Why Fallout New Vegas is the high point of the franchise

Tehe yout lil comment at the bottom.
He did miss a lot of details; bitter spring being filled with women, children and their elders, the Mojave ranger - NCR ranger issue, some positives in the Legion, etcetera.
And he kinda defined why the "americana" is inherent in Fallout.

The Cuba war description though. Americans were in a neutral position with the Spanish government, but were supporting the rebellion, in the same way they did with the URSS satellite nations.
They failed when deploying marines and allied cuban agents, making a massacre of their own men.
And about the battleship sabotage, it's pretty obvious that it was the excuse to intervent publically, it doesn't matter who did it (although it's mostly confirmed that the rebels did it, in a clash with the US having high demands.
 
Arnust said:
Tehe yout lil comment at the bottom.
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:ok: I noticed there was only one other comment. As someone who's written articles I know it's always nice to get the occasional positive response.

On the article itself, I'm sure we can nitpick little details here and there about the history or details in the game itself, but my point in my comment about him "getting it" is that Fallout, especially New Vegas, is a western (taking pointers from Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns alike) and that it's nice to see a critic actually take notice rather than just compare it to the Bethesda games. Fallout New Vegas is a game with a story that should be taken on its own terms.

There's just so much to discuss with Vegas (and the previous games) it's staggering. Westerns, The Frontier, the Spaghetti Western-style stories of vengeance and redemption, the science fiction messages, the political intrigue and conspiracy, and all its other themes. I hope that with this analysis we might see more like it.
 
Someone else on here said it best:

I can't believe Joshua Graham and Preston Gravy are supposed to live in the same Fallout universe.

New Vegas didn't have to be the high point, but Bethesda's writers are the worst in the entire industry and decided "Another settlement needs our help" and "WHAR SHAUN WHAR WHARRRGARBLE!" and "YES NO MAYBE SARCASTIC" was good writing. New Vegas was completed in less than 2 years, it took Bethesda 7 years to diarrhea out the Fallout 4 "story" and "characters" if you can even call them that.
 
Is it fair to compare Garvey to Graham? I get that he's a terrible character but he doesn't have quite the same story or build-up as Graham does.
 
Earth said:
Is it fair to compare Garvey to Graham? I get that he's a terrible character but he doesn't have quite the same story or build-up as Graham does.
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That's kind of th entire point of comparing the two. No character in Fallout 4 has the same story or build up as the characters in New Vegas.

Old Lady Gibson has more character development than Elder Maxson and she's barely of any relevance in New Vegas whereas Maxson is the leader of a major faction.
 
Earth said:
Is it fair to compare Garvey to Graham? I get that he's a terrible character but he doesn't have quite the same story or build-up as Graham does.
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Comparing "equal" characters (with the similar role in the story) shows the same result. Think of Benny and Kellog. Maxson and McNamara. Danse and Veronica/Boone. Hancock and Raul. Curie and Arcade. Looong etcetera.
 
I have no idea which character you're comparing with Joshua and others from NV, but I will say this - that article is brilliant. I have read before some similar analysis which compared NCR and Legion with Afghanistan, as well as situation in Syria, but this one goes really in-depth.

Thanks to @Earth for sharing it.
 
For me, Fallout New Vegas fails to be the best Fallout game simply because of its gameplay. Storywise, it's brilliant, though very rough on certain edges.

Fallout 1 is still supreme for me, even though NV is the "deepest" game.
 
I really liked this part of the article:

Think about it; even if you’re as young as 20 or 25, how many doomsday predictions have you already lived through? Y2K. 2012. The solar flare panic. Why is Western culture so obsessed with the end? The truth, sadly, is that it’s easier. It is easier to hope for things to be wiped clean than to look at the problems faced by our planet today and to fix them. That’s New Vegas’ genius.

Even after the world ends, humans have to take responsibility for their actions and for their history. Fallout is at its best when it looks behind, not forward. Just like the mysterious courier who waits for you in the Divide, at the end of the Lonesome Road DLC, New Vegas asks of its players: "Who are you, that do not know your history?"
 
