Welcome to the World of Tomorrow
Written: Nov 29 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Engaging gameplay is more strategic than it looks. Fantastic sense of style and exploration.
Cons: Lots of time consuming walking around, occasionally confusing navigation.
The Bottom Line: This is the game we've been waiting for for nearly a decade. An engrossing, beautifully designed adventure through post-apocalyptia that shouldn't be missed.
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| zero_'s Full Review: Fallout 3 for PC |
You're not a true nerd if you haven't been waiting the last decade for Fallout 3 to come along. Like so many other cult classics, the first two Fallout games didn't sell very well at their time(s) of release, and dated as their graphics and interfaces are they're still regarded as among the best and deepest of open-ended RPG's.
After these two there was going to be a third Fallout developed by Interplay. But then there wasn't, and then there was, and then there wasn't again, and so forth. And now, ten years later, there is. But this installment isn't made by the original authors of Fallout 1 and 2 – It's made by Bethesda, renowned for their Elder Scrolls RPG series. Most lately, this has been Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion.
Fallout 3 has been described more than once as “sort of like Oblivion, but with guns.” This is true, in a way, and because it's based on the same game engine as Oblivion (with suitable modifications) many parts of Fallout 3 play and feel very much like Bethesda's earlier title. Anyone who takes in a few minutes of gameplay from each will know exactly what I mean.
Following the traditions of both branches of its roots, Fallout 3 is also incredibly stylish, well written, and fantastically detailed. It's a story of a post-apocalyptic Earth 200 years after a global nuclear war, an alternate reality seemingly permanently stuck in a state of vacuum tube, 1950's technology and style. I would say that the fantastic art direction feels almost like Bioshock, but Fallout did it first way back in the late '90's, and if you ask me Fallout 3 does it a heck of a lot better. The game world is littered with advertisements and other artwork in that hand-illustrated, '50's style. You can unearth notes and audio logs, records, machinery, tools, and materials from the lost world before the nuclear war, all pieces of a puzzle describing a fantastically detailed fictional world. Every inch of the game from the burnt-out outlying wastelands to the smashed marble architecture of Washington D.C. is richly detailed and breathtaking to behold. Every line of dialog is voice acted. Because of a relatively large pool of voice actors, many of them unique to a character, it doesn't always feel like you're talking to the same person every time.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Fallout 3 is incredibly well-presented. There's literally nothing in the game that breaks the post-1950's vibe, from the logos and initial menu screen (presented as a series of slides on a mechanical projector), to the in-game user interface (a CRT-and-vacuum tube computer strapped to your character's wrist).
The original Fallout games were top-down, grid-based, turn-driven traditional RPG's. Fallout 3, on the other hand, is presented in the format of a first person game exactly like Oblivion and, to a certain extent, Stalker (that other post-nuclear survival/first person/RPG). This is about as far a departure from a turn-based RPG as you can get, but the game manages to preserve the same sort of character building, methodical combat (if you so choose, anyway), and atmosphere that made the first two Fallouts great. And for what basically boils down to an FPS, this is admirable.
The first thing that leapt to mind when I heard that Bethesda was making an FPS Fallout based on the Oblivion engine was “Oh dear, they're going to totally ruin the RPG appeal, lose all of the classic players, and turn the whole mess into a twitch-game like Bioshock.” And, to be fair, a certain extent of that is unavoidable. Oblivion worked well as a first person RPG because most of the combat was based on whacking things with swords or dealing out area-of-effect magic, rendering aiming and other first person shooter-esque tasks irrelevant unless you actively chose to play an archer character. Fallout 3 is the opposite: Just about every shred of combat revolves around gunplay, and while you can play a melee-only character it's usually just a fast (and frustrating) way to get yourself riddled with bullet holes.
Bethesda's solution to this is their vaunted “V.A.T.S.” system. It's reminiscent of the way you could target specific areas of your enemies' bodies in the original Fallout games, with the added bonus of pausing the action while you take time to decide where to put your bullets. The V.A.T.S. relies on your character's stats and those of your weapon for accuracy and damage, and can only be used by spending automatically regenerating “action points,” just like a turn-based RPG.
Without using V.A.T.S. you can still aim guns manually and there are various weapons and situations (particularly long range combat) where aiming the old-fashioned way is preferable to using the V.A.T.S. to roll dice at your enemy. Twitch-FPS players will be perfectly happy to just go around scoring headshots left and right manually, while more casual or strategic gamers will find no disadvantage to using V.A.T.S. nearly exclusively.
