Fallout: New Vegas Preview

Another Eurogamer Expo-based preview of Fallout: New Vegas has trickled onto the web, and this time it comes to us courtesy of Dealspwn.

I said in the previous preview that New Vegas bore all of the hallmarks of its predecessor. It looks the same at first glance, it feels the same, slipping back into VATS like a comfortable jumper and navigating the Pip-Boy with ease. But, as I minced around yesterday morning, swatting bloatflies out of the sky and shooting holes in geckos, a number of the games new features began to shine through. Obsidian have once again taken on the mantle of another’s game in spite of Feargus Urquhart and co.’s return to the franchise that they birthed, it comes back to them much changed by Bethesda but, and it becomes more apparent as you play, there are new things afoot here.

A little background first of all. Shot in the head and left for dead in the Mojave desert, the game kicks off in the town of Goodsprings. There are marauding gangs to be dealt with, pesky vermin infestations to be cleared out and a great deal of exploration to be done. The move to the West comes with a frontier-like mentality, there’s something about the cowboy (RDR anyone?) to this game, much as there was to the last. You’ll recognise the apocalyptic desolation, the dilapidated buildings and the oddly animated characters, but then other things begin to dawn on you little luxuries that were absent in amongst the stark lifelessness of DC. There are tufts of grass, birdsong to be heard, a blue sky and even the audible chirrup of the odd cricket. The Four Horsemen might have come through, but they were a bit less thorough with the Vegas.