I have spent years hating Fallout: New Vegas.
I think that's important to say, because it's not the first game to allow me to see things in a new light. As a game reviewer, it's quite easy to make early and often imperfect judgments of a game based on certain immediately apparent factors. It's important to have that ability, in many respects. As someone who enjoys being critical about games, it's validating to know that your repeated analyses are paying off, that you're able to easily recognize key features of games that you do or don't like. It's also useful as a gamer, because you're stuck with a game you dislike for far less time. You can dump it and move on to something good that much faster. But what happens when the initial impression is wrong? What happens when somebody says something, and it actually changes your mind permanently?
I recently had this experience watching YouTuber H. Bomberguy's video, "Fallout 3 is Garbage and Here's Why." Now, I'm a huge fan of Fallout 3. I played it for an easy hundred fifty hours in 2008-9, and I adored getting lost in the world and experiencing this post-apocalyptic RPG. The story was, to me, compelling and interesting. My character was a cool guy who helped out the Capital Wasteland, he wandered the wastes providing altruistic aid to all he found. He had adventures in virtual reality, in bombed-out Pittsburg, and even in space! Plus, how cool was it to explore a world that was a post-apocalyptic vision of a more technologically advanced 1950's America? I loved it all! So, when I saw Mr. Bomberguy's video pop up on my recommendations, I ignored it. For weeks, I pushed it aside. It seemed like clickbait, an easy target for controversy, something that would only make me mad for no reason. But it stayed in my mind. The video was an hour and a half long, surely he would have to make valid points and reasoned arguments with something so lengthy. And, more importantly, what kind of critic would I be if I never addressed an argument like that? This hobby all but requires debate and an allowance of shifting perspectives. I knew I would have to watch it.
And so I did. All one hour, twenty-nine minutes, and thirty-seven seconds. I was ready to defend my position, to somehow validate that my dozens of hours had been well-spent on a game that was, to my memory, a masterpiece. And the unthinkable happened. After a while, I began to agree.
WHAT?! Fallout 3 isn't bad, how could it be? I don't have bad tastes, right?! I wouldn't have spent so long playing it if it were a bad game, right?!
Right?
Well, that's a much more difficult question to answer. Games like Brink, RAGE, Prototype, the bad features of these trash piles are easily identifiable. The problems with Destiny are felt from an immediate, visceral level. There are aspects that are lacking, or straight up nonexistent, in these titles and make them objectively bad. But, what if a game is only... kind of bad? This is where Fallout 3 falls.
Fallout 3 proclaims itself as an RPG filled with freedom of choice and player direction. It is a game that was designed from the ground up to have that same grandiose feel as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but in a world that fringes on wacky science fantasy and is built on a contradictory notion of highly advanced 1950's technology. It accomplishes this quite well. It has "dungeons" in the form of exploring sewers or other ruined structures filled with zombified ghouls and big angry mutants, the world is grand, open, and exciting, and you help people like a good old fashioned fantasy hero (or spread chaos like a villain). And that's what I liked about Fallout 3 when I was fourteen. It was grand and open, and yet limited enough to not make me think too deeply. I could just be a hero and feel cool. But now that my tastes have matured, I'm forced to ask myself what actually constitutes a good RPG. It's a broad category, and there is no one cut and dry answer. Part of why we have so many games in general is that different tastes exist and there's no such thing as a perfect game.
But it's critical to think about Fallout 3 in comparison to its genre fellows. And in doing this, Fallout 3 lacks considerably. There is a blanket, uncaring Karma system that judges actions based on a deity-level, all-seeing moral scale. There are railroaded segments that force you to play only one of two ways, or sometimes just one period. Thousands of man hours were spent on creating this massive world that is limited and not entirely cohesive. A real RPG is nuanced. Fallout 3 is not.
More importantly and ironically, when Fallout: New Vegas came out, I hated it for this exact reason. New Vegas is by far an imperfect game, in my defense. There are too many massive text walls when encountering new pieces of the interface that are immersion breaking and horribly boring, the voice acting is less professional, the world is not as immediately gratifying and interesting. But underneath this shell lies an intricate web of mechanics, built in the same engine, that are far better overall at crafting a real, believable, and interesting world. After hearing Mr. Bomberguy's critiques, I decided to play New Vegas anew, with a fresh and much more critical perspective. That was when I had to face the music of being truly wrong.
Fallout: New Vegas is the best Bethesda-era Fallout game to date.
Now, I don't like the story as much as Fallout 3's. I like the drive of having to find my dad out in the wastes, and I love the setup of seeing a sped-up eighteen years of growing up in Vault 101 only to be forced to leave that world behind and face something terrifying and alien. The Courier's tale doesn't hold up like that for me. But all the other hundreds of hours spent in New Vegas? Now those are fascinating. Every town has a different opinion of your character based on their personal interactions with you because news travels very slow. Every faction thinks differently of you because of your actions. Every area of the map holds a unique kind of danger and is designed around player progression and earning one's stripes. For example, there is an early quest to take on a large group of deathclaws, and they will kill you if you try to take them on like an idiot with your low level gear and trash stats. But the longer you leave them, the longer a group of lovable, honest miners goes without work. That's a kind of pressure that is rarely present in Fallout 3.
On a more base level, you can take traits during character creation that permanently change the way the game works for that character. You can have a faster fire rate for less accuracy, you can get a higher critical chance for a slower fire rate, you can gain agility in exchange for less durable limbs. I took one on my new character that lowered her perception by 1 permanently, but gave her a +2 boost to the stat for wearing glasses. How cool is that? A rollplay element, needing to wear glasses, that has a mechanical effect in the game! It's an amazing way to get a cooler character right from the get-go, it immediately made me care more about the game. She needed to get glasses as a first order of business after leaving the doctor's house so she could see properly.
Now, to get back to the core idea of this post, all of this new way of seeing 3 and New Vegas is thanks to an ability to see them from a new angle. I opened myself up to other opinions, and was able to see these games in a better way. I still like Fallout 3, and I definitely disagree with Bomberguy that it's garbage, but I can see where he's coming from and acknowledge that these parts of the game do, in fact, lack considerably. New Vegas can still grate on my nerves, but now that I can see the elements that make the game interesting, I can actually enjoy my time spent in the Mojave and come out with an overall positive experience counter to my original knee-jerk dislike.
Is it ethical, then, to go back and edit an old review to reflect this change? Not only do I think it's ethical, I think it is necessary. I don't post reviews for games as they release, I post reviews for games as I play them. Generally speaking, this means I have a lot of time with each game before I craft my opinion into writing. That also means I have time to go back to old games to revisit and finish them, and my experience during this revisit may change my overall opinion of the game as a whole. Or I might have a conversation with somebody or watch a video that makes me question my initial findings enough to try a game again with a clean slate. When that happens, I've found myself conflicted about what I should do with a review I've already written. Ultimately, I've come to the decision that if my opinion has changed or deepened, then the original review is inherently flawed and incomplete, which is unjust to both readers and to the game. Sure, it may be obvious that it's an old review, but all the same I don't think that fact speaks for itself.
That's what Fallout: New Vegas taught me. That I'm not always right, and in not being right I have an obligation to amend previous statements to reflect a more honest and up-to-date attitude. As things go forward, you'll start seeing some old reviews pop up again, with more polish, a revised score, and of course a disclaimer of [REVISED] at the top of the review. This allows me both the freedom to return to old games when I want to, and the contentment of knowing that my opinions are allowed to change as I change and grow.
I hope I've properly explained myself, and I thank you for your understanding. As always, I am committed to delivering properly explained reviews, and I will always continue to providing quality content. See you soon!
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