Saturday Morning Gaming: Watching a Zoomer play Fallout New Vegas
One of my bud’s kids plays multiplayer games with his buds. Fortnite, Rocket League, and Bloons TD 6 (he’s the guy who got me into Bloons TD 6, now that I think about it).
I asked him “have you ever played a single player RPG?” and he said “Nah, not really.” “If I got you one, would you play it?” “Yeah, I guess.”
So I picked up a Steam gift card for $20 and waited until Fallout: New Vegas went on sale. Fortuitously, it went on sale near the kiddo’s birthday and, on one of our Monday Night Raw visits, I gave him the gift card and told him “Hey, you can pick this up for under $7 and use the rest of the card for something else” and he downloaded it.
He booted it up and I got to be on the couch watching the show and see him play the first 15 minutes of what I consider one of the best games of all time.
Short version: I am old.
Okay, he started it up and woke up in the doc’s office and the doc worked with him to set up his character and the kid walked out the door and immediately started punching people.
The town banded together and quickly dispatched the courier.
“I told him that he should reload a save and go back and *TALK* to these people instead of punching them.
“I didn’t save.”
My bud told me “Yeah, kids these days don’t save their games.”
So the kiddo sprinted through the opening of the game again and this time started wandering around and talked to people, picked the first option of the conversation, then chose “bye”. No digging in with Easy Pete outside of the Prospector Saloon and learning about the NCR and Caesar’s Legion… just “okay, I’ll talk to him” and then went inside where he met with Sunny Smiles who offered to teach him how to shoot.
So he followed her behind the bar where she gave him a varmint rifle and told him about aiming the gun. The kiddo turned around and said “I’m going to shoot her in the head!” and proceeded to do just that. She didn’t die, though. She started shooting back at him and he was quickly dispatched.
“Well, reload!”, we cheerfully told him. “But I shot her in the head!”, the kid told us.
He reloaded again and, this time, he learned to shoot, he accepted the mission to help her go clear out some of the geckos down by the wells. He cleared out the geckos, saved the game again, and he was done for the night and went back to Fortnite.
So I realized that I am old.
Now, if I want the kiddo to play the game again (and I’m not sure he will), I’m going to have to do a much better job of explaining the philosophy of this sort of game… and I realize that I shouldn’t force the kid to listen to me give a lecture on this sort of thing. So, instead, I’m going to give the lecture to you all.
First off: This game has some similar trappings to the games you’ve been playing with your buddies. You move around the same way as Fortnite and you have some superficial similarities when it comes to combat but there are some serious differences.
You’re a character in this game. Like, you have specific stats. Look at your guy. Your guns score helps determine how good you are at shooting and how much damage you do. Your speech score helps determine how successful you are at speaking with other people. Oh, and speaking to other people is *REALLY IMPORTANT*. They tell you things. They give you hints. They explain how the world works. They give you *QUESTS*.
As you go around doing quests, you learn more about the world and about the story. You know how you started out as a courier who got shot in the head? Well, you can learn more about who shot you in the head and why. Those two guys who were with him? You can learn more about them. The very first shot of the very first cinematic takes place in an abandoned casino, right? Well, you can find out why this particular casino is abandoned when the other ones on the strip are populated.
The world is interesting and the acronym “RPG” is “Role-Playing Game”. In this game, you’re actually going to be role-playing. Maybe you’ll be a good guy. Maybe you’ll be a bad guy. Maybe you’ll be a selfish guy. You know how you said “I’m going to shoot her in the head!”? Well, the game world lets you do that. I mean, it’s cool that you immediately wondered if the game would let you do such a thing because, hey, there are a lot of games out there that don’t let you do that. They immediately tell you you can’t or give you a non-standard “game over” screen. Well, in this game, you can do pretty much whatever you want. And that includes being a bad guy.
Just be a smart bad guy. Learn about the world first. If you want to kill everybody in Goodsprings (the town where you started), *YOU CAN*. You just would be a lot more likely to succeed at it if you teamed up with the Powder Gangers. One of the first real quests you get is to either protect Goodsprings from the Powder Gangers or to join the Powder Gangers and help them take over the town.
That’s one of the things that makes me say “this is one of the best games ever”. There are just so very many things you can do… and that includes getting good at things. You have skills. You start out with just that silly little varmint rifle, but you can eventually get better ones. Pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles. But you not only need to get a better gun, you need to get better at using them. Go up a level and put points into your guns skill. Make sure you’ve got pretty high agility and that’ll help you do more damage too.
But you don’t *HAVE* to get good at guns. You can get good at melee or fisticuffs or laser weapons or grenades. You can get good at so many things as you wander around and explore and find out that you can pick locks or hack computers or fast talk your way out of a jam.
