[Introduction]
Fallout 3 an open world action RPG set in post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. - you can also staple first and third person shooter to that description. It represents Bethesda's first foray into the franchise, and considering that many people swear by it to this day, it's safe to say that they succeeded. One might also argue it represents the comeback of the Fallout franchise, and there's certainly a case to be made for that as well. But, being developed by Bethesda, it also falls firmly into the fairly unique genre of "Bethesda Game" and consequently has quite a few bugs. I suspect anyone even remotely familiar with the company probably already had that figured out, but consider yourself warned all the same.
[First Impressions]
Not off to a great start. I own the Steam version, and it outright refuses to run on Windows 10, at least in my experience. Fortunately, I'm not the only one with this problem, and there's a guide on how to get it running available on Steam.With that out of the way, first impressions are decent. Not spectacular, but decent. It starts in a very Bethesda-RPG kind of way, which is to say that it starts as it means to go on. It won't take long for the feeling to kick in that this is essentially a Fallout-themed Bethesda RPG. That's not a point of criticism, but it was a pretty weird mix at launch.
[Development]
Wow.
Where to start?
Following the successful release of Fallout 2 back in 1998, Black Isle Studios wanted to shoot for the stars. Specifically the three-dimensional ones. We're not sure when exactly development began on the original Fallout 3 project, but we do know that it was codenamed Van Buren. We're also not sure what exactly development entailed, other than that it was a mess. Interplay, Black Isle's parent company, was concurrently developing Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, and the two teams only met for a single meeting to plan the games. On top of that, a lot of the team's best developers left around this time. Other issues include publisher meddling, a brand new engine in the form of the Jefferson Engine and attempts at console ports.
Suffice it to say that Van Buren was never released. We may not know when work on the game started, but we do know that it ended in 2003 when Black Isle Studios closed its doors following the bankruptcy of Interplay. A tech demo for the project was leaked in 2007, but that's neither here nor there. For a while, it looked like Fallout was dead. Of course, we now know that Fallout was, in fact, not dead. Well, in a sense it was, but it was brought back. Resurrection: it just works.
You see, Bethesda bought the rights to the franchise and sort of began development in 2004. The real work didn't actually start until 2006 though, following the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. This might seem odd, but there's an explanation: namely that Bethesda's Fallout 3 runs on the same Gamebryo engine as Oblivion. The idea appears to have been to finish work on Oblivion before using the newfound experience working with the engine to develop Fallout 3, but that's only speculation on my part.
The next 2 years were dedicated to creating a successor to Fallout 2, with substantial focus on following its lead in regards to humor in particular and the setting in general. There was even an attempt at merging the turn-based combat of Fallout 2 with real-time action, a feature that had been intended for Van Buren as well. This was accomplished with the implementation of the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or V.A.T.S. for short.
A great deal of work also went into the audio design of the game, particularly the music, with both a musical score being composed and licensing for tracks used on the the in-game radio stations. Additionally, Bethesda also spent what I assume to be an inordinate sum of money to hire the likes of Liam Neeson and Ron Perlman to work as voice actors.
But, Bethesda being Bethesda, they also spent a less-than-inordinate sum of money on bug fixes. Consequently, true to tradition, there's... there's a lot of those. They range from helpful or humorous to mildly annoying or frustrating to outright game-breaking. Some are harmless, some will directly impact your enjoyment of the game, its performance or even crash the whole thing.
There also appears to have been a number of decisions during development whose results are, frankly, baffling to me. Take, for example, the Chinese Pistol. It uses the same ammunition as the 10mm Pistol, but is a flat downgrade in every way other than weight. The weight difference, however, is negligible. There's no reason at all for the player to use it at any point, because there are several 10mm Pistols the player can pick up during the tutorial in the vault. It's obsolete pretty much the instant you step outside Vault 101, and I don't understand why it was kept in the game.
It's even weirder when you consider the sheer amount of cut weapons that would have been more useful to the player, or at least more interesting. For instance, the Lightning Gun, a weapon that appears to have nothing at all to do with lightning. It's just a standard laser rifle, but with a special feature: wherever the beam hits, it spawns a gas cloud. Then, a second later, another beam (apparently from a randomly determined direction) ignites the cloud and causes an explosion. It's a neat idea, and I would definitely rather have something like that instead.
There are almost two dozen cut items in the weapons category alone, including stuff like Mirelurk Bait Grenades, a .32 Pistol that doesn't suck and a Gauss Rifle that actually works. Other cut content includes the Tenpenny Radio Station, a slew of clothing and armor items (including night vision goggles), dozens of notes and a number of maps and areas.
[Game Mechanics]
Gameplay is fairly straight forward. Unusually, however, it starts with your character's birth. Fresh out of the womb, you get to pick your name and tailor your appearance. So you make a character, you select your SPECIAL stats, you tag 3 skills, you finish the tutorial and you leave the vault. From here, you're on your own. You can go in any direction you like. There's literally nothing stopping you from forgetting about finding your dad and doing every side quest in the game instead.
As you progress through the game, you gain experience from assorted actions. Hacking computers, killing enemies, completing quests, that sort of stuff. Gain enough experience and you'll gain a level, allowing you to apply skill points and select perks. The perks available depend on your current level and your SPECIAL stats.
Fallout 3 is fairly lenient as far as playstyles are concerned. You can be sneaky, you can be loud. You can be a talker, you can be a fighter. You can use melee weapons, you can use heavy weapons. There's a decent enough variety of options that subsequent playthroughs can stay engaging and feel different.
This is also helped by the branching quests. Some quests have set outcomes, while others (a fair few actually) afford the player a choice between a number of outcomes. These can range from fairly benign stuff, like how you decide to handle relationship drama between a lady and the priest she's in love with, to some pretty damn dire situations, like determining whether a settlement ought to get nuked or not because some asshole thinks it's an eyesore.
