Our Sneak Rating Was High Enough to Avoid The Giant Scorpions

I'm pretty sure I knew the places in Fallout: New Vegas were based on real locations. Obviously there's a Las Vegas (even if it's become New Vegas), and the Hoover Dam is a thing that exists. So even without looking to confirm, I wasn't surprised to drive past Primm, Nevada yesterday.

I was surprised there actually is a casino with a roller coaster built into it. It's Bison Steve's in the game, and Buffalo Bill's in the real world, but at least from the highway it looks basically the same. Once you adjust for the game being 200 years on from a nuclear war, anyway.

I think the Fallout games may be the first time I've played video games using a real world setting where it actually felt significant. Where driving through the actual Primm brought the fictional one into focusSports games portray various arenas and stadiums that do exist, but that's not the focal point. Grand Theft Auto Vice City is basically set in Miami, but it's more like Miami Vice Miami than actual Miami. I can't imagine driving through Miami and recognizing something from the game. If I did drive through Miami and recognize something, it'd be more because I saw it on Burn Notice. I don't know Moscow well enough to know if the Metro games are at all representative of that city, during the brief periods you're on the surface.

Plus, in Metro, when you're on the surface, the clock is constantly ticking for you to get someplace safe before the radiation in the air kills you, so I rarely found the time to stop and consider the scenery. One nice thing about the Fallout games is sometimes you can pause and enjoy the scenery before being attacked by cannibals or mutated monsters. It helps to ground them as actual locations, rather than just some place you stop to shoot people or try to trigger quests.

We didn't stop in Primm. Neither of us was up for gambling, and we had 300 miles to go yet. We did make a brief detour into Nipton, because we wanted to see at least a little of the Mojave National Preserve. It was a nice small town. We had a pleasant lunch under a tree, although the wind was a bit much at times. The view was excellent, and the Legion hadn't burned most of the town down and killed all the inhabitants. So that was a pleasant surprise.