Play the courier the way that you would play a character who woke up in a doctor’s office after getting shot in the head. Not, like, a monster of the wasteland capable of killing anybody you came across but, like, as a *GUY*. And then go up to level 2. Get a little better at shooting guns. Go up to level 3. Get a little better at picking locks. Go up to level 4. Eventually *BECOME* the monster of the wasteland capable of killing anybody you come across.
But just, you know, be smart about it. Figure out why you want to kill the people you want to kill. Don’t be “Chaotic Evil”. That’s a good way to end up dead. The game will let you do dumb things that will get you killed. That’s part of what makes it so awesome.
I hope you try it again. I hope you talk to the people of Goodsprings and learn about the world you’re exploring.
Because, seriously, this is one of the best games ever.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is Fallout’s “Please Stand By” screen. Screenshot taken by the author.)
My son “hated” RPG’s especially open world rpgs. He tried Skyrim first, hated it. I didn’t bother trying with Fallout, and anyway, he refused anything that had “open world” or “rpg” in it for the last few years.
Then, we watched the Edgerunners anime together and he wanted to try Cyperpunk 2077. Fortunately this is after the recent patches and DLC. He LOVED it. Now he’s listening to his friends and playing Elden Ring – loves it too. He still wants technically difficult combat more than interesting stories, but maybe I can get him to seriously try a classic. You give some great advice here for how to explain it to him better.Report
The main thing that I realized was that the kiddo has an ENTIRELY different vocabulary, for lack of a better word.
He doesn’t see conversations with NPCs as anything but obstacles to the good part. Plow through them and get back to playing the game.
And you know what? In Fortnite, that’s all they are. Someone blabbing until you can get back to the game.
Which doesn’t have a save. It doesn’t *NEED* to be saved. After this fight, we’re going to have another one. There’s another dozen coming down the pike.
Save the game? Why would you need to save the game?Report
“He doesn’t see conversations with NPCs as anything but obstacles to the good part. Plow through them and get back to playing the game.”
He’s doing it right… it’s the Devs who are hopelessly lost.
As DD says below, a lot of these games are just interactive books… some of you like that… I just see it as really bad books written by people who should be writing meta-rules, not books.Report
Books are good, though! Interactive books are better in a lot of interesting ways!
In the old argument of “are video games art?”, the question could easily be asked “are movies art?”
I mean, you’re just sitting there in your chair, eating popcorn and having to pee, probably, waiting for the movie to end.
How is that art? Video games ask you, the viewer, to interact with the art and participate in its own creation.
You know the banana taped to the wall? This is like that but *BETTER*.Report
I don’t think this is an ‘art’ question, at least not what I’m raising with regards a good game question.
But ‘if’ it is an art question, my objection is that the art itself is too constrained by a series of mostly A/B questions which are themselves the result of constraints of Dev time to map out non-binary interactions and downstream paths. It’s an illusion of choice that usually makes the game worse because making the choice ‘meaningful’ just makes the choice ‘instrumental’ to whatever you’re hoping to do. It’s the worst sort of calvinist pre-destination on rails we could imagine.
So, even if we grant that it is art (not necessary IMO), it’s bad art because we aren’t really participating in ‘sub-creation’ we’re executing branching paths that have already been written and exist in all their badness — which we merely uncover.
Truly dynamic worlds is something I’ve heard about for years… and I’m still not convinced that’s what anyone wants. The ‘game plays you’ theory strikes me as ultimately (even with, say, AI) unsatisfying as the only thing the game exists for is to play and it will play you relentlessly and it won’t be fun.
‘Games’ that is ‘True Games’ are meta-systems that increase in complexity such that they are ‘fun’ at easy levels and still fun as complexity increases. Calling them books or art is just a category error.
Don’t get me wrong… I have no problem with people writing books and getting people to participate in them … just not for me. I’d rather they ‘get out of the way’ and build better systems. The most common failure of games as story is that the story runs out and the game isn’t that fun.Report
You’re allowed to dislike reading books, you don’t have to invent a lengthy justification for it.Report
“You’re allowed to dislike reading crappy books”
FTFYReport
…and there’s that too.Report
Heh, I like reading books. I just don’t pretend they are games.Report
Well, it’s more that… hrm. I completely misunderstood the genre.
I looked at him playing Fortnite and thought “He should play a game with *REAL* combat!” and thought about V.A.T.S. and the awesome fights with, for example, Deathclaws.
He immediately found out that a Varmint Rifle will not kill an NPC even if you shoot them in the head.
Two *ENTIRELY* different sets of expectations going on here.
So, like, when it comes to the non-binary interactions and downstream paths, the game that I thought he was playing when he was playing Fortnite was not the game that I happened to see when surfing over his shoulder all the way over from the couch.
I may as well have asked him to play a Baseball Management sim for all of the overlap with New Vegas.Report
Eh, it’s not so much that you’re (we’re) old, it’s just that people who play Fortnite or Call of Duty or Rocket League or any number of those type of constant “fast twitch” games are looking for something else in their gaming experience. I know this speech would 100% vibe with my boys (but they’re already in the RPG tribe).
