Fallout 3
Description official descriptions
After World War II, rapid technology development carried humans towards a supposedly bright future, fulfilling their eternal dream. But eventually war raged again and in the year 2077, the dream suddenly came to a halt and mushroom clouds dominated the sky. A few communities survived in their underground bunkers called "Vaults"; others mutated heavily. Overall, what was left of the world was nothing more than a nuclear wasteland filled with ruins of a once great civilization. Two hundred years later, the human kind slowly but surely leaves the vaults and reclaims the lands of Earth.
The protagonist is one of them. As a member of Vault 101 in the wasteland surrounding the city formerly known as Washington D.C. and now called "Capital Wasteland", raised under the tight rule of the Overseer and the watchful eye of his father, he doesn't know anything about what is outside. But on his nineteenth birthday, his father unexpectedly leaves the vault. The hero's goal is to find him, learning part of the truth about what the Overseer concealed all these years on the way.
Fallout 3 is a role-playing game with elements of a 3D shooter. It retains many elements of the previous games in the series, while somewhat shifting the emphasis from social interaction and ethical role-playing to exploration of an open, continuous 3D world and combat. The player is free to explore the game's world from the beginning, visiting many optional locations, talking to characters and completing side quests. The main quest line, however, is largely linear, posing moral choices to the player only during its final phase.
Character creation and customization are similar to those of the previous games. The player shapes the main character by allocating points into the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck) attributes. The skill system has been mostly carried over from the preceding installments, including weapon specializations (small and big guns, energy weapons, etc.), and active skills such as Science, Repair, Lockpick, and others. Passive skills, particularly Speech, play a lesser role than in earlier Fallout games. A few skills have been removed completely. Skill points and perks are acquired when the protagonist levels up.
Combat system has undergone a major overhaul. Tactical turn-based battles from the previous games have been replaced with two different combat modes; the player is able to switch between them at any time. The simpler system of these two is action-oriented, nearly indistinguishable from traditional 3D shooter combat. The player character equips a weapon (ranging from a baseball bat to the destructive mini-nuke-launcher) and attacks enemies with it; damage calculation is based on the participants' statistics more than on the player's dexterity, though the latter plays a role as well. In addition, the player can opt to switch to Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) combat mode, a real-time system that allows the player to pause the game at any time and target specific regions of one or more enemies until the available action points are used. After all the actions have been assigned, the game plays them out in a slow motion.
The Karma system from the previous installments is back, keeping track of the main character's actions and decisions made by the player throughout the course of the game. Ethically unacceptable actions reduce the player character's Karma points.
Spellings
- 異塵餘生3 - Traditional Chinese spelling
- 辐射3 - Simplified Chinese spelling
Groups +
- BPjS / BPjM indexed games
- Fallout games
- Gameplay feature: Armor / weapon deterioration
- Gameplay feature: Auto-mapping
- Gameplay feature: Burden / Encumbrance
- Gameplay feature: Cannibalism
- Gameplay feature: Character development - Skill distribution
- Gameplay feature: Controllable pet companions
- Gameplay feature: Day / night cycle
- Gameplay feature: Directional/positional damage
- Gameplay feature: Drowning
- Gameplay feature: Drug addiction
- Gameplay feature: Equipment quick slots
- Gameplay feature: House ownership
- Gameplay feature: Interior decorating
- Gameplay feature: Karma meter
- Gameplay feature: Lock picking
- Gameplay feature: Multiple endings
- Gameplay feature: Pickpocketing
- Gameplay feature: Radiation / radioactive poisoning
- Gameplay feature: Slavery
- Gameplay feature: Targeting system
- Games for Windows Live releases
- Middleware: FaceFX
- Middleware: Gamebryo / Lightspeed / NetImmerse
- Middleware: SpeedTree
- Physics Engine: Havok
- PlayStation 3 Platinum Range releases
- Premium Games label
- Protagonist: Female (option)
- Protagonist: Visually customizable character
- Setting: City - Washington, D.C.
- Setting: Museum
- Technology: amBX
- Technology: FaceGen
- Weapon: Minigun/Chaingun
- Xbox 360 Classics releases
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Credits (Windows version)
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 90% (based on 144 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 282 ratings with 12 reviews)
How to translate fantasy world into the Fallout universe.
The Good
There is a lot of creative ideas in the game, and it has its moments : like the Tenpenny Tower, which has a good surprise if you finish the quest with the "good" side.
Special award for the musics. No no, not the musics composed for the game by Inon Zur, which are as boring as the landscapes of the game. But the selection of jazzy tracks were quiet well chosen, and fun to adapt with Fallout's world.
I guess this is it. It is not that I hated all the rest of the game, I warn you right now. But... there are a lot of complaints.
The Bad
Much.
