Fallout: New Vegas — Ramblin’ about Ricky
Fallout: New Vegas. What is there to say about this game that hasn’t already been told hundreds of times? Oh, I know. Whatever ludacrous little nitpick that I came across whilst researching other things. In this case, that would be the vault suit. Yes, while I was looking up any and all background information about one of the series’ most iconic elements, I came across some small discrepancies that I figured were worth mentioning one way or another.
First off, I feel the need to mention that similar to Fallout 3’s DLC Operation Anchorage, Honest Hearts is New Vegas’ only DLC that makes any use of the base game vaults’ stories. Quite a weird little detail, I’m aware. However, unlike the former, Honest Hearts does not make any attempts to dress up their vault suit-wearing NPCs in any unique way. Instead just settling for the dry, average suit.
So, where am I going with this? Well, in the base game, many pointers may lead you to Vault 22. This vault has become completely overgrown and houses mutated spore carries that attack on sight, as well as giant hostile plants. Honest Hearts continues the story of the vault’s inhabitants, albeit in the background. You’ll be made aware of this as soon as you step foot in the DLC’s starting area, Northern Passage. There, alongside a caravaneer and three serious-looking mercenaries, you’ll find a balding, baby-faced man wearing a bright blue vault suit with a pair of suglasses: this is Ricky.
Your first thought upon seeing him might be ‘Is he from a vault? Where did he get that vault suit?’ And, remembering which game you’re playing, you can ask him about it, to which he’ll say: ‘Where the fuck you think? Vault two-two! That’s where I grew up!’
Problem: you are aware that that’s total bogus, and you can call him out on it, at which point he’ll spill the actual beans: ‘You been to Vault two-two, huh? I may have been exaggerating a little. Truth is, I got this suit and the Pit-Boy off a dead prospector who came out from Zion. Guy was dead when I found him, okay? Had a ton of shit on him. That’s how I know there’s good loot in Zion, see?’
Ignoring the apparently vault suit-transporting prospector, Ricky is quite open about how he attained his clothing of choice. It also helps him blend in as a supposed vault dweller that the caravan leader was looking for. Something he isn’t as open about is his Psycho addiction. Although the average player still has plenty options to get this information out of him. For the uninitiated, Psycho is basically a legally-distinct version of methamphetamine. It was created for miltary use and has numerous side effects, of which heightened agression and jumpiness are the two most common ones.
Ricky displays these side effects, albeit in a very botched way. He comes across more aloof than agressive. And when he’s supposed to be agressive, he doesn’t seem honest. For example, when the player outs his Psycho addiction, he yells through the entire cave about having said nothing about using the drug. This might be a bit alarming to the rest of the caravan, but nothing’s ever said of it. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there’s an unused line for Ricky where he shoots at attackers in a canyon. The script notes state that he should be yelling out in the canyon, and being drugged-up and ready for action might warrant such a reaction, Ricky instead raises his voice about as much as a high school kid being annoyed at their sibling.
Although we shouldn’t give Scott McNeill too much flak for the performance, it’s quite fine for a character of Ricky’s caliber. What has always bothered me about him is how he is presented visually. For a drug addict that’s probably not doing all too well physically, he looks clean, way too clean. Of course, the engine is largely to blame for that. In 2010, the G.E.C.K just wasn’t ready to have dirty skin or bloodshot eyes on anything other than the specified raider races. A similar issue afflects the tribals of Zion as a whole, but that’s a topic for another time. His smooth perfect skin is then heavily contrasted again his neatly-kempt, balding hair. So first, why is he balding? He looks like he’s barely out of his twenties, thirties at the very most. Of course, premature baldness is a thing, and I know guys that starting losing hair in their twenties, but none of them have ever looked so… off as Ricky. And on that note, why is his hair so neat? Why not just give him a more wild, unkempt hairstyle? Fallout’s filled to the brim with those, and it fits the character a whole lot better. Or just give him some facial hair, anything, to make him look less of a human approximation, because the voice and face don’t match, and neither does the face with the character, honestly said.
But then, when we’re done ogling his grotesque visage, we need to adress the elephant in the room, the Vault suit and Pip-Boy combo. Why is his Vault suit in such pristine condition? Well, I can actually tell you why. Fallout 3’s Vault suits appeared in various states of cleanliness and distress. You had new ones, filthy ones, bloody ones… They all kind of fit their respective locations and uses. For New Vegas though? Well, the base Vault suit texture was reused, making sure they all looked stylistically consistent. But every single Vault suit in New Vegas looks pristine, regardless of the story of its vault. So, texture reusage is to blame here, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been cool.
As you find out when playing through the DLC, Ricky’s prospector likely got the Vault suit from the Vault 22 dwellers’ guard camp. This location, as its name suggests, was set up by Vault 22 survivors after leaving their vault behind due to events seen in the base game. You can find more suits packed in duffel bags, and numerous skeletons around, but sadly, none of them still wear their iconic suits. Again, this is likely the case because the base game doesn’t have skeletons in Vault suits. Those wouldn’t show up again until Fallout 4, despite being a series mainstay previously (think of Ed, or the classic game over screen). One might expect a suit looted from a corpse killed in cold blood to be dirty, bloody, or in some way damaged, but no. Those around the dwellers’ skin evaporated, the ones they brought with are still in perfect condition, and so is the one that Ricky found. Sad but true.
And then there’s his Pip-Boy. It’s just a normal run-of-the-mill version, which would be fine, if it wasn’t a plot point that his is broken with accompanying text that explictly states that ‘The screen’s locked up, and the reboot button is missing.’ Again, a small detail that wasn’t a big priority, but could’ve been really cool if they had actually made a seperate, busted model just for Ricky’s Pip-Boy.
What’s there to take away from this? Well, that the first Bethesda iteration of the iconic Vault suit appears more degradable than its earlier appearances, but besides that, I suppose that we can always notice the very small details that seem just a bit off. Honest Hearts always was the DLC with the least development time and the smallest team behind it, so small details like this just aren’t a priority. Thta isn’t to say that the DLC lacks in small detailswork, far from it, but AAA work, regardless of the team or time put into it, will always be fine-combed through. Back then, we just expected that kind of quality. And, at the end of the day, at least the Vault 22 story wasn’t done as dirt as the Vault 3 one…