Personally, I think it’s less about RPGs and more about games that can be played at a fast pace, with no history or foreknowledge, and with your friends.Report
I started with the wrong one.
I have no idea how someone would ramp up to New Vegas from Fortnite.Report
Borderlands?Report
Hrm. It’s got co-op multiplayer and quests. That could work? Maybe?Report
Dang it, now I’m playing New Vegas again.Report
I still haven’t played it. It frequently goes on sale for <$3 on Steam, but I feel like I should play Fallout 3 first, though I'm sure it's not actually necessary. In the past couple weeks I managed to finish a couple of lengthy games that I was playing in parallel, Final Fantasy XV and Xenoblade Chronicles.
FF XV gets a lot of hate, but I enjoyed it. It's quite a departure from the usual FF games, because you get 4 characters, and that's it, except for the rare guest that drops in. Though the story is ultimately about saving the world, it really focuses on the relationship of the four guys, a prince and his three companions driving around in their car. There are a lot of little details in random dialogue while travelling or even animation while walking around that does a lot to show the friendship between these guys.
Xenoblade Chronicles, on the other hand, has some of the most interesting world building. I started with the third game in the series, which is a world where people age quickly but only live to be (IIRC) 10 years old, then die, and their essence is returned. They live in colonies where they constantly fight one another, and the essence of those they kill in battle is harvested to power the giant mechs that are at the center of the colony. There is a lot more, but it quickly gets into spoiler territory. The first game, which I just finished, is set in a world where there are two giants, Bionis and Mechonis. In the past, they fought one another and died locked in combat. Everybody lives on the two giants. The fleshy people and animals live on Bionis, and Mechonis is full of robotic life. At some point, I will get around to playing the second game, but I am not sure what sort of sitting that game has. Each game takes place in its own world.
Yesterday, I got started on Psychonauts 2, which feels a lot like the first game so far, and that's a good thing.Report
Fallout 3 was an amazing experience. I loved the opening section where you grow up in the vault and the first time you take a step outside and see the outside world and it’s blinding? Oh, that was great. There’s a little city off to the right that has a character that is writing a book and she gives you little quests that happen to explain mechanics of the game… like, you can loot buildings! You can crouch down and sneak! You can disarm landmines!
And it feels organic while you’re doing it.
The Capital Wasteland is awesome.
New Vegas is better, mind… but playing Fallout 3 for the first time felt like going home.Report
I was/is a good game. I also like how in Fallout 4 that incorporated some stuff from 3. Like Mccready.
I could go for a graphics update though 🙂Report
Nexusmods, man.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/25478
(Warning. The site also contains some, erm, how do you Americans say… mods that can incorporate… uh… “Boobies”.)Report
Modern kids don’t play games. They play tag on the playground except tag is Fortnite and the playground is a screen.
Or they play with toys, and toys don’t have a manual that says “how to play”, and a toy that won’t let you play how you want is quickly discarded.
An RPG could probably be better described as a movie, or a book. And if your kid lacks the patience to watch an entire movie or read a whole book, well.Report
Eh, I don’t know. There might also be a legit expectations thing going on.
It’s not possible, for example, to go back to the LucasArts games like Maniac Mansion or Day of the Tentacle.
When they remade Monkey Island, they had to change a *LOT* to turn it into a game that made sense in the current year.
Heck, compare the gold box Pool of Radiance games to stuff like Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Pool of Radiance was *PERFECT*… in 1988. It’s nigh-unplayable in the current year and only playable to people who play and remember.
I don’t think that it’s all just the kidz doing it wrong.
Of course, some of it is.Report
I’ll link to this now thirteen-year-old post about Ultima IV as an example of the difference between modern expectations of How To Play A Game and what we used to do.
…or, maybe, what we used to put up with because the tools we had couldn’t do any better. Like, I’m pretty sure that if the designers had been able they’d have made things like modern RPGs (indeed, the comments in the article point out that’s basically what “Ultima VII” was.)Report
That’s a good essay. And, yeah, I beat Ultima IV back when me and all of my buddies played it.
One of my friends met Lord British at a con and he told my buddy (Dave? I think it was Dave) that the rug in the throne room was a flying carpet.
I mean, you eventually learned that in the game a little over halfway through but you could go into the castle about 20% of the way through the game and you could just pick the carpet up if you wanted!
This blew our minds!
Now? Well… I don’t know the last time that someone started and proceded to beat the game. Maybe GOG has stats… they don’t. OH! But there are youtubes of people doing the playthrough from the last 5 years or so. So that’s heartening.Report
I think there is something to this.
But I look at something like BG3 and what a huge success it was, and I don’t worry as much about the future of RPGs.
The great thing about gaming is the diversity. Most everyone, from the solitaire player to the person making spreadsheets in Eve, has something that will appeal to them.Report