Fallout 3

The Good
Ok. Its massive. Its huge. Its just bigger than any other game I’ve ever played. You can easily beat the game without encountering two thirds of the stuff that Bethesda has created for this game. Unusual NPCs, Bizarre and breathtaking scenery, and challenging enemies are all here.

I like the fact that the designers mixed it up a bit with different factions and alliances too.

The graphics come very close to being photorealistic, especially when looking at the outdoors, with broken roads and burnt up buildings. I freak out when I see how the inside of the buildings are torn apart and crumbing. The rusted sheet metal of the Megatown buildings gives a real post war atmosphere to the game. There are so many little touches that you’d miss if you weren’t looking, like the various phases of the moon at night. The character models are very detailed and articulated. The don’t just stand around. They wander throughout the world, ready to interact with you and others.

You can play as a straight FPS, or use the VATS, which usually ends with a spectacular if not blurry death of your foes. You can size up your weapons and decide which one will be the most useful against your enemies.

There is an assortment of moral choices with long reaching implications, which is refreshing in a game. You can also make choices and add perks. The perks can really change some of the game play, making some fights and quests a great deal easier. Bethesda does know how to balance gameplay. You can play as any kind of character as you want, as long as you learn how to play with the character’s weaknesses and strengths.

I loved the collection of old time songs, and really wish they had more. I really liked how many of the songs had themes that matched with the game. The environmental music was ok, and pleasant at times but a tiny bit repetitive. The voiceovers of Malcolm McDowell as President Eaton were well done. Liam Nelson was almost unnecessary. Good job on the sound effects and foley effects.

Major Kudos to whomever designed the Dunwich Building. The Temple made my skin crawl.

The Bad
I miss the “everything but the Kitchen Sink” approach to design that Black Isle was famous for. Bethesda touches on it, but don’t go all out. The black humor that was characteristic of the first 2 Fallout games is missing or at least muted.

By their very nature, RPGs tend to be buggy. Fallout 3 had a couple bugs, but nothing too bad in comparison to others. The character models were a bit repetitive, but not excessive.

Now on to the stuff that REALLY bothered me.

A hard limit of 20? You have to upgrade to Broken Steel to get to 30? Ugh… The 3 voice actors were used repeatedly for all the same characters. Some of the quests were breakable by bugs. I had an experience where an explosion occurred on the west side of the map and when I fast traveled to the east, the NPCs acted like they heard the explosion.


The Bottom Line
Its great! It will take a while to get through. But it may also make you boot up your old copy of Fallout for nostalgia reasons.

The Good
Let it be known from the very beginning that Fallout 3 is a RPG, just as original games were, just as Oblivion was. The majority of the outcomes of your actions will depend on your skill points. Shoot, hack, talk, repair, shop or do anything else and you can easily expect a dice roll determining the success of your action. There is another thing I should get out my system right away before getting down to the fine details. Fallout 3 wasn't developed by Black Isle. This means a number of things, but most importantly it entails an idea that Bethesda couldn't physically deliver a game which would have stayed faithful to the classic Fallout games. This should be remembered while evaluating this game.

Alright. So what is great about Fallout 3, you ask? Very many things is the obvious answer! The most outstanding aspect of this game is that it was developed for explorers. Being one very deep in my heart, I just can't possibly resist a game that offers a huge world filled with thousands of hundreds of details to uncover, characters to meet and places to roam. This is where FO3 differs greatly from Oblivion. There are no generic Ayleid ruins #53 or the samey Cave interior over and over again. The locations in Fallout 3 have history to them or at least a peculiar idea behind their existence.

Here's a last message received by a 911 operator at a police HQ. Here's a Vault with a cloning project gone bad. Here's a Nuka-Cola plant, complete with a working conveyor belt and specifically designed robotic security. Here's an Oasis with the real trees growing amidst the wasteland. Here's a US fort with an ability to launch a nuclear missile, or another one introducing to you the latest, unique model of power armor. Here's a museum of technology with a number of expositions still working. Here's an abandoned hotel with the residents gone mad worshipping a deity with a silly name -- an obvious nod to Lovecraft. This list can go on forever.

No matter how much time you invest in exploring the locations of Fallout 3, you will always be rewarded with either a unique weapon, armour, environment or a story. That really brings the exploration aspect of the game to the foreground of Fallout 3 experience. The feeling of discovering a yet another interesting location carries with it the most pleasure to be had with this game.

