A breakout at their own “correctional facility” gave rise to the Powder Gangers, who have now taken over Primm. The first time you meet the NCR – the supposed moral peacekeepers of the Mojave – they’re hapless and outmanned, on the outskirts of a town besieged by the failures of the movement’s own bureaucracy. But as you make your way to Primm, you start to realise that the dynamic in New Vegas is really not that simple. The Powder Gangers are presented as the ultimate antagonists at first, harassing an innocent town in Goodsprings to settle a score. Take the first few engagements in Goodsprings, Primm and Nipton, for example – New Vegas’ opening really is a masterclass. This helps you understand the organization at large and feel a greater sense of place in the world. Instead of monochrome choices which doom or venerate gangs, you take part in smaller scale operations in the Mojave that explore their intentions and motivations prior to any ultimatums. But precious few games back that commitment up with the agency and clever writing that Fallout: New Vegas provided, and that’s where they fall short.įallout: New Vegas. Plenty of role-playing games use factions to give colour to their world, to the point where I’d argue it’s become something of a crutch in open-world RPG game design ever since 2010. Framing this situation against a monument to human excess – The Las Vegas Strip – made for one hell of an atmosphere.
With New Vegas in particular, it was fascinating to watch extremist groups flourish and war with each other in the wake of an apocalypse, and study what aspects of society they decided to rebuild or leave behind. Some of the political commentary naturally flew over my head in favour of “Woah, Deathclaws” and cool head explosions, but the broad strokes concerning the mythos of American exceptionalism stuck. Particularly with Fallout, I was hopelessly addicted to its premise, too. I got lost in these inspired worlds so quickly because I hadn’t played anything remotely like it. Having grown up on a diet of 3D platformers and Pokémon, meaty RPGs with such worldbuilding and mechanical nuance felt frankly alien to me. READ MORE: The best games you missed in 2020.I had played a lot of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and then Fallout 3, warts and all, which was my first proper introduction to the series when I was in my mid-teens. When it came out in October of 2010, I remember being on board the hype train. It will live indefinitely in my Steam ‘Favourites’ category, because looking through my 65 hours of save games is like reliving multiple past lives. I always seem to find a reason to return to Obsidian Entertainment’s Fallout: New Vegas.
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