FO3 with mods - so we're left with better writing. However, as good as the writing might be - the actual plot/story/NPCs were dreadfully uninteresting and didn't serve to motivate me in the least. FO3 did this better - to me, believe it or not.

NV is also a lot more clunky and buggy, and I found the atmosphere VERY inferior to Fallout 3. That's probably down to taste, but I just couldn't get excited over it. There was literally nothing in that world I wanted to "see" EXCEPT for New Vegas. I'm not really sure why, and it could be that I was just tired of the formula as a whole after playing Fallout 3.

But, to me, it's as clunky and "visually/technically amateur" as all other Obsidian games.

Also a wonderful game for me. I really can't wait until the compilation DLC package is released so that I can play it all over again and rediscover its joys.
Over the course of three playthroughs already from last summer, I must have invested a good 160 hrs +.

I think it's superior to F3 in almost all conceivable ways to be honest. One of the greats for me.

If I were to direct a criticism on the topic of 'incompletion', I would probably point out that the quest content in vanilla NV does lean in favour of the NCR a little.
I wonder if someone has attempted to address this in any mods? Alot of the flavour and visual mods don't particularly interest me, but I would certainly be interested in a big quest oriented mod that would expand the interactive stories of the other factions.

I do agree with the lack emotional involvement and I my biggest issue with the game is the lack of motivation.

After I was done with Benny I didn't feel I was given any other reason to keep going on.
(And, actually, even before that… choosing to go after a guy who wants you dead and in fact thinks you are dead… could need some explanation as to why - I wouldn't have done it!)

But towards the end I found myself following orders by the NCR (literally following orders) without having given any reason (other than to continue playing the game). I found myself accepting what seemed to be suicide missions without having given any reason to be so loyal towards them, and in fact, I found myself ignoring all these orders in favor of a different, non-bloody, diplomatic approach, which nonetheless should have proven that my loyalties were at best ambiguous. - for example when they send me to annihilate the Brotherhood of Steel and instead I join them and help them with their problems.

At the end they ask me to go into the very heart of the enemy's army almost by myself. It was expected of course, but why should I? They have an army full of soldiers and even some elite ones …and I wasn't one of them. Did I owe them anything?

I suppose it's a problem that may appear when you try to keep your choices gray and ambiguous. I ended up feeling that there needed to be a choice to not get involved and just sit back and observe, but that's because the game never made it personal.

I really liked the game almost all the way through but I felt it fell apart when neither I nor my chosen faction seemed to have any motivation to keep working with each other.

It's one of the best RPGs I've played in years.

skavenhorde said:

It's one of the best RPGs I've played in years.

Click to expand...

Agreed but you cant deny the game doesn't have problems. After all the patches I still get the usual ctds just like fallout 3. Then again they used the Gamebryo Game Engine so that explains it.

I shouldn't have to use mods and in edits just to make the game work.

holeraw said:

I suppose it's a problem that may appear when you try to keep your choices gray and ambiguous. I ended up feeling that there needed to be a choice to not get involved and just sit back and observe, but that's because the game never made it personal.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that really bugged me. The only way to avoid siding with someone was to decide "You know what, I'll be in charge.".

I had no interest in taking over the area, but I didn't care at all about any of the other options. My entire contact with the Legion consisted of me shooting them in the head, the individuals from NCR were alright at times but seemed to have a very "join us or else" mentality behind their actions and House came across as a nutter.

Dhruin said:

120 hours+ for me, still going. Quite possibly my favourite modern RPG (depending on my mood) - brilliant game.

Click to expand...

Yep, I agree. I invested a *lot* of time in FNV.

I gave up finishing fallout3 and I wanst even halfway through. My main reason for boredom was that most explorable places offered nothing but combat encounters.

After I modded Fallout 3 to be harder and more realistic, it ended up being one of the most immersive games I had played in a long time. I think I logged around 200 hours in the main game + DLCs.

I'm still waiting for all the DLC to be released before starting FO:NV. I'm hoping my experience with that game is as good as it was with FO3.

I loved both Fallout 3 and FNV. FNV had better writing, but I enjoyed the locations much better in FO3. It's hard to beat the Capitol Wasteland. I've logged over 200 hours in each game. I'm approaching 150 hours in Deus Ex on my 2nd complete playthrough. In the case of Deus Ex, I'm really just waiting for Frayed Knights to come out and I'll put it on the shelf.

Comparing the two, FNV provided more content than F3. Content means more quests, more stuff in each area, more unique items, more peculiar secrets to uncover etc. But FNV also usually gave you at least two ways to complete a quest rather than one.

Bethesda's recent games (Oblivion/F3) usually felt like a themepark ride for me. You go to the next waypoint and you experience it's questline. FNV give you more decisions within the first few hours than the entire F3 game.

But it's ofcourse this complexity that introduces bugs.

F:NV is a very long game - took me 100h to complete the main quest (one of the endings of course) and without finishing all side quests. In addition to the strong story, F:NV gives you options and consequences so that you can approach things as you please with interesting outcomes. Moreover, with a different character build you have a huge replay value. Excellent and very enjoyable experience. Will be creating a new character for my next journey (on Hardcore)!

I think it's an excellent game, really one of the better games in my recent memory and one of the only completely open world sandbox games with decent writing and a significant amount of C&C. It's basically a Bethesda game if they could write worth a damn and actually made the player's choice's matter, which is a good thing.

I find it amusing that this article lumps Bethesda Fallout with the first two games while this one, which was worked on by some of the people who actually made the first two games, was set apart.

tuukka said:

My problem with the New Vegas was that I felt the visuals and map designs are kinda dull looking…

Click to expand...

DArtagnan said:

I think it was very dreary and bland…and I found the atmosphere VERY inferior to Fallout 3. That's probably down to taste, but I just couldn't get excited over it. There was literally nothing in that world I wanted to "see" EXCEPT for New Vegas.

Click to expand...

It's the American Southwest so it's supposed to be dreary. Maybe you Scandavian types just don't appreciate the desert setting.

I suddenly have this mental image of two Nords stuck in Elsweyr (Khajiit land) complaining that there is nothing but sand.

FNV was way more complete, longer and more detailed than F3, so if this guy thinks otherwise, perhaps there's something wrong with him. FNV is huge, with a lot of detail and a hell of a lot of things to do. It also has a lot of flaws: a crappy engine, ugly graphics and a lot of bugs. But it's neither short nor incomplete.