That, in itself, is meaningful enough for me. Whatever meaning was to be assigned was for me to assign. He was there whether he meant something or not and whatever meaning was intended was so veiled it may as well have been a quark, or Darth Vader in the cave.
Was he some courier like me who’d bee killed, then dumped into a fridge? Was he a joke left there by the game’s developers in a nod to the horrible MacGuffin from the even more horrible Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull like the fossils of dinosaurs left in the earth by a trickster Christian god? It didn’t matter. I could have imprinted many a lesson onto this encounter, written my own story behind this man’s fate, but whatever meaning I assigned would be my own. The game is in turns poignant, funny and desperate, and just enough of each so that all can be observed. Even your own story, that of a hapless courier shot and left for dead for the trinket he was carrying, is tinged with multiple layers of interpretation. In still another, the diary of a man who’s lost everything, even the will to live. In another, a mutant driven to insanity by the thoughts of cows. In one corner of the map you may find a regiment of NCR rangers slowly turning to ghouls from overexposure to radiation although they don’t know it. Step after step and encounter after encounter, the Mojave Wasteland astounds with its understated charm. I was afraid New Vegas, by contrast, with the injection of a vibrant sense of dark humor and awash with more colors than brown, would be hokey. Fallout 3 was many things – some good, some bad – but it was never hokey. The humor was what put me off, to be honest. New Vegas, by contrast, seems content to let the misery of a post-nuclear wasteland speak for itself, and focus instead on the dark humor that makes living in that world interesting in and of itself aside from the archeological fun of seeing familiar places as they would look post-apocalypse. Gone is the dreary stodginess of Fallout 3, in which even the rare bit of humor added to the overall sense of doom. This is as evident in the overt quirkiness of Novac’s gigantic Dinky the Dinosaur as it is in the subtle touches that grace practically every element of the game. What will hit you in the face like a ton of bricks as soon as you start playing New Vegas is the fact that this game has a sense of humor. You won’t feel this after only a few hours. Yet, even if you do nothing more than simply follow the main story, you will still explore a generous chunk of the wasteland, which makes the smaller side missions and random encounters feel more like gems in the rough that enhance your play when encountered, rather than missed opportunities you have to seek out. You will need to be wary of your surroundings and cognizant of your abilities. You cannot, for example, trudge through the wasteland willy nilly without encountering some severe obstructions, whether those obstructions are impassable mountains or unbeatable creatures. What makes New Vegas satisfying is not how much choice it gives you as the player, but how much it limits you. You can barrel through this land on your own personal quest or you can take sides (any side) and make the Mojave Wasteland a better – or different – place. You will meet many people in your travels who will call upon you for help, but whether you come to their aid or not is up to you. You will travel to blown-out Western towns like Novac, built around a motel and a dinosaur tourist attraction, and Nelson, a town being overrun by Caesar’s Legion. You will also meet Caesar’s Legion, a slave army led by Caesar, a would-be warlord king.Īs you search for the man who done you wrong, these two great forces (and others) will wage battle for control of the Mojave and the still-functioning Hoover Dam, arguably the most important piece of real estate in the world. You will encounter The New California Republic, who, having tamed California, have carried their humanist spirit east into the Mojave Desert. The colors are brighter, the mood lighter, but this is Fallout as you’ve always known it – perhaps better. In New Vegas, as befitting a game set in the City of Sin, your objective is revenge.Īlong the way, however, you will explore a wasteland as rich and varied as that of any other Fallout game.
Nothing so lofty as saving (or ending) the lives of all of the residents of the Capital Wasteland, or finding a water chip your family needs to survive. In Fallout: New Vegas, you will play as a courier who’s been shot and left for dead.