5/5 ★ – LOOMIS's review of Fallout: New Vegas.

Back in the late 2000s, with a short development time of 18 months, Obsidian created a video game that Bethesda themselves could never have made, and which is still unparalleled to this day. An RPG with so much charm and character, so much creativity and humor, so much player freedom and choice, and so much cleverness in terms of story/dialogue/character writing, and world building that, despite having an outdated engine and graphics, and tons of bugs, it is still celebrated 15 years later for being one of the best RPGs of all time. Instead of congratulating them on their achievement, Bethesda back then refused to pay them a bonus because they missed their desired score on Metacritic by one point. That already pretty much sums up the way Bethesda treats the Fallout IP these days. I don't want to shit on every impact Bethesda had on the franchise, because Fallout 3 exists, and whatever lightning in a bottle they captured with that game, I know that without Bethesda, Fallout: New Vegas wouldn't be the same as it is today. But it's really easy to look at what we have these days: a self-deprecating, jumping-the-shark-level, non-RPG memegame with Fallout 4; a completely over-the-top multiplayer Fortnite clone with Fallout 76; and whatever the fuck that god-awful TV show is supposed to be, and then think what could have been under Obsidian's stewardship. We'll probably never know, just like we'll probably never have good Fallout games again, because even the fanbase now consists largely of people who’ve never respected, or simply never understood, the true essence of Fallout. But no matter how much that may be the case, this game, the many good hours I've spent playing it, and the good times it brought me—that can never be taken away from me, and I'm grateful to have had them.