Not to say that it doesn't excel in other areas. There is a lot of talk, saying that Fallout 3 has been dumbed down when compared to its predecessors. It's not a completely unreasonable claim. However, personally I was amazed by the amount of details which comprised the RPG system of the original games making their way into Fallout 3, with a few welcome additions. Because your stats really matter. There were always doors and locks I couldn't pick, computers I couldn't hack and NPCs I couldn't outsmart. The repair system works fabulously well, making sure that you won't be getting a great weapon from the enemy corpse that easily. The barter system really works too with me being short on cash most of the time. Sure, your experience may differ. But I really felt the challenge this game poses, and I have completed both Fallouts without a drop of sweat! Just kidding, it's an easier game, but certainly not "dumbed down".

At this point we should really to talk about the inevitable. The visual representation. I deliberately avoid employing a word "graphics", because it usually implies a number of distinct technological requirements and Fallout 3, while not exactly belonging to the Luddite camp of modern day Adventures is still two or three years long out of date. This is not by all means a cr(y/i)sis, because the lack of technological prowess is easily made up with stupendous and absorbing world design. I am not sure how Washington DC will look after a nuclear blast, but Fallout 3 gives a very convincing picture indeed. Desolate square miles of concrete debris populating a scorched corpse of a land aren't that easy to forget. The menacing remains Washington monument seen from all over the wasteland are akin to the tower in Cyrodiil in Oblivion, but, of course, the effect here is much more intimidating and depressing.

Sure, doesn't avoid repetition at some parts, but I guess that's price you have to pay for achieving such a strong homogeneous look. And, seriously, we don't really expect one collapsed building to be drastically different from the other?

But worlds mean absolutely nothing without exciting stuff to do in them and while exploration aspect, which I mentioned in the second paragraph, is all nice and cool, the RPG is nothing without quests to perform and NPCs to please. Now, quest system in Fallout 3 is a coin, and a very doublesided one at that. By no means they are dull. God, no. There is always a double bottom to every one of them and it's impossible to predict where a quest might take you or what turn of events might await around the next journal entry. Even more than that, Bethesda clearly made its homework, for not only the quests are interesting they are also filled with numerous choices and checks. Don't want to be bothered going to a remote minefield? How about lying that you did? Suspicious of your quest giver, ask around, maybe there is something completely sinister about his motives. Pretty much every quest is multilayered, filled with choices and really provides an opportunity to flex all of you various perks, skills and attributes in numerous checks.

The Bad
Now, here comes a tricky coiny part. Surely, the quests in Fallout 3 are amusing. But that's that. They are just hilariously amusing leaving us with nearly an ocean of unused opportunities and an Everest of untouched subjects and themes, post-apocalyptic fiction is usually respected and loved for. A humanity rebuilding itself from the ruins of the nuclear holocaust has nothing better to do than collect Nuka-Cola bottles, build towns around atomic bombs for other people to blow them up, live in towns full of children, listen to the radio DJs and dress up in ridiculous super hero costumes. I mean really? Where is the slavery, violence, bigotry, gambling, prostitution, rape in the amounts encountered in the original Fallout games? Most certainly not here - for Fallout 3 takes only a passing glance at those themes at a curious angle, as if asking the player "Isn't that fun?". So much wasted chances for the stories that would really matter to our hearts and brains.

This is true not only in regard to the quests of Fallout 3. It's really a part of a much bigger problem. Which is this: Fallout 3 quadruples all the superficial aspects of original games, without being able to match their true nature. What do I mean by "superficial aspects"? Well, you've seen them all in the marketing: Vaultboy, Nuka-Cola, 50's aesthetics, mellow jazz and well-known standards, over the top violence and so on. Indeed, all these were bringing a huge amount of style and identity to original games, but they were much subtler there. Retro stylistics were only there to introduce you to the world of Fallout, to make an initial shock of encountering this horrifying world for the first time. This was a sort of an amusing gimmick, that really helped a transition into the much more grittier and darker world, in which nobody really knew or cared about the vault boy, retro songs, American lifestyle, rock-n-roll jackets and robot butlers.

