Or so say some people. First there's GameSetWatch, drawing parallels to James Joyce:<blockquote>The message is not all that sophisticated. A moody teenager scribbling "life sucks" in her diary has it beat. As always, the key is not what it says but how it says it. Fallout 3 unleashes anecdotes that cohere into a whole, and tells stories through characters instead of about them. Washington isn't explained in an opening crawl or an in-game textbook, the player learns by being there.
It's an uncommon narrative construction, especially in a medium whose great existential debate on storytelling sometimes feels like an argument over whether the cutscene proportion should be more like Half-Life 2 or Metal Gear Solid. Look at BioShock for an example of something similar: the posthumous histories of its characters, told via audio diaries, represent one sociological element of Rapture. The difference being that the stories run parallel and are paced out for the entire length of the game, where the Fallout 3 vignettes are segmented and sequential.
The separate chapters of Fallout 3 have a thematic unity that the content of other RPGs lack. This is why the short story associating doesn't apply to the whole RPG genre, even though the games usually have a comparable volume of sidequests and incidental characters. </blockquote>And then there's NPR:<blockquote>Fallout 3 is state-of-the-art game design, and I can say this with confidence because (a) I've followed the industry professionally for many years, and (b) the game has completely devoured my free and not-so-free time for the last month or so.
I would also contend that the game is the final winning argument -- if one still needs to be made -- for videogames as art.
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Fallout has gotten into my head (and dreams) more than any of [the post-apocalyptic books or films]. A big part of that is the nature of the videogame medium. Fallout is a first-person RPG (role-playing game) -- the most immersive of the various, blurrily defined videogame types. When you play, you are the hero; you are there -- wandering the wastelands, dodging mutants, getting radiation poisoning and otherwise enjoying the end of the world as we know it.</blockquote>Suggested by the usual Ausir.
It's an uncommon narrative construction, especially in a medium whose great existential debate on storytelling sometimes feels like an argument over whether the cutscene proportion should be more like Half-Life 2 or Metal Gear Solid. Look at BioShock for an example of something similar: the posthumous histories of its characters, told via audio diaries, represent one sociological element of Rapture. The difference being that the stories run parallel and are paced out for the entire length of the game, where the Fallout 3 vignettes are segmented and sequential.
The separate chapters of Fallout 3 have a thematic unity that the content of other RPGs lack. This is why the short story associating doesn't apply to the whole RPG genre, even though the games usually have a comparable volume of sidequests and incidental characters. </blockquote>And then there's NPR:<blockquote>Fallout 3 is state-of-the-art game design, and I can say this with confidence because (a) I've followed the industry professionally for many years, and (b) the game has completely devoured my free and not-so-free time for the last month or so.
I would also contend that the game is the final winning argument -- if one still needs to be made -- for videogames as art.
/../
Fallout has gotten into my head (and dreams) more than any of [the post-apocalyptic books or films]. A big part of that is the nature of the videogame medium. Fallout is a first-person RPG (role-playing game) -- the most immersive of the various, blurrily defined videogame types. When you play, you are the hero; you are there -- wandering the wastelands, dodging mutants, getting radiation poisoning and otherwise enjoying the end of the world as we know it.</blockquote>Suggested by the usual Ausir.
