14 DAY TRIAL // Fallout: New Vegas is a post apocalyptic role playing game from developer Obsidian and publisher Bethesda, taking the player to a relatively intact Vegas area and in the middle of a fight for power between Caesar's Legion, the New California Republic and the Brotherhood of Steel.
I am playing this game using the Hardcore mode, which adds more realism oriented features, like heavy ammunition and healing which takes place over time, alongside a need for food and water.
The problem with Fallout: New Vegas is that it sits at the intersection of two bug storms, the Gambryo engine, which showed its power in Fallout 3, and Obsidian, the company which earlier in the year launched Alpha Protocol.
And I was less than two hours into Fallout: New Vegas when my first serious bug (people walking with their feet of the actual ground do not count) which could have prevented me from completing one of the early game quests.
After getting acquainted with the nice town of Goodsprings players are presented with the first clear morality oriented choice in the game, whether to rat out or defend a trader who is being chased by some members of a Powder Gang.
The problem with the quest is that it revolves a bit too much around Sunny Smiles, the friendly town ranger, who at one point needs to be met in order to allow the quest to jump to the firefight phase.
Problem is the ranger is apparently not marked as invincible and, in my game, she died while stepping on a mine.
I saw this and though that she'll just be revived in a few hours, seeing as how she was integral to the quest chain.
She wasn't and the game made the situation worse by teleporting her dead body to the place where we were supposed to meet.
My first real quest in Fallout: New Vegas was broken.
The good thing is that both me and my colleague Andrei Dobra have long experiences in Fallout 3, where reviving characters was sometimes needed, so we looked up the console commands and the ref identity of Sunny and brought her back to push the game along.
The issue I had could have easily been solved via better scripting or by eliminating Sunny as a requirement for quest completion.
Let's hope that this small bug is not a sign of how the entire experience will play out.
PS: To make the character come back to life simply click on it while in console mode and type "ressurect".