Windows

Fallout 3

I'm not going to review Fallout 3 here, that's already been done by and large all over the place by people much smarter than me. Two years ago. I'm just gonna say this is the sort of game that makes me hate it when it's over, because in its absence I realize how shallow and crappy every other game out there is. Fortunately, not only you can keep exploring the world of Fallout 3 for quite some time and still find new stuff, but there's also a virtual army of very talented fans with plenty of time on their hands working 24/7 in what might just be the most prolific modding community in the history of gaming.

The thing is, upon entering Fallout3Nexus one finds themselves quickly buried in a landslide of mods, and frankly we're all very busy trying to keep up with 4chan's latest meme or digging the archives of Jailbait Gallery, and we don't have the time to make the in-depth analysis required to understand what's what in the wonderful world of Fallout 3 modding.



Lucky for you, here's your trusty family Doctor with this, a work that the future generations will undoubtedly come to know as THE ULTIMATE FALLOUT 3: A collection of unmissable mods aimed to take your Fallout 3 experience to the next level.

First things first, a few considerations:

It's very important -vital, even- to have the latest official patch (to date that would be 1.7), even if you haven't bought the DLCs. There are many reasons for this, so I'll sum them up in one sentence: Because I say so. There you go.

Even though all the mods we're about to discuss can be applied at any point of the game, I'd strongly advice to start a new character, for two fundamental reasons:

1) Some mods -especially those that alter XP rewards- could be quite unbalancing for a character on a high level, and ...
2) ... I witnessed firsthand that a modded Fallout 3 is a lot -A LOT- more stable when starting a new game.

In this link you'll find a .txt file which will save you a lot of headaches: It's my FOMM loading list (see section 1). This is 100% guaranteed to work perfectly, and believe you me, it's the fruit of weeks upon weeks of hard work. You're welcome. The list can be loaded into FOMM using the option Load Order > Import.

With that out of the way, let's get into it.





section 1. fixes & patches
Anyone who spent a couple hours with Fallout 3 knows that -maybe barring SiN and Bloodlines- it might just be the most unstable, buggy game in the recent millenium. Bethesda produced half a dozen patches, and not even one of them did squat to address any of the game's multiple issues. The closest they came to this was patch 1.6, which fixes a couple of problems created by the previous one. That's right: The infamous patch 1.5 not only doesn't fix anything, it breaks Fallout 3 even more than it already was. For a team that made such an great game, these Bethesda guys sometimes would seem to be some formidable retards. Luckily, among the mod community there are a handful of talented kids that took on their hands the specific task of fixing everything Bethesda couldn't be bothered to. The fixes in this section are highly recommended even if you're not going to use any mods. [Read more]


section 2. megamods
Even though Fallout 3 is remarkably complex by today's standards, once you get the gist of it it becomes ridiculously easy. To add insult to injury, Dog only knows what got into Bethesda when they decided to implement a level cap at 20 (30 if you have the Broken Steel DLC), a limit you're most likely going to hit before you uncovered half the locations on the map. On the one hand, the game gives you a gigantic world full of exploration possibilities, and on the other hand it would seem to punish you for exploring too much. Playing a RPG is not quite the same thing when you can't level up anymore. In this section we have mods that make the game much more balanced, complex and challenging; to the point that, after playing a bit with them, it's impossible to conceive Fallout 3 without them. [Read more]


section 3. subtle but useful
Aesthetic changes, some more subtle, some more obvious; all of them affecting gameplay somehow. [Read more]


section 4. companions
Because it gets really lonely in such a big world. [Read more]


section 5. quests
The world of Fallout 3 is enormous and full of stories, but this section proves there's always room for one more. [Read more]


section 6. aesthetic changes
While largely useless in practical terms, these mods are undeniably charming. [Read more]

You mean I can stop hating Fallout 3? In the end, it's always the fans that finishes the job.

No...must...resist...picking...up...tin...cans...

Would've made a fortune being a garbage collector. :)