If you asked someone to come up with a list of features as to what defines a role-playing game, you’d be liable to get a drastically different set of answers depending on what RPGs they had played. Some might answer turn-based combat, party-based character building, and a robust crafting system. Then again, the person right next to them might answer with real-time combat, moral choices, and the opportunity to sleep with your party members.

Of course, neither person is wrong; there are such a wide variety of RPGs out there that such a sprawling list of responses is inevitable. Of course, if you dig down past a lot of the aesthetic and mechanical choices designers make, there are still some core tenets of role-playing games that hold true across the board. In my experiences, one of those core ideas is that of growth. It could be growth in the sense of characters gaining levels and abilities, growing stronger in a very mathematical gameplay sense. Or, it could be a more metaphysical growth of character, with the snot-nosed punk from the small village blossoming into the kind-hearted hero of the land. In either the case, the idea of becoming something greater than what you were before in order to overcome the obstacles before you remains the same.

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In 2008, Bethesda revived the long dead Fallout franchise with the release of Fallout 3, after acquiring the franchise from Interplay. Having had to wait almost 10 years since last playing a “core” entry to the franchise,  I was stoked to play Fallout 3. And while the atmosphere was there, it left a lot to be desired as a Fallout game. Thankfully two years later Obsidian has stepped in to fill the void that Fallout 3 failed to fill.

Good

Story

While Fallout 3’s story painted a stark black and white contrast between the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave, the factions in New Vegas are much more gray. Between the Legion, the New California Republic (NCR), and Mr. House, they each have the own good and bad points. The Legion is ruthless, brutal, and oppressive; but to citizens in its territory, they offer safety and security that the other two are unable to provide. The NCR offers democracy and freedom in the style of the pre-war governments, but has expanded too fast, annexing whomever they wish – with or without their consent. Finally, Mr. House offers a vision and knowledge to return to pre-war glory, but is a heavy handed dictator with little regard for those who disagree with him. Of course, players who dislike all of these factions can also elect not to side with any of them.

Layer on top of this many competing sub factions and you have a giant muddled mess with no clear morality to pin down. Situations the player encounters in the story much more closely resemble parts of the first two games, particularly the situation in Junk Town from Fallout 1 and competing interests in Vault City, New Reno, and the NCR from Fallout 2.

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I’m sure you’ve all been there before at some point in your life:  playing a friendly game of Monopoly, enjoying the zesty give-and-take of shifting the same pile of money back and forth between players, when suddenly you notice that the banker took $300 when he paid himself for passing Go instead of the mandated $200.  Perhaps it was an accident, you think to yourself – it would be easy to be distracted by the pure fun of Monopoly and make such a mistake.  And yet, on the next go-round the board, you see him do it again.  That’s when you realize: you’re dealing with a cheater.  You respond the only way you know how; driving the Thimble playing piece into his eyeball while screaming about the “integrity of the game.”

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STEALING EVERY MUG IN THE EMPIRE

In Part I, we left off in the late 90′s as technology began to offer larger worlds. As time went by, the open-world game continued to develop, and each successive iteration brought new elements, improvements, and occasionally, missteps.  The first game I encountered that truly felt like it contained pure exploration for exploration’s sake was The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (let it be noted here that I did not play Daggerfall, the prior installment, until after Morrowind).  Released in 2002, Morrowind put you in the role of a prisoner shipped off to the outskirts of the kingdom of Tamriel.  Once you finish the character creation process, you are given a simple quest and, beyond that, complete freedom to do whatever you wanted.  Vradenfall was a large, open place, with an estimated 6 square miles of terrain to explore.  Within the bounds of the island were plenty of caves, ruins, and points of interest of all types.  On top of that, Morrowind was styled in the Ultima mold, with individual locations being incredibly detailed; searching almost any home would quickly show you that you could pick up most anything (whether they were useful or not), and poke your nose into every nook and cranny that you so pleased (until the home’s residents noticed you…).

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