Recent reviews by Magnus

I had originally reviewed this game back in 2015 (when I was 13 LUL) and it was purely rambling, had bad grammar, poorly explained points etc. So, out of boredom, I'm going to rewrite (hopefully well) why 4 years later, I still love this game to death.

PLAYER FREEDOM/IMPORTANCE
A huge factor in why I continually come back to this game time and time again is twofold, one, the overwhelming amount of options on how YOU want to play and two, the in my opinion rarely matched beautiful sense of player importance to the story. Let me explain, even though I play in relatively the same way for most characters, i.e. a super generic guns, medicine, and speech build I am still amazed by the variety encountered by any given playthrough. You have many faction options including no faction, various moral options, approach to violence (pacifist, crazy murderer, or somewhere inbetween) and many other things throughout the game there is one constant, the game is balanced (for the most part) around however you wish to play. The game won't hold your hand or conversely discourage any other way of playing. Two words friends, REPLAY VALUE! You can care however much or however little you desire on the main story or any other quest for that matter. Do what you want, meet who you want, play how you want to play. It is also massively helped by the sheer variety of weapons and usefulness of all skills (besides maybe....survival). I've see the gameplay criticized fairly regularly, the gunplay is awkward I'll admit but everything else is amazing. Building your character, using your skills, acquiring amazing loot, it's all here. Along with this, Obsidian did a marvelous job making you, the player the center and most important part of the story. It isn't critical for all games, but there is a reason why this and KOTOR 2, another obsidian game, are high on my top 10 games list. They make the player feel like the biggest badass and most crucial part of the story in their games. All of the factions emphasize how you, the courier, are the key to helping the leader take over New Vegas. You put all the major events into action and take part in them and this is an amazing, empowering feeling for the player. While other games, even in the fallout franchise would push you to the side and say oh these other things are much more important *cough* fallout 3 go find your dad simulator *cough* fallout 4 go find your son simulator *cough* obsidian says ♥♥♥♥ all that the player playing our game is the most important step in this journey.

WORLD/CHARACTERS
The world of New Vegas even with the time constraints put on obsidian is amazingly crafted. It's a beautiful, shining, but empty feeling relic of a bygone era. Mankind sent back to nearly the stone ages and vying for control of the destroyed wastes. The world feels alive and is populated with real and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up individuals. This game does not care about societal conventions about what good and evil are, it has fascists, rapists, murderers, crime families, the whole package and never will the game take a side. While many of these people might seem extreme or truly evil obsidian unmasks this and says there is a deeper meaning or side to this coin. Take Caesar for example, yes a megalomaniacal, enslaving, possibly irredeemable dictator but actually take some time to talk with him and you'll see there is real motivation behind those eyes. He suggests the old democracies and technologies are what caused the world to be destroyed in the first place and thus humankind must evolve even past Caesar and the NCR's conflict to move humanity forward to prevent the tragedy of the Great War. What's this? Real motivation and humanity given to even villain characters? Bethesda should've been calling obsidian for writing advice after they made such an amazing villain and dozens, nay, hundreds of deep and amazing characters. Most of my favorite games have real worlds with real people. New Vegas makes me care because I have real and deep conversations with these blocks of code that inhabit the game, it's truly amazing.

ENEMY DESIGN
A more minor point but still an important one. I think New Vegas easily has the best new enemy designs in the series. It redesigns or adds new variants to existing enemies and adds some terrifying new ones. All of them have interesting lore too and are fun to fight usually.

TL;DR Fallout New Vegas has an amazing story and world with real characters and a real player driven importance. It has immense replay value and even with its limitations amazing game play in my eyes. What're you waiting for?