There may be two or three at the most that care about Fallout on these forums I think. But I'm compelled to write a thorough review of this game regardless. I touched on it a bit in my other thread about Fallout, but I hadn't finished it by then so now I can write about the whole game and give readers my final thoughts on it. I'll warn of spoilers (we still don't have those damn spoiler tags as far as I can tell) because I need to talk about some specific moments in the game as either strong or weak points.
As far as the gameplay itself, it was simply very fun and addicting. To those who are familiar with Fallout 1 and 2, you can target specific areas of your opponent's body and you can in Fallout 3 as well (they call this VATS). Since the combat is in real time in Fallout 3 rather than being turn based, everything remains so until you use the VATS. Then time freezes as you can choose where to attack your opponent. Once you approve of the targeted areas, you let the scene of carnage play itself out. It's one of the coolest features in this game. I thought I would end up getting tired of it, but I never did. It's pretty dang neat watching a cinematic view of my character firing a sniper rifle to see the camera following a bullet all the way to my targets head only to end in the guy's head exploding. You can do this with melee weapons as well. One weapon, the Ripper, a sort of crude handheld chainsaw is great for this feature. I'd run up to an opponent who was low on health, then right before attacking I'd go into the VATS and target maybe their left arm. Then I'd get this really cool kind of blurred and flurried action sequence of me sawing my target's arm off.
Of course, the VATS isn't all about dismemberment. It also works to cripple. If you gain a critical hit in the leg, they'll start limping. If it's in the arm or the head, their attacks become less effective. Even just shooting beasts using the VATS is really fun to watch. Energy weapons will totally melt opponents and as they're falling back from the force of the projectile, they are also melting away in the process and leave a pile of goo behind. Weapons do require upkeep. At first I thought this would be annoying, but it barely managed not to be as it gives more legitimacy to the repair skill. What bothered me though was that if I want to repair a Chinese Assault Rifle, I have to repair it with another Chinese Assault Rifle. I was hoping once I got my repair skill high enough, that it would allow me to repair, for example, an automatic assault rifle with any other type of automatic assault rifle, but no.
The inventory, mapping, and leveling systems are all managed by your Pip-Boy. You can also get crippled limbs yourself, and if you don't have a bed to rest in or a doctor to be healed by, you can individually heal limbs using up stimpacks.
Exploration in Fallout 3 is very similar to Oblivion. But the graphics are improved and the lighting is a bit more realistic and not so super shiny. My favorite areas to go to were near the D.C. hub. It was visually stunning I thought to see D.C. in ruins. The Washington Monument still stands but is heavily damaged and you can see it's framework. They even have the Jefferson Memorial, Arlington Cemetary, and the Museum of National History. I guess it was so cool for me cause I've been to all those places. And in the Musuem they even still had the giganatic wooly mammoth in the front only it was damaged and several parts of the museum were caved in. I had even been in the basement of the Jefferson Memorial were I got my first migraine ever. So it was fun being back in there. There is fast traveling to locations as long as you manually reached the location first. And some places are actually pretty hard to get to. You have to take the subway stations underground a lot because the path is obstructed on top. And down there are a lot of feral ghouls which always scared the crap out of me because they run at you and all you hear are their sticky footsteps.
I think they did a decent job of making exploring worthwhile. The random locations are a bit more distinguishable than the cookie cutter dungeons and ruins of Oblivion. You can also scavenge various parts across the land which can be made into unique weapons later. There are even various vaults you can journey to. Those locations were unnerving at times though. Creepy places.
The game is pretty difficult starting out, but once it becomes easier to kill, I actually recommend tweaking the difficulty level of this game. There is no dreaded scaled-leveling like there was in Oblivion. So tweaking the difficulty only increases the chances that they'll kill you, but it doesn't make it too much harder to kill them.
Storyline, I was fairly conflicted on. All Fallout games have some kind of major plot device. The water chip, the GECK, and in this one it's Project Purity-a project to turn mass bodies of water into drinkable water. Your father is the man person behind this project only he has recently fled the vault and you are on a quest to find him and get some answers. I think what I do like about this story compared to the others is you immediately get to forsake your vault instead of thinking you'll return to it one day and save it. There is still a war between the Enclave and the Brotherhood, with the Brotherhood still having inferior technology, but possibly a higher moral code than the Enclave.
Unfortunately in this game, this is hardly any chance to really choose between the two. The game ends a single way without allowing you to choose who you wish to side with. Bethesda really seems to struggle with this in their games. They just do more fancy simulations than actual RPGs.
Which brings me to the spoiler section of this review.
SPOILER ALERT!