Not so in Fallout 3. It remains rooted in those amusing gimmicks right to the very end of the game undermining any attempts to make this version of a Fallout world believable and vibrant. With the exception of amazing environmental design, it's simply a fake. Its characters are fake, their feelings are fake, their stories are not that real either.

And I firmly believe that many other problems with the game like uneven voice acting and dodgy writing are also the symptoms of the overall superficial quality the game, unfortunately possess. The worst part in all this story is that it was a deliberate decision on the developers part, who wanted this game first of all be amusing and franchise once again recognizable. Oh, well.

To a lesser degree one can easily be annoyed with poor animation, not exactly the best interface, few unimportant bugs and a rather generic, by-the-book soundtrack clearly lacking a masterful touch of Mr. Morgan.

So, without further ado, let's sum it up!™

The Bottom Line
Talent: 3/5

Bethesda is no Black Isle or Troika. There was absolutely no need to create or play Fallout 3 to state that. But what they can do, they do nicely. An amazing look of the Capital Wasteland stands as a proof that Bethesda doesn't need any tree rendering middleware for it's locations to look stunningly great.

Ambition: 4/5

Merging two RPGs of such different pedigrees is a spectacular feat in itself. Just as with Oblivion, Bethesda really believes that with games like Fallout 3 it's creating a great new brand of RPGs for the future. Many people believe that, while I just applaud the moving forward even though I am wary of the direction the wagon is facing.

Originality: 3/5

Fallout 3 owns every bit of its personality to a couple of well-known games. The strings that hold these two together are interesting enough to examine up close, though.

Effort: 4/5

Bethesda tried, it really tried hard, having created tons of original content, quests, locations to absorb you into its world and never let go. They worked long hours to integrate SPECIAL system into a completely new context and that shows. One point off for not hiring Mark Morgan and a new animator.

Adequacy: 2/5

Oh, well. Contrary to what people say, Bethesda did get Fallout. But, unfortunately, chose to ignore it in favour of the more recognizable, fan-base building and generally amusing gimmicks.

Total: 3.2/5

Oh, what a pity. I advise you not be fooled by such a low score. Fallout 3 was a successful experiment, even though it is based more on a compromise rather than "the best of both worlds" philosophy. So, in line with the positive outlook of the 50's America I suggest looking at Fallout 3 as a continual growth for the Bethesda game company, building upon its own achievements while not shying away from taking the tips from the classics. And as for original games, they are always there to provide a nostalgic shoulder to cry on about the days long gone. So stop this nonsense about butchering the franchise, and enjoy the game for what it is. An interesting experiment that manages to produce an excellent breed of great RPGing, at the same time rejecting any emotional connection you try to establish towards it.

The Good
Fallout 3 is a game that I have been waiting for from the moment I finished Fallout 2.

Of course, back then I never visualized anything like Bethesda's Oblivion-like treatment of the game. I was thinking of - and wanting - another iteration of the classic 2d isometric game style. And if that is what we had gotten, then I would have been ecstatic.

When I found out that it was Bethesda which was going to make a new Fallout, I was somewhat apprehensive. I had played the stuffing out of their last two Elder Scrolls games - Morrowind and Oblivion. However, I have to admit that I was finding their formula a bit stale. In particular, Oblivion is a game which I gave an earnest effort to getting into, but never found compelling enough to complete.

The worry which I had was whether Fallout 3 would remain true to the series or simply be Oblivion With Guns. Well...the good news is that it is true to the series. The bad news is that it is also Oblivion With Guns.

The Fallout series had its start back in 1997. Game wizards Black Isle developed the title, as well as its later sequel Fallout 2, for publisher Interplay. Heavily influenced by classic DOS title Wasteland, the plot involved people living in the aftermath of a massive global nuclear war which almost destroyed humanity. The player, known as the "Vault Dweller", was among a select group of people who had been living in underground protective vaults since the apocalypse. Your vault, number 13 (a number which hints at the dark humor of the series), has run into an emergency when the computer chip controlling the water purification system needs replacement. Armed with a weak pistol, an even weaker knife, and dressed in a spiffy blue jumpsuit, you are dumped unceremoniously into the bitter wasteland to save your people. In the process, you find out that there is something much worse than a water purification crisis facing the world. So the legend of the vault dweller began. And from the quirky 50's/futuretech stylings of the world to the visceral combat, gamers loved it.