Prone Squanderer said:
I really liked this part of the article:

Even after the world ends, humans have to take responsibility for their actions and for their history. Fallout is at its best when it looks behind, not forward. Just like the mysterious courier who waits for you in the Divide, at the end of the Lonesome Road DLC, New Vegas asks of its players: "Who are you, that do not know your history?"
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Added: Just not that behind, in such a way your neck twists and it's impossible to move it again.
 
Atomkilla said:
I have no idea which character you're comparing with Joshua and others from NV, but I will say this - that article is brilliant. I have read before some similar analysis which compared NCR and Legion with Afghanistan, as well as situation in Syria, but this one goes really in-depth.

Thanks to @Earth for sharing it.
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I'm just shocked it exists, it's such a recent article. Maybe New Vegas will actually get some real cult status amongst video gaming, and I don't mean in the sense that it will be a fun game loved amongst just Fallout and RPG fans. I mean critically.

Quick history lesson: The Wicker Man was filmed in 1973. The producers hated it. They thought it was weird and unmarketable. Because they didn't know how to sell it they slashed and edited it. Changed it to be a marketable "B horror" movie, then sold it to British and American markets where it was quickly forgotten by everyone but the people who made it and the few people who saw it. Then suddenly, four years later, an American article was written about it, describing it as the "the Citizen Kane of horror movies." Suddenly renewed interest appeared. The original people behind it looked to repair the film and rerelease it. In 1979 they were able to put together a more complete version, which was released to critical acclaim. Voila! We now have a critically acclaimed cult classic on our hands. One that appears in the "1001 Movies to see before you die" books. My point is, there may be hope for New Vegas yet.

Agreed with you on Fallout being a better game than Vegas, but to be honest the two are very different beasts. Fallout is a science-fiction gothic horror story. New Vegas is a post-apocalyptic western. If it weren't for Bethesda's engine the two would be stood as equals for me.

@Prone Squanderer = The truth, sadly, is that it’s easier. It is easier to hope for things to be wiped clean than to look at the problems faced by our planet today and to fix them. That’s New Vegas’ genius.
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One interesting point about that is: Both Elijah and Ulysses want to do exactly that in some way. Both of them want to reset the clock. To "begin again". Because they're disappointed with how the post-nuclear world has worked out. It shows how, even after the world has blown up, that that feeling of wanting all the world's problems to go away, won't go away. Because it's human nature for us to want things to work perfectly, and to want to take the easy way out when things don't go our way.

All this in a game with robot scorpions.
 
New Vegas is not a high point of the series, but a high point of role-playing games in general.

I consider there to be a small number of western RPGs to really push the genre to its limit in the decade so far, those being New Vegas, Wasteland 2 and Witcher 3.

In many ways, I hope Obsidian doesn't touch fallout again. New Vegas was so perfect with its game and DLC that to follow it up would be near impossible.

(I'm also adding South Park and Pillars to the list above btw).

But New Vegas is a game I'll never get bored of, it's impossible for me to.
 
Fallout New Vegas, is certainly a great game, and it definetly is a decent adaption of Fallout in a first person shooter-like setting - we all know Obsidian had simply no other choice but to use Beths fucked up engine and gameplay, however Obsidian tried to make the best of it in such a short time and they definetly succeeded. But NV is NOT a high point of the Franchise in my opinion. A game, to be really the top of the franchise, has to stay true on every aspect of Fallout 1. Not just the role playing, but also the gameplay and with the visuals. It goes without a saying that the graphics have to be updated. But it should still remain a top-down perspective, comparable to what we saw in Wasteland 2 or the newest X-Com games. Those games have proven, that it is possible. If NV would have also improved on the gameplay, like a better and more tactical turn based combat, then I would have called it a real high point.
That's at least my opinion.
 
I also consider New Vegas my favorite Fallout game. The perspective doesn't really matter to me, but I understand how it's hard to compare games in a set when they have completely different gameplay.

It's certainly the high point of the more recent titles though, that's for sure, even more so if you brush it up with some mods, especially JE Sawyers mod.
 
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