Can I ask a favour? I've rebranded my little marketing business, Chris does Content, and approval from my audience helps me win new customers. If you enjoyed my work on the Fallout New Vegas Tour, I'd be really grateful if you visited me here and clicked the Facebook "Like" button at lower right. Thanks!

16 April 2011

My Fallout: New Vegas Tour

The site's now complete. In less than a week it's approached 100,000 pageviews and over 5000 people have watched the videos. But doing a tour based on a videogame remains a fundamentally silly thing to do. So a few people have asked: why did I do it?

Here's my answer: because life itself is fundamentally silly. We're born. We eat, sleep, reproduce. And then we die. We're each an eyeblink even in human history, let alone the history of the universe. There's not a lot of point to any of it; life has no innate meaning or purpose, save that which we impose upon it. So the worst thing you can do is take it too seriously.

Besides, the American West is among my favourite places on earth. The vast distances, the extremes of climate, the hardscrabble characters eking a living from motels and dime stores. There are millions of stories scratched into the sands of the Mojave, with millions more left to be written. In its own tiny way, this trip was one of them.


The only thing left to do is thank my special friend Melissa, source of the idea. (Herself a midwesterner, she once did a tour of Rome based on the much-panned film "Hudson Hawk".) I haven't seen the movie yet, Melissa: it's waiting for us when I see you again.

So there you have it: my Fallout New Vegas Tour, a real-world journey around 34 locations that appear in the game. If you've just arrived at this blog, here's where you start.

14 comments:

  1. Very cool journey! I thoroughly enjoyed going through your collection of photo-to-screenshot comparisons and write ups of the real life "mojave wasteland". Thanks for throwing it up on the internet for us all to see! :)

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  2. Amazing, very well done and very interesting. Thanks!

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  3. Thanks for sharing with your experiences & photos.
    "Here's my answer: because life itself is fundamentally silly." - yeah, I just need to chill da f**k out with job, I can't stand.

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  4. A very enjoyable read; reminds me of a little tour of Washington, DC I did myself a couple years ago. I didn't document that one, though, or plan too thoroughly ahead in regard to where I'd go. I do remember taking the Falls Church metro a little more cheerfully than anyone taking a DC metro line reasonably should, and walking around Chevy Chase in frustration trying to find the nearest real-world equivalent to Galaxy News that I could. Perhaps I should launch another expedition.

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  5. Thanks very much for sharing, Chris, the sleuthing and pics are brilliant. Having read this, I'm passing on your Red Rock Canyon suggestion to my parents, who'll be coming over to the States on holiday in a few months.

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  6. Hey, great trip you've undergone!! A shame you have so few comments for this, must have be a great fun through. Thanks for the site!

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  7. Wow - that's primarily the one word I have to offer about this. You inspire me to pursue my own aspirations of becoming a writer (freelance business/technical, bit of authoring as well) so as to have an excuse to work remotely on projects for others and find time for personal projects like this as well. I am a fan of a good historical road trip, and one as creative as this would be a blast to undertake. I wonder if the same could be done for Fallout 3 and the Maryland/DC region. Thanks for entertaining journey!

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  8. Very nice, are you planning on trekking Zion Canyon?

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  9. Great Very Nice I hope You Make More Picture Like This Thanks

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  10. This project is awesome! I really enjoyed this!

    Just FYI:
    The Smithsonian is collecting art and photography about Fallout for a new video games exhibit. I think your project would be an awesome part of that! Here's the link if you're interested.

    http://www.bethblog.com/2011/11/29/smithsonian-exhibit-looking-for-game-inspired-art/

    Cheers!

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  11. I wished there was a Fall Out New Vegas theme park and I would be happy to go there.That what I wish would actually happen.

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    1. hey, actually check out a real 188 trading post theme park for real up here in the north with a real life Samuel and all the real music that love

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    2. furthermore, we have all the old fallout music that we all love for sure, you can actually pull up and sit down at this 188 trading post and order up some good old whiskey and turn on the radio and Mr. New Vegase is right there, also there are many other characters around like Cass and Boone ready and willing to party down before our next Deathclaw raid

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  12. Btw i think the fort is located at the north rim. North Rim az, have fun folks!

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