As classic as the first Fallout games were, the combination of key staff members going elsewhere and a lack of success with spin-off games made it so that fans of the series eventually saw a third game as unlikely. So it was that the news that Bethesda Softworks had acquired rights to the IP sent an electric shock through the gaming world. Strong opinions abounded, as they still do, about whether or not it was a good thing that a company known for a very different style of RPG would do justice to a series which was so iconic.

Fallout 3 is, if nothing else, a loving homage to its predecessors. From the Pip Boy character to the use of the Inkspots for the opening music, there is a great deal of classic series nostalgia here. There is no doubt that this is meant to be a continuation in true spirit.

While the first two Fallout games took place in California, Fallout 3 takes place in the wasteland around Washington D.C., including southern Maryland and northern Virginia. The player character grows up as the son of a brilliant scientist in one of the underground protective vaults - Vault 101. It is in this environment that the player gets their first experience with the game, going through a few different stages of early life while working out their initial stats, looks, and such. Some parts, like the GOAT exam, are reminiscent of the old Ultima series where you would be asked a series of situational questions to determine what your character would be like. However, if this is not for you or if the test gives you results contrary to what you wanted, you can adjust things accordingly.

One of the most important aspects of the Fallout tradition is the "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." system for stats. In my earnest opinion, it is one of the finest roleplaying systems ever created. The system is based upon the primary statistics of Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Each of these has possible scores from 1 to 10 and in turn effects a variety of derived statistics. Then there is a large set of skills, from combat related abilities to speech and bartering, which are influenced by the primary stats as well as points applied directly by the player. SPECIAL is essential to the full experience of Fallout. Bethesda knew this and reproduced it mostly intact. The few changes they did make I have to say I enjoyed. Having new perks - special bonuses or abilities - every level more than made up for the removal of the two starting traits from the first games.

All seems to be going reasonably well in the placid but slightly uneasy atmosphere of the vault until one day everything falls apart in a hurry. Suffice it to say that your father has left the vault and you need to go after him, starting the game in earnest and beginning the main quest line. And once you enter the outside world, you find that it is a place where even if you are skilled with words, some things have to be solved with a bullet (or a sledgehammer...or a missile...or a laser bolt....or a power fist.....etc)

The variety of weapons in Fallout 3 does not disappoint. You can choose from small guns (eg. sniper rifles, assault rifles, pistols), energy weapons (eg. laser rifles, plasma rifles), melee weapons (eg. sledgehammers, swords, baseball bats), big guns (eg. missile launchers, miniguns, a tactical nuclear bomb launcher), explosives (mines and grenades), and "unarmed" (which actually includes things like brass knuckles and power fists). Within each category there is a decent selection of options, each with different strengths and weaknesses. The assault rifle puts out a lot of bullets, but does not have very impressive critical strike performance. Meanwhile, the sniper rifle has a higher chance to cause a critical strike and packs a punch when it does. Different weapons have distinct situational uses as well as play style uses.

There are also schematics available to craft your own weapons from wasteland salvage. It is a nice way to use all that clutter which you are constantly wading through in the game. All I will say about the specific weapons is that firing the railroad rifle is very satisfying.

Combat itself is a mixture of real time and turn-based, as compared to the original turn-based style of Fallout 1 and 2. You can play entirely in real time if you wish and some weapons work much better this way - especially those with high rates of fire. However, aiming is not quite like a normal FPS where things go pretty much where you aim them. Rather, the RPG engine is underneath the action calculating your accuracy and effectiveness based on a variety of factors.

Along side the real time action, there is a turn based mode known as V.A.T.S.. Hitting the VATS button causes the action to pause. At this point, the player can choose to target various parts specific locations on one or more enemies with ranged weapons, depending on how many action points are available. Melee, unarmed, and grenades can also use VATS but they cannot target specific body locations. I found that this setup was gracefully instituted in general. It works very well for quick and accurate head shots or, when facing a powerful enemy, for tactical attacks on limbs. And shooting a grenade while it is still in the enemy's hand is always a great moment.

Combat in general is visceral and brutal in the game. Slow motion critical strike take-downs can be quite entertaining. In the tradition of the earlier titles, deaths can get gruesome, with blood and gore spilling out liberally over battlefield. Adding the infamous Bloody Mess perk just ramps up the carnage.

