Game Impressions: Fall Out New Vegas

Fall Out 3 New Vegas wastes no time in letting you off the leash.  Once you have created your character (a rather in-character process) you are then unleashed onto the world and while there is a primary quest to follow and several easier quests in your starting location, there’s nothing to stop you from trying you luck in going off the beaten path.  Sure, the enemies might be massively overpowered compared to you but you can still try it and with a little luck you may even get past those Deathclaws defending that road.  The whole place is saturated with an atmosphere of another world you’re exploring – one that is post-apocalyptic where a nuclear war has irradiated America and left its prior proud (yet corrupt) civilisation in shambles.

In case you didn't think of it, here’s a reminder that there will be heavy spoilers for the first hour of gameplay.  This is an analysis, after all.

Starting Screen

Starting screens in videogames are like a well-designed character sheet (the design of it, not the stats on it).  It gives you a sense of what the game is about.  In this case you first see a member of the Steel Brotherhood (futuristic suit of armor) holding a western-style revolver (wild west old-fashioned technology themes) with the New Vegas sign behind him (themes of greed and rivalry).  The other screens shown involve 1950s-style posters with little hints of exposition on them and screenshots of derelict roads.  This is a pretty good primer for the sort of technology you’ll see.  Most of it is backward but some of it is far advanced of what we have available to us.  This helps us ease into a game that will pare DOS-style computers with lazer rifles.

Introductory Clip
“War never changes.”  This tagline gives a real sense of theme for the games.  There’s people all fighting over resources and championing their own ideals and this leads them into clash and competition with each other that sometimes leads to murder or even massacre, in the event of all-out war.  The clip itself also highlights the various conflicting forces from Caesar's Legion to the Steel Brotherhood to the Lucky 38 police robots to the NCR and the various tensions between them all.  Following this is a brief history lesson on a flickering screen like an old-fashioned documentary with a voice over and then a short cut scene where you are in the first person of a man whose hands are tied together who is shot by a rather cocky man in a suit flanked by two thugs who are apparently Khans.

Character Generation

You begin in a doctor's office after having been shot in the head by a guy called Benny for the poker chip you were carrying.  His various assessments give you a chance to decide your gender, appearance, SPECIAL skills (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck) and certain extra traits.  This is a pretty neat way of doing it and it's kind of funny that I've never seen character generation pulled into the first hour of gameplay in an RPG before -- likely because most character generation systems are so long-winded!

Once you've proven that you're able to walk about, you can then search through his home and potentially steal all of his things (which for some reason aren't marked as stolen goods as they are in everyone else's home) and then you can head out into the sunlight.

Goodsprings ... not derelict at all.

Environment

The setting of Goodsprings is exposition in its own right.  You can see dirt-logged roads whose asphalt is being wittered away by the desert.  You can enter homes whose furnishings are in variable states of disrepair whose wardrobes have broken glass panes within their doors (no idea why folk haven't removed the shards).  The place itself, however, does look a bit like a tiny town allowed to go to ruin with a few farmhouses, a schoolhouse, a general store, a saloon (quite large, all things considered) and a defunct petrol station.  That’s not all. There's more clues to the kind of world we're in:

• The clothing everyone wears hearkens back to the 1950s but with a wild west vibe occasionally obvious from some of the hats and the leather armour you can see.
• You’re given a Pip-Boy (advanced tech on a wrist-mounted computer which is where you access your inventory, stats, quest logs, etc. and it warns you of radioactivity by crackling) and a Vault uniform which clues you in to the whole underground survival aspect of the nuclear war that occurred years ago.
• A talking cowboy robot shows that AI, while still most assuredly artificial, is more advanced than today.
• If you drink the water, you gain a little radiation poisoning which gives you a hint about what’s happened beforehand.
• The roads are being retaken by the desert – suggests no more maintenance programs.
• The Brahmin are two-headed cows.
• Lots of sandy dirt, rock, and desert plants reinforce where you are.
• There’s a pet dog, which highlights the fact that these people are still people.
• The schoolhouse has been overtaken with large insects that attack you when you approach.  The fact they haven’t been cleaned out shows that there aren’t many kids around.  In fact, the general absence of kids always makes me think of radiation-induced sterility.

