Fallout New Vegas is 10 years-old today, having been released on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on 19th October 2010 in North America (it came out on these shores a few days later).
Obsidian’s wonderful entry in Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic open-world role-playing series was critically-acclaimed for its writing, characters and freedom with which you could complete quests. While it suffered a raft of technical problems – as most of the games built on Bethesda’s RPG engine did at the time – its reputation has only grown more positive over the last decade, and it is now considered one of, if not the best Fallout game.
Writing about Fallout New Vegas for Eurogamer’s Games of the Decade series, reporter Emma Kent called it “a side-quester’s dream”. “… it felt like even the smallest story was carefully crafted to maintain interest and deliver a rewarding kicker. Looking at a run-down of the mission Come Fly With Me, it reads like a list of fetch quests, but the compelling story points, array of player choices and engaging dialogue disguised this so well I never really noticed at the time. And, at the end of the trail, you always knew there’d be an incredible payoff – like launching a cult of ghouls into space with Ride of the Valkyries playing in the background.”
Back in April 2018, I wrote about the horror of Vault 11, my favourite vault in the Fallout series (this article includes a bonus interview with Vault 11 designer Eric Fenstermaker, which I think provides fascinating insight into the development of the game).
Fallout New Vegas was of course followed by Fallout 4 and, most recently, the online-focused Fallout 76. Now Microsoft owns Bethesda, it’ll be fascinating to see how the next Fallout game turns out.
