Fallout: New Vegas Director Debunks 13-year-old Myth About Locations
The shortcuts leading to New Vegas were not a mistake of the old Fallout, but an alleged test of player abilities. At least that's what the game's director claims.
Tim Cain wasn't the only one who picked up on memories regarding the iconic post-nuclear RPG series. The lead designer of Fallout: New Vegas debunked a popular myth about the game that had been circulating among fans since the game's release.
A shortcut to hell
The eponymous New Vegas (more precisely: New Vegas Strip) is, of course, the main attraction of the thirteen-year-old installment of the post-apocalyptic series. However, players embarking on the adventure won't get there right away - unless they take a shortcut through one of several unfriendly locations. For example, through Black Mountain or Quarry Junction.
There is only one small problem: The shortcuts to the New Vegas Strip are riddled with high-level dangers. The quarry is teeming with deathclaws (including females and one alpha male), and even a single one is too many for a low-level character.
Black Mountain doesn't fare much better in this regard. True, there is no nest of deathclaws here, but instead players can expect the company of different varieties of supermutants and other "friendly" inhabitants of the nuclear wasteland.
In other words, the road through these locations may indeed turn out to be a shortcut - only not to New Vegas, but to sudden death.
It's not a deathclaw, it's a feature
Of course, gamers wouldn't be themselves if they didn't rise to the challenge. Ways were quickly found to get to New Vegas Strip early in the game, even at character level 1 (via GameFAQ). This required maneuvering between enemies and traps, sometimes with the help of the (un)reliable quick save system and a "modest" number of deaths along the way.
Nevertheless, some fans did not believe that this was the solution envisioned by the developers. This was expressed by Internet user @lilteeara on X / Twitter in response to a post by Josh Sawyer, director and lead designer of New Vegas, regarding the mistakes used by speedrunners in video games.
The developer quickly corrected it: The ability to sneak through the Black Mountain into New Vegas is not a "glitch," but a test of the player's ability, so to speak. Sawyer stated bluntly that the difficulty level of these locations was not meant to be an insurmountable obstacle, but only to force players to "Git Gud or Die". The same goes for another unfriendly location: Scorpion's Gulch.
New Vegas 2 only in gamer dreams
The developer's entry became an excuse for fans to praise Fallout: New Vegas, both those who managed to get to the Strip early, and those who, even after many attempts, had to give up on shortcuts (via posts on Twitter). Admittedly, not all Internet users believe that Sawyer was serious in his post (especially after his subsequent responses).
Of course, there were also those who, for the hundredth time (at least), asked or begged for New Vegas 2. As usual, to no avail.