Other Characters
There’s a number of different people you can speak with during the first hour and each one has their own perspective.  While you are nudged against, say, the Powder Gangers who are threatening Goodsprings (as Goodsprings’ doctor set you right, after all), you can actually side with the gang and help them take out the guy hiding in the petrol station.  In fact, you constantly have such choices to make.  By assisting one group you can improve your reputation with them while hurting the group with harm your reputation with them (sometimes this leads them to give you gifts or shoot you on sight).  You are going to have to take sides in a few instances but in other ways you can keep a relative balance of reputations here and be accepted in most places.

So what NPCs do you meet in this first hour:

• Powder Gangers who escaped from an NCR prison facility and took the prison over.
•  The residents of Goodsprings.
• A man by a caravan who begs for your help to aid his wife against the geckos – only to attack you once you’ve cleared a path for him.  Treachery is a fact of life here.
• The caravan guard hiding in the Goodspring petrol station.

Enemies / Difficulty Curve
The game allows you to explore the place and slam into things well above your current ability but it doesn’t leave you completely without guide rails if you choose to use them.  You begin in a relatively safe town where you are directed to speak with a woman who can teach you how to shoot at bottles before taking you down to clear some geckos away from the water supply.  Goodsprings has some relatively easy quests within it as well which you can accept, turn down, or return to later at your leisure.  This is something you could do in a pen and paper RPG, you would need to include some sort of time frame for certain quests as it stretches credibility for the party to return a month later to assist a woman who’s been assaulted by geckos all this time.

• The large insects aren’t clever and don’t need great tactics to take down.
• You can enjoy some safe gunplay exercises with Sunny Smiles.
• You can reduce the difficulty of the encounter with the Powder Gangers (and are encouraged to do so) by encouraging the town members to rally together.  This requires the use of non-combat skills (Barter, Explosives, Speech, Sneak, Medicine) which allows those who aren’t that great with a gun to better their odds.
• The geckos are problematic but you’re given prior warning and can attack them at range before they reach you.

Actions
There are plenty of different things you can do and the skills which you level play into this (just like in a roleplaying game).  In fact, this is such a good example of it that if you’re stuck on how to keep different skills relevant within the course of a high-combat game (such as D&D or Pathfinder) you should either play the game or examine the walkthroughs for clues.  Here's just a few examples below:

• Hacking computers to unlock safes.
• Or breaking into a safe through larceny.
• Convincing people to assist you in a combat.
• Noticing enemies from greater distances (Perception).

Mood
The moods this game evokes are those surrounding exploration, wonder and curiosity, as well as a touch of discomfort that this could be the future (partially averted by the fact this is a divergent history where the world didn’t progress from the 1950s except in a few key technological ways before the nuclear war that undid it all).

Game Expectations
You can really sense how much exploration will be pertinent here, especially when you open your Pip Boy map and see new locations light up.  This is further evidenced by the sight of roads or some of the broad vistas when you climb up onto the hill at the graveyard and peer out at the wide expanse.  You also expect to have a real impact on the game world as you can choose to undermine Goodsprings or the Powder Gang or simply lead Goodsprings’ citizens into a fight they can’t well win and then pick them off yourself.  You soon come to expect also that there may be another route to success and that skills other than combat ones will also play important roles to come.

If you’re going to run this sort of game, you’re in luck, because it already uses some of the systems of roleplaying games.  All you need to do is get them to log the objectives they accept (if they’re planning on roaming about) and include some sort of a map upon which you mark new places they’ve gained the coordinates for.  Oh, and do remember to give them a nudge when another skill could be a possibility.  The best nudges, of course, are part of the first impressions so giving them a quest like in Goodsprings where they have to use other skills to gain the assistance of the citizens is a good idea as well.  Especially if your players are fresh or come from games where their other skills just never got much use.