Using the same engine as Oblivion, the graphics in Fallout 3 to be technically excellent. The overall sense of devastation after a nuclear war is impressive and leaving the vault for the first time is one of the best moments of gaming, no doubt. The models and textures that are used are all very well done.

Character interaction was somewhat faithful to the earlier games. There are some genuinely fun characters in the game.

As far as quests, the side quests are really the shining point of Fallout 3. Most of the smaller quests and side quest lines are fun to play and some are quite memorable I think that I had the most fun with the character of Moira and the quirky missions she sends you on in order to complete research for a book. But that is just the beginning. Exploring the wastes, you find yourself rescuing mercenaries, retrieving historical documents, dealing with costumed crazies, and more.

While you are taking care of business, your exploits are announced to the world via one of the in game radio stations - Galaxy News Radio. In general, GNR serves as an extra soundtrack, providing a list of old big band and jazz classics, including the iconic "Maybe" by the Inkspots. During interludes between the music, DJ "Three Dog" will make news and public service announcements. Being able to hear about your adventures over the radio is one of the coolest ideas I have seen in gaming. Bethesda gets a big thumbs up for that one.

Thanks to the release of the modding utility, a robust modding community has now sprung up around Fallout 3. They have introduced a variety of possible changes, extensions, and fixes to the game which can significantly improve the experience. I highly recommend checking out what is available.

The Bad
As I said, Fallout 3 is Oblivion With Guns in many ways.

To start out with, I have always found that in Bethesda games there is a strange sense of things being incomplete regarding how people react to your accomplishments. For instance, in Morrowind, I was head of the Fighter's Guild and yet when I needed to hire them to guard my new house, I still had to do quests for the Fighter's Guild.

In Fallout 3, I found myself disappointed that when I finally did return to the vault briefly, no one really noticed that I had come back as a seasoned wasteland warrior in a suit of power armor. I might as well have been walking in wearing my vault suit and carrying a baseball bat for a weapon.

Repetition is another major issue. Just like in Oblivion, while Fallout 3 is massive, the set of models and textures is just too small. After exploring for awhile, the continual sameness of many of the locations saps away some of the life of the experience. Variety is the spice of life. Bethesda needs to get a bigger spice rack.

Now I will stop here and say that I do realize one could say the same for Fallout and Fallout 2. Absolutely. But those games were made a long time ago and, furthermore, were not 3d first-person games. As soon as you go into that realm, any sameness becomes much more noticeable.

I would much rather have a smaller world with more interesting places to see.

For contrast, look at Bioshock. Yes, Bioshock is much smaller. However, every place had a very strong sense of reality to it and was distinct from the others. Exploration of the Bioshock game world was extremely rich because every location was fully unique.

Also the same are NPC's - both in models and vocalizations. There were a few big name actors who, naturally, provided good work to the game. However, most of the voice work for the minor characters in the game sounds as if Bethesda had something like five total voice actors available. Indeed, as far as I can tell, there is only one male and one female VA for ghouls period. And, unfortunately, the dialogue often sounds unnatural and stilted.

It became quickly tiresome to run into the same voices and models all the time. And, worse, it destroys immersion and makes it harder to take the characters seriously.

Additionally, while I loved GNR, the same small list of tracks plays over and over again until you start to become really tired of it. For an A-List title, I really find that problematic. And the fact that there is no built-in utility to have a custom playlist (as there is in the much lower tech Grand Theft Auto games) is a sever omission. However, the modding community has come to the rescue on this with custom playlist mods and even a wonderful library of classic music to extend the GNR library by as many as 100 songs. The latter mod is called More Where That Came From and it greatly enhances the game experience.

In general, I did not find the plot of the game to be as well put together as that of Fallout 1 and 2. There were some severe holes, especially in the ending (which thankfully was changed by the Broken Steel expansion), and it was too short. Further, some things in the game seemed too gimmicky, which also hurt the overall sense of narrative.

Finally, there are numerous bugs, including quest breaking ones. Things like character walking off of high ledges and falling to their deaths should not happen in an A-list title. Even with patches, things are still messy and that is unfortunate.

The Bottom Line
Fallout 3 is a very enjoyable and engaging action RPG with a classic post-apocalyptic setting. A must-play for Fallout fans. But it is not without its flaws.