Fallout: New Vegas Preview

By Oli Welsh Published 4 May, 2010

Obsidian falls in.

Sometimes, in order to step up, you need to take a step back. Over the last couple of weeks, Bethesda Softworks has shown the world's gaming media what it thinks is the strongest line-up in its history, a line-up which announces its arrival as a publishing force to be reckoned with: Rage, the comeback game from new stable-mates id Software; a very different vision of the future of the FPS, Splash Damage's Brink; modern-day dungeon-crawling in inXile's Hunted; and of course, Fallout: New Vegas, the follow-up to 2008's smash hit Fallout 3.

But Bethesda, the developer, is absent from its own star parade. Helming New Vegas in its place is Obsidian Entertainment, a seasoned RPG understudy that's done stand-in duties for BioWare in the past (on Knights of the Old Republic II and Neverwinter Nights 2). There's a world of difference between BioWare's style and Bethesda's, and another leap again back to Obsidian's Black Isle roots. But if you were looking for a radically different take on Fallout from New Vegas, you'll be disappointed. Chances are, though, that you weren't, and you won't be.

Obsidian has slipped into Fallout 3's clothes as comfortably as it once assumed KOTOR's mantle. New Vegas is technically and mechanically almost identical to the older game. As he walks us through a demo, creative director Chris Avellone reveals a number of tweaks and additions to Fallout 3's character development, conversational storytelling and the crunchy, stop-start hyper-violence of its VATS-powered combat. But the engine is plainly unchanged and to all intents and purposes, the game looks just the same.

'Fallout: New Vegas' Screenshot 1

The draw distance is stupendous, and makes amends for the creaky animation and slightly rough detailing you'll remember from Fallout 3.

It doesn't feel quite the same, however. It's three years later. The Mojave desert, though still identifiably post-holocaust, is nowhere near as ruined or bleak as the Capital Wasteland. Buildings stand whole, there's a pale wash of blue in the sky, scrubby vegetation clings to the landscape and some warmth and colour have seeped back into the scene. Although he doesn't take us there, Avellone teases us with glimpses of the still-standing Las Vegas Strip dominated by the huge Stratosphere tower, McCarran airport in the foreground.

Where Fallout 3 had you emerging from the buried Vault into a hostile world like a visitor from another planet, New Vegas casts you as a surface survivor, a functioning member of some sort of society, and starts by surrounding you with a few friendly faces. You're a courier who's been left for dead by bandits, but a mysterious robot named Vic - displaying Vegas Vic, the city's cartoon cowboy mascot, on his chest - recovers your body and takes you to Doc Mitchell to bring you back to the land of the living.

A rapid character-creation process allows you a few more options - creating an older character, for example - and suggests the skills you might take according to your answers to the doctor's personality questionnaire and Rorschach test (you don't have to follow these suggestions, naturally). The skills, like the stats, are all familiar and include combat skills like explosives as well as social skills like bartering. A scavenged Vault jumpsuit and Pip-Boy personal interface ensure that you'll feel at home, and you're dispatched to the saloon of the village of Good Springs (like many of New Vegas' locations, a real place) to meet a female hunter called Sunny Smiles who'll walk you through the tutorial quests.

'Fallout: New Vegas' Screenshot 2

New Vegas takes Fallout's fifties futurism and adds a touch of the nineties. The 1890s.

It's at this point that you're offered a chance to play in New Vegas' new Hardcore mode for "veteran players". In Hardcore, healing from stim-packs only happens over time and cannot mend broken limbs, ammo has weight, and you'll need to drink regularly to stave off dehydration as you wander the wastes of the Mojave. If Hardcore proves too much for you you can revert to Normal at any time, but once you do that, you can't go back, and you won't get the special achievement for completing the game on Hardcore.

Appropriate to its location, New Vegas has a Wild West, frontiersman feel. Dust devils cross your path, an old prospector called Easy Pete rocks his chair on a porch, and Trudy, the down-home saloon-owner, wants help against the bounty hunter Joe Cobb and his gang who are holding the town to ransom. This is all after you go hunting for Geckos (one of many references to Fallout 2 Obsidian is folding into the game) to learn, or re-learn, your way around the real-time, first-person combat with optional tactical pauses via VATS.

