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Fallout: New Vegas Hands-On

Guy Cocker
By Guy Cocker, Editor

We entered the Mojave wasteland for a new look at Obsidian's postapocalyptic role-playing game.

Talking to the team behind Fallout: New Vegas, it seems that it will have more in common with the first two games in the series, rather than 2008's Fallout 3. According to the creative team, the west coast setting means that it will have relatively little in common with the Washington-set Fallout 3, but it will feature some characters and locations from the original two games. We managed to score new hands-on time with the game to find out more.

The E3 demo starts out in Vegas itself, which has been left unspoiled by the nuclear apocalypse that ravaged much of the rest of the US. It's only age and a general lack of maintenance that has left Vegas slightly ruined, but the gambling business still continues apace. New Vegas is a mix of glamour and seediness, with one city dweller throwing up down the walls of a casino during our intro. However, you'll be able to go into casinos and play blackjack, roulette and slot machines--all of which allow you to win (or lose) in-game credits.

Our time in New Vegas also allowed us to meet some of the seedy characters that call it their home. You can't take normal weapons into casinos, but Mister Holdout wanders around on the streets, trying to sell concealed weapons that can help you avoid detection. Chairman Greeter is the man that introduces you to the Tops Hotel and Casino--the place that you're going to be staying during this section of the game. We were told that this bit was from around 20 to 30 percent through the main story.

After the casino demo, we moved out into the Californian desert and were met by a small group of New Californian Republic soldiers. We had the choice of fighting on the NCR side or turning against it, but we decided to ally up and help the soldiers take on Caesar's Legion. The mission was to take out a CL leader called Nelson, and we had the choice of taking two different routes to get to him. After fighting a little bit of resistance, we made it through to Nelson's hideout and took him down using the V.A.T.S. combat system. This should be familiar to players of Fallout 3, but for the uninitiated, it allows you to slow down time and pick off individual parts of an enemy's body, with frequently spectacular results.

New Vegas introduces a new command wheel that allows you to give direct orders to certain allies. In the demo, we were able to use the wheel to tell our man what weapon to carry, for example. New Vegas also allows you more customization over your weapons, including augmentations such as clip size, silencers, and scopes. The story will take place a few years after the events of Fallout 3, and your character is a courier who is left for dead before a doctor brings him back to life. The beginning of the game will be spent trying to find out who did this to you, as well as what you were carrying, but it will soon branch out into another multilayered storyline.

Fallout: New Vegas is shaping up well for its October 22, 2010, release date. Be sure to check out the new images that have been released for the game, as well as all of the other Bethesda show content, at e3.gamespot.com.

Guy Cocker
By Guy Cocker, Editor

Guy Cocker is the Editor of GameSpot UK, a handheld gaming fan, and someone who actually managed to use video games to lose weight. He recently took up the position of games expert on BBC 5 live and is a BAFTA games judge.

212 Comments

  • Velvundrgnd

    Posted Oct 16, 2010 8:42 am GMT

    @ magusat999
    There are so many things wrong with what you posted, its insane.

  • McLarty

    Posted Oct 12, 2010 3:20 am GMT

    sounds good.. think i am going to pre order it today

  • tomgallagher95

    Posted Aug 13, 2010 5:41 am GMT

    @skinnybodydown
    all he means is it is not a continuity of fallout 3 because the storys competely different

  • skinnybodydown

    Posted Jul 27, 2010 5:03 pm GMT

    @magusat999:

    Have you played Fallout and Fallout 2? They both featured '40s music (in the opening movies; mp3 audio wasn't around in 1997) and laser rifles. It's called retro-futuristic, or Raygun Gothic alternatively. Look it up. You can get both games from gog.com, and they are well worth playing. "Continuity" means that the story is continuous and coherent, not that it is realistic. Star Trek has continuity. It's hardly realistic.

    Fallout 3 is different because technology is different. 3D gaming was in its infancy in 1997 and wasn't really an option for a large open world RPG. The way the game plays- the SPECIAL system, the weapons, even the enemies- are largely the same as the first two games. Super Mutants, ghouls, rad roaches, giant ants, radscorpions, deathclaws, slavers, raiders- all feature in the first two. They are Fallout's bad guys, just like Koopa Troopas and Goombas are Super Mario's. The NCR that features in New Vegas grew out of the Shady Sands community in Fallout, into the NCR in Fallout 2 and is now back in Fallout: New Vegas. How is this not continuity?

  • bigsam45

    Posted Jul 27, 2010 12:11 pm GMT

    new vegas ftw

  • magusat999

    Posted Jul 27, 2010 7:33 am GMT

    @skinnybodydown:

    We are talking about Fallout 3, which is vastly different from the rest of the series. My comments refer to Fallout 3, obviously (speaking of continuity...). When I said people didn't care or notice continuity in the 90's it was obvious - all we wanted in the 90's was games that had great story and visuals. It's only been in the past few years that gamers have been looking for "accuracy" and flow in games, which has a lot to do with the "realistic gaming" trend.

    And I still maintain that there is no continuity when you have laser rifles and 40' music in the same.game...