First of all, the environment. I love Morrowind and I like Oblivion despise its flaws, so do not think I don't like open-worlds game. But Fallout 3's world just feel empty. It is logical, after a nuclear war, but in a game, it just doesn't serve anything except bore the player to death. As much as I didn't like instant travels in Oblivion, in Fallout 3, I would have thrown my computer through the window without them.
Then, since we are in a role-playing-game (well, sometimes, I wonder if we really are...), the most important characteristics would be :
A) Character Development. As in all Bethesda's games, whatever you chose your character to be, they all finish to do the same. Bethesda tried the way of "choices & consequences", something they have not done in their TES series, and at the end we just have the classic good/evil differences. I may overrate Fallout 2, the only one I have played so far, but I found it to go beyond these clichés, and, in a way, no one was truly good. In Fallout 3, you have Paladins (the dissident branch of The Brotherhood of Steel), you have a secret society which kills evil men (you can loot fingers on those "evil men" and give them to the society as a proof, and earn a reward...).. All of this just fell flat and killed the little sense of credibility you could expect from the world.
B) Scenario & Dialogs. Once again, here, there is good & less-good, & even worse than bad. The scenario itself is not bad, but is poorly executed. Same applies to dialogs & characters, with some of them being good ideas (like the Android quest) and some which fell completely flat (destruction of the garbage-city, someone asks you to do it, but do not give you a real reason).
C) The World It is obvious that Bethesda wanted to do their own thing with the Fallout license. While we should applause them for trying to do something new with it, the illusion of novelty fades quite quickly : you are playing Oblivion in the Fallout universe. Yes, the mutants could be Orcs, these members of the Brotherhood of Steel are Paladins who protects the weak. Heck, there are even Vampires & Druids (& now Samurai, as I heard, with the latest DLC). As much as I love these components for a TES game, it is not what I expect to see in a Fallout one.
Final thing (I may forgot a lot of others, but this one cracks me up) : the world is not that open. Yes, there are places you can't go, because of artificial walls. You want to climb this pile of debris to get inside Washington DC ? Guess what ? You can't. There is only one way : take the subway, and go out at the exact place the game wants you to be, otherwise, how could the script work ?
Well, open-world & obvious linearity does not go well...
The Bottom Line
Honestly, there are two types of gamers, which won't see the game the same way :
- Fallout fans. You will hate it. Stay away, try it when it will be cheap if you really want to know what has happen to your beloved universe, but you won't like it.
- Bethesda fans : you should like it. Well, you should, because it mostly feels like Oblivion in a different universe. You won't if the "liberty" of the Elder Scrolls is what you like the most. The little additions Bethesda tried to its style are welcomed though : different paths (good/evil), even if they are this simplistic, are still better than only one forced way.
Windows · by Alaedrain (3442) · 2009
The Good
It improves on Oblivion in some ways. The environments are more interesting and varied (but most feel more artificial than Morrowind). The faces look normal again (still miles away from e.g. Mass Effect or Crysis). Level scaling seems to be mostly absent. The PIPBoy interface is well done. Physics is improved, and by improved I mean that cups are now bolted to tables and so on.
The Bad
Fallout 3 is really an action-adventure title and not a RPG. The stats are mostly meaningless.
The set pieces vary from decent to abysmal and do not from a coherent whole. The nature of presentation in previous Fallout games left a lot to the imagination and you could fill the details yourself and pretend it made sense. In F3 everything is available in very graphic detail and it does not come together well.
Radiant AI is still crap. The results are either hilarious or frustrating, depending on your mood.
There's some swearing, prostitution, and tons of gore, but it doesn't feel like it's part of the world, but rather it that it was just tacked on to make the game edgy and mature. This is a rather dubious addition to a game which mostly feels like a Disney production.
They tried hard to include "Fallout features" like being able to put explosives onto people but apparently it didn't occur to them that some were a design flaw in the first place and while it was cute in a 2D isometric RPG game in 1998 it's kind of stupid in a modern fully 3D first-person game.
The Bottom Line
It's Oblivion with guns. It's very far from an ideal "Fallout 3", but depending on what you are expecting it might still be enjoyable. Playing it I can't help but feel that the target audience for Fallout 3 is ten years younger than for the previous Fallout games.
Windows · by dorian grey (243) · 2008
The Good
Full 3D world, good graphics.
Very entertaining when playing without questioning things.
The Bad
Bugs and crashes.Lots of them.
Failed to establish the same atmosphere from the predecessors.
The Bottom Line
Being an old school player, I had the privilege of being able to play the series back in the day. They were something completely new then, and still are, since there is a lack of successors. However fallout 3, which caused me much anxiety, was something different.
When I first got the game, I had problems trying to run it, every time I clicked in new game, the game closed. After just a few hours of useless patching (yes, it took hours), I discovered that I was not the only one with this problem and just gave up, gave the dvd to a friend of mime, just to find later that he had no problems to run it, except for recurring crashes, that look like everybody else had.