I've noticed this with more than a few of Bethesda's games. They just seem to get cold feet or something when it comes to ending their games. As if they were so proud of the body of the game, that they have no idea how to conclude them. Well the ending of Fallout 3 was embarrasinly similar in feeling to Oblivion's. And it made me pissed off about the whole thing despite how much I enjoyed playing the game.
For those of you who played Oblivion, you'll recall how the ending sucked because you're not doing anything except for watching to other things fight each other. All you have to do is practically run to a location. Once there, you're just a bystander to the final events and not a participant. All your hardwork is laughed at as someone else gets to fight the main boss. Bethesda has something against boss battles. If it becomes absolutely necessary to fight a boss, someone else fights them for you.
So what happened toward the end of Fallout 3, was the Brotherhood decided it was time to get on the offensive against the Enclave after your character had just struck a critical blow to the Enclave's command structure. So it is decided that you among a bunch of Brotherhood knights are off to go fight the Enclave at the water purification base. Oh, and did I mention you also have the help of a huge fuck off robot? That's right. This robot more than just helps you in this final offensive though. In fact, you can practically just sit back while he blows the shit out of everything. Imagine the lost opportunity for you here. There are literally tons of Enclave soldiers everywhere as well as about a dozen Vertibirds flying around. It's bad enough that you can just let the other Brotherhood soldiers fight all the Enclave, but you don't even have the chance to fight the Vertibirds yourself.
It could have been a kick ass boss battle if it was just you taking cover wherever you could find it and trying desperately to bring down these vicious flying machines with rockets, plasma weapons and whatever else you could fine. But no! The huge fuck off robot gets to do all that instead. At one point, I was seriously like, "Stupid robot! Those Vertibirds are mine!" He'd just kill them in one shot with his laser shooting eyes. And then by the end, all the Enclave and their air support is easily defeated by someone else, and you just go into the water purification area and flip a switch and the game is over.
I just didn't understand the logic behind it. Was I supposed to be so impressed by this anachronistic looking robot killing the shit out of everything that I wouldn't care that I'm not even participating in the fight? For all the impressive game mechanics and graphics of Fallout 3, could they not anticipate that the player simply wanted to be an integral part of the last fight and not just a bystander? Apparently not. And so with Bethesda, I know they have all this technical skill for making a game. But the developers themselves seem to lack some basic gamer instincts. They seem to just want to create art sometimes rather than playability. Throughtout most of the game I enjoyed myself, but the ending could not have made all my efforts seem more pointless.
I'd probably give the game a 7/10. The plus points came out of great graphics, the Pip-Boy, the combat and VATS, and the open ended exploration. But the game was a disappointment in terms of story, characters (there really were no signficiant ones, with the exception of your father, who dies very anti-climatically), and ending.
I think Bethesda learned a few good lessons from Oblivion, but not enough.
Nice Review. I was considering getting it for PS3, but decided to get Little Big Planet and Prince of Persia. Fallout 3 sounds fun since I loved Oblivion, but it's not in my budget for a game that I have not played Fallout 1 or 2. It's gotten mixed reviews and doesn't seem like one of Bethesda's greatest acheivements after Oblivion.
Nice Review. I was considering getting it for PS3, but decided to get Little Big Planet and Prince of Persia. Fallout 3 sounds fun since I loved Oblivion, but it's not in my budget for a game that I have not played Fallout 1 or 2. It's gotten mixed reviews and doesn't seem like one of Bethesda's greatest acheivements after Oblivion.
I enjoyed it far more than Oblivion. I should also mention that the soundtrack is really great.
All good questions. There are very few roleplaying opportunities in Fallout 3. I see now your point about Megaton that you were making earlier. It was kind of this big decision making process that the gameplay trailer featured, and gave people an impression that the rest of the game you would be faced with such opportunities. And don't get me wrong, you do have choices to make, say whether you want to help some ghouls take over Tenpenny Tower or help Tenpenny Tower eradicate all the nearby ghouls. Only thing is, no matter what you do, everything seems to go back to a kind of default setting once the quest is complete. As if none of it ever happened, except for now you'll just have NPCs that are missing because they're now dead.
Having good or bad karma really seems to have no impact on things. The only thing I've noticed is that if you have bad karma you can enlist the help of this one ex-bandit who lives in Megaton. Besides that though, there didn't seem like many consequences either way. I did notice that if you turned out to be too good, eventually a merc company gets a contract on you and you will encounter them from time to time trying to collect the bounty on you.
And yes, wearing certain clothing items can add or detract from skills. I don't really see how this is anti-RPGish. Or at least it didn't bother me in anyway. I guess I just liked being able to put on a lab coat and then be able to hack into a computer, albeit there is nothing practical about this. But for say, recon armor to add to your sneak skills because you are more agile in it, that makes sense to me.
