<table align="left" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td align="left">To page 1</td></tr></table>
Mikael Grizzly
Diagnosis
I didn't anticipate Fallout 3. I didn't wait for it. I didn't respond to the hype spread by Bethesda's marketing department. To me, Fallout 3 epitomized the very worst fate a franchise can meet - being turned inside out and reshaped into something barely resembling the original - if resembling it at all. Promotional stills, videos, interviews did nothing to alleviate the fears of a person whose life has (literally) been changed by Fallout back in 1996. Twelve years have passed since that moment, marked by one of the saddest moments in gaming - the cancellation of Van Buren, one, true sequel to the Fallout series.
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Therapy
Twelve years, and a copy of Fallout 3 rests on my hard drive. A different developer, a different publisher, a different game. It's not the isometric turn-based cRPG I grew up with and play to this day. Overcoming my hostility, I played it, and the initial impression was a bit meh. The writing was mediocre, the graphics, upon closer inspection, lifeless (even for post-nuclear wasteland) and the tutorial overall was very shoddy and embarrassing - playing as a toddler, 10 year and 16 year old respectively isn't what a gamer like me likes, especially if its done in an awkward way with writing making you wonder what was the writer smoking. But, grinding my teeth, I made it through the tutorial (slaughtering the security force at level 1 thanks to the miracle of VATS) and stepped into the Capital Wasteland.
Surgery
At first, the game seems as if it's able to live up to its legacy, at least aesthetically and thematically. I followed the usual previewer path (shame on me), soaking up the atmosphere. Springvale, despite its implausibility (burned down wooden houses standing for two centuries) had a great atmosphere of desolation to it, and same rings true for most of the other deserted cities, especially Washington DC. I enjoyed simply wandering through the desolate wasteland, enjoying the views and slaughtering the odd molerat or bloatfly. And for a time, it was good.
Autopsy
The initial rush made me almost exclaim that it is Fallout... but it quickly stepped off the stage, giving room to my Fallout memories and the keen eye of an observer, and all the bad design choices and atrocious writing in Fallout 3 slowly came to light, despite the great environmental art and atmosphere. The further I delved into the game world, the more uneven it became, with some brilliant elements and design balanced by criminally bad choices and writing. And Little Lamplight. I hate Little Lamplight.
In the end, there are two questions to ask:
Is it a good game? Yes, despite it's flaws it's the best post-apocalyptic simulator on the market, a solid 7/10 entry.
Is it a good Fallout game? No. Inconsistent design and plot, gutted SPECIAL and disregard for established lore (despite several interesting additions to it) disqualify it as a proper sequel.
<hr>
Makagulfazel
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
It should be noted the game is not without graphical glitches</center></tr></td></table>War. War never changes. However, Fallout has in the 11 years since it made its debut on game shelfs. Fallout has evolved into five separate games by now, and has seen drastic gameplay changes after the original two. While I will admit that I love the originals more than any other Fallout, the Fallout that Bethesda has created is not as far off as the two spinoff Fallout titles (Tactics and BoS) created.
Bethesda chose to go with a first-person perspective, the first time since the title's conception. Now, when I first heard this, I was scratching my head thinking, “How the hell are they going to pull this off?” For example, perception in the originals directly affected your chance to hit an enemy. How could that be implemented well into a game where you do most of the aiming with your mouse? Well, they ended up changing the importance of perception, making it more useful for displaying enemy markers while adding a little sum of skill points. It's this kind of change that helped smooth out the transition to a first-person perspective.
While Bethesda did a good job transposing skills into a completely new perspective, they do not seem to have had the ability to make skills and stats retain their importance. This game is for a power gamer. This is for someone who looks at a guide to find out where all the little skill books and stat-boosting bobbleheads are in the world. Basically, as opposed to what they claimed, your character build doesn't hold that much importance. This is because even half way through the game, if you planned your character decently, he or she is already a jack-of-all-trades. That is not what Fallout is about. No super heroes or demi-gods are allowed in this universe. Yet, Bethesda allows you the chance to do just that.