The carefully-crafted prologue ensures there's a low-level weapon for every weapon skill in the area, and conversational options for all the possible powers of persuasion in the mission to defeat (or, of course, side with) Cobb's gang. It introduces you to the new special abilities unlocked with every melee weapon in the game - a nine-iron golf club comes with a destructive blow called "Fore!" - and New Vegas' biggest new element, a reputation system.

A new entry in the Pip-Boy gives you a perk for a particular location or faction if your reputation with a faction changes. Defeat Cobb and you earn "Accepted" with Good Springs - "folks have come to accept you for your helpful nature". Ultimately, this system plays into the game's principal narrative struggle between the New Californian Republic (NCR) militia, based at McCarran, and a group of slavers called Caesar's legion. If you know Vegas, you can probably guess where you'll find their HQ. Whichever you side with, the other will be your principal enemy in the game.

Other factions like the Brotherhood of Steel and the Super Mutants are around, naturally, and can be played against, for or even toyed with. Avellone shows us an assault on the stronghold of the Super Mutant Tabetha, a mentally unstable, hulking brute in a blonde bob wig and love-heart glasses. It's possible to pave the way to her death by turning two generations of mutants - the tough first generation and the "dum dums" from the military base in Fallout 2 - against each other, exploiting their paranoia in radio transmissions.

'Fallout: New Vegas' Screenshot 3

The companion wheel. Sounds like a kids' bicycle stabiliser. Isn't.

This mission is also an opportunity to show off the new interface for companions, which allows you to give them orders via a wheel system without needing to dip into dialogue. We're accompanied by a friendly, funny Latino ghoul named Raoul, who also serves to display the lighter touch of Obsidian's writers. Tabetha's head is blown clean off with his help - and also that of some ridiculous modified weapons, like a grenade machine-gun with an increased rate of fire (weapon mods from the PC modding community have been included in the game).

Our final excursion is to Helios 1, a Poseidon Energy power station occupied by the NCR. Reputation with that bloated, bureaucratic faction grants you access to the station's inner sanctum, where a surfer dude posing as a scientist, calling himself Fantastic, runs the plant at 1 per cent efficiency. Get past the pre-war security system and you could re-route the power anywhere you like: to McCarran to benefit the NCR, to Fremont to help out the local poor, evenly across the whole region... or to the plant's dormant defence system, an insanely powerful orbital laser. You can then command it at will anywhere in the environment: your own, private apocalypse.

'Fallout: New Vegas' Screenshot 4

Nukes are so passé.

Avellone uses it to turn on his NCR allies and decimate their troops. In doing so, he demonstrates Obsidian's gleeful embrace of the player freedom and destructive abandon that were the hallmarks of Bethesda's already legendary revival of Fallout. But there's also a richness, a texture here that really harks back to the original Interplay games - not surprising really, given Obsidian's own Interplay heritage.

That texture is evident, above all, in the warped Americana of the locations: the distant threat, promise and perverted glamour of the Strip; its humble echo in Primm, with its seedy casino entangled in a rollercoaster; a roadside motel community calling itself Novac after a broken No Vanacies sign, with a sniper nest housed in the mouth of a cheesy dinosaur statue; the lonely, bald rocks of Black Mountain surveying it all. New Vegas will give you a chance to unfold your own story somewhere that's at once real and unreal, familiar and utterly fantastical and strange. And that, surely, is what role-playing games are all about.

Fallout: New Vegas will be released for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in autumn 2010.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (63) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • tiredoldandy #1 2 years ago

    Want. Want want want.

  • viper_h #2 2 years ago

    Do not want.

    Didn't like Fallout 3. Good luck to this game though :)

  • KayJay #3 2 years ago

    Bloody hell. Mr Welsh has been a busy boy... :-)
    Kudos.

  • telboy007 #4 2 years ago

    Oh dear? Fallout 3 was great.

  • ChronoMizaki #5 2 years ago

    "Oh dear? Fallout 3 was great."

