So, I’ve got the Fallout 3 game.
On the start I want to apologise for my low quality images, it’s because my computer isn’t good enough to properly play this game. Don’t know why, but Medal of Honour 4: Modern Warfare runs nicely on the low graphical options, with resolution 640x480, and the graphics looked nice even with that. Unfortunately, in FO3 the lowest resolution is 1024x768. If there was 640x480 probably the game would work just fine- thanks Bethesda!
So I will not be commenting the graphical design of the game. Instead, let’s focus on the gameplay with VATS and FO3’s RPG side
[spoiler:1463ab47c0]“Life in the Vault 101”
As they said, we’re starting as a child born in the Vault 101.
On the start, hearing a disgusting vomiting-sound-like, we see the light and someone’s face. Liam Neeson says “It’s a boy! We have a boy!!”- when I’ve chosen to be a boy…because…I am a guy…and stuff. Then you can edit you’re look (your face basically, the weight and height doesn’t exist in this game- everyone is equal, HURRAY!!). Unfortunately, I couldn’t create a face which looks exactly like me. I made only a guy who looked like me but in a very American way (maybe). The low graphics might be the problem, so I don’t want to criticise it.
Then, my “mum” started saying that she doesn’t feel well, something was wrong. Nobody told me why…she just died.
Note: We don’t remember the moment of out birth. Thanks to Bethesda, we remember now!!
Note2: You can’t have a long hair!! That’s UNACCEPTABLE!!
Note3: There are more choices in beards than in hair styles.
Note4: The whole character creation is a pain in the ass.
Okay, let’s cut the “nice writing crap” and go with it shortly, hitting some major and minor things in the game.
Note: I’ve never heared Liam Neeson’s voice acting before, and I realised he kind of sound like my real father! He even looks like my dad and they’re both in kinda the same age. I haven’t seen my dad in years, so it’s a good thing…despite that my father is a dick, but still…never mind.
Bethesda said they wanted us to experience how the life in the Vault is like, like we lived it by ourselves. But they only showed us few scenes of “someone else’s life” in the Vault. It looks very scripted, and it seams you don’t have much of choices here. NONE choices! It’s like Watching a movie.
Do I even know this girl? Who the hell is she? When did we start to be friends? Was I asleep? It’s like having a huge gap in the memory.
-1 RPG
I think, the Overseer is a looking-nicer copy of the Overseer in Fallout 1. And it’s crap because in the first Fallout he looked cool and tough. This one looks like a wimp with Mexicans or Japanese roots.
Everything seems so…messed up and unfinished. When the Mr Handy fucked up my cake , Amata only said “Andy Noooo!”, and that’s it. On the same time when the cake was getting ripped off apart, there were like 3 people talking on the same time, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on! This is RPG (…right?), so every dialogue might be important, but probably Bethesda doesn’t know that.
-1 RPG
Dialogue:
In the previous Fallouts there was always an option which would resemble to something I would say in the conversation, in reality. Here, I didn’t know what to choose! Most of them seems so “the same” with the same meaning.
A 10 year old boy wouldn’t say such things like they wrote! Like with that woman (who came to me unexpectedly), she wrote a poem as a present for my birthday, and none of the dialogue options resembled what I would ask (you have only 3 options, 2 of them are negative, and 1 is positive- I guess, but it’s gay). It would be better to give another option, for example “What is a poem?”, then the dialogue would go deeper like in the usual RPG games. At least kids playing this game would learn something, but NO!
Note: Thanks to Bethesda, kids will stay to the opinion that poems are lame.
My scripted dad came to me and told me there is a surprise downstairs. Wow, I’ve got a BB fucking Gun. He told me that I can come down here and shoot some stuff whenever I want to. But, it didn’t happen, because after taking a stupid picture with him, next years in the vault passed.
-1 to game’s intelligence
+1 to Scripted Scenario (no choices and consequences)
G.O.A.T.:
This was supposed to be a serious test, right? Questions and answers were lame, too random, GOAT was too long (well tests are long, but I want to play a game, not experience the same old shit I hated in my life in school), and supposedly this test helps this vault to survive?? WOW!! Were they drunk when they wrote these questions?
Todd: We need to write some questions for GOAT, Pete.
Pete: Don’t worry about that <shows>
Todd: Oohh right. <smilled>
There was a question about a baseball team. Three answers were about being one of the team’s player, and the last one was “I like basketball”. Well…I don’t like baseball, neither basketball, and I don’t know much about them…so…what should I choose?
I don’t know, maybe it was a joke about how education system is dump these days or maybe they (Bethesda) just thought “Everyone likes baseball, or at least basketball…duhh.”
Note to Bethesda: I’m not into sports. I would only prefer volleyball.
The last thought came into my mind when I was doing this question “Wow…they have a baseball field in the Vault??”
-2 to game’s intelligence
Last day in the vault:
Amata woke me up, she told me everyone is looking for me. Well…I was in my room, they didn’t check the room?
Security guard 1: Where is he? We checked the lockers, restrooms, and even garbage bins! Where else could he be?
Security guard