Was Obsidian Entertainment the smart choice for Fallout: New Vegas?

Californian software house Obsidian have a reputation as Western RPG understudies par excellence. Starting with Knights of the Old Republic II, the sequel to Bioware’s brilliant Star Wars themed RPG, they’ve built a business providing follow-ups to other companies’ games.

Continuing in the same vein with a sequel to the Bioware D&D sandbox Neverwinter Nights, now Obsidian have been given the reins for Fallout: New Vegas, a full-length follow up to the post-apocalyptic FPS/RPG from Bethesda Softworks; the second big player in Western RPGs.

Fallout 3 is a very tough act to follow. Released in 2008 to stellar reviews and huge sales, it’s a real modern classic. As the sequel to two equally féted 2D RPGs, Fallout 3 had a lot to live up to itself, making the switch to both three dimensions and a new developer, following the 2004 collapse of Fallout’s old publisher, Interplay.

The series’ new minders handled the challenge skilfully, taking the unique post-nuclear flavor of Fallout – think Mad Max meets 1950’s Public Information films – and mixing it with Bethesda’s trademark massive, open exploratory worlds of myriad challenges and plotlines. They also assuaged fan fears that it might abandon the series’ turn-based roots, by incorporating strategy into the combat in the form of Action Points – played as a straight FPS, Fallout is punishingly difficult, but the player can pause the game at any time and use slowly recharging Action Points to take precision shots.

Fallout 3 featured the surroundings of a ruined Washington DC, but in New Vegas the setting has moved to — no wild guesses needed — Las Vegas, an area somewhat less affected by the nuclear war and very different in tone and feel.

Does the team at Obsidian have what it takes to make New Vegas a Royal Flush? Or will the new Fallout be little more than a glorified add-on to a tired old game? The jury’s still out – and the evidence for both scenarios is almost equally powerful. Let me help you make your mind up.

The Good

These guys made Fallout

No-one knows Fallout better than Obsidian. Formed out of the wreckage of Interplay’s Black Isle studios, key personnel from Obsidian worked on the first two classic Fallout games, so not only is it gratifying that they have the chance to continue their legacy, but they know the spirit of the Fallout universe and its role-playing mechanics inside out. Chris Avellone, one of Fallout 2’s designers, is working on the project, and the company also boasts Fallout alumni like Chris Jones, Darren Monahan and Fergus Urquhart. Josh Sawyer, famed for working on the Icewind Dale series, also joins New Vegas’ design team.

It’s a strong bunch, with experience developing beloved gaming properties. But can they replicate their success in a modern iteration of Fallout?

The Bad

Unfinished games

As warm as the reception for both KOTOR II and Neverwinter Nights 2 might have been, neither achieved quite the stellar praise heaped on the originals. The most common criticism; glitches, especially graphical, which left both games as rough-hewn gems, hurried out of the door before being satisfactorily polished.

In the case of KOTOR II, especially, it was transparently evident that huge areas of the game had to be cut late in development. As a result, despite the generous length, the sequel just doesn’t present itself like a finished game.

This worrying trend for Obsidian – of releasing undercooked products, often caused by working to time constraints – has hardly been bucked by their latest outing…

Alpha Protocol missed the mark

Their first original IP, espionage themed RPG Alpha Protocol, is also the worst received of all Obsidian’s games. Wildly over-ambitious, Protocol succeeded in terms of offering the player a coherent, non-linear narrative with plenty of choice and consequence, but failed to impress when it came to the core gameplay.

The bulk of the game was a terribly constructed, unbalanced melange of third person shooter with underlying RPG mechanics that resulted in bizarre, nonsensical situations; shooting someone point blank with a shotgun could leave them almost uninjured, because you hadn’t sunk enough points into the requisite skill; stealth “powers” could be used to walk straight past unsuspecting guards in plain view; some boss fights were virtually unbeatable without the “right” skills.

It’s also Obsidian’s most recent work, released earlier this year, and developed by overlapping personnel to New Vegas. This stinker is the one thing that bodes really, really badly for their Fallout project.

Already graphically dated, and it’s not even been released

The Gamebryo engine and the codebase that powered Fallout 3 were inherited from Oblivion, a Bethesda game dating from 2006.

When Fallout 3 was released, it impressed graphically, but mainly because of the top-notch visual design; the nuts and bolts of the graphic tech was already looking a little long in the tooth.

The bad news is, the new game employs the same underlying tech; and it’s really showing its age in the screenshots. Line it up next to id software’s RAGE, another upcoming post-apocalypse adventure, and Fallout: New Vegas looks almost quaintly old-fashioned.

So, what can you expect?

Gathering together all the evidence, smart money rests on New Vegas being a unfinished, glitchy game with dated graphics, but a killer storyline that trumps the short core quest in Fallout 3.

Expect New Vegas to be a worthy addition to the Fallout series, but one that doesn’t quite touch the bar set by its illustrious predecessors — a solid win, but no high-roller.