http://www.zgeek.com/forum en Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:58:19 GMT vBulletin 1 http://www.zgeek.com/forum/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.zgeek.com/forum http://www.zgeek.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80652&goto=newpost Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:40:17 GMT Full disclosure: I loved the first two Fallout games. I beat them both numerous times. I even played and beat the lesser known Fallout: Tactics. Years ago when I heard that Interplay had gone out of business, I despaired at the prospect of there never being another sequel. Fast forward to... Full disclosure: I loved the first two Fallout games. I beat them both numerous times. I even played and beat the lesser known Fallout: Tactics. Years ago when I heard that Interplay had gone out of business, I despaired at the prospect of there never being another sequel.
Fast forward to last year (I know it was announced prior to last year, but that's when I found out) when I first heard that Bethesda had acquired the rights and was developing a new sequel, I was filled with a mix of joy and dread. I had spent hours enjoying Oblivion and bought the expansion when I had the chance, but as a Fallout purist I feared that they would screw up all of the elements that I'd loved about the first few games (especially the "feel" of the game).
This being said, I got the game for Christmas and finally got a chance to experience what is probably a new level in RPG gaming experience.
However, right off the bat there were a few problems. I spent a few hours attempting to get it to run on my PC. This game has pretty high video and minimum system requirements and it took some work to run it on my aging system. Like a lot of you, I love PC gaming, but am constantly annoyed by the obsolescence factor of games requiring constant system upgrades.
Nonetheless, once I got the kinks worked out, I was able to seamlessly get into the game.
Fallout has one of the best tutorials I've ever seen. It takes the idea that, like a child, one must learn how to walk before one can learn how to use a mini-nuke launcher. The tutorial starts with your character's birth, where you name your character, choose your sex, and what your future appearance will be. Once this is done, the tutorial then takes you through infancy where you choose your stats and learn how to walk and interact with the world. It fast forwards to adolescence as it teaches you the controls of your Pipboy (which controls your inventory and health among many other things) while advancing the storyline. Finally as a teenager, you take a standardized test to determine your base skill set (much like an aptitude test in high school). The full tutorial is presented seamlessly with the main plot of the story and follows your life growing up in Vault 101.

Bethesda learned a lot of lessons from Oblivion (and to a degree Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth especially with the visual effects of drug use) and applied many of them to Fallout 3, including the facial design software. Because of this, the main criticism I have of Fallout 3 is that it can only really be compared to Oblivion due to their similarities in scope and game play. Unfortunately, it's apparent that some of the compromises that Bethesda made to keep aspects of the original Fallout games overrode some of the advances that they made with Oblivion.
In Oblivion, in order to advance in a skill one was forced to actually practice that skill. For instance, if you wanted your character to get good with using a bow, you had to actually use a bow. In Fallout 3, to advance you skill in (for instance) small guns, you have to wait until you level up to apply points which increase your percentages of success.
The idea of practicing a skill to become good at it was a wonderful innovation
that Oblivion introduced and gave the player incentive to change the nature of his character through work. Fallout 3 is diminished by leaving this aspect out (even though it is an aspect from the source games that they were probably trying to stay true to).
Another aspect of Fallout 3 that this affects is leveling up. When you level up in Fallout 3, you distribute points to your skills and are given the choice of "perks" which allow for greater specialization. While I'm really glad that they continued to include perks, ("bloody mess" being an all time favorite that they had to good sense to leave in), they have capped the levels at 20. For a game that has as large of a game world as Fallout 3, this is truly unfortunate.
Fallout 3 has a beautiful and involved world map, which like Oblivion, can lead to hours of exploring. However, once you have reached your level cap, because you can't train up any of your abilities (independent of skill books which are found throughout the game), the game stagnates. While Oblivion also had a level cap, that didn't prevent you from increasing your skills.
Another objection I have with Fallout 3 is that it ends. An innovation that Oblivion introduced was that once the main quest was beat, you could continue on with your character and play in a myriad of side quests (which gave a lot of incentive to explore the beautiful world that they created). While Fallout 3 has a lot of side quests, none of them are as involved as those in Oblivion and if you are in a late point of the main quest, you'll never get a chance to go back and complete them. This has the effect of making somewhat irrelevant the fact that there is such a huge world map especially considering that you're probably already level 20 by the time you reach the point of no return in the main quest.
According to Bethesda, they intend to roll out a downloadable patch sometime in the future that will increase the level cap to 30 and allow play after the main quest has been beaten. I imagine that this will be a few months as they just recently introduced the first expansion patch, Operation: Anchorage. Of course, these patches cost money and in order to get them, you have to go through Microsoft Live (which is a whole other type of big hassle).
The plot of Fallout 3 is full of references to the previous games. Bethesda put a lot of work into subtly including references to Fallout and Fallout 2 throughout. My personal favorite is when they reintroduce Harold the ghoul who was a follower from Fallout 2. I won't tell you more about that as I don't want to spoil it, but it put a smile on my face.
The main quest was well done, but derivative of the source material. Essentially, it's nearly the same plot as Fallout 2 with a few tweaks here and there to shake things up. You're still fighting the Enclave to prevent them from taking over the Wasteland with the help of your friends in the Brotherhood of Steel and you are still sent off to retrieve a GECK.
I realize that these criticisms of Fallout 3 make it sound like I've been horribly disappointed in the game but please don't get me wrong. This is hardly the case because these are really minor critiques of an overall amazing game. Bethesda managed to not only kept the "feel" and quirks that I loved about the earlier games, but improved upon them greatly. That said, am I the only one who wishes that I could find a velvet painting of Elvis in Fallout 3? Just for old times sake?

Fallout 3 is nothing short of a masterpiece and another example of how Bethesda is one of the most imaginative and dynamic game companies out there right now. Do yourself a favor and play this game. If you like epic RPG's, this is the best you are going to get right now. ]]> PC Symon_magus http://www.zgeek.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80652