A sequel to Obsidian's beloved entry to the Fallout franchise, Fallout: New Vegas is looking more likely than ever. With fans calling for a sequel and Bethesda’s recent acquisition by Microsoft, which purchased Obsidian Entertainment back in 2018, another Fallout collaboration could be just around the corner.
While the original Fallout: New Vegas is a fan-favorite for many Fallout players, there is one feature the next game should steal from CD Projekt Red’s upcoming and hotly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077. Adding this feature could help take open-world RPGs into the next generation of gaming, and restore the Fallout name among fans after the disappointment of recent entries by focusing on elevating the franchise's and the genre's strengths, not overcoming its weaknesses.
New Vegas Origins
One of the best things about the original Fallout: New Vegas was the freedom of its opening. Very little is established about the player character at all. They are referred to only as the Courier, and the only thing out of the player's control is that their character took a delivery job to deliver a platinum chip, which ended with them being shot and left for dead in the tiny town of Goodsprings in the Mojave Desert.
The brilliance of this opening is that it complements the freedom the player has to explore wherever they want, allowing them to imagine their character as whoever they want. Fallout 3’s timeline establishes that the player is about 19 when they leave Vault 101, while Fallout 4’s introduction was even more specific. This was an attempt to give the series a more narrative-driven edge, but the decision was ultimately detrimental to Fallout 4, establishing the player to be a veteran in a happily married heterosexual relationship, and that they recently had a child named Shaun with their spouse.
This choice for Fallout 4 hugely limited the roleplaying options available to players in the game, and massively reduced the replayability of Fallout 4, unlike games like New Vegas or Skyrim where the player could start the game again and come up with a totally new character. New Vegas 2 will need to get the series back on track in this regard, and there’s one interesting feature from Cyberpunk 2077 that could allow them to do this if implemented correctly.
Cyberpunk 2077 will have 3 different origins which players can choose from, called Life Paths in the game. These are the Corpo Life Path, the Nomad, and the Street Kid, and each has its own first act before they converge with the main plot of the game.
It is possible that Cyberpunk’s protagonist, V, being voiced will undermine the replayability of the game by making the character feel like the same person regardless of their origin, but if New Vegas 2 has multiple origin options and no player character voice, it could massively increase the roleplaying options available to players in the game.
Opening Options
Skyrim mods like Alternate Start – Live Another Life show just how popular having different opening options are among many first-person RPG fans. The mod starts the player in a cell, where they talk to a statue of Mara and choose from a number of different starts to the game, including being a member of any of Skyrim’s famous guilds, and race-specific options like starting in a stronghold for orcs.
Mods like these help open-world RPGs lean into their most valuable asset – the freedom they present players with, allowing them to roleplay as whoever they would like, limited only by their imagination. While Cyberpunk 2077 only presents players with three Life Path options, Alternate Start shows just how many can be added seamlessly into a series like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout. Each option doesn’t need to be hugely narrative-driven, because first-person RPGs as a genre aren’t about railroading players onto tightly constructed storylines.
Indeed, part of the genius of the original New Vegas opening is that it provides very little clear story motivation at all. The player has just woken up from being shot in the head while delivering a platinum chip, the value of which they have no idea. It makes perfect sense to many players to not try and find the men who shot them, and instead to count their blessings and head out in the opposite direction, fully taking advantage of the game's sandbox to explore.
Like Cyberpunk, Fallout: New Vegas 2 could present players with different origin options that take place before the main quest begins and converge at a single point. If this was done in the original New Vegas, for example, the player might be able to start as a member of Caesar’s Legion, a ranger for the NCR, a prospector, Powder Ganger, or King, and then take up the delivery job that triggers the events of the main quest later if they’d like to. This would allow a huge amount of variety when it came to different playthroughs.
The Future of Fallout
It has been difficult for both sci-fi and fantasy open-world RPGs to live up to the incredible double-punch that Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim made back to back in 2010 and 2011. Bethesda attempted to make the last single-player Fallout feel like a next-generation game by adding a fully voiced main character in Fallout 4, but as already stated, that only ended up limiting roleplaying options.
The open-world RPG that will take the genre to the next level, stepping out of the shadow of those two older games, will likely be one which provides players with even more options, even more freedom, and even more unique ways of experiencing the game that make it feel like the player’s story is being told even when the game world itself isn’t particularly reactive or as narratively driven as other RPGs like The Witcher 3.
With Bethesda and Obsidian now under one roof the chances for a sequel or a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas are higher than they have been in years. Nonetheless, fans will have to continue to wait to see how the studios’ relationship changes now that they are owned by the same company, and whether this will be enough to overcome the controversial past Obsidian and Bethesda have shared.
Fallout New Vegas was released in 2010 and is available on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.