I can't resist adding my thoughts...
I know I'm just the latest in a long string of posts like these, but when you've been waiting (either hopefully or disdainfully) for a game for years it's kinda hard not to share your opinions on it once you play it.
I think there's really three different ways to review the game...as a Fallout successor (depressive fail), as an Oblivion successor (much better than the TES games) and as a standalone game (a mixed bag.)
1. Interface fucking sucks. I played it on the PC and the Xbox-styled interface should be considered a crime.
2. Why are we still using bottle caps? Bethesda studiously ignored a ball even Interplay dropped, namely that no one would ever trade for a bottle cap and I doubt that kind of monetary system would not survive without some sort of government to back it up. Why aren't bullets currency?
3. 200 years later and there's still edible food laying around? There's still a massive dinosaur in the Museum of History? No raider wanted that T-Rex skull as a trophy? I realize this stuff adds affect - the entire Mall area was gorgeous - but it shatters any sense of immersion when you realize this would never, ever happen in real life. And isn't immersion why they made the damn game this way in the first place?
4. Does anyone at Bethesda have a father? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Why was my dad calling me sweetie and honey every three words? I was playing a female, so maybe it's different if you're male, but I'm female in real life and my dad doesn't spend half his waking hours showering me with pet names. Maybe I just have bad dad luck or something, but I've never heard of anyone else's dad acting like that, either. And he looks like
Scott Peterson. The last scene with James in the game was still fairly poignant, though, if only because he had just told me how much he was looking forward to working with me again.
5. Why did the east coast have such shitty Vault luck? All the DC Vault experiments were utter shit. You get forced mutations, forced insanity, a vault that never ever opens, Tranquility Lane...actually, that might explain why the east coast is still so shitty 200 years later. The two big anchors on the west coast are the NCR and Vault City, the former springing from a relatively functional vault and the latter from the absolute vault. But DC got no such leg up.
6. I enjoyed exploring, for awhile. After awhile everything blends together and there's really no need to keep going. I'm at max level and I have more caps then I will ever, ever know what to do with. I like collecting garden gnomes to put outside my house in Megaton, but that's it.
7. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST FUCK THOSE SUBWAY TUNNELS WTF. Why can't I climb over those piles of rubble, again? They're not any steeper than the hills I have to climb out in the wilderness, and they actually would have more footholds, and yet they are impassable because Bethesda finds it absolutely necessary to force me down into the mind-numbingly repetitive metro tunnels.
8. Radiation is absolutely meaningless. Ammo was a problem for me at first, until I realized I could wait in the shop for a few days until the vendor restocked.
9. Little Lamplight rivals talking deathclaws as one of the worst Fallout design decisions ever. And at least the talking deathclaws had a story and a rhyme/reason to where they were. The absolute dejection of Big Town was decent, though.
10. Where are the mod tools? It's like Beth's holding out because they know once they release mod tools, the game will be changed until it's infinitely better than what they actually created.
11. Mirelurks.
There were a few moments that really stood out for me, though...
1. Dialogue isn't Wikipedia-style. This is probably the biggest example in my mind of judging the game by itself, as a Fallout scion or as Oblivion with guns. Oblivion's dialogue trees are so horrible they can't even qualify as dialogue at all. FO3 is nowhere near on par with FO2, but its Shakespeare compared to Oblivion.
2. Minefield would not have existed 200 years after an apocalyptic war - if it was as easy as disarming mines two steps at a time, someone would have done it by then. But exploring it was genuinely fun, since it was different than the monotony of shacks and housing shells out in the wasteland.
3. The Vault demonstration in the Museum of Technology.
4. The holotape of Sydney's father made me tear up a little, but why the hell would you address your dying words to "Little Moonbeam"? Use her real name and someone might actually be able to deliver the damn tape to her.
5. Parts of Paradise Falls were fairly striking. Why is coming across a caged child's skeleton, complete with party hat, any better than actually killing a kid yourself?
6. The whole Mall area, including the music.
7. Three Dog and Eden had the perfect voices for their respective roles.
I just don't see myself replaying this game much. What else would there be to do? The thing about Fallout 1 and 2 is that all those towns are interconnected. Your evil actions have ramifications far beyond the place they occur, whereas in Fallout 3, they are isolated, specific events good for nothing but bad karma. You blow up Megaton, and then what? Not a damn thing changes elsewhere after the destruction of an entire town. This is still a slight improvement over previous Bethsoft games, but obviously not up to Fallout par. Still, at this rate, if they keep getting slightly better each game, we'll get a stellar game by the time they're up to The Elder Scrolls XXII: Tears of Blood.[/url]
Who cares about that?
don't read if your already bent on disliking FO3, there's nothing new here... Its the only thread i could find appropriate to air the following.
) now with dad, on route to Rivet / Dr Li.
