

Even though the door you’re supposed to find is close to where you already are, you can spend hours trying to find it, because the quest takes place in one of the most dimly-lit, rundown, copy-paste buildings in Fallout history, which is saying something. The character that is supposed to direct you to the launch console, since the group of religious ghouls want you to do the honours, often runs away without telling you where to go. Once that is taken care of, you have to go on a series of fetch quests to get the rockets working and even after you do that, the final step of the quest can bug out. Even if he gives you the quest, it’s easy to think the area behind him is where you go instead of the next room over, but if you return un-stealth-ed to try to talk to him again but have not done his bidding, he will attack you. In this case, you have to talk to him with a Stealth Boy item consumed, and you can’t move a skull that he believes is a deity that talks to him. If you’re trying for anything other than a burn this mother to the ground playthrough, you will be reloading save after save, figuring out why a faction now shoots at you on sight. You can easily offend him and turn him aggro or hostile, terms you will become very familiar with when you google the game.

You have to find a way to deal with stealth-addicted super mutants with shields fashioned from stop signs, but if you don’t find the quest-giver right away, you can fail the quest by killing too many of them. This is also one of the most infuriating and poorly designed areas in the game and the quest is not only easy to break but, like much of Fallout: New Vegas, feels like it is actively trying to prevent the player from completing it. You watch them board rickety rocket ships and fly away, certain of their doom, but still hopeful that they find their mecca. The ghouls are one of the most tragic types of characters in Fallout, and so it is no surprise that this faction would want to find a new world for themselves. You are sent to simply clear out some ghouls, a common kill quest in Fallout games, only to step into a questline about identity and religious fanaticism. The game is literally lurching to work at times, calculating all manner of parameters, many of which are not immediately apparent to the player.Ī few standout quests demonstrate this dichotomy perfectly. It’s also a game so utterly broken and creaky that it is impossible to play cleanly without the trusty Fallout wiki by your side and constant saving. Or rather, the greatest video game story sandbox ever.

It’s arguably the best video game story of all time. There’s none of that binarity in Fallout: New Vegas.
