Name: Fallout 3
Genre: Adventure
Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows PC (Reviewed on Xbox 360)

                                 Check out the video review.

Some of my fondest gaming memories stem from killing children in Fallout. It wasn’t the actual act that was so satisfying, but the response; being labeled as a “child killer” and having the entire world turn its back on me. The fact that I was able to do it, the freedom to do whatever you wanted; that’s always been what excited me about Fallout games. When Bethesda picked up the rights to the series and announced that it would build off of the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion’s engine, I was excited to see what their take would be on the post-apocalyptic world. Comparing early screenshots, it was apparent that they were going to go their own way with it, enough that many people assumed it would be “Oblivion with guns,” which would be all well and good, but “Oblivion with guns” isn’t Fallout. Luckily, those views were mostly short sighted, and the full game is not only an impressive achievement in its own right, but a worthy entry that fits seamlessly in the Fallout series as well.

Fallout 3’s opening scenes are brilliant, starting the character’s life as they are born. The player is able to choose their sex, name, and appearance, before being brought to the next stage of the tutorial: childhood. Gamers, for the first time, learn how to do tasks as their character does, growing up and learning how to walk, shoot, and interact with the world. It’s brilliant, and an original take on tutorials, which comes as a breath of fresh air when compared to the typical “crouch under this box, jump over this hole” dog and pony show we’ve become accustomed to.

Aside from changing perspectives, shifting from top-down to first person, the game also changes locations from California to Washington DC. The story itself, involving the search for your father, who mysteriously left the vault (the first person to do so in over two centuries), is short when compared to most RPGs, but is interesting enough, and mainly serves as an excuse to explore the Wasteland, seeing what the world would be like after being given a once-over by nuclear radiation.

From corner to corner, the world is populated with imaginative cities and inhospitable landscapes. Each is filled with vendors and quest givers, allowing for players to carve a path of destruction or peace wherever they go. One of the first encountered areas is Megaton, a shanty town built around an un-detonated nuclear warhead. There are people in the city worshiping it, some asking you to disarm it, and others asking you to detonate it, each of which can be followed depending on your character’s personality. Needless to say, everything in the world is appropriately fleshed out. 

 

Fallout 3 runs on the GameBryo engine, just like Oblivion, and it looks similar because of it. That doesn’t mean that Washington D.C. looks like Cyrodiil - they are very different. The graphics are dark and gritty and the environments look desolate and depressing. Bethesda did an amazing job of bringing the dreadful world of Fallout to the current generation, and while it looks and feels a lot like Oblivion it really isn’t. Weapons break easily, and need to have constant maintenance. Ammunition and health is scarce, and it’s common to run out of supplies mid battle. Rationing supplies gives the game a very different feel, and while it isn’t as large as other open-world titles are, it’s definitely packed with more content. The game also has its fair share of blood and gore, so fans of excessive violence will be happy to hear that they should be well served. Seriously. It’s crazy over the top in just about every aspect. There’s no reason a sniper bullet should actually remove the head, intact, from the body, but it’s cool as hell when it does. There’s even a weapon called the Fatman, which launches a small, tactical nuclear warhead at an enemy. Exactly.

There are dozens of different quests that will have you exploring the far reaches of the Wasteland. So many, in fact, that there’s a good chance that you won’t find many of the people, areas, items, or quests on a single play through. After completing the main story and doing a fair share of side-missions I was shocked to find out that I hadn’t even encountered some of the game’s enemies or met NPCs. Apparently, somewhere in the wasteland is the Lincoln Memorial, and there’s a quest to repair it. I had no idea, and never even got a hint of it throughout my play.

Each level allows for players to invest points into different skills, ranging from basic weapon skills to abilities that allow them to pick locks or barter with vendors. Using these skills, quests can be completed in an assortment of ways depending on which skills the player focused on. Players could use their Speech skill to ask someone for information, which is represented in the game’s dialogue trees, their science skill hack their computer during the night, which is a complicated but interesting minigame, or their weapon skills to shoot them in the head, hoping that they might have a clue hidden somewhere on their body. Theres should never be a time where the player feels like they aren’t able to complete something due to the way they built their character, and each path has interesting and rewarding results.

Leveling also allows players to pick Perks, which can be used to further customize your character. There are over 50 perks to choose, ranging from Gun Nut, which simply puts more points into different weapon skills, to more impactful bonuses, like Mysterious Stranger, giving players their own personal guardian angel from time to time during VATS scenes. Others boost the amount of experience earned from a kill and give extra skill points, and there are enough to justify several plays simply to try them all.

Combat is a focus in Fallout 3, and Bethesda has found a nice medium between turn-based RPG and real time shooting. Firing at enemies with weapons in first or third person will do damage like normal, but players also have access to the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or VATS. Tapping a button shifts into first person and allows for precise aiming at different body parts, causing a number of effects. Headshots are usually the quickest way to get a kill, but aiming at the legs can slow an enemy, and the arms or weapon can disarm them.

The shooting mechanics without VATS might not be tight enough for all gamers, but it’s well made enough where a headshot with a sniper rifle can still tear off a head, and it can sometimes be more beneficial to fire a rocket without VATS than it is to use them. During these sequences, the camera pulls to third person and shows the mayhem from an opportune position. Heads will blow off in slow motion, bullets will be trailed by the camera and literally remove a limb from the body. It usually shows the combat in a much better light, but can also get lost behind a wall or enemy, showing the scene from another inconvenient location.

The interface is sleek, and most everything is mapped to your Pip-Boy 3000, which is an electronic PDA device permanently attached to your forearm. It displays inventory, quest, and map information, as well as acting like a radio for receiving one of the two remaining signals in the wastes. Wandering around fighting mutated rats is more fun with the Ink Spots playing, and the radio signal reacts realistically as well, dropping out when they go underground or into a tunnel.

Players are able to fast-travel between locations they have visited, which cuts down on unnecessary wandering, while taking away from the desolate feel of the world. There isn’t much fear of being stranded with no health or ammunition when you can zip back to a town and sleep, returning all of your hit points. The last two Fallout titles had similar features, but there were small scenes that could interrupt your traveling, such as raider attacks and tumbles off of cliffs to add to the tension. It seems like Fallout 3 would have been better with these sequences, but their omission doesn’t hurt the game too much.

That really sums up many of the game’s problems. While most of Fallout 3 is polished, there are some issues that can be annoying from time to time. Many characters share voice actors, and the voices sometimes sound overproduced. I understand that some characters might pride themselves on speaking even in the most depressing of situations, but I find it hard to believe that half of the Slavers in Paradise Falls sound like they are from the Royal Shakespeare Company. Something about the radiation in the water and sulfur in the air should give most people a gritty tone, and it’s a detail that would have gone a long way. There are also issues with graphical pops, especially when buildings appear in the distance. Neither of these take away from the game much, but every blemish on a product so good is noticeable.

Fallout 3 portrays a world that no one wants to live in, where there are difficult moral decisions to make and the line between good and evil is extremely blurry. Before long, I found myself killing strangers for Stimpacks and stealing ammunition from Merchants, all the while actually trying to justify it to myself. I usually try to make choices in games similar to what I believe I would do in reality, and by the end of Fallout 3 I was trading slaves and detonating nuclear warheads in cities for a warm bed to sleep in. Fallout 3 gives an incredibly bleak outlook on our future and humanity, all the while roping me in closer than just about any title has in the past few years, despite its faults. It’s a game everyone should play, if not just to find out who they really are, and to learn what life would be like if we finally had to duck and cover.

 

 


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