Fallout: New Vegas plot details

Source: USA Today

Since the Fallout: New Vegas trailer hit the web earlier this month, I’ve been anxiously waiting for more details to emerge. My mind goes right to that of Fallout 2, which took place in a similar location. It would appear, however, that things are going to be approached a bit differently this time around, as we’ll get to see a story take place from the point of view of someone who’s NOT the traditional vault-dweller.

“Unlike the previous Fallouts, where you start in a vault and you are a vault dweller, this one starts with a curveball,” says Pete Hines of Bethesda Softworks. “You were a courier, and you were obviously carrying something that somebody wanted. Part of the story is finding out what you had and what they took.”

At the outset of the game, your character is shot and left in a shallow grave in the desert, lifted of the package you were entrusted with delivering. A robot digs you out and takes you to a local caregiver, Doc Mitchell, who nurses you back to health.

The move to Las Vegas provides “a brand new, fresh experience that has a familiar feel of Fallout, but otherwise it’s an entirely new game and a new look, with Joshua trees and tumbleweeds and blue skies,” Hines says. “Vegas is up and running. It is not a ghost town. It still exists and thrives. There are casinos, and you can go down onto the Strip. It will have a very different feel from that standpoint.”

Events in the game happen a few years after Fallout 3. No characters from that game appear, Hines says, “but you will eventually hear a little bit about the events” of that game. New Vegas is “a self-contained story. You don’t have to have played the previous games to have any clue what’s going on here.”

Wait…NO characters from that game appear?? I certainly hope they’re not referring to my favorite, trusty, canine sidekick.