    'No Mutants Allowed' community would definitely disagree there. Anyway, looking forward to New Vegas, for the sheer fact it's more close to the first two games in terms of storytelling.
    Edited by 1 at 04/05/10 @ 15:12

  • Fixxxer #6 2 years ago

    As a hoarder I hate weight maximums in games so I'm pleased that the ammo weight is optional. Though I suspect this won't stop me going on another 30 minute slow walk to the nearest shop with about 100 tonnes of valuable armour.

  • mungolikebeans #7 2 years ago

    Colour me pre-ordered.

  • feistycheese #8 2 years ago

    Bollox!! There goes another few months of my life.

    And Im supposed to be working hard and saving for a house with my girlfriend . . .

    Hmmm, fuck the house and the GF, Obsidian wins hands down . . .

  • Rob_B #9 2 years ago

    No a dramatic change from F3 then but as a fan that’s no bad thing. I've played F3 to death recently so a new way to waste 70hours of my life is always welcome :D
    What's with the 'Claptrap on steroids' enemies though?!

    Do we have any idea of a firmer date yet?
    Edited by 1 at 04/05/10 @ 15:35

  • mowgli #10 2 years ago

    How much do I want that dinosaur to be real. :(

  • Kanjin #11 2 years ago

    Really looking forward to this. I loved Fallout 3 and this looks like Obsidian are doing well. Also this time no stupid LA breathing down their necks to bring it out 'before Christmas', uncompleted. This should be the sequel The Sith Lords never got a chance to be.

  • Gambit1977 #12 2 years ago

    Hve they changed the conversations? It's the one thing I hate about bethesda's games. Yuck!

  • M4RV #13 2 years ago

    One more chance for those guys to ruin the Fallout universe... I still love the originals, but for the love of God, I can't bring myself to finish Fallout 3, which I own since November 2008; Ohhh well... :'(

  • mcmonkeyplc #14 2 years ago

    This and Reach?! Guess I'm not going out this winter.

  • thewool #15 2 years ago

    Sounds excellent, got really excited reading that, PC preorder is in.

    Just hope they fix the multi-GPU 'flickering sky' issue that bugged Fallout 3...
    Edited by 1 at 04/05/10 @ 15:56

  • andromeda #16 2 years ago

    The engine looks so dated already. ID's Rage shits on this in the looks dept.

  • SalarymanDaishi #17 2 years ago

    Oh, yeah! Want want want as long as it's stable. Fallout 3 (on PS3) was most brilliant but if New Vegas simply recycles that same game engine, it's going to be fun for ~20 hours until the game has picked up enough trash on the way to start frequently crashing, bringing down the entertainment value by... Umm... A lot.

  • Rob_B #18 2 years ago

    God yeah I hope it's less buggy than F3 (PS3) - crashes/stutters constantly, at least it encourages me to go to bed when its 1AM & I should have gone hours ago!

  • darkmorgado #19 2 years ago

    Playing this the day it comes out, on hardcore mode.

    Fallout 3 just wasn't challenging enough. Still loved it though - I got every achievement (and add-on packs). I think my save file sits at around 230 hours.

  • wonton #20 2 years ago

    Jesus, 4 previews in a row. Oli's been pretty damn busy recently.

  • Metalfish #21 2 years ago

    I think I'm rather more ready for another elder scrolls game.

    I've spent ~100 hours in fallout 3 and I loved it and all the expansions that I played. I still think anyone who plays a Bethesda game on a console is mad though -how do you not go mad without noclip and the like for when you inevitably get stuck inside the floor or a quest item goes walkies?

    I think if the devs were reading these comments I'd offer the following advice: a) the bobbleheads were cool but offered such huge bonuses that whenever you started a new character you were somewhat compelled to make a beeline for them, a change of some sort might be an idea b) make lockpicking and hacking not crap c) no super-overpowered perks until the end of the game d) no useless ones either e) same goes for skills, esp ones pertaining to non-combat f) no more uniformly ugly ass characters with poor writing and bad acting (some was actually pretty good though).

    /Moan over

  • telboy007 #22 2 years ago

    Agree about the bobbleheads, no need to make us explore every nook and cranny - we'll do that anyway!

