I have finished Fallout New Vegas.
Or at least as much of it as I felt like doing, there’s plenty more I can tell. Lots of quests still and 2 more untouched DLC, but I got as much out of it as I wanted. Just under 40 hours.
I finally got out of Old World Blues and really was missing some main quests, which I went promptly back to. Until I hit another wall where my stats not being high enough locked me out of any options I had at my disposal to move forward. In which case I would go pick a side quest and follow that for a while until I leveled up enough.
I eventually finally found a companion.
I liked the talking suit from Old World Blues btw, the only cool thing from that DLC. I didn’t stealth hardly at all but I did enjoy the commentary.
Raul was my guy, first one I found who I could get to join me, picked up while working through another questline.
And here we are wrapping up another companion questline, one that I finished and then left Boone behind. Because Raul was cool, like when I would crouch and he complained about being old.
He and I traveled the rest of my journey through the wasteland together, kicking ass and taking names. My ledger was pretty full of names though, so we mostly kicked ass. Like I finally got to go back and kill Cook Out or whatever his name was (see the previous statement about a names ledger) and then Raul got a sweet upgrade.
I could feel the interest fading, and I think I’m coming to realize I need to build in a break for each of these games between main story and DLC. My thoughts after trudging through Fallout 3 DLC right at the end were that I needed to do them earlier on, work them into the main game.
Clearly, as I have mentioned a few times, that didn’t work out so well in New Vegas. By the end I at least went to each of the remaining DLC start areas, saw I couldn’t bring Raul and thought “nah.”
So maybe I will go back, but for now I’m shelving it as done. I at least did my best to complete each faction’s storyline. I didn’t make it through the crazy people at the Air Force Base who wanted to rain down literal destruction upon the others, but that actually was more because every time I tried to go get to the lake and go diving I couldn’t make it there due to the large number of deathclaws that are on the way. Too much for us and I lost interest.
Besides that, I did my best to complete everything else. I, again not trying to look up much online, tried to follow through each storyline until I could tell Yes Man it’s over and not choose the “ignore” option. And that worked with most of them.
I went too far with the brotherhood of steel to try and replace the guy in charge, even when I did go back and fix the computers with a higher science skill.
Looking online now after the fact, I think I missed one of the minor factions entirely. They didn’t even make it onto my radar.
But for the most part I helped all and was liked by most, right up until I went my own way and killed Mr. House, fuck Caesar and his army, and turned control to me. I wanted to rule.
I guess it became turning it over to the people and making it independent, which is cool too. But I still feel like in the end, I was in charge. I held the power to turn those upgrades bots on anyone, so who was messing with the courier now?
Great stuff, little tough fights at the end but that’s to be expected. I appreciate that I actually had a talking option, I just had a load a few times, trial and error, because I couldn’t survive that final fight against big boy in the Legion. But I made him see reason and what else was more in character considering I boosted my speech to 100 before any other skill.
Overall pretty great time, I think I ended it right around when I was still having fun and was ready to wrap up before it went on too long. I liked that I got my choice for the ending and I have a feeling that there were a lot of other options depending on if I wanted to play the sidekick to any of the factions and instead put them in charge. Or I guess Mr. House but like, why?
So here’s a selection of screenshots I took as I was finishing out things at the end.
It’s all mine now
I should have shot this fucking guy and had him run over to a pancake by my robot army, but it was better to just talk it out and let them tuck tail and run.
And so I have finally caught up on what many people consider to be the best Fallout game in the series. I reserve my opinion until I’ve played all of them. But it is up there so far. And to be honest I’m probably not going to rank them, they each are clearly made to be their own standout and complete games. It’s a little unfair to compare them. Different people working very hard on them, just so some guy with no value to his opinion can say one is “better” on the internet.
Nah, I’m here for a good time and that just means catching up on things I’ve missed out on. I’ll be taking a fallout break before I jump back in, maybe next year at the current rate I’ve been going. And that’s fine, the backlog grows one title shorter and I move on to whatever comes next.