There is a word that gets thrown around ever once in a while; this word is verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is the characteristic of being plausible or believable, and in this context I'll mean plausible to the Fallout universe. Now, while there were things in Fallout 1 and 2 that lacked believability, such as the existence of the alien blaster or BB guns blowing chucks out of people, the games generally stuck to the plausible. Fallout 3 does not try very hard to be verisimilar. You can find and use nukes, the very thing that devastated the world, in ample supply. To top it off, these nukes can be used in a small blast radius, with little to no damage to the character. Also, cars all over the wasteland have - for some reason - not been scavenged for their mini nuclear fuel supplies, so you can set those off to explode with just a few small gun shots. Teddy bears and other objects of little weigh and rigidity can be thrown from a rock-it launcher to blow people's limbs off like so many a crash dummy. Equipment all over the wasteland give illogical stat and skill bonuses. It's almost as blatant as naming items “+1 combat armor.” If I wanted to enchant my equipment, I'd play a fantasy RPG. Fallout is not supposed to have fantasy elements.
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>I have been playing the game on very hard. While I do enjoy how enemies take dozens of shots to kill, combat is still broken by the ability to open the pipboy at any time to change armor or inject a bunch of stimpacks. I simply wish stimpacks took a decent amount of action points to use, because otherwise the difficulty of combat is non-existent. While I was sceptical about V.A.T.S., I believe Bethesda did a good job at retaining importance of the agility stat by implementing it. I imagined it'd be flawed to where you would have awkward results, such as killing enemies through walls, but it appears they did a good job polishing the system to avoid a good portion of exploitation.
The dialogue in the Fallout 3 is outstanding when compared relatively to Oblivion and Morrowind. No more completely recycled speech. Characters with names now actually seem unique and interesting. While not all of the writing was good, I was utterly flabbergasted that Bethesda was able to do a complete 180 as compared to their Elder Scroll games.
I am attempting to now cut this short – I've already written too much but there is so much to explain. Fallout is still a huge game with a lot to explore and many instances to remember. That coupled with the dialogue has changed me from a nay-saying sceptical to an optimistic for the Fallout series. As a Fallout sequel, I have to give the game a C-. What an asshole, right? Well, the lack of verisimilitude and character build importance killed me. As a Fallout spinoff: B+. I found it to be more enjoyable than Tactics – which I played a few times through. As a RPG/FPS, Fallout 3 wins hands down with an A. It's beaten every other recent game in its genre(the few that there are). Good job Bethesda, you made me believe that you tried to make this game more than just “Oblivion with Guns.”
<table align="left" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td align="left">To page 1</td></tr></table>
Mikael Grizzly
Diagnosis
I didn't anticipate Fallout 3. I didn't wait for it. I didn't respond to the hype spread by Bethesda's marketing department. To me, Fallout 3 epitomized the very worst fate a franchise can meet - being turned inside out and reshaped into something barely resembling the original - if resembling it at all. Promotional stills, videos, interviews did nothing to alleviate the fears of a person whose life has (literally) been changed by Fallout back in 1996. Twelve years have passed since that moment, marked by one of the saddest moments in gaming - the cancellation of Van Buren, one, true sequel to the Fallout series.
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>TherapyTwelve years, and a copy of Fallout 3 rests on my hard drive. A different developer, a different publisher, a different game. It's not the isometric turn-based cRPG I grew up with and play to this day. Overcoming my hostility, I played it, and the initial impression was a bit meh. The writing was mediocre, the graphics, upon closer inspection, lifeless (even for post-nuclear wasteland) and the tutorial overall was very shoddy and embarrassing - playing as a toddler, 10 year and 16 year old respectively isn't what a gamer like me likes, especially if its done in an awkward way with writing making you wonder what was the writer smoking. But, grinding my teeth, I made it through the tutorial (slaughtering the security force at level 1 thanks to the miracle of VATS) and stepped into the Capital Wasteland.
Surgery
At first, the game seems as if it's able to live up to its legacy, at least aesthetically and thematically. I followed the usual previewer path (shame on me), soaking up the atmosphere. Springvale, despite its implausibility (burned down wooden houses standing for two centuries) had a great atmosphere of desolation to it, and same rings true for most of the other deserted cities, especially Washington DC. I enjoyed simply wandering through the desolate wasteland, enjoying the views and slaughtering the odd molerat or bloatfly. And for a time, it was good.
Autopsy
The initial rush made me almost exclaim that it is Fallout... but it quickly stepped off the stage, giving room to my Fallout memories and the keen eye of an observer, and all the bad design choices and atrocious writing in Fallout 3 slowly came to light, despite the great environmental art and atmosphere. The further I delved into the game world, the more uneven it became, with some brilliant elements and design balanced by criminally bad choices and writing. And Little Lamplight. I hate Little Lamplight.