About the Pip-Boy, I should make this very clear that I thought it was one of the stronger features of the game. I mean, you do manage everything using it, so it may be encumbersome if you feel it shouldn't take on every function. You can use it to listen to nearby radio stations as well, or listen to audio logs that you find. And you don't need to be in the Pip-Boy menu to listen. I rarely listened to the radio, though. They didn't quite master this feature the way GTA did. But it's used simply for everything else such as traveling, inventory management, hotkeying items, and checking stats or healing limbs.
In regards to the Enclave and Brotherhood, the only clue you get that the Brotherhood is not all that noble is when a certain scientist character tells you to be careful around them because she doesn't entirely trust them. I had hope when I first heard this because I figured maybe this meant I will begin seeing them as not necessarily good or evil, and then choose accordingly whether or not to aid them. But I was bummed because in the end, in order to finish the game, you simply have to side with them and you don't really get to learn of their darker nature. Except for that ghouls will tell you that the Brotherhood shoots them on site, but that's about it.
Another plot point that they totally didn't follow up on were the Brotherhood Outcasts. Occasionally you'd come across these Brotherhood guys in their power armor, only painted red, who were neutral toward you and would attack any monsters in your vicinity. You could never talk to them though. They'd just be like, "Move along wastelander." And then there was only one other reference to them inside the Brotherhood Citadel where they mention how there have been some knights who disagreed with the Brotherhood Elder and were banished. But that's the only other time you learn about them. And I just thought it seemed like a great opportunity to have some interesting plot twists with them, but no. They ended up being totally inconsequential to the storyline.
The Enclave were also just faceless villains so they ended up not being too interesting either. I still haven't finished Fallout 2 yet so I don't know quite as much about them as I'm hoping the conclusion will reveal.
Super Mutants I feel that Bethesda was way off on. To anyone who at least played Fallout 2, it was obvious that not all Super Mutants were just evil monsters, but some were actually very intelligent and articulate people who were capable of living peacefully with humans and ghouls. The story didn't really feature them at all except for in some sidequests. As with Oblivion, Fallout's sidequests are actually way more fun than the main ones. I don't know exactly why this is the case usually with Bethesda. But it is likely to do with overall plot structuring or lack thereof. They're good at these little short stories that are happening all over the wasteland, but they don't seem to know what to do with the larger issues at stake or what your character's role in it should be.
To an extent, I think the original Fallouts had some kinks in the story as well. But they at least knew how to climax at the end. The end of Fallout 3, while the middle bulk of the game was a blast, was so disappointing for me it made me feel a little dead inside.
Especially because at the end, you have the opportunity to insert this virus into the water that will kill off all the Super Mutants once and for all. But once you do it, nothing really happens. You just lose a lot of karma and the end cinematic is narrated slightly different. Gay.
Nice review, your previous discussion made me go down memory lane and play Fallout 1 and 2 (good stuff), and I'm right with you on the locations in Fallout 3. Compared to Oblivion, most of the locations are different in Fallout 3, whilst in Oblivion every other dungeon seemed to be exactly the same. And maybe it's just because it's in D.C. and there tends to be a deeper connection with the locations, seeing as a lot of them are real, including some of the ruined cities and towns within the wasteland, not just in the central city itself. But yeah, a few hitches here and there in the game, but overall I had a lot of fun with it.
The first indoor hostile location I went to in the game was the public school near the vault. It was fun for me because everything was still completely new at the time and I had no idea what to expect. And those bandits can really talk some trash.
Nice review, your previous discussion made me go down memory lane and play Fallout 1 and 2 (good stuff), and I'm right with you on the locations in Fallout 3. Compared to Oblivion, most of the locations are different in Fallout 3, whilst in Oblivion every other dungeon seemed to be exactly the same. And maybe it's just because it's in D.C. and there tends to be a deeper connection with the locations, seeing as a lot of them are real, including some of the ruined cities and towns within the wasteland, not just in the central city itself. But yeah, a few hitches here and there in the game, but overall I had a lot of fun with it.
Well, you have to figure Bethesda was pioneering the technology, basically, when they did Oblivion. They probably used the knowledge from their shortcomings in Oblivion (which I feel were many, although I still loved the game to death) to make Fallout III the amazing game it is
Thanks for the review, im now definately going to get this game, i was debating on whether i wanted to spend 50 dollars or not but now i know that it is definately worth the money, thank you once again Siaynoq
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I'm like a dog chasing cars." - Joker, Dark Knight
Word of advice then, White. Explore a lot. Even if it's not for a quest. Those were some of the funnest moments in the game. Also collect misc. parts, especially darts and railway spikes.