If you want to read most Game Impressions, you can find them here.

If you want to read the Game Translation, you can find it here.

Game Impressions: Cold Fear

At least the first hour of Cold Fear is entirely devoted to setting up anxiety and apprehension as it slowly drip feeds you information on the bad guys.  Although I moved pretty quickly and did manage to encounter the parasitically driven zombies within the first hour, they were still mostly treated as set piece events rather than random encounters as they were always highlighted against the background, perhaps showcased against the human soldiers.  Some of the main points of the plot are also revealed involving experimentation into strange parasitic organisms that can revivify dead corpses to their own ends.

Also, bear in mind, there will be heavy spoilers for the first hour of gameplay.  This is an analysis, after all.

Introductory Clip

• First clips showing the original soldiers despatched to investigate dying with blurred camera shots of some glowing eyed humanoid.  This is intended to show the dangers that you're up against.
• The second half of the clip establishes your arrival and your lesser status (rather than a tactical assault team trained for this you're Coast Guard) and the fact that you're separated from your fellow men. 
• The Storyteller could duplicate this effect by using framing exposition to explain that the last team is MIA and that the new team must go out there and fix things.  This is best used in a briefing, perhaps with camera footage from the last team, although some groups may be happy for you to describe scenes they're characters couldn't hope to have seen.

Environnment

The ship rocks back and forth, rain beating down on the deck as you first regain control of your character.  As few games attempt this, it really cues you in that environmental hazards are a distinct possibility.  The player is further cued in when he finally gets up onto the main deck and sees a large crate swinging wildly across a deck that is burning in a few places.  Some of the hazards met within the first hour include:

• Tilting ship can splash waves on you, causing you to gain Fatigue, possibly washing you overboard.
• Tilting ship can cause you to slide through breaks in the railings.
• Swinging 'hooks' and swinging crates might hit you and damage you.
• Flooded corridor - electrocuted if you shoot out the fuse box.
• Fire on certain parts of the deck - avoid.
• Fire blocks corridors - wash it out with the sprinkler system.

Other Characters
This game has thus taken care to keep the Russian soldiers from appearing sympathetic which is important in a game where you're expected to kill them all.  The fact that they don't attempt to hail you or work with you against the greater threat also doesn't work to endear you to them.

• Corpses of soldiers are the main people you'll meet.  Often twitching, jaws moving, which gives a hint that they're not quite as dead as you would like.
• Scared Russian soldiers assume you're an Exocel and will attack you.  No civilians or whalers yet seen.
• Lansing is dead on the toilet.  His head falls off when you disturb the corpse by taking something from his pocket so at least you don't need to worry about him reviving.
• A man crawls toward you, trailing intestines due to his removed lower half.  Zombie?  No, he reaches for you in a plea for help.  Then an Exocel drops behind him and kills him.  This is how you meet your first Exocel.

Russian soldier meet Exocel (off-screen)

Enemies / Difficulty Curve

The game focuses on environmental hazards before moving on to the first couple of actual enemies.  I know there are more kinds of enemies but I only came across two and neither were too difficult which is pretty good for the first hour.

• Russian soldiers armed with guns who don't take many shots before going down.
• First Infected soldiers will fall down when you shoot them but require a head shot to take them out.

Scare Moments
This game uses a few twitch 'Wham!' moments but also plenty of slowly building up moments where the player is relied upon to come to their own realisations.  This certainly makes it a whole lot scarier.

• The moment you realise the corpses are still twitching.
• Lights going off in one of the rooms.  Nothing happens but still.
• You take something out of a floating corpse's pockets and when you turn to leave it rises up and smacks you.
• You turn on the sprinklers and a burning soldier runs through the fire, possibly burning you.
• The dead monkey in a store room near the empty cages that just lies there.

