14 DAY TRIAL // Bethesda has confirmed the launch date for Fallout: New Vegas, a spinoff, which builds upon the popularity of Fallout 3, one of the best action role playing games launched in the last few years. The game is set to be launched on October 19 in the United States on the PlayStation 3 from Sony, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PC, using Valve's Steam digital distribution service. The European version should arrive on October 22.
Fallout: New Vegas is being put together by the development team at Obsidian, taking over the game engine that was used by Fallout 3 and adding a host of improvements.
The action is moving to Las Vegas, which will be reimagined using the Science! sensibility that has come to be associated with the role playing game. It seems Las Vegas, and especially the casino strip, was not too affected by the nuclear exchange that happened in the game world between China and the United States, with most of the buildings still intact and with a flourishing gambling business still taking place.
With the landscape so different from Washington D.C., the player will take on the role of a messenger who has no connection to a vault and who must navigate a game universe dominated by two big factions, the slavers of Caesar's Legion and the bureaucrats of the New California Republic. The Brotherhood of Steel will also have a presence in the area and the main resource is electricity produced at the Hoover Dam, which will play the same role as water in Fallout 3.
Obsidian is promising a deeper experience, with some changes made to the underlying role playing system and a new hardcore mode that actually allows the player to experience the full burdens of a post apocalyptic world, including munitions having weight and bad injuries needing assistance from a doctor.