In the end, there are two questions to ask:
Is it a good game? Yes, despite it's flaws it's the best post-apocalyptic simulator on the market, a solid 7/10 entry.
Is it a good Fallout game? No. Inconsistent design and plot, gutted SPECIAL and disregard for established lore (despite several interesting additions to it) disqualify it as a proper sequel.
<hr>
Makagulfazel
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
It should be noted the game is not without graphical glitches</center></tr></td></table>War. War never changes. However, Fallout has in the 11 years since it made its debut on game shelfs. Fallout has evolved into five separate games by now, and has seen drastic gameplay changes after the original two. While I will admit that I love the originals more than any other Fallout, the Fallout that Bethesda has created is not as far off as the two spinoff Fallout titles (Tactics and BoS) created.
Bethesda chose to go with a first-person perspective, the first time since the title's conception. Now, when I first heard this, I was scratching my head thinking, “How the hell are they going to pull this off?” For example, perception in the originals directly affected your chance to hit an enemy. How could that be implemented well into a game where you do most of the aiming with your mouse? Well, they ended up changing the importance of perception, making it more useful for displaying enemy markers while adding a little sum of skill points. It's this kind of change that helped smooth out the transition to a first-person perspective.
While Bethesda did a good job transposing skills into a completely new perspective, they do not seem to have had the ability to make skills and stats retain their importance. This game is for a power gamer. This is for someone who looks at a guide to find out where all the little skill books and stat-boosting bobbleheads are in the world. Basically, as opposed to what they claimed, your character build doesn't hold that much importance. This is because even half way through the game, if you planned your character decently, he or she is already a jack-of-all-trades. That is not what Fallout is about. No super heroes or demi-gods are allowed in this universe. Yet, Bethesda allows you the chance to do just that.
There is a word that gets thrown around ever once in a while; this word is verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is the characteristic of being plausible or believable, and in this context I'll mean plausible to the Fallout universe. Now, while there were things in Fallout 1 and 2 that lacked believability, such as the existence of the alien blaster or BB guns blowing chucks out of people, the games generally stuck to the plausible. Fallout 3 does not try very hard to be verisimilar. You can find and use nukes, the very thing that devastated the world, in ample supply. To top it off, these nukes can be used in a small blast radius, with little to no damage to the character. Also, cars all over the wasteland have - for some reason - not been scavenged for their mini nuclear fuel supplies, so you can set those off to explode with just a few small gun shots. Teddy bears and other objects of little weigh and rigidity can be thrown from a rock-it launcher to blow people's limbs off like so many a crash dummy. Equipment all over the wasteland give illogical stat and skill bonuses. It's almost as blatant as naming items “+1 combat armor.” If I wanted to enchant my equipment, I'd play a fantasy RPG. Fallout is not supposed to have fantasy elements.
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>I have been playing the game on very hard. While I do enjoy how enemies take dozens of shots to kill, combat is still broken by the ability to open the pipboy at any time to change armor or inject a bunch of stimpacks. I simply wish stimpacks took a decent amount of action points to use, because otherwise the difficulty of combat is non-existent. While I was sceptical about V.A.T.S., I believe Bethesda did a good job at retaining importance of the agility stat by implementing it. I imagined it'd be flawed to where you would have awkward results, such as killing enemies through walls, but it appears they did a good job polishing the system to avoid a good portion of exploitation.The dialogue in the Fallout 3 is outstanding when compared relatively to Oblivion and Morrowind. No more completely recycled speech. Characters with names now actually seem unique and interesting. While not all of the writing was good, I was utterly flabbergasted that Bethesda was able to do a complete 180 as compared to their Elder Scroll games.
I am attempting to now cut this short – I've already written too much but there is so much to explain. Fallout is still a huge game with a lot to explore and many instances to remember. That coupled with the dialogue has changed me from a nay-saying sceptical to an optimistic for the Fallout series. As a Fallout sequel, I have to give the game a C-. What an asshole, right? Well, the lack of verisimilitude and character build importance killed me. As a Fallout spinoff: B+. I found it to be more enjoyable than Tactics – which I played a few times through. As a RPG/FPS, Fallout 3 wins hands down with an A. It's beaten every other recent game in its genre(the few that there are). Good job Bethesda, you made me believe that you tried to make this game more than just “Oblivion with Guns.”
<table align="left" width="100%" border="0"><tr><td align="left">To page 1</td></tr></table>