Quote from "Doppelganger" »
I don't know if i will enjoy the "bullet" camera for longer then an hour or so though, is there a way to turn it off? (for me real-time always had a bigger impact then slow-mo anyways, its more "brutal" i guess)
You could always just not use the VATS I suppose. But obviously being an original Fallout fan, you're gonna use it. You may be able to turn off the cinematic views of the VATS action. I don't know because I actually never got sick of it. The angles change themselves up and the speeds vary as well. So it's not like if you've seen it once you've seen all there is to see with it. I would just recommend giving it a good long try before deciding on it.
Quote from "Doppelganger" »
About the clothing, sure some of it might make sense, although i'm pretty sure i will rage about making a specific character only for it to be made useless "because i could of simply wore the relevant clothes anyways". (thats the "anti-rpg" i'm referring to)
I can understand what you mean. In some ways though, I also found the game to be short, making it feel like some of my skills never really got to be utilized very much. Science skill unfortunately only really affects whether or not you can hack into a computer. I wanted to make a really brainy character and solve more situations using my wits rather than guns, but the lack of RPG element in the game didn't really make this viable.
Quote from "Doppelganger" »
It seems one of the biggest strong points compared to Bethesda's previous games (mostly Oblivion) are actually fairly interesting places to visit, instead of copy-paste dungeons frantically spotted around the world to make it seem more interesting and content-filled then it actually is.
Yes, and don't get me wrong, many locations do look similar, but not at all like it was in Oblivion. And the outside terrain is amazing looking. It's kind of more desert looking to the west, you find more structures in ruins with metro stations linking important areas.
Quote from "Doppelganger" »
Sad to hear about the bland and faceless factions though, they could of really made some effort there (plus it isn't something easily fixed with mods i'm afraid, which goes for the story also) and to force the player to side with the Brotherhood is just a big nono imo.
To be honest, I don't recall any opportunities in Fallout 1 where you had much of a choice with the Brotherhood, aside from just killing them. However, I hate in Bethesda games where if you kill a certain character, they just go unconscious instead of dead. A true RPG should attempt to make all characters expendable in finding the paths toward your goal. At least the voice acting for the generic NPCs isn't quite as bad as the ones in Oblivion. But you will still find a lot of people sounding exactly the same.
Quote from "Doppelganger" »
One of the last issues i probably will be having is about how "big" and "empty" to wasteland feels. Sure, Fallout 3 will probably have more places to visit then Fallout 1 and 2 combined, still the wasteland in Fallout 1 and 2 felt absolutely huge and it didn't need "walls" to force the player through a long path to make it seem bigger then it is (which i fear Fallout 3 makes abundant use of, ie "the subways"). One of the most important feelings i had with Fallout 1 and 2 revolved around the wasteland, you almost felt dreaded to traverse it and it could take in-game weeks to go from one "civilized" place to another. From what i understand Fallout 3's world is actually smaller then Oblivions (which felt very claustrophobic to me, because it only took you maybe a in-game days to traverse from one corner of the entire map to the opposite corner). Have you been making the same thought about Fallout 3 regarding that?
Mm, at a glance, yes, Fallout 3's world is smaller than Oblivion's. But each location is more pertinent than your random dungeons and ruins in Oblivion. When I was first in Megaton, and made my journey to the DC area where all the monuments are, it was actually a really long and arduous journey. Not just because of the physically onerous path I had to take, but because there were more dangers there, more advanced enemies. And the DC area is infested with Super Mutants who have dug trenches all around the Washington Monument.
As small as the area may seem at first, there are still tons of places to explore, plenty of which have meaningful things to do. Sometimes certain locations were no more than bandit hideouts, but other times you'd maybe come across a vault which as you know, was subject to a specific kind of experiment so there is nice side storytelling going on.
Fallout 1 and 2 did seem more daunting to travel from one place to another, I would agree. But it was all fast travel unless you were stopped by a caravan or some radscorpions or something. I think many games from the 90's though were more daunting and unforgiving anyway. Before the gaming market became as mainstream as it is today, games back then were just more hardcore. I like to think of Lands of Lore 2 as a good examples of this: fucking mean ass monsters, all NPCs are totally hostile toward you or totally helpless, longer bouts of isolation, areas deep underground with no relief until the job was completely finished (you'll notice so many games these days allow you to bail out from wherever you are if you wish to return to familiar or safe territory).
I fear though that I'm starting to talk too much about the game. You need to try and just go in with an open mind about it. And try as much as you can not to compare it too much to Fallout 1 and 2. I know this seems strange since it is a sequel, but the fact remains that it is a totally different company making the game and there are simply a lot of things that are going to be different. And try not to be disappointed like I was that I couldn't kill any kids by shooting them in the junk.
