My Fallout 3 adventures! - Day 1

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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<center>[ Day 1 ] - [ Day 2 ] - [ Day 3 ] - [ Day 4-5 ]</center>
This is a "Let's Play" playthrough of some early bits of Fallout 3. This article is fairly light on spoilers as most of this has been covered in previews and early showings, but there are a few spoilers in here. No Mutants Allowed will publish impressions pieces and a review later, this is intended as a light-hearted glimpse and not to be read as a review.

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My Fallout 3 adventures
By Vince D. Weller

Day 1 - Vault 101</center>
Painful.

You start as a newborn and slowly move through different ages, FINALLY becoming a teenager. Your birthday is an especially painful "level". You play the role of a dumb 10 year old with an amazing repertoire of dialogue options.

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Couldn't the Overseer help out more with your birthday? Who comes up with this shit? You can also harass every adult and either demand presents or complain about what they gave you. I guess Bethesda thought it's a good example of Fallout humor.

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Anyway, after taking a painfully long GOAT exam, I'm awakened by the Overseer's daughter. I wonder what she wants.

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My dad, the light of life, my moral compass and the only friend, is gone you say? Good for him. The girl informs me that the Overseer's thugs are looking for me (I guess they didn't think of looking in my room) and have already killed Jonas. Oh my... Poor Jonas. She gives me a gun - thanks, kid - and tells me how to escape the vault. Apparently everyone knows it but me. I expect troubles, so I equip a baseball bat (I'm too cheap to waste bullets at this point). Let's take a look at my stats:

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Strength 5, Melee 15. In Fallout 1 that would mean a painful death. In Fallout 3 that means 94% chance to hit in VATS mode.

I run into two armed guards in combat gear. The guards manage to reduce my health from 200 to 141, but die easily. Then I kill more guards. Then I kill the overseer. Then I kill some more guards, leaving a dead vault behind. At lvl 1. Unskilled. Wearing nothing but my vault pajamas.

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The Overseer's last seconds.

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I killed the entire vault and I'm a Vault Guardian! I wish my dad could see me now.

<center>Day 1 - The Great Outdoors</center>
Welcome to Morrowind. Bring guns.

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When you're walking outside the game feels like a typical Elder Scrolls game. Very Morrowind-ish. Everything is grey, including Megaton.

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Megaton is conveniently located within 5 minutes walking distance from the cave where the entrance to 101 is. Well, looks like everything is conveniently located within 5 minutes walking distance. Probably to make traveling easier but that doesn't work in the wasteland setting AT ALL.

Anyway, I walked slowly to Megaton (slowly because I was overloaded with all the loot from the vault). The doors were immediately opened (too friendly for the wasteland?) and the infamous Calamity Jane sheriff greeted me:

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Dialogues in the game are bad. Really bad. I can't believe that Bethesda can't find someone who can, like, write sentences without sounding like a 12 year old. *sigh*

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"Have you see my father? He's a middle-aged guy..."
:facepalm:

I've offered the sheriff my help with the bomb and successfully used a speech skill to increase my pay from 100 to 500 caps. Not bad at all.

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I sold my loot to Moira the storekeeper. She looked surprisingly like the Overseer's daughter. She is writing a survival guide and needs my help. First task is to check a local (within 5 min) store and see if there is any food and drugs there. I see. So, Megaton was around for "several decades". Within a 5 min walking distance is a store and you want me to check if there is any food left? I see. Makes sense. 'Cause it's a dark and gritty game, right?

So, being a helpful guy I went to that store. The combat got tougher. Wild dogs reduced my health to 42, but died easily. I shot one dog's head off, but the body remained standing. Oh well...

Inside the store I was attacked by 5 raiders. Very tough fight. I was killed 7 or 8 times. That's a huge and pleasant difference comparing to my vault exploits. I had to save and I used VATS a few times. It's pretty good. At least it's more interesting than the FPS mode.

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I found two laser pistols in poor conditions and plenty of ammo. Kind of too much and too soon, I think. The dead raiders supplied me with 3 different types of raiders armor, a few handguns, a combat shotgun, and an assault rifle.

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Tried "repair". When I've heard about this feature, I imagined something out of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" - swapping parts and such. Unfortunately, it's much more simplistic. You click on an item you want to repair, select a similar item from the list (this item will be completely destroyed, but it looks like you won't lose any money as the "merged" item would have the value of the both items), and that's it. As you can see it increased the condition by 9%! Yay!

Now let's look at my new armor and weapons. Nice glasses.

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Overall, it looks like it's a much better game than Oblivion. It's not a Fallout game, of course. It's not even a Fallout-inspired game as I quietly hoped. It's a game with things you've seen in the Fallout games. Like vaults and super mutants.

<center>[ Day 1 ] - [ Day 2 ] - [ Day 3 ] - [ Day 4-5 ]</center>
 
evilpumbaa said:
The vault is a tutorial. Thats why it is easy.
The Temple of Trials had pretty much the same intent (tutorial) and lots of gamers thought it was hard.
 
alec said:
The Temple of Trials had pretty much the same intent (tutorial) and lots of gamers thought it was hard.

I found it tedious, although the little rad-scorpions are creatures to be feared.

I found the Vault to be shitty AND tedious, and there isn't anything in the Vault that couldn't have been shown to the player in a different way.

In FO1 you spend nearly no time in the Vault, but I found it to be much more part of my characters identity than I do in FO3.
 
Enjoyable read.