  • OverTheHill #23 2 years ago

    I put about 560 hours into fallout 3. I loved he original 2, but I must say, Fallout 3 was the best game I've ever played. Ever. This I guess will be no different, preordered

  • Scimarad #24 2 years ago

    Sounds great! Let's hope they finish it before releasing it...

  • Soton4084 #25 2 years ago

    I'm definately looking forward to this, but I really do hope that it isn't buggy! I was unable to complete several of the DLC add ons in the GOTY edition due to the game constantly crashing.

  • TeaFiend #26 2 years ago

    And there goes another hundred hours of life. At least it is out in winter.

  • seasidebaz #27 2 years ago

    Grenade machine guns are real and not at all ridiculous. I saw one in a magazine earlier today.

  • glaeken #28 2 years ago

    Yeah I am also wondering if it might be too similar to the last game. I played Fall Out 3 to death so this might not be fresh enough for me. Have to wait and see I guess.

  • GamesConnoisseur #29 2 years ago

    Avellone guy did Planescape Torment, that level of writings within the game and RPG being so central with conversations. I have much more hope that this is not just going to be another episode of Fallout 3! Rather a subtle new approach which gamers reconfigure to play more through interactions with npcs and where choices matters more.

  • TRUTH #30 2 years ago

    Though I enjoyed Fallout 3; I think this game will be just to similar. The setting looks to similar, the color too, the game mechanics too similar, the characters look and behave the same etc etc.. After Oblivion, Fallout 3 - this game is becoming a seen it-done-it's getting a bit boring now!

    Something new esp with the looks and element of surprise is needed now.
    Edited by 1 at 04/05/10 @ 18:06

  • Zephro #31 2 years ago

    "Obsidian has slipped into Fallout 3's clothes as comfortably as it once assumed KOTOR's mantle. New Vegas is technically and mechanically almost identical to the older game."

    Oh cock! I wanted something like a Black Isle game. It seems like no one will make anything quite like them ever again nowadays.

  • Chazmeister #32 2 years ago

    Hardcore mode all the way for me baby!

  • darc #33 2 years ago

    Bethesda is taking over the world, and that's fine by me. :)

    Crazy spoiler-rich preview though. Reads like half the script.

  • PearOfAnguish #34 2 years ago

    In one of the early previews they mentioned the option to choose your origins, changing the first few hours of the game. One of the origins mentioned was a zombified Chinese soldier who had been trapped in a cave since the war. Guess that's all been dropped now?

  • trip919 #35 2 years ago

    It's sounding good. Gamers are being spoilt this year with too many great releases.

  • Death-Jester #36 2 years ago

    "I still think anyone who plays a Bethesda game on a console is mad though -how do you not go mad without noclip and the like for when you inevitably get stuck inside the floor or a quest item goes walkies? "

    Not to mention no way of getting community mods, unofficial patches, and addons that match - and sometimes even eclipse - the official ones!

  • TheBrow #37 2 years ago

    Sounds great! Obsidion are great story tellers too, if they can just be a little less buggy / glitchy this time around.

    I REALLY love the sound of the hardcore mode too; the early part of F3 brought a nice sense of danger to it which disappeared after a while as your character's stats and equipment got better and better. I will certainly give the hardcore mode a go, but I fear I might not have the skillz for it - if not then I play it like I played F3. Which I loved anyway. It's all good! :D

  • thewool #38 2 years ago

    Love the PC's extended GNR mod - hundreds of oldies in the same vein as the standard GNR.

    Music to ace headshots by....

  • George-Roper #39 2 years ago

    Hmmm, i'm a huge fan of Fallout 3 but this is leaving me feeling very cold.

    It just looks so...bland.

  • TRUTH #40 2 years ago

    This really needs a graphical overhaul...just looking dated and bland.

  • Widge #41 2 years ago

    Hardcore mode sounds like it could make the game

  • Murton #42 2 years ago

    Would also like to echo the need for a stable PS3 release this time round. After the excellent work from 4J on the Oblivion port it was a disastrous disappointment to see Bethesda not only fuck up royally on their PS3 version, but not even care enough to acknowledges that there were even issues on the platform. It's amazing it even passed cert to be honest, it was that broken.