Bethesda should leave the RPGs to Blizzard and Bioware. (Mainly Bioware :P, for hardcore ones)
I have Fallout 3 as well, and have beaten it. While it was a great game, the ending was absolutely horrible - to the point that I wondered why I even played it. The game has some interesting decisions and story to it, but IMO the story just wasn't that interesting to me.
I guess I don't find a post-apocalyptic world to be very interesting. It reminded me of that one move (I forgot the name, really popular older movie) where it's sorta like this game ... with he raiders and stuff. (Biodome maybe?)
In all, it was a good RPG game, but the story never engrossed me ... plus, the customization was very little IMO.
Bethesda should leave the RPGs to Blizzard and Bioware. (Mainly Bioware :P, for hardcore ones)
I don't think Blizzard has really mastered any kind of RPG. But I agree with you about Bioware.
Quote from "Lydeck" »
I have Fallout 3 as well, and have beaten it. While it was a great game, the ending was absolutely horrible - to the point that I wondered why I even played it. The game has some interesting decisions and story to it, but IMO the story just wasn't that interesting to me.
Didn't that fucking robot just bug this piss out of you? All you had to do was just follow it to the Jefferson Memorial and then the game was over. I think Fallout's story is interesting though, but it probably helps if you've played the original two.
Quote from "Lydeck" »
I guess I don't find a post-apocalyptic world to be very interesting. It reminded me of that one move (I forgot the name, really popular older movie) where it's sorta like this game ... with he raiders and stuff. (Biodome maybe?)
Mad Max and the Thunderdome? Quite different though in my opinion. But I actually love the post-apocalyptic setting. Seeing DC in ruins I thought was rather stunning. Say what you will about Bethesda games, I still love their graphics.
Quote from "Lydeck" »
In all, it was a good RPG game, but the story never engrossed me ... plus, the customization was very little IMO.
A common problem for Bethesda, the customization thing. It's rendered pointless with how little your character is actually in the story. For a Fallout story, the plot wasn't that bad really. But overall, yes, the story was weak and the ending was anticlimatic. It did have Ron Pearlman narrating though which was a plus.
Definitely one of the best games I've ever played. I'm still not finished with it as I am too busy just walking around. Did guys blow up Megaton? I didn't and it so far has gotten me killed a bunch of times.
I chose to save Megaton from the bomb. Mostly just because Megaton is the easiest town to return to when you want to go manage your inventory and store a bunch of things, and trade and stuff.
I heard that if you bomb it then you get some kick ass apartment but then guys still come after you and kill you. Oh well. This is one of the only games where I feel bad when I kill people.
The apartments that you would get after bombing it are probably in Tenpenny Tower. But I hate trading at that location too. Megaton is just nice because everything is centralized and fairly easy to find. There are also more quests to be had from it.
As far as the gameplay itself, it was simply very fun and addicting. To those who are familiar with Fallout 1 and 2, you can target specific areas of your opponent's body and you can in Fallout 3 as well (they call this VATS). Since the combat is in real time in Fallout 3 rather than being turn based, everything remains so until you use the VATS. Then time freezes as you can choose where to attack your opponent. Once you approve of the targeted areas, you let the scene of carnage play itself out. It's one of the coolest features in this game. I thought I would end up getting tired of it, but I never did. It's pretty dang neat watching a cinematic view of my character firing a sniper rifle to see the camera following a bullet all the way to my targets head only to end in the guy's head exploding. You can do this with melee weapons as well. One weapon, the Ripper, a sort of crude handheld chainsaw is great for this feature. I'd run up to an opponent who was low on health, then right before attacking I'd go into the VATS and target maybe their left arm. Then I'd get this really cool kind of blurred and flurried action sequence of me sawing my target's arm off.
Of course, the VATS isn't all about dismemberment. It also works to cripple. If you gain a critical hit in the leg, they'll start limping. If it's in the arm or the head, their attacks become less effective. Even just shooting beasts using the VATS is really fun to watch. Energy weapons will totally melt opponents and as they're falling back from the force of the projectile, they are also melting away in the process and leave a pile of goo behind. Weapons do require upkeep. At first I thought this would be annoying, but it barely managed not to be as it gives more legitimacy to the repair skill. What bothered me though was that if I want to repair a Chinese Assault Rifle, I have to repair it with another Chinese Assault Rifle. I was hoping once I got my repair skill high enough, that it would allow me to repair, for example, an automatic assault rifle with any other type of automatic assault rifle, but no.
The inventory, mapping, and leveling systems are all managed by your Pip-Boy. You can also get crippled limbs yourself, and if you don't have a bed to rest in or a doctor to be healed by, you can individually heal limbs using up stimpacks.
