I’m afraid I’m done now with Fallout. It’s a good game, but I hit a frustrating point with my companion that really started to grate on me and then I finally saw the extent to which bugs can screw up this game. It’s one of the typical horror stories: two hours of play basically lost because I was near the end of a quest and I hadn’t done anything but autosave when an irreversible bug happened. I still like Fallout a lot and I may very well come back to it, but I’m on to other games now. Spoilers within.

After a long break, I come back to Fallout for a session that actually shows a few more of the game’s warts. I spend a lot of time in a badly explained and hard to navigate board to not complete a quest on my list even though I meet the criteria. I find a number of seemingly interesting locations where I can’t do anything. On the other hand, I do complete a significant quest and get a sub-plot that is maybe the most true story to the old Fallout games I’ve seen since the old top-down games. So let’s call this session a wash, but the game is still quite good. Spoilers within.

Day 11 is more subplot goodness as I fast travel across the map helping people. The subplots remain interesting to me even though many of them are conversation style fetch quests. Still, the narrative is quite nice, and as always in Fallout, the open selection of kinds of resolution make it fun just to see what I can do. Not much combat at all this session, but some nice conversation choices. Spoilers within.

Day 10 is a bit more arduous than I’m used to from Fallout. First, there is a kind of speed challenge in which I die many times, basically unclear on how to proceed. I then have to do a ton of little side missions to accomplish my main goal. The missions themselves aren’t that bad, but there’s a lot of them and it starts to feel very fetch quest-y. Overall though, the plot of the game remains good, and I have a number of good conversations with NPCs about different groups and how they need to adapt to survive. There were annoying moment this time, but the game’s writing and plot remain very good. Spoilers within.

Day 9 is all New Vegas. There is a complex and pretty dramatic set of plots here that intertwine very curiously. A lot of the game’s plot comes together this session in a interesting whole, and again there are lots of ways to play it depending on who I want to help and who I want to hurt. There are some annoying design flaws in this session, but they’re minor and thankfully unusual in this game. This session is basically all conversation as I get up to speed on the current state of the Strip and start to see that there are some deeper mysteries and intrigues waiting for me here in the coming sessions. But I have a goal now and it’s a doozy. Spoilers within.

Day 8 is yet another day of Fallout goodness. I find a secret location I only get access to because of one of my teammates. There is just a ton of plot in there, which is really cool. It makes me wonder what plots I’ve missed because I didn’t have a teammate somewhere. I also uncover a bunch of other locations as I complete side quests and do some fun exploration. It’s a session of open-world enjoyment that shows me more enemies, potential quests, and side narratives that I could possibly complete in one take. And I figure out how to make easy money for the rest of the game. Spoilers within.

Day 7 in New Vegas is a busy one. I complete a set of outstanding quests and do a lot of exploration of the wastes. I have to say I’m impressed by the world here. There are lots of social dynamics and groups that just make sense, and there’s a nice feeling of purpose to the position and types of locations you find. I also make my first ally and wow, does that game get easier after that. Maybe it’s a little too much of a jump, but it’s also possible I’ve just been using crappy weapons for too long. Narrative on the plots is solid and there’s a lot of side-taking as I pretty firmly ally myself with one of the two big factions of the Fallout Southwest. Spoilers within.

Day 6 in New Vegas is a perfect example of the storytelling style of Fallout. My session is almost entirely centered around a single location, but the intricacies of the characters and relationships has a depth you simply don’t see in any other game today. The combat is interestingly hard and there are intriguing twists to the plot, but the really cool thing is that there are a ton of ways to resolve it all. There isn’t a single faction in this session that I didn’t have a chance to either support or betray in a variety of ways if I wanted to. And that flexibility is what puts Fallout in its own class as an open-world game. Spoilers within.