For this critical play, I chose Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian Entertainment and released in 2010. I played the PC version, but it’s also available on console. The target audience is older teens and adults, especially people interested in narrative-heavy RPGs with lots of player choice and gray morality. I’ve played it multiple times, and it still feels like one of the strongest examples of how game design can encourage worldbuilding through interaction instead of exposition.
One thing that makes New Vegas stand out is how it builds the world around the player rather than just giving them a map and some lore. Gabriela Pereira’s ecological model for worldbuilding fits the structure almost perfectly. At the center is the player character, the Courier, who starts with no defined traits except that they were shot in the head and left for dead. From there, everything that shapes them is up to you. You decide how they talk, who they trust, and how they interact with the world. And you see the consequences of those decisions, usually instantly, but sometimes hours later.
From the beginning, you’re surrounded by supporting characters that make those decisions feel real. In the first town, Goodsprings, you get caught between helping a tight-knit, under-resourced community or siding with a gang of convicts who are threatening to take it over. Neither side is perfect: the townsfolk are in over their heads, and the gang only exists because the NCR used convicts as forced labor and armed them poorly. That conflict teaches you that everyone in this game has a backstory, and nobody is evil just because the game says so. Even the Powder Gangers have a reason for what they became. These kinds of encounters repeat constantly throughout the Mojave.
On a systems level, New Vegas encourages you to form your own moral compass. You have separate reputations with each faction, and actions that help one will often hurt another. Unlike in many RPGs, like Fallout 3, you’re not tied to a binary “good” or “evil” meter. Instead, the consequences of your choices are felt socially, and the world reacts to you differently based on where you’ve been and what you’ve done.
That world is mostly shown through exploration. For many important and eye-catching locations, the first time you see them will be when you walk by them on your way to a different quest. This contrasts sharply with Fallout 3, which was designed to make sure the player reaches and explores every important set piece. Maybe that thing on the horizon is just some loot, but maybe it’s a vault full of disturbing logs and dead bodies. From the first time you choose to go off course and check out something that looks interesting, you’re rewarded with loot and story details that encourage you to explore independently more often. Even when they’re not pushing the story directly, the physical surroundings are used in smart ways. You’re almost always within sight of multiple landmarks, which keeps you moving and makes the desert feel intentionally designed, not random. This kind of environmental structure rewards slow play and reinforces the idea that the game doesn’t owe you anything.
Higher up in Pereira’s model is culture, and New Vegas leans into that as well. Each major faction represents a different take on how to rebuild civilization. The NCR wants to bring back pre-war democracy and capitalism, but they’re corrupt, stretched thin, and falling apart. Caesar’s Legion is authoritarian and violent, but it offers safety and unity through total control. Mr. House represents a technocratic future with no space for individual freedom. What’s impressive is that none of them are obviously “right,” and the game forces you to see their flaws firsthand.
That focus on complexity also shows up in the mechanics. The game doesn’t tie your combat or dialogue ability to your gender, race, or body type. Your effectiveness is based on what stats you pick and how you choose to build your character. Some perks let you define your sexuality (like “Confirmed Bachelor,” which gives dialogue options and combat bonuses against male characters), but these traits are never treated as limitations. That stands out compared to Fallout 3, where similar perks existed but were mostly heteronormative and locked to gender-specific outcomes. New Vegas opens things up and adds value to those identity-based choices without making them feel like stereotypes.
The ethical design is also in how the game never lets you escape responsibility. Even if you try to stay neutral, you’re still shaping the outcome. The game ends with a slideshow showing how every faction, major or minor, was affected by your decisions. Sometimes, people suffer because of choices you didn’t even realize would matter. That structure forces you to reflect, even after the game is done. It treats your actions not as puzzle solutions, but as real choices that leave a mark.
Fallout: New Vegas doesn’t tell its story through long cutscenes or emotional cinematics. It hands you a broken world, tells you where to go to get revenge on the guy who shot you, and then watches what you do with it. The world becomes meaningful not because it’s big or pretty, but because it reacts to you and remembers what you’ve done. That memory of walking back into Goodsprings hours later and seeing whether the town is thriving or burned is what sticks.