Actions

There aren't many different things you do in this game but that isn't uncommon for this sort of videogame.

• Killing.
• Locating objects and using them with things (namely keys).
• Avoiding death from environmental effects.
• Exploring rooms.

Mood

The moods this game evoke are ones of dread, anticipation, and adrenaline.

Game Expectations
You don't really sense a mystery brewing but you do know that there are going to be shocks and scares aplenty alongside issues of timing, quick reflexes and pinpoint aiming.  Even though this is an action game, it's slower than usual pace builds up the expectation that this is still a horror game and that horror tropes with overshadow action tropes every time.  This means that wasting ammunition, flinging yourself headlong into battle, and otherwise showing off how epic and cool you are might just leave your battered and broken body bleeding on the ground.

This is important because you can imagine how frustrating it would be if it acted like an ordinary shooter and then punished you for responding accordingly.  Since part of the gamer contract is dealt with through self-selection (don't like horror?  you're unlikely to buy it) whereas roleplayer contracts are more inclusive (you like to roleplay in my games so you're here), some element of out of character discussion beforehand can be helpful. 

You're in a better spot you if you're planning to run a new system designed for that type of game as your average D&D players can be easily clued into the fact that Call of Cthulhu runs differently.  Otherwise you may also have to smack the players over the heads with the game style as it's not like they've had a chance to read reviews, view a cover, and watch a trailer to judge your campaign on. 

Still, if you drench your game with enough indicators as this game did within the first hour than you'll end up with a very immersive, slick, and above all defining experience that should help the players set their expectations.  A few hints about ammunition conservation and high damage outputs also wouldn't go astray if your players are used to unlimited ammo and low damage-to-hit-point ratios.

If you want to read most Game Impressions, you can find them here.

If you want to read the Cold Fear Game Translation, you can find it here.

Game Impressions

As there's only so many games I can play on a weekly basis around all of my other hobbies, my social life, and my job and because there's so much extra other videogames can teach us I thought I'd like to add to the Game Translations style of articles.  Game Impressions will do things a little differently than Game Translations as it will focus on breaking down the first hour of gameplay to pick out how the game designers created the sort of atmosphere they were after and cued the players into the sort of game they should expect.  It'll also give you a number of scenarios and bare bones elements that you could always plug into your own game sessions and adventures.

Therefore some Wednesdays will have a Game Translation article and others will have Game Impressions article.  There won't be a set alternating schedule or anything like that as it'll depend on my interests and current experiences.  Odds are you'll be getting a few more Game Impressions and a few less Game Translation ones for awhile simply because I have translated most of my favourite games already but have yet to analyse the first hour of them yet.

I can hear some of you asking: "How will this help us run, or understand, good games?  We're roleplayers.  Our games work differently."

Absolutely they do.  A videogame *isn't* the same thing as a roleplaying game but there's a lot it can teach us as it's more experiential than movies and has to accept player diversions into it's pacing.  The other benefit of it, as opposed to actual plays, is that it's far easier for you to go out there and experience what I've experienced.  You can always purchase the game, take a look at the first hour of gameplay, and see what I mean.  While I can analyse my own game sessions, it's exceedingly difficult to encapsulate the experience so we might not be on the same wave-length.

On a slight tangent, another great source for roleplaying includes How To Write novels as they can help Storytellers with plotting, descriptions and characterisation.  Especially characterisation.  Very few roleplaying game books really delve into how to develop deep and meaningful interactions with complex characters.  Sure, you can't script dialogue like you can in a novel (at least, not very well) but you can get some pretty good advice.  Every so often I'll do articles on these as well but you're really better off picking up a few books yourself.

Of course, movies, books, and television series also help fantastically with pacing and big ideas but I've personally found it easier to analyse videogames in terms of how certain aspects can port into roleplaying games so I'll keep with it.

I'll list out the various Game Impressions here as I write them.

Cold Fear.
Fall Out 3: New Vegas.