The game extinguished the isometric theme of the series, adding a new 3D world, which is a very good thing, but apparently the attention to the graphics are not reflected in the rest of the game: the optional missions are varied, but with tenuous motivation. The VATS system seems to be a murdering tool, implemented to disguise the FPS nature of the game, instead of a remake of the old system of post-apocalyptic atmosphere combat. The atmosphere did not save the game to resemble "Oblivion with guns", an unhappily true cliche by now. There are many small illogical details, as the fact that you cannot sleep in a bed you don't own. All this leads me to believe that this is not only an unreliable sequence of fallout, but even not a pure RPG (consider the fact that the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system has only a fraction of the game effect from the previous), just a commercial exploit with the name of the series and most of their elements.
Nevertheless, the title is interesting as a FPS dressed up like a RPG. If seen this way, it offers a good deal of action (since gun blazing it's the way to go, unlike the previous two games when you could beat the game killing only the final boss, not necessarily fighting) and the bonus of good music and a bit (or a lot,if you like) of wandering mixed with a different background of most contemporary action games, which are settled almost exclusively in WWII and modern warfare environments. Therefore, it's recommended for a large audience, and should earn a higher score if it wasn't the bugs and crashes.
Windows · by Open_Sights (466) · 2010
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
BOS-in-a-BOX | bubbleman1987 | Dec 9, 2012 |
(no subject) | bubbleman1987 | Sep 5, 2012 |
Minor complaint time! *spoilers* | Simoneer (29) | Feb 19, 2011 |
Melee character? | BurningStickMan (17916) | Jan 8, 2011 |
Teh Ultimate Fallout 3 Mod Guides! | Slug Camargo (583) | May 13, 2010 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Fallout 3 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Australian release
Fallout 3 was originally banned in Australia in July 2008, but an edited version was re-submitted to the country's Classification Board. Funnily enough, this is also the version that was released in all regions.
German version
In the German version all blood and removed limbs were removed. This includes robot parts, e.g. the arms of Mister Gutsy.
References to the game
Fallout 3 was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 02/2009.
Awards
- 1UP
- 2009 - "Digital Delivarence" Award for Best DLC in 2009 (Editor's Choice)
- 2009 - "Digital Delivarence" Award for Best DLC in 2009 (Reader's Choice)
- GamePro
- February 2009 (issue 245) - PC Game of the Year 2008
- GamePro (Germany)
- February 26, 2009 - Best Console RPG in 2008 (Readers Voting)
- GameStar (Germany)
- February 26, 2009 - Best PC Game in 2008 (Reader's Voting)
- February 26, 2009 - Best PC RPG in 2008 (Reader's Voting)
- Gamespot
- 2009 - Best Downloadable Content/Expansion in 2009 (Reader's Choice; for the DLCs)
- GameSpy
- 2008 – Game of the Year
- 2008 – PC Game of the Year
- 2008 – Xbox 360 Game of the Year
- 2008 – PC Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
- 2008 – Xbox 360 Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
- 2008 – #2 PS3 Game of the Year
- 2008 – PC RPG of the Year
- 2008 – Xbox 360 RPG of the Year
- 2008 – PS3 RPG of the Year
- 2012 – #10 Top PC Gaming Intro
- GameTrailers
- December 25, 2009 - Best Expansion/DLC in 2009 (for the DLCs)
- Golden Joystick Awards
- 2009 - Ultimate Game of the Year
- 2009 - PC Game of the Year
- IGN
- 2009 - Best Xbox 360 Aftermarket Support in 2009 (Reader's Awards; for the DLCs)
- Machinima 2009 - Best DLC in 2009 (for the DLCs)
Information was also provided by Big John WV, PCGamer77 and piltdown man
Analytics
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Related Sites +
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Bobblehead Locations
Locations of all Bobbleheads in Fallout 3, which increase the player's stats permanently. -
Fallout 3 Hints from UHS
Game guide using a question and answer format. Includes all of the quests, a world map, plus gameplay tips and strategies. -
Fallout: Welcome to the Official Site
Bethesda's official site for "Fallout 3." -
Mac Gamer Review
A review of Fallout 3 by The Mac Gamer's Alex McLarty, who makes use of Apple's Boot Camp utility in order to play the PC version on his Macintosh (Nov 16th, 2008). -
No Mutants Allowed
An unofficial site about the Fallout series. -
The Vault
Wiki based encyclopedia about the Fallout series. -
Wikipedia: Fallout 3
Article in the open encyclopedia. -
X360A achievement guide
X360A's achievement guide for Fallout 3.
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Sicarius.
Xbox One added by MAT.
Additional contributors: Katakis | カタキス, Jeanne, Apogee IV, Carl Ratcliff, Solid Flamingo, Zeppin, Paulus18950, Lizzy Carft, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Plok, FatherJack.
Game added October 31, 2008. Last modified March 7, 2024.