    Hopefully when the review code goes out someone will have the balls to review it properly and honestly and tell us whether or not the game is actually playable before we go out in droves to buy it and find that it is not.

  • djed #43 2 years ago

    creaky animation

    Does this mean the scripting is still shit, or that the PC floats jesus-like whenever you command a strafe?

    Watching all the students ending up in a great giant clusterfuck just trying to hand in their G.O.A.T exams while I was ping-ponging between the desks was for me what you'd call immersion breaking...

  • Bulbatron #44 2 years ago

    This sounds good. Really enjoyed Fallout 3. I'd have enjoyed it even more without the bugs.

  • Whitster #45 2 years ago

    I sware I must be the only person who got through all of F3 with no glitching, I know a friend who couldn't complete it due to the final character you have to talk to not recognising that he had killed all the enemys in the room, this was after around 90 hrs of play as well, hilarious.

  • Pastici #46 2 years ago

    I'm sure some people didn't read that it feels different and looked at the screens and right away claimed it'smore of the same!

  • Miths #47 2 years ago

    @Murton

    I played the PS3 version of F3 for close to 60 hours right after launch, and I recall preciously few problems - neither in terms of serious bugs, nor, as far as I can recall, system lockups/crashes.

    In fact I seem to remember having more problems (still not many though) with the PC version when I played that several months, and patches, later. It certainly looked a bit better though - especially with some high res texture mods installed - but that's hardly surprising.

    Both versions had atrocious character animation though, but that just seems to be a rather unfortunate Bethesda trademark (and one that's probably being passed on now with this game engine). You would think they should be able to afford hiring competent animators.

    Anyway, I'm definitely looking to New Vegas.

    Edit: I do remember one rather serious F3 bug. I was unable to continue with or after the GOAT test, but I believe that was fixed with a reload or two. And I think I might have had that problem with the PC, not the PS3 version.
    Edited by 1 at 05/05/10 @ 03:09

  • SirScratchalot #48 2 years ago

    Just the fact that there seems to be much more personality outside of the main story makes me jump with joy. Want indeed.

  • Flying_Pig #49 2 years ago

    Loved FO3.

    This is on the top of my Most Wanted™ list.

  • metalangel #50 2 years ago

    He's hoping the dialogue has been further improved. It'll never be Mass Effect but so long as it's not Oblivion... I'm the world's biggest Fallout fan (perhaps) and one of the key things about the series was the excellent conversations.

    Pleasing that some elements of the original cancelled Fallout 3 (Van Buren) have made it in. Less pleasing that the supermutants here look like the ones out east.

    Hardcore mode ftw, definitely looking forward to that. The early stages of FO3 were quite challenging and thrilling, as you were wearing crappy armour, had crappy weapons and not much money, and getting lost in the DC ruins and being thrilled to find a trader or a fire hydrant or something (a bed was like hitting the jackpot) to replenish your health. However, soon you were in power armour and just shrugged all that off, food and water was just used in place of stimpaks, what was the point?

    Oh, and weren't there supposed to be vehicles in this? As was pointed out waaaay back when the first game was released, are we really to believe that no car mechanics survived the war? Given there's plenty of power sources, working robots, etc etc, nobody's decided they've had enough of walking everywhere and started repairing the cars?

  • chrisola #51 2 years ago

    need a firm date so i can book the time off work for it!

    I hope with it being in Vegas that they include some MMA \ boxing side challenges like in Fallout 2.

    When I played through F3 and i had 1 freeze which i put down to my 360 overheating after 13hrs straight...man i get addicted big time to this series of games!

  • geeza2020 #52 2 years ago

    i loved fallout 3 to bits, but this does look ridiculously similar. Almost like DLC. I will probably buy it, but unless it is astonishingly good, will have to wait for it to drop in price a little.

  • Talbot #53 2 years ago

    Despite not liking Las Vegas as a game location... at all, I'm certain I will enjoy this with every cell in my brain regardless.

  • TRUTH #54 2 years ago

    The more I look into this game - it looks like a quick remake and touch up...Graphically looking the same, animations the same, speech is the same, textures are the same, most characters look or are very similar feel the same, weapons are generally the same, story might have changed but it's game mechanics are the same... etc etc.

