So I've been thinking a lot about Fallout today and open-world games in general and I had some interesting thoughts to put on paper and there are no Fallout threads on /v/ right now so here will have to do.
A lot of people on KF and /v/ love NV while hating/tolerating 3 and 4, which is in contrast to like millions of people who love those games because they just wanna shoot things in the face. And honestly, I've always wondered why that is. For me personally at least, it's not the writing - I love good writing in my games but I loved BotW too and that game has dick writing. There's like one entire character in it that goes through an arc. It's not the combat because NV's combat is just barely acceptable (in contrast to 3 which has just awful, seriously why does every gun feel like I'm firing nerf darts out of my dick). The story is very flexible and there's a lot of different ways to engage with the world so you can actually roleplay unlike 3 and 4, which is great, but there are plenty of RPGs out there that have that as well that didn't grab my attention as much as NV did. I think I finally figured it out though - it's the structure.
I'm a 100% certain that 3 and 4 bore me to tears is because they simply don't have a structure. Once the tutorial's over the game essentially tells you "lol do what you want and go make your own fun", which I don't really mind, but there needs to be something in place to hold me over. The old GTA games made you unlock more places as you went through the story which made every new location feel exciting and actually makes you care about the world, in contrast to GTAV (don't @ me). In BotW the game has a very loose structure once you leave the Great Plateau but you have a goal in mind and everything you can do is related to that goal. You beat shrines and dungeons and find weapons and Korok Seeds and whatever to get more powerful so you can defeat Ganon. Fallout 3 and 4 just don't have anything like that. They both have plots that consist of optional breadcrumbs to find that barely have anything to do with the actual gameplay, and I can only take so much aimless wandering around shooting at zombies and orcs before I get sick of it.
In contrast, NV has a very well set-up structure. You wake up in Goodsprings, which is one of the best tutorial stages in any game I've ever played. It's got so much stuff to do - you can hack computers, open locks, bluff, barter, steal, use workbenches, dick around with recipes, it rewards pretty much every kind of character you can build and it's very fun as a result. In that sense it's pretty much a microscopic version of the game world at large in the way it introduces you to all of NV's mechanics, but I nearly forgot about the central conflict in Goodsprings and the most important mechanic of all - the factions, namely the fight between the factions of Goodsprings and the Powder Gangers. It's admittedly one of the less interesting conflicts in the game - it's rather simple and black and white compared to some of the more complex and morally grey situations the game puts you through later - but there are still multiple ways of dealing with the situation depending on what kind of character you're playing and, as black and white as the conflict is, you can still join the Powder Gangers if you want to, and this choice actually has its benefits - it's not just some arbitrary evil choice like the kind that FO3 throws at you all the time.
Now NV is pretty much designed to make you interested in Vegas - the game's named after Vegas, Vegas can be seen from pretty much every point at the map and it shines like a beacon at night which is already enough to get players interested in getting there, so of course pretty much every character in Goodsprings warns you not to make a headline for it because the direct road to NV is dangerous. I assume most players are like myself and ignored the fuck out of that warning and then proceeded to get their asses kicked by a bunch of fucking bullshit-ass bees. At that point it might feel like you're being forced to head south to get to NV proper, which seems like a weird way to design an open-world game - and I suppose it is unconventtial - but this structure really benefits the game. As you head south, east and north again to Vegas you find yourself in locations where you slowly start learning more about the Mojave Wasteland, the characters and factions in it and the conflicts they face at a very steady and natural pace. The game does this so well that at the end where you're forced to make decisions that affect the entire Wasteland, it feels completely natural, like this is what your whole journey's been building up to all this time. It's incredibly climatic and a shitload more satisfying than being handed Power Armor and a minigun right at the beginning of the game.
That said, if you're skilled and smart enough, you can still head for Vegas right away if you wish. The game's open-world after all, so even if it has a very heavily suggested route for you to take, it's all still optional. NV was the first Fallout game I've ever played and heading for Vegas right away is what I did on my first playthrough, and I fell in love with the game right there when I actually managed to get to Vegas in the first hour of the game. It's the best of both worlds - there's a clear and well defined structure so you feel like you have a goal in mind and aren't just endlessly wandering around, but if you want to you can skip the route the game wants you to take while still having that same goal in mind. FO1 and 2 had similar structures, and those games were very well-designed, but NV does it better, I think. It's a lot more clever with engaging you into the world than 1 and 2 meaning you get pulled into the game that much faster.
Now New Vegas isn't flawless, of course - it's still buggy, Caesar's Legion is so much wasted potential and the combat, again, is just barely acceptable. But they really nailed the structure and the great story, roleplaying and writing on top of it make it a really fun and endlessly replayable game. Fuck I love NV.
