14 DAY TRIAL // I have already praised Fallout: New Vegas for the way it unfolds its narrative and for the various stories that it managed to cram into the slice of post apocalypse in and around New Vegas.
But the new Fallout is more than just a collection of cool little stories and a vehicle to advance the development of the in-game universe with Obsidian managing to take the framework of Fallout 3 and create a complex and deep role-playing experience that requires quite a bit of time but delivers a lot of joy.
There are even more possibilities to craft a persona here than in previous games of the series starting with the relative simple conflicts of Goodsprings and leading to the high level decisions that will shape the way the entire in-game universe will be governed from here on.
And the big achievement is that, beyond skills, perks and abilities, beyond the weapons a character uses and the companions he chooses, there are differences in morality and ideology between a role-playing character that sides with the New California Republic, one who like the brand of justice handed out by Caesar's Legion and one that tries to essentially profit as much from the conflict between the two.
The developers manage to give gamers the space to create their own character, to decide whether the atrocities they see push them away from a faction or are just a necessary evil in the post-apocalypse order of things.
I played through Fallout: New Vegas three full times and am half way through a fourth and I can testify to the very different mind set that I have developed depending on the side I chose to help out.
New Vegas is the kind of role-playing experience that leads the player to a point where (attention, spoilers) he can become comfortable with the strict order sought by Caesar's Legion only to be asked to take out the Brotherhood of Steel and then go do a 180-degree turn and wipe the Legion out while working for Yes Man in the end.
There's no other video game out in 2010 with this breath of possibilities involved.
We have a full review of Fallout: New Vegas elsewhere on Softpedia.