    They have just added simplistic ideas as with SW:KOTR and called a sequel.

    Instead of producing a proper new Fallout; they providing a sequel with a different story + added small additions and re-selling the same game...I do hope I'm wrong, but it looks more & more that I'm not!

  • metalangel #55 2 years ago

    Guys, bitch all you want about it being "the same old engine" but remember history. The original Fallout had a dated engine, and Fallout 2 reused it with just a few tweaks. The original Fallout knocked all our socks off, yet the sequel provided so, SO much more to see and do.

  • chrisola #56 2 years ago

    "Instead of producing a proper new Fallout; they providing a sequel with a different story + added small additions"

    So by that logic, you would never ever play a sequel to ANY game unless it was completely different? So you won't be getting Halo:Reach unless it's a racing sim and you didn't buy a Forza sequel or any God of War game after the 1st because they weren't music games or a dating simulator :p

    Seriously it's a 'spin off' and not a full sequel.. i get that people may have been hoping for a new engine or something, but it's Fallout. It will be another story in it's post apocalyptic world and stories make the games. Small refinements to existing game engine plus LOTS of effort into the story is what these games need. Fair enough if it comes out and it's like an expansion pack or the story is complete shite.

    To be honest, i hope for the next one that they go back to the isometric view and make an hugely epic game to end all games, we'd have then had 2 full isometric RPG's and 2 FPS ones. I'd imagine that talented artists could make a brilliantly realised HD game in that style.
    Edited by 1 at 05/05/10 @ 21:01

  • metalangel #57 2 years ago

    @chrisola: yup. The same folks had better not have enjoyed Vice City or San Andreas. Or any FIFA games. etc etc etc

    By all means you don't have to get raving excited about every new game that's talked about here, but at least have some GENUINE reasons to be negative!

  • Murton #58 2 years ago

    @ Miths: you would seem to be in the very fortunate minority. The staggering majority of people I have encountered who own the game on the PS3 suffer regular hangs and deadstates after about 15 hours with them increasing in frequency the longer you play.

    The frame rate on the PS3 version is also dreadful, it's below 30 for the vast majority of the game and can drop as low as single figures during combat. I seriously hope that Obsidian did what Bethesda could not, or would not, and actually optimise the engine a little for the PS3.

  • Zebula77 #59 2 years ago

    Had my fair share of bugs and glitches on the PS3 version, but none were game-breaking. They consisted mostly of characters getting stuck in walls or going through them, body parts floating around, corpses twitching madly (kinda cool, actually!) and this one guy I shot with a sniper rifle who ended up flying out of the map (which sucked, cos I wanted his shotgun).

    I've had a few serious bugs with the GOTY edition however. Got stuck in the terrain and had to load up an old savegame.

    Really hope this one'll be way smoother. Gonna buy it either way. :p

  • viper_h #60 2 years ago

    Wheee. Neg 53 just for saying I didn't like FO3. Dumb fanboys.

  • steveb07 #61 2 years ago

    I played Fallout 3 for weeks on end loved every minute. Got all 1550 achievement points as well!
    New Vagas I'm already looking forward to, more of the same is no problem with me.

  • Psihomodo #62 2 years ago

    Hehe, "Novac" in croatian means "Money"...

    How ironical XD
    Edited by 1 at 13/05/10 @ 01:33

  • mirrorcelcius #63 1 year ago

    the entire game is a mistake, the map is BIG, but it is nothing to see. i don't want to talk about the BUG. this is human MAde. i accept it. but the concept and art that really bothering me. i am not asking the same with fallout 3. where is megaton, rivet city, oasis, dc ruins, capitol building, monument and other significant artwork ? in NV what do they have ? few shacks , hills, rock, dry lake, couple gas station, and what's up with strip ? oh ya hoover dam. and what else ? hmm..couple caves maybe ?. and what's up with Caesar and Khans in here ? look at their uniform ? my god. where is the unique feel of apocalyptic world that FO 3 has ?
    Edited by 2 at 12/11/10 @ 06:16