This is the introductory review of my sub account, because of course it is. Fallout: New Vegas is the quintessential Fool game, and so having it be the very first of this account's reviews makes the utmost amount of sense.

I typically try not to make word salad, as my friends describe making long essays on games, because I find that most reviews could say more with less words and be more understood in that sense. However this account is going to be specifically dedicated to this longform essay type structure. The thesis of this essay being: Why do I think Fallout: New Vegas is the greatest game ever made?

When I first played this game at the ripe old age of 12, I was in a spot where I absolutely hated first person shooters, both in their tone and in the online communities that surrounded them as Call of Duty was at its cultural zeitgeist and had infected both young and old into playing its rather lackluster titles. So, when I first picked up Fallout: New Vegas and saw it was a first person game, I was initially reluctant. I had grown extremely weary of the genre, and did not want to force myself into playing another unremarkable FPS. But as I kept playing, I realized that Fallout: New Vegas did not limit itself to the FPS standards of its time, and had a Third Person mode. At a time when FPS games were oversaturated, I hadn't played an over the shoulder Third Person Shooter since I had first forayed into Metal Gear Solid 3 nearly 4 years before playing New Vegas. This was when I first noticed something that became more and more evident to me as time went on: Fallout New Vegas wants you to play the game how you want to play it.

There's nothing quite like freedom of choice, the freedom to choose whether you want to play in First Person or Third Person or choosing whether to use guns or a machete, Fallout: New Vegas allows the player to pick and choose how they play, and this mentality is rewarded through both perks you can get through Level Up or earn through completing various challenges throughout the game. If you spend a lot of time killing let's say, Super Mutants, the game will give you a perk that increases the damage you deal to them because you the player have experience with how to kill them. In other words, the freedom of choice allows for character development within the game itself, which also allows for a deeper kind of roleplay than your typical RPG.

Of course, I've been speaking mostly on gameplay at this point, and in reality, the gameplay is easily the weakest thing about Fallout: New Vegas. As much as I love this game I cannot deny that there is an innumerable amount of jank in regards to combat with all sorts of weapons. Part of me thinks there's charm in that though. The amount of weird things that you can pull off, like running around placing mines and throwing grenades while getting chased by 10 ghouls in an area you're not supposed to be in, or punching Boone into the stratosphere, those things are just innately fun to me.

In truth though, you're not here for the gameplay, you're here for the world and its characters, and the consequences of your various actions. Without spoiling it, I just love that this game, while making you very important in the grand scheme of the narrative, doesn't paint you as some "Chosen One" (though this does become a problem in Lonesome Road, but we're just talking base New Vegas with this review). You are just another bumfuck wanderer in this post-nuclear world, but unlike the other bumfucks, you have the motivation and drive to do what you want, change what you want to change. You don't just become the most important individual in the wasteland because you are, you earn that position through countless fights, trials, and sometimes just straight up diplomacy.

In fact, that's my favorite way of playing New Vegas, diplomacy. Talking your allies or your enemies down in different situations reveals more about them and the world around you, and allows for the deeper narrative writing by Obsidian to be rewarding to the player who goes out of their way to raise the Speech stat. The fact that you can end the massive war that the game is about without having to kill the most dangerous person imaginable is something that speaks to the nature of mankind: Human beings can be reasoned with, and I think that the option to do so is refreshing in a day and age where murdering your enemies with no consequence is still the norm in most games.

Fallout New Vegas is my happy place game, which I know is ironic given the literal apocalypse it takes place in, but there is something nice about being important. In 2021, where you're just a face among a sea of faces, a world where your choices genuinely matter outside of just tiny moments, where your decisions can change and better the lives of others, I don't know, it's just a kind of fantasy.

So, why do I think Fallout: New Vegas is the greatest game ever made? Well, the answer is simple to me.

Fallout: New Vegas is a look into how one person can change the community around them, and it makes me feel special to that community. It isn't really a game about revenge, or war, or the apocalypse. It's a game about choice, something I don't have in my life.