Exploration in Fallout 3 is very similar to Oblivion. But the graphics are improved and the lighting is a bit more realistic and not so super shiny. My favorite areas to go to were near the D.C. hub. It was visually stunning I thought to see D.C. in ruins. The Washington Monument still stands but is heavily damaged and you can see it's framework. They even have the Jefferson Memorial, Arlington Cemetary, and the Museum of National History. I guess it was so cool for me cause I've been to all those places. And in the Musuem they even still had the giganatic wooly mammoth in the front only it was damaged and several parts of the museum were caved in. I had even been in the basement of the Jefferson Memorial were I got my first migraine ever. So it was fun being back in there. There is fast traveling to locations as long as you manually reached the location first. And some places are actually pretty hard to get to. You have to take the subway stations underground a lot because the path is obstructed on top. And down there are a lot of feral ghouls which always scared the crap out of me because they run at you and all you hear are their sticky footsteps.
I think they did a decent job of making exploring worthwhile. The random locations are a bit more distinguishable than the cookie cutter dungeons and ruins of Oblivion. You can also scavenge various parts across the land which can be made into unique weapons later. There are even various vaults you can journey to. Those locations were unnerving at times though. Creepy places.
The game is pretty difficult starting out, but once it becomes easier to kill, I actually recommend tweaking the difficulty level of this game. There is no dreaded scaled-leveling like there was in Oblivion. So tweaking the difficulty only increases the chances that they'll kill you, but it doesn't make it too much harder to kill them.
Storyline, I was fairly conflicted on. All Fallout games have some kind of major plot device. The water chip, the GECK, and in this one it's Project Purity-a project to turn mass bodies of water into drinkable water. Your father is the man person behind this project only he has recently fled the vault and you are on a quest to find him and get some answers. I think what I do like about this story compared to the others is you immediately get to forsake your vault instead of thinking you'll return to it one day and save it. There is still a war between the Enclave and the Brotherhood, with the Brotherhood still having inferior technology, but possibly a higher moral code than the Enclave.
Unfortunately in this game, this is hardly any chance to really choose between the two. The game ends a single way without allowing you to choose who you wish to side with. Bethesda really seems to struggle with this in their games. They just do more fancy simulations than actual RPGs.
Which brings me to the spoiler section of this review.
SPOILER ALERT!
I've noticed this with more than a few of Bethesda's games. They just seem to get cold feet or something when it comes to ending their games. As if they were so proud of the body of the game, that they have no idea how to conclude them. Well the ending of Fallout 3 was embarrasinly similar in feeling to Oblivion's. And it made me pissed off about the whole thing despite how much I enjoyed playing the game.
For those of you who played Oblivion, you'll recall how the ending sucked because you're not doing anything except for watching to other things fight each other. All you have to do is practically run to a location. Once there, you're just a bystander to the final events and not a participant. All your hardwork is laughed at as someone else gets to fight the main boss. Bethesda has something against boss battles. If it becomes absolutely necessary to fight a boss, someone else fights them for you.
So what happened toward the end of Fallout 3, was the Brotherhood decided it was time to get on the offensive against the Enclave after your character had just struck a critical blow to the Enclave's command structure. So it is decided that you among a bunch of Brotherhood knights are off to go fight the Enclave at the water purification base. Oh, and did I mention you also have the help of a huge fuck off robot? That's right. This robot more than just helps you in this final offensive though. In fact, you can practically just sit back while he blows the shit out of everything. Imagine the lost opportunity for you here. There are literally tons of Enclave soldiers everywhere as well as about a dozen Vertibirds flying around. It's bad enough that you can just let the other Brotherhood soldiers fight all the Enclave, but you don't even have the chance to fight the Vertibirds yourself.
It could have been a kick ass boss battle if it was just you taking cover wherever you could find it and trying desperately to bring down these vicious flying machines with rockets, plasma weapons and whatever else you could fine. But no! The huge fuck off robot gets to do all that instead. At one point, I was seriously like, "Stupid robot! Those Vertibirds are mine!" He'd just kill them in one shot with his laser shooting eyes. And then by the end, all the Enclave and their air support is easily defeated by someone else, and you just go into the water purification area and flip a switch and the game is over.
I just didn't understand the logic behind it. Was I supposed to be so impressed by this anachronistic looking robot killing the shit out of everything that I wouldn't care that I'm not even participating in the fight? For all the impressive game mechanics and graphics of Fallout 3, could they not anticipate that the player simply wanted to be an integral part of the last fight and not just a bystander? Apparently not. And so with Bethesda, I know they have all this technical skill for making a game. But the developers themselves seem to lack some basic gamer instincts. They seem to just want to create art sometimes rather than playability. Throughtout most of the game I enjoyed myself, but the ending could not have made all my efforts seem more pointless.
