Planning the trip: making sense of the map

The first thing to remember is that New Vegas isn't Las Vegas; it's a reimagining. The roads and landscape are reasonably faithful to reality, though distances aren't, and many place names are plays-on-words (for example, I suspect "Freeside" is actually the Fremont St area.) But one question comes first: what's that junction of two major roads on the game map?

Fortunately, it's easy to answer. The road running from the south that flows north then northeast is America's Interstate 15, one of the USA's busiest. Near the Strip (in both New Vegas and reality) it intersects Interstate 515, which in America's interesting road-naming system is also US Routes 93 and 95 along its length; this is the road from the northwest corner of the game map that flows roughly southwest before splitting into the 93 and 95. These roads are the key to relating the game map to reality: in the game they're rubble, but they're traversable rubble.


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Many of the game's most important locations are along this big shaky X. If you're new to the game, I'd recommend a walk along its entire length to reveal a large number of locations. (Bring companions and decent weapons; there's any number of evil creatures along the way. No change from real life there!)