I'm playing through myself, just about to enter Rivet city, and the game is a very mixed bag in many areas. The voice acting is very inconsistent. Some is awful, some is decent. It is an improvement over Oblivion, but then that would hardly be difficult.

Aside from delivery, it's the originality of the dialogue that suffers. It's a case of wash, rinse, repeat with so many characters. Needless to say, nothing spoken matches the dialogue of The Master from the original in terms of originality or quality. That remains a spectacular piece of work.
 
Just so you know, I picked up Burke's hat after I killed him after he killed the Sheriff. It only has +1 to Perception and you get a Shady hat with the Moira quests that looks exactly the same and has a +5 to Sneak and +1 to Perception I believe.

You may be able to find Mr. Burke at Tenpenny towers though.

I never got to do that radio quest or kill the super mutant behemoth quest though. Looks like I have a few more things to do just when I thought the game was over. :D
 
Froggystylexz95 said:
Just so you know, I picked up Burke's hat after I killed him after he killed the Sheriff. It only has +1 to Perception and you get a Shady hat with the Moira quests that looks exactly the same and has a +5 to Sneak and +1 to Perception I believe.

You may be able to find Mr. Burke at Tenpenny towers though.

I never got to do that radio quest or kill the super mutant behemoth quest though. Looks like I have a few more things to do just when I thought the game was over. :D

Yeah, I did this as well (see another thread, can't remember which)

There are certainly a few directions you can take with the main plot points of the story. My main issue with them at the moment is that they do not 'really' effect your character in the process.
 
alec said:
evilpumbaa said:
The vault is a tutorial. Thats why it is easy.
The Temple of Trials had pretty much the same intent (tutorial) and lots of gamers thought it was hard.

The temple of trials was the worst part of Fallout 2.

Nice to see though that by the end, the writer seems to come around a bit. Although I still don't understand how it does not feel like a fallout game, the old games where various shades of brown and grey, it was possible to grab a rocket launcher in the first ten minutes if you knew where to look and all the characters looked identical just like the new one.

Bethesda pulled off the impossible. They made a Fallout game that out does the originals in my opinion, and I really did not see that coming.
 
I wouldn't say it outdoes the originals, though I have not gotten all that far. I do, however, think it is an improvement over Oblivion. I also think it feels like Fallout, overall. In particular, I feel like the SPECIAL system translates pretty well so far.

The decisions you make in character creation actually effect how you will play the game in very real ways. Just like in the previous Fallout games, you design your character to take on challenges in a particular way. If you do not keep this in mind, you will die very quickly. If you design your character badly, you will not have fun. This is not true in most RPG's, but it is true in this game and it was true in the past F.O. games.

(In Oblivion, as in most RPG's, I think your character creation determines whether you would charge head on with magic or charge head on with a sword, and that was about it.)

My biggest problem with the character creation so far: I think the optional traits were fun and should have been included.
 
Dunno if this was clear or not, but you can gun down Burke after he shoots the sheriff by shooting him FPS style instead of using VATS. I gave him both barrels of a sawed off shotgun just after he did the deed.
 
evilpumbaa said:
Although I still don't understand how it does not feel like a fallout game, the old games where various shades of brown and grey, it was possible to grab a rocket launcher in the first ten minutes if you knew where to look and all the characters looked identical just like the new one.
You couldn't kill a band of super mutants or heavily armed raiders at level 1 with a 10mm pistol. You couldn't buy combat armor for 170 caps. You couldn't max out all your skills. The characters actually had character.

evilpumbaa said:
They made a Fallout game that out does the originals in my opinion(...)
Yeah, Fallout 1 and 2 were terrible shooters and that whole background story stuff was, like, terribly boring. I am so glad Bethesda fixed all that.
 
GarfunkeL said:
it was possible to grab a rocket launcher in the first ten minutes if you knew where to look

Please, enlighten us. How did you manage to do that?

Run straight to the Hub and steal from one of Jake's guards?
 
Well I posted the gist of my point on "Fallout 3 Review" so just go see that if you want to know my opinion past this.

Again this was a rather bashful review towards the game so here is my slightly bashful review on your review.

You played the main story line doing a few side quests and just trying to get the game done so you could write this review I'm pretty sure, because you have no details in the review that makes your points false. For example, Megaton is an easy 5 minutes walk because it was created by people trying to get into Vault 101, why in the hell would you make it far away from the vault? Plus, it gives the player the basis of the game outside of the vault, it is basically a zone to test out things without heavy consequences (death, etc.).

Not trying to flame or be mean, but Chinese Officer Sword is obviously a Fucking sword, made for Chinese officers who came here during the great war. Derrrr
Do you need a detailed description? Here it is:
A sword made by folding steel creating a strong and durable sword. Distributed to Chinese officers during the Great War. You can pick that up.

And you made comments that you later commented against, which is ok but not in a review.

I'm glad you ended without comparing this to previous Fallouts because it is about the game not the series.

Thanks for the review, helpful and to the point generally, and surprisingly unbiased compared to others on this site.
 
haha my bad. Just commented on your review so I said review. Thanks for the walkthrough thingy :)

Now I know where to get a sawed off shotty, I never found one lol.
 
Having nothing much better to do I decided to read through this again. Out of several similar tries at this yours is still the best. :clap:
 
Thx for this... hm... playthrough. Now i lost my hunger to play this game :mrgreen: I like Morrowind (and only that game of series) and i like Fo (1, 2, Tactics). I don't want to see that mixed weird creature on my hard...
 
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