  • the-wayward

    Posted Jul 27, 2010 3:51 am GMT

    and also .... alot of people out there are saying that rage is a better game ....
    will....rage does have better graphic , shooting engine and enteractions ..
    but fallout offers a lot more freedom of choice and _ thought it's an RPG _
    a lot lot more character costomisation ..
    but the biggest advanteges that fallout has over rage are the ability to sneak " personal opinion " and the extremly enjoyable exploratin ... so .... for those who ar looking for the looks ,rage is the target .
    but I and a bunch of other gamers will stick to the fun offered by fallout NV ..
    "by the way that deosen't mean that I'm not buy'en rage ... "

  • the-wayward

    Posted Jul 27, 2010 3:39 am GMT

    this game is still better played on 3rd person shoulder view .....
    textures will look better , the shooting mechanism will also look better " even with the weapon costomisation "

  • skinnybodydown

    Posted Jul 26, 2010 7:48 am GMT

    @magusat999:

    People didn't notice or care about continuity in the 1990s? Huh? Gamers have always taken such things seriously, RPG gamers doubly so. How old were you in 1997?

    Fallout came out way back in 1997, with a retro-futuristic theme that the series has carried ever since. Fallout 2 came out in 1998 and continued the story from the first Fallout, through a descendant of the PC in the first game. Many of the same NPCs appeared, suitably aged, and the political scene had developed tremendously. Continuity much? Claiming that Fallout somehow plagiarized Bioshock is like claiming that Command and Conquer plagiarized Total Annihilation. Fallout has always had the same retro-futuristic theme, with the same iconography and even the same music, although technical limitations back in the day limited the tunes to the opening movie. "Maaaaybe.... you'll think of me..."

    A gamer not knowing the Fallout series is akin to a professor of literature never having read Dante and then fumblingly accusing Dante of plagiarizing Milton.

  • dono14

    Posted Jul 25, 2010 4:14 pm GMT

    "It looks like a shooter but it has alot of RPG elements..." I HATE when people say that about fallout. What he should have said, was; "It looks like a shooter, but it is an RPG." Saying Fallout has rpg "elements" is ridiculous...you can't get much more rpg than fallout. You could say it has FPS elements though.

  • Salmanw

    Posted Jul 22, 2010 3:48 pm GMT

    Can't wait..! Fallout is one of the most powerful games out there...!

  • JM_MUFC

    Posted Jul 22, 2010 10:56 am GMT

    Cant wait for new vegas, fallout 3 was probably the best game i have ever played! Am i right in assuming that if it's going to be using the same engine/graphics then the system requirements are going to be the same too?

    People need to stop judging this game before they play it, ok so dehydration is only on hardcore it wasn't on Fallout 3 but no-one seemed to complain about it. Im just hoping for a stack of new weapons and this time a lot more schematics. Searching for the schematics and parts added easily 10 hours of gameplay to fallout 3 if not more. I also think that the ability to customise the weapons would be a nice touch, for example lets take the shishkebab. It would have been cool if you could have but in like a car battery instead of a gas tank so that it was electrically charged instead or being on fire.

  • chris10218

    Posted Jul 18, 2010 1:13 pm GMT

    cant wait for this game all you people need to stop winging because unless you have actually played it you don't really know what its gonna be like and by the looks of it its gonna be awesome

  • Mentalnutter

    Posted Jul 16, 2010 1:38 am GMT

    If this is half as good as fallout 3 was its going to be awsum tbh i dont see how they can top fallout 3.

  • gorygorefest45

    Posted Jul 15, 2010 1:12 pm GMT

    @ all f@gs
    who cares. your opinions are stupid. if your like me and liked fallout 3 a lot then just buy the new one. stop freakin out bout crap that dont matter like graphics. and its not an expansion either thats just retarded. f@gs.

  • irishdude199210 posted Jul 13, 2010 4:13 am GMT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    irishdude199210

    Posted Jul 13, 2010 4:13 am GMT (hide)

    i dont see the point of getting this. i mean, i love fallout 3, but buying this wud be pretty much buying the same game twice. you cant argue that u buy it for the story, i mean come on, fallout 3's story really sucked. so cud someone please explain the difference den?! oh wow its in vegas! who cares. u can customize weapons! just like a ton of other games. dyhydration? its pathetic thats only in hardcore mode, they didn't even mention possibly starving! sorry bethesda, WASTE OF MONEY!!

  • magusat999

    Posted Jul 10, 2010 9:40 am GMT

    @saphon

    I am familiar with the Fallout series - it's just that this one is supposed to be set in the future so they should have considered that when they peppered it with 1940 thematics; as well as consider that there are other games using the same themes and graphics. I mentioned Bioshock - but if you played Red Dead Redemption, as another example, the movies have the same style. Its all over the place and it's getting monotonous - if I want to see Monopoly icons I'll play Monopoly...

  • magusat999

    Posted Jul 10, 2010 9:30 am GMT

    @:KingAmeboid - sorry, I tend to be long winded...
    @Micanthropyre - Yes, perhaps it did have that theme back in the 90's, but that was at a time when people just played games and didn't really care or notice what's called in the film industry "continuity". You don't have a futuristic game and then slap old iconotry on it. Games are getting more accurate now in those respects. And regardless of whether Bioshock was made first or second, it was so heavily laden and infused with the theme that Fallot 3 should have strayed away from it just to show some originality.

  • KingAmeboid

    Posted Jul 7, 2010 11:50 am GMT

    Magusat999,

    Dude your comment was longer than the gamespot preview.