Video Games have long since become a staple of the media industry and pop culture genre as a whole. So it won’t surprise you that there were many games that seemed to be lost in the mist of groundbreaking content. 2010 saw some of the greatest games of not just the generation but in history. Games like Red Dead Redemption, Bioshock 2, Call of Duty Black Ops, and of course Halo Reach, along with many other games. But in recent years, the gaming industry as an entertainment group has suffered a decline, with many games being released unfinished like Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 2042 and even the newest iteration of the fallout series Fallout 76. But with many of these failures, gamers have taken a trip back down memory lane to rediscover games of which may have been overlooked, but are now getting the recognition that they so desperately deserve. One of said games that has risen in popularity is the 2010 rpg Fallout New Vegas.

Fallout New Vegas was a joint venture between the owner of the fallout license, Bethesda and the remnants of the company BlackIsle Studios Interplay, the original creators of the Fallout series, now known as Obsidian. For those wondering, Fallout was created originally as a sequel to the game Wastelanders, another RPG created in the 90s, however due to licensing problems, BlackIsle would evolve the game into something new. Interplay would publish fallout in 1992, with limited success, that lead to a sequel and 2 spin-offs. When fallout 3 was in production the game developers would declare bankruptcy and sold the rights to fellow game developers Bethesda. Under Bethesda, a very different fallout game would be released, Fallout 3, which would be a 1st or 3rd person shooter RPG, much similar to their own Skyrim.

Fallout is a role playing game set in the post appotyplic United States, where which the cold war never ended and instead the culture of the 1950s had continued into the 21st century with nuclear energy being the primary source of energy, and tensions with the USSR decreases, a state of peace is continued until oil supplies in the middle east dwindled. This the resource wars where countries fought over the remaining supplies of their natural resources. With wars escalating, a new plague falling upon America and the UN being dissolved, the USA government enlisted the corporation Vault Tec to create massive underground fallout shelters Called Vaults, in order to save as much of the population as they could. However in 2060 the U.S. was able to drill and claimed one of the last known untouched oil reserves in the world. However after claiming it, China invaded Alaska to take the last oil supply themselves, starting the Sino American War, during which both sides committed massive war crimes, though the countries would enter a stalemate. The U.S. would annex Canada to move troops through the country, leading to protests across the continent. In 2076 the U.S. was finally able to win the war with the intervention of the newly created tank like Power Armor, pushing out the communists once and for all. However on October 23rd 2077, the world would face near destruction by the power of an atom, Mutating the American Continent, into a heartless wasteland where everything and everyone wants to kill or use you. 

While most Games involve the Vaults directly and the previous one being on the east coast, the game would instead be much more similar in style to the first 2 Fallout  games, with many factions, weapons and even characters making a return. Set in the Mojave desert near Las Vegas now known as New Vegas, a lone courier is shot and robbed by a stranger in a checkered suit along with some biker gang looking mercenaries. The character, known only by fans as Courier 6, is rescued by a robot cowboy named Victor and wakes up in a nearby doctors home, and from there you choose your special skills. There’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Stats, which stands for: Strength, which effects, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. Each Stat represents a bonus to different skill Abilities, for example Strength affects your damage output and carry weight, Charaima will affect your dialogue choices, and intelligence does this creative little effect, if you have to little in the category it more or less makes you, as the state of New York puts it, Special. In fallout 3 many players have complained how the start of the game takes over an hour trying to set up the story. It starts out with you being born and you play 18 years 8n an hour and believe me it’s a LONG one. In Fallout New Vegas, after you finish setting up your character, you are sent out to the wastes to find the one who shot you. Just like that. No fuss no muss, you get let out just like that.

The game has even more quests then Fallout 3 and while this may just seem like a quantity over quality thing, the characters, even the most minor ones are superior to man6 of the ones in 3. For example, in 3 one of the many campions you can get is a ghoul, wish is a human that has suffered radiation exposure that has lead them to be both heavily scared and near immortal, named Chiron, who is currently a club Guard/thug under the employment of another ghoul. Now you can get his contact from his current employer, however afterwards there’s nothing really that interesting about him afterwards, he just kind of follows you around, which can be said about all the companions in 3. But in New Vegas, each companion has his or her own side story after you meet and gain them. For instance there’s Veronica, who tells you that she’s just a lonely girl looking for some adventure in her life. But after she becomes your companion, she tells you she’s actually a member of an organization called the brotherhood of steel, an organization that was founded by remnants of the U.S. military, dedicated to preserving the old world technology. After a certain time exploring with her she asks if you can help her reach out and convince the brotherhood to start opening up and at the end you must choice whether or not she should leave. All that work and it’s just down to

After you go through the Mojave, moving from town to town, trying to find him only to discover there’s a much bigger conspiracy at play, the game will eventually take you to the city of New Vegas, having somehow survived the test of time, but those secrets and more well as one would put it that’s a story for another day.