I'd probably give the game a 7/10. The plus points came out of great graphics, the Pip-Boy, the combat and VATS, and the open ended exploration. But the game was a disappointment in terms of story, characters (there really were no signficiant ones, with the exception of your father, who dies very anti-climatically), and ending.
I think Bethesda learned a few good lessons from Oblivion, but not enough.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
It's the decisions you make when you have no time to make them that define who you are.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
All good questions. There are very few roleplaying opportunities in Fallout 3. I see now your point about Megaton that you were making earlier. It was kind of this big decision making process that the gameplay trailer featured, and gave people an impression that the rest of the game you would be faced with such opportunities. And don't get me wrong, you do have choices to make, say whether you want to help some ghouls take over Tenpenny Tower or help Tenpenny Tower eradicate all the nearby ghouls. Only thing is, no matter what you do, everything seems to go back to a kind of default setting once the quest is complete. As if none of it ever happened, except for now you'll just have NPCs that are missing because they're now dead.
Having good or bad karma really seems to have no impact on things. The only thing I've noticed is that if you have bad karma you can enlist the help of this one ex-bandit who lives in Megaton. Besides that though, there didn't seem like many consequences either way. I did notice that if you turned out to be too good, eventually a merc company gets a contract on you and you will encounter them from time to time trying to collect the bounty on you.
And yes, wearing certain clothing items can add or detract from skills. I don't really see how this is anti-RPGish. Or at least it didn't bother me in anyway. I guess I just liked being able to put on a lab coat and then be able to hack into a computer, albeit there is nothing practical about this. But for say, recon armor to add to your sneak skills because you are more agile in it, that makes sense to me.
About the Pip-Boy, I should make this very clear that I thought it was one of the stronger features of the game. I mean, you do manage everything using it, so it may be encumbersome if you feel it shouldn't take on every function. You can use it to listen to nearby radio stations as well, or listen to audio logs that you find. And you don't need to be in the Pip-Boy menu to listen. I rarely listened to the radio, though. They didn't quite master this feature the way GTA did. But it's used simply for everything else such as traveling, inventory management, hotkeying items, and checking stats or healing limbs.
In regards to the Enclave and Brotherhood, the only clue you get that the Brotherhood is not all that noble is when a certain scientist character tells you to be careful around them because she doesn't entirely trust them. I had hope when I first heard this because I figured maybe this meant I will begin seeing them as not necessarily good or evil, and then choose accordingly whether or not to aid them. But I was bummed because in the end, in order to finish the game, you simply have to side with them and you don't really get to learn of their darker nature. Except for that ghouls will tell you that the Brotherhood shoots them on site, but that's about it.
Another plot point that they totally didn't follow up on were the Brotherhood Outcasts. Occasionally you'd come across these Brotherhood guys in their power armor, only painted red, who were neutral toward you and would attack any monsters in your vicinity. You could never talk to them though. They'd just be like, "Move along wastelander." And then there was only one other reference to them inside the Brotherhood Citadel where they mention how there have been some knights who disagreed with the Brotherhood Elder and were banished. But that's the only other time you learn about them. And I just thought it seemed like a great opportunity to have some interesting plot twists with them, but no. They ended up being totally inconsequential to the storyline.
The Enclave were also just faceless villains so they ended up not being too interesting either. I still haven't finished Fallout 2 yet so I don't know quite as much about them as I'm hoping the conclusion will reveal.
Super Mutants I feel that Bethesda was way off on. To anyone who at least played Fallout 2, it was obvious that not all Super Mutants were just evil monsters, but some were actually very intelligent and articulate people who were capable of living peacefully with humans and ghouls. The story didn't really feature them at all except for in some sidequests. As with Oblivion, Fallout's sidequests are actually way more fun than the main ones. I don't know exactly why this is the case usually with Bethesda. But it is likely to do with overall plot structuring or lack thereof. They're good at these little short stories that are happening all over the wasteland, but they don't seem to know what to do with the larger issues at stake or what your character's role in it should be.
To an extent, I think the original Fallouts had some kinks in the story as well. But they at least knew how to climax at the end. The end of Fallout 3, while the middle bulk of the game was a blast, was so disappointing for me it made me feel a little dead inside.
