Attention Spoilers ahead

I have played Fallout 3: New Vegas for 31 hours now. I am exploring the Mojave desert and do not care much about the storyline. I want to give an example of the game scale. To walk from the start village to the city of New Vegas i spent 45 minutes only walking. And the route was cleared by me before.

The wasteland feels like a wasteland. There is much space and some occasional monsters or gangs to fight. But not too much. Its not overcrowded and feels like a radiated waste. The need of drinking, eating and sleeping improves the pressing need to survive. Only thirst seems to be a little weak. You are just not thirsty enough for running and fighting your way through the Mojave desert. I think its one of the hottest places on earth, so you should be thirsty much more. But its a fun game not a desert survival simulator.

The level scaling of enemies is hidden very well. Most places are filled with all levels of enemies. In the dust bowls there are small scorpions and giant scorpions mixed. So you can fight them like you desire. The combat in the wide open space is somewhat easy, when you are playing as a sniper. But hey i don't know of an animal that stands a chance against a hunting rifle.

Every small village has 2 or 3 quests for you. The wasteland is not overcrowded it feels just well for a apocalyptic world. The locations are well made. When people in a location talk about their job to guard a river from enemy scouts crossing it, the scout post sits nicely on top of the river on a mountain spine. From the river you can't see the scout post at all. Forts are easy to defend. Most farms have their own defense lines. The farms without defenses are mostly smoldering ruins. When your job is to search for radio post each of the locations actually has an antenna.

There are no quests like go kill 10 bugs and bring me their eyes. I found only a few kill requests of NPCs. Its more like stop those evil gang from hunting our Brahmin or go secure the road to the north. The quests are not generic. Each questline has several steps and you need a little bit of thinking to do it. Some of the quests check your stats to finish. The storyline is okay so far. Nothing really fantastic but okay.

I did not try to play as a peace loving hippie. The shooting with guns skill is needed for every character build except melee fighters and commanders. Without killing things you would have a very hard time to get experience. You could get some XP by sneaking around in stealth and accomplishing the mission objectives, but its not enough to level. The lonesome (without 7 followers) pacifist would be the iron man mode of FNW. I will try it some time.

Ah and the most important thing. FNW has strong ties to fallout 1 and 2. The Khans out of Fallout 1 are back. The Crimson Red Caravan is back in business. The water traders. The Hub is now the economical center of the RNK state. Your actions in fallout 1 actually shaped the history of the world. It feels like a real successor to the original fallout series. No, you can not kill children, or sell your lovely bride to slave hunters. But who cares. Its Fallout, its back.

The best open world RPG is reallife but in pc games FNW is in the top 5 for me. Top 5 Fallout 3 / FNW, Gothic 2 + addon, World of Warcraft (Exploring the world in first month) -addons, Ultima 4 to 7, UW1 + 2.

Have a nice desert trip.