I'd agree to that, at least in part. It does feel similar, or rather most of it feels like a modification. Newish content built on old foundation.

It doesn't have a lot about it that's really visually pleasing but there's lots and lots and lots of fun game there. I'm not sure you could get as much game on top of a brand new engine. It certainly could have done with still more art and more voices (the female voices in particular). Very nice atmo-music, worth switching off the PipBoy radio for.

As well as the much publicised bugs familiar to any Obsidian release NV also has Obsidian's interesting characters and occasionally witty writing. It doesn't take its self too seriously, but its also not afraid to tackle serious issues even if its just attached to yet another fetch quest.

I'm playing an emotionally damaged, "female batman" character inspired by the in game comic book La Fantoma! (female version of The Phantom). By day she's a polite and intelligent scientist, complete with white coat.

By night and when on dangerous missions she switches into a fancy red cabaret girl's outfit (The female version of the Mysterious Stranger). With guns blazing and her trusty robot Dog companion she meets out the kind of Justice the NCR can't.

If anyone's interested, but finding it hard to track down maps of the locations in NV.

Here's a good'n

Dispite the bugs i am still enjoying the game allot. Visualy not all that different from F3, but some nice in game additions. And with Obsidian at the helm skills open up allot of different conversation options, that you wouldnt see unless you have that skill. Plus the voice acting & story is better so far.

Give that idtech 5 or whatever its called, the new engine by id for their game Rage (which scales right down to even run on the ipad!) is now a zenimax owned property, I find myself wondering if Obsidian will get their hands on that now... Imagine a Fallout (or god please make it so, Troika's Arcanum) title running on that engine.

Only if Bethesda use Obsidian to make another game. In a way, I hope they do, but I hope they don't buy Obsidian. It's kinda funny, though, Bethesda have three of the Interplay remnants under their wing at the moment. Interplay for the Fallout MMO, Obsidian for New Vegas and inXile for Hunted.

AFAIK Arcanum would be owned by Activision.

I get the feeling that Bethesda will force all their games to use iD Tech 5, or at least their top shelf games.