Especially because at the end, you have the opportunity to insert this virus into the water that will kill off all the Super Mutants once and for all. But once you do it, nothing really happens. You just lose a lot of karma and the end cinematic is narrated slightly different. Gay.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Well, you have to figure Bethesda was pioneering the technology, basically, when they did Oblivion. They probably used the knowledge from their shortcomings in Oblivion (which I feel were many, although I still loved the game to death) to make Fallout III the amazing game it is
Fallou t 3 is fantastic,but not as fantastic as oblivion:)but still,fallout 3 is definitely and A-STAR game.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
allthough i did love the part when butch comes crying to you to save him, and you leave him for the radroaches.....
overall I just felt like the game was lacking, in many area's, I wont go into detail but I give it 6/10.
You could always just not use the VATS I suppose. But obviously being an original Fallout fan, you're gonna use it. You may be able to turn off the cinematic views of the VATS action. I don't know because I actually never got sick of it. The angles change themselves up and the speeds vary as well. So it's not like if you've seen it once you've seen all there is to see with it. I would just recommend giving it a good long try before deciding on it.
I can understand what you mean. In some ways though, I also found the game to be short, making it feel like some of my skills never really got to be utilized very much. Science skill unfortunately only really affects whether or not you can hack into a computer. I wanted to make a really brainy character and solve more situations using my wits rather than guns, but the lack of RPG element in the game didn't really make this viable.
Yes, and don't get me wrong, many locations do look similar, but not at all like it was in Oblivion. And the outside terrain is amazing looking. It's kind of more desert looking to the west, you find more structures in ruins with metro stations linking important areas.
To be honest, I don't recall any opportunities in Fallout 1 where you had much of a choice with the Brotherhood, aside from just killing them. However, I hate in Bethesda games where if you kill a certain character, they just go unconscious instead of dead. A true RPG should attempt to make all characters expendable in finding the paths toward your goal. At least the voice acting for the generic NPCs isn't quite as bad as the ones in Oblivion. But you will still find a lot of people sounding exactly the same.
Mm, at a glance, yes, Fallout 3's world is smaller than Oblivion's. But each location is more pertinent than your random dungeons and ruins in Oblivion. When I was first in Megaton, and made my journey to the DC area where all the monuments are, it was actually a really long and arduous journey. Not just because of the physically onerous path I had to take, but because there were more dangers there, more advanced enemies. And the DC area is infested with Super Mutants who have dug trenches all around the Washington Monument.
As small as the area may seem at first, there are still tons of places to explore, plenty of which have meaningful things to do. Sometimes certain locations were no more than bandit hideouts, but other times you'd maybe come across a vault which as you know, was subject to a specific kind of experiment so there is nice side storytelling going on.
Fallout 1 and 2 did seem more daunting to travel from one place to another, I would agree. But it was all fast travel unless you were stopped by a caravan or some radscorpions or something. I think many games from the 90's though were more daunting and unforgiving anyway. Before the gaming market became as mainstream as it is today, games back then were just more hardcore. I like to think of Lands of Lore 2 as a good examples of this: fucking mean ass monsters, all NPCs are totally hostile toward you or totally helpless, longer bouts of isolation, areas deep underground with no relief until the job was completely finished (you'll notice so many games these days allow you to bail out from wherever you are if you wish to return to familiar or safe territory).
I fear though that I'm starting to talk too much about the game. You need to try and just go in with an open mind about it. And try as much as you can not to compare it too much to Fallout 1 and 2. I know this seems strange since it is a sequel, but the fact remains that it is a totally different company making the game and there are simply a lot of things that are going to be different. And try not to be disappointed like I was that I couldn't kill any kids by shooting them in the junk.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
I have Fallout 3 as well, and have beaten it. While it was a great game, the ending was absolutely horrible - to the point that I wondered why I even played it. The game has some interesting decisions and story to it, but IMO the story just wasn't that interesting to me.
I guess I don't find a post-apocalyptic world to be very interesting. It reminded me of that one move (I forgot the name, really popular older movie) where it's sorta like this game ... with he raiders and stuff. (Biodome maybe?)
In all, it was a good RPG game, but the story never engrossed me ... plus, the customization was very little IMO.
CyberPunk RP Nexus
Didn't that fucking robot just bug this piss out of you? All you had to do was just follow it to the Jefferson Memorial and then the game was over. I think Fallout's story is interesting though, but it probably helps if you've played the original two.
Mad Max and the Thunderdome? Quite different though in my opinion. But I actually love the post-apocalyptic setting. Seeing DC in ruins I thought was rather stunning. Say what you will about Bethesda games, I still love their graphics.
A common problem for Bethesda, the customization thing. It's rendered pointless with how little your character is actually in the story. For a Fallout story, the plot wasn't that bad really. But overall, yes, the story was weak and the ending was anticlimatic. It did have Ron Pearlman narrating though which was a plus.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Did you find that village with the cannibals? Where they're all ridiculously happy and cheerful?