I've been playing Fallout 3 for about 35+ hours now (during exam period no less.. stupid, stupid!) and beleive it or not I *have* come across some Fallout-y moments.
Now these moments are nothing but rehashes of moments within the previous games, but they were memorable none-the-less.
In Navarro.. I mean "Raven Rock", there is a plethora of lost cutlery underneath the Mess Hall. Vaguely amusing, if not a little un-beleiveable given the potential for access to that area is mind-bogglingly easy.
An underground (accessed from the Jefferson Memorial) party-street type-thing. Okay, the sewers are filled with insane ghouls and there's a brightly lit dead-end with white-picket fences etc. I think they were going for inane contrasts, and it kind of works. But ultimately it makes no sense.. even if we accept that Fallout 3 is the Sims with guns, why would insane ghouls 'trick out' their 'pad' to look like a pre-war wonderland. Sane ones might... feral ones wouldn't.
There are various couples (skeletons) that are positioned lying next to eachother, and it's really a very dark/tragic irony type moment, but the frequency at which i've seen it replayed it a little annoying. I get it. The nukes hit. Peole died. Stop remaking the same scene.
[spoiler:419be06379]A genuinely funny moment where I discover a note written by a long-dead man (actually i've found many of these) describing how he was left trapped by an insane Robotic Nuka-Cola factory foreman who had been implementing harsh new conditions that apparently warranted life-long imprisonment. My central gripe with this was that *after* I had found the note (and dead employees) there were no new dialogue options! [/spoiler:419be06379]
One truly fantastic moment was when I found children huddled under their School desks in a direct imitation of the *classic* 1950's
Duck and Cover Civil Defence videos. Weeelll.. it *would* have been a great moment, except I have yet to find such a prime example of Fallout humour within Fallout 3. If this most perfect of moments does exist within the game, please put me in my place and inform me of its location!
I think the central problem with finding Fallout-y moments and situations, is that within the games so much of the appeal was in the descriptions and the implied depth. Yes it might be true that actually *seeing* a revolting mattress is more "immersive" than reading an item description, but reading about a bed that looks and smells like it has a dead thing wedged between it is far funnier (at least in my mind) than actually seeing it.
The dialogue issues stem primarily from the poor voice acting. Okay so there are moments where excited 12 year olds are holding the crayons over the book of Fallout Canon whilst laughing gleefully, but there are also some moments of entertaining and very Fallout-like speech.. just turn off the sound.
(For the love of all that is unholy don't ever listen to the dialogue of the NPC's.. it makes the rage palpable.)
I hate this game less the more I play it, but there are far too many moments where Bethesda (having worked their way into my good grace) just kicks sanity and reasoning in the balls and forces me to loathe them.
There are simple things that become increasingly annoying the more I play.
A laundry list:
No FN-FAL or Gauss Gun - in fact a general loss of guns.
Too much ammo/stim packs/rad-away/chems/food ect etc - sure I could put the game on Hard and restrict the amount of avaliable ammo but that's not really a good way of addressing the problem. If i'm in a Post Apocalyptic wasteland it should FEEL like that. Everything should be stripped bare except in the most difficult and to reach and dangerous places (like in the Gecko Caves).
What the fuck is with all the standing houses?! Wood rots astoundingly quickly when exposed to oxygen and water.. and atomic blasts. So why, after 200 years, are there still any towns!?
It made sense in Fallout and Fallout 2 why there were towns.. because people MADE them.. and LIVED in them. But for Springvale to be anything more than dirt and rubble... well that just makes no sense.
Exploding cars/trucks. One in 100? Very likely if underground in Carparks or something. 50 in 100? Not too likely, especially if 200 years of rust and Wasteland violence have preceeded it.. not to mention that damn Nuclear holocaust we keep mentioning. 99 in 100? Now this is just silliness run amok. If the only exceptions for exploding cars in your game, are those that are *stacked* one atop another (hardware constraints..
) then then it's clear you haven't done your job right!
Jeez. That took awhile to write. And that list still isn't complete.
I can conclude this diatribe by saying simply that, once an editor comes out, Fallout 3 will potentially be a great game.. and even a good Fallout game. ("shock horror" I know, but I'm staying optimistic even in the face of all opposing evidence.