Fallout 3's combat mechanics fall almost short of being a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none affair. There is “fake inaccuracy” added into the guns when you're aiming manually, just like in Stalker. This is absolutely infuriating at times, especially with weapons like the sniper rifle that are supposed to be pinpoint accurate when they're in good nick. This seems to artificially limit your effective combat range, forcing you to move close enough to get your gun's lousy spread in check or within V.A.T.S. distance while your enemies casually pelt you from miles away. Odd, for instance, is the fact that any of the game's battle rifles are for some reason wildly inaccurate even when in perfect condition, making the 10mm pistol you're handed at the beginning of the game the best choice for inexpensive long range combat.
Being an FPS/RPG hybrid, many things in Fallout 3 revolve around your character's stats. Just as in previous Bethesda games and indeed the earlier Fallout titles, building your character is an immensely important part of the game. From the outset you get to pick your gender, basic appearance, base stats, and skills. The way this is handled is actually incredibly immersive and well done. The game begins with your character being born, when you select your gender. Afterwards, the “genetic analyzer” predicts how you'll look when you grow up, giving you the opportunity to style your eventual appearance. Through a series of memories and flashbacks you set your base stats by way of a thick-paged children's book as a toddler, learn about your Pip-Boy 3000 personal computer (the game's menu/inventory interface) and basic combat at your 10th birthday, and pick your skill specialties by way of an aptitude test when your character is 16.
What follows is a long and complicated story of following your scientist father out of the underground shelter or “vault” in which you were raised, trekking across the burnt, shattered, radioactive remains of Washington D.C. The main storyline is involved and well written, with a couple of twists (which I won't spoil) and, as in any decent open-ended RPG, is yours to complete or ignore entirely. Outside of the main quest are tons of sidequests, vaults, villages, and dungeons to explore, monsters and raiders to fight, loot to scavenge, and sights to take in.
Owing to its style and where it comes from, it's easiest to compare Fallout 3 to two contemporary games I've already mentioned: Oblivion, and Stalker.
On the whole Fallout 3 feels much less linear than Stalker did, owing to the fact that there's a lot to do outside of your main mission. Because of this it rarely feels like time spent trudging through the countryside is wasted. Equipment is scarce and valuable, and any excursion that might turn up weapons, ammo, or loot is generally a worthwhile one. Unlike Oblivion you gain experience points and thus level ups purely via combat and uncovering map locations (not grinding with a particular skill over and over and over...) so there's incentive to explore instead of warping yourself from town to town to finish out your quests.
The experience and leveling system is straight out of the original Fallout games, with stats and perks (specialized bonuses) you get to chose from every time you level up to build and specialize your character however you like. Every stat and perk has an amusing illustration, and some of the perks are just hilarious. Since you can put your points literally anywhere you want you don't get “boxed in” by your early actions like you did in Oblivion and there's much more flexibility to experiment with building different character types.
Fallout 3's world feels much more dangerous than Oblivion's. In Oblivion it was fairly rare and not very harrowing to get into combat outside of dungeons because you could use magic to heal for free, most threats were on the same general level as you, and there were plenty of friendly NPC's around. You're free to map out the whole world nearly from square one. Not so in Fallout. Here, just about everything that's living out on the Capital Wasteland wants to make you dead, and matters are complicated by the fact that all healing comes at a price (either expendable equipment or radioactive drinking water) and your enemy is likely to have guns.
As such Fallout feels very much like a survivalist environment. You're always on your toes, desperately seeking safe shelter, healing, equipment, or ammo. You have to think about what you're going to do ahead of time in a certain unique way. Should you drink some radioactive water to heal and deal with potential radiation sickness, or spend a valuable stimpack? If you ambush that band of raiders will you have enough ammo to see it through? I think it's a fantastic vibe for the game, and the gameplay captures the intent of the setting very well.
Fallout 3 is also very open-ended, much more than any other game I can think of. “Sandbox gameplay” is a buzzword we're all starting to tire of these days what with our myriads of Grand Theft Auto clones and so forth. But Fallout 3 excels at this despite being “just another hybrid RPG.” In Oblivion, for instance, you had a very similar open game world with lots of side quests and character classes to explore and so forth, but in the best of cases there were only two ways to carry out any given quest (the “right way” and the “wrong way”) and worse still, many quests could only be completed in one predetermined manner. You had your combat quests and your thief quests and so forth, and that was that. And let's not even mention Stalker. In that game, your only option for advancement was nearly always plain old killing.
Not so in Fallout. Just as in the original Fallout games, depending on your character's specialties there may be loads of ways to complete any given objective. You could fight, sure, but you're often presented with the opportunity to bribe people to see your way and sometimes even just talk them into your point of view, sneak, steal, intimidate, and sometimes even outwit other characters into meeting your goals. The game is very carefully designed not to allow you to get “stuck” or otherwise prevent you from completing any quest because of your situation. You could bribe an NPC into letting you through the gate, or you could just slaughter him and take the key from his corpse. Or even pickpocket it from him and slip by, or ask around town for alternate routes, bluff your way past him, or any number of things depending on the situation.
This is in keeping with the Fallout tradition, as the first Fallout games were known for the variety of (non-combative) ways you could achieve victory. Famously, in the original Fallout you could actually talk the final boss into surrendering and giving up on his scheme if you had the right stats and knew what to say.
There are a scant few points in the main storyline where you feel as if you're being railroaded. These are so unusual that they're jarring, almost infuriating to players who are used to handling things their way. In one instance (minor spoiler) you're flashbanged and captured, stripped of all your equipment Half Life style, all for the sake of blasting your way out of the base where you're imprisoned anyway. Even if you know about the trap, even if you see the soldiers ahead of time, even if you duck and cover and get away from the flashbang you get screwed. No choice.
There's another major plot point involving the death of a key character (I won't say who) that's even more infuriating. After you arrive back at his lab from doing some errand-boy tasks, the Enclave – remnants of the US Government – Swoop in, demand ownership of the technology, kill a lab assistant, do the usual bad guy stuff while you get to sit and watch. You're stuck behind a glass partition that you'd normally be able to open at any other point in the game while the character in question makes a “noble sacrifice” to kill himself and drive off a single Enclave soldier and officer, enemies that you've probably already mulched dozens of by now. Again, no choice. Even if the player were to be railroaded into the same overall outcome, I think this scene could have been handled much better without breaking the “anything goes” style of gameplay and without showing a jagged chunk of poor design.
On the whole, though, these situations are rare. Everything else in the game feels as open-ended as it should and the game is good enough that you quit caring about the small blemishes in short order.
Again just like Oblivion, Fallout 3 is a multiplatform release and as such the interface has been simplified to accommodate the console versions of the game. This simplification isn't nearly as bad as Oblivion's was comparing Oblivion to the previous Elder Scrolls title, Morrowind. The original Fallout games also had very simple inventory and stat management interfaces, so in this case it doesn't feel too much out of place. There's a lot of category-subcategory clicking around which can make simple tasks like administering a danged medkit more time consuming than they need to be. But it's not terrible, and the inventory interface is, at least, as stylish as everything else in the game.
Another complaint of mine involves confusing navigation, and how hard it is sometimes to get from one place to another in the game. The game is rife with insurmountable waist high fences, simple piles of rubble and rocks that look as if they should be easily surmountable by the player but are not, presenting you with an inelegant invisible wall. The downtown D.C. area is particularly bad with this, as the game's designers obviously wanted to force the player to use the D.C. Metro subway tunnels to get around. But the tunnels are confusingly laid out and connected, and your little magic map marker doesn't always make it clear where the heck you're supposed to go.
Likewise, there is a lot of trudging all over the place on foot. Miles upon miles of walking around. There are no vehicles. Thankfully, once you discover a location and get it marked on your map you can just zap yourself there in the future, saving yourself from having to trudge over all that expanse again. And get shot at by raiders again, and trudge through radioactive water again, and go through the subway tunnels again...
Despite this, or possibly because of it Fallout 3 is one of the few games left that, I think, properly preserves the spirit of adventure. Even though I've beaten the game twice already I'm always finding new things to see and do, new places to explore, and new tidbits of the game's back story and atmosphere. And that, I think, is the biggest part of the appeal. Fallout 3 has a fantastic mythos, a rich and detailed back story that you, as the player, get to pick up a piece at a time as you explore and play through the game. Oblivion had a complex history and back story, too, but for some reason I find Fallout's much more interesting. Obliion was too much nonsense about how this wizard with an unpronounceable name did such and such this king in this year, but there's nothing relating it to the story at hand. In Fallout, you're living through the aftermath of the backstory you uncover. Maybe it's because so much of the back story is tounge-in-cheek, or because it mirrors the “world of tomorrow” mindset of our own 1950's, or maybe because we can better relate to Fallout's vision of a future imperfect than Oblivion's swords-and-sorcery. But any way you slice it, playing Fallout 3 is a fantastic experience.
I'm still playing it. I probably will be for quite a while.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
zero_
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Member: Robert "Zero" Drendall
Location: Claymont, DE, United States
Reviews written: 102
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
Providing your semi-regular dose of extreme verbosity since somewhere around the turn of the century.
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