Windows

Fallout 3

First of all, this game freakin' owns and I've had a LOT of fun so far, around 30 hours into it. Might me one of my better gaming experiences. Recently, though, I ran into an annoyance. Or not really an annoyance, but it feels idiotic.

You know how the Enclave suddenly appears, right? And then you're off to the Citadel and meet several members of The Brotherhood of Steel?

YEAH.

Here's something that felt stupid: when the Enclave attacked the building your Father died in (assuming that's an event you cannot prevent), well, I killed one of their soldiers and I took an armor from them (Advanced Power Armor Mark II!). Logically, if I was to be good at least, I would want to donate this armor to The Brotherhood of Steel so they may research the technology, but that's not a possibility. I realize it's much to ask for, and games probably won't have that much freedom and be that well thought-out for years to come, but it felt incredibly stupid how I was in possession of something that would help them extremely much, potentially even save them and us (this armor is superior to theirs; if they could reverse-engineer it and learn how it works, perhaps even improve upon it... do the math), and yet I could not do anything.

Similarly -- but this is nothing annoying, just silly and slightly funny -- after Gunny has taught me how to use Power Armor, I equipped the Enclave Power Armor and walked around in the Citadel with it. Drew no attention whatsoever.

I look forward to the day games are so detailed that they would, in fact, respond differently depending on what you wear; in this case, be startled, shout something foul at you, move on with their business. Or attack you because they think you're Enclave. Or at least tell you to state your business, ask you to identify yourself, or whatever. Oh, and I certainly look forward to when they take these things in consideration -- the fact that I could possess an Advanced Power Suit Mark II at this point -- and change the game accordingly.

Go and play Arcanum!

:o

Arcanum is that awesome? And that's 10 years old! I stand corrected on that point, I guess.

As a side-note, it's unfortunate that I could never get into that game. Tried like three times.

Story, atmosphere, character development, party intrigue -- yes. Combat, possibly the most boring of all Troika games...and of course, buggy.

This is absolutely correct. The real-time combat is crap and the turn-based combat just doesn't feel right compared to Fallout. But what bothered me the most is that you can't add map markers. I think this is the only game ever in which I drew manual maps.