Naturally, nuking the settlement is downright evil, as opposed to preventing the scheme. This is important, because Fallout 3 has a karma system. It's a simple system based on performing good or evil deeds, but it's there. It also influences the availability of certain companions, access to certain factions and may result in certain people sending someone to hunt you down.
My main gripe in terms of gameplay is how power armor has been implemented. It doesn't offer the same degree of protection as it did in Fallout 1 & 2, or indeed later titles. Out of all the Fallout games, Fallout 3 has the worst implementation of power armor. It's still the best armor you can acquire, don't get me wrong, but it's just not as good as it ought to be - or as good as it's made out to be.
All in all though, it's a quite satisfying game.
[Graphics]
This is a pretty bleak game. I know that might come across as a needlessly obvious statement, given that it takes place after an apocalyptic nuclear war, but still. There's a lot of washed out colors, and the general feel in the vast majority of areas you visit is usually rather glum. It's something of a feat if you think about it, because the environments range from metropolitan to suburban to straight up wasteland.
By and large, these environments are well put together. There's often an attention to detail that makes inhabited areas look like people actually live in them. Larger settlements like Rivet City has residences, amenities, security and places to eat. Occasionally you might run into weird details though, such as bathrooms having multiple toilets but no stalls to separate them. I guess you can't be picky in post-apocalyptia, especially about working toilets.
Every now and then, you might also move too close to something the developers didn't really expect you to get very close to at all. Exploration is rewarding, but it also sometimes leads to the player finding something that looks unfinished, for want of a better description, which clearly received less attention than other places.
It's not an ugly game by any means, but it's not a beautiful one either, and its age shows more with every passing year. You do get some pretty scenic views sometimes though.
[Story]
The premise established by the opening crawl is simple: you were born in Vault 101, which will never ever open. No one enters, no one leaves. You were born here, and by the Overseer, you're gonna die here. You get no alternatives because the entire rest of the world is screwed. Everything outside the vault is an irradiated wasteland and there's nothing out there for you. Put on your vault suit, power up your Pip-Boy and get to work.
That all turns out to be a great big lie though. Not only is the world outside kinda sorta thriving, but the vault has actually been opened before. Your dad came in from the outside, and now he's left, which has caused all hell to break lose. You're left with no choice other than to follow him out into the wasteland.
Unfortunately, dad is quite spry for a man his age and is already familiar with the area, so he's long gone by the time you escape the shitshow unfolding underground. Consequently, you have to somehow track him down. Most people start asking around in Megaton, the nearest sizeable settlement, but really you can go in any direction. Large segments of this initial part of the main questline can actually be skipped entirely if you know what you're doing. For first timers though, I'd recommend not doing that. You'd be missing out on some fun interactions.
During your endeavor to hunt down your wayward parent, you learn more about the surrounding area and the setting's story in general. This is done through the assumption that the player knows nothing, which is fitting considering the fact that we literally lived under a rock our entire life up to this point.
Really, the overall story isn't super important. It's a backdrop. The centerpiece is the player character and your interactions with people and situations in the wasteland.
[SPOILERS]
Of course, you end up finding dear old dad and briefly get reunited with him before he dies from deliberate radiation poisoning. You also end up discovering that the President of the United States of America is presently a self-aware artificial intelligence with an army of highly trained and well equipped soldiers at its beck and call. Also it plans on killing every "impure" human in the wasteland, so that's fun. As it happens, you can throw caution to the wind and decide that maybe the presidential murderbot has a point and help it kill every "impure" human in the wasteland.
There's really not a whole lot to spoil, because as I said, the overall story is more of a backdrop than anything else. So instead, here are some fun random encounters you might not have heard about already:
In certain areas, a UFO may explode overhead and shower the area with alien ammunition and the unique Firelance weapon.
There's Uncle Leo, a friendly super mutant. He refuses to fight under any circumstances, and if you try to rob him, he gives you clothes.
An Enclave vertibird sometimes lands and deploys troops. Occasionally, this glitches and repeats indefinitely, causing an endless torrent of hostile power armored soldiers.
You can encounter a guy scavenging a robot. He also has a mutated pet bear. Looting the robot (or just looking at it for too long) turns them both hostile.
Another scavenger has a robot of his own, but it's malfunctioning. Among the interaction options is convincing him that it's about to explode.
A wastelander might approach you and warn you about raiders chasing him. Incidentally, they also strapped a bomb to the poor guy, which you might be able to disarm.
There's a fella named Mel who might try to mug you, but his gun isn't loaded, so he's really no threat to anyone but himself.
Occasionally you may also run into a group of hunters who sell "strange meat" - similar hunters can be encountered attacking wastelanders. Don't buy the strange meat. They're cannibals.
And, finally, the Dunwich Building. It's not a random encounter per se, but it's well off the beaten path and there's some downright Lovecraftian stuff in there.
[Pros]
- A worthy addition to the Fallout franchise
- Interesting and fairly varied environment
- Good variety of side quests
- Decent leeway for different playstyles being viable
[Cons]
- Buggy
- Steam version doesn't run on newer systems "out of the box," as it were
- Some items are outright redundant
- Unlike previous titles, power armor doesn't turn you into a walking tank
[Conclusion]
A worthy, if unstable, successor to the original Fallout games. In fact, in my book, it's the second best Fallout game out there, but take that with a grain of salt. I never really managed to get into the first two. I might give them another spin at some point, but I digress.
Times have changed, war has not.
Moral compass optional. It may even be a detriment if you're in a pinch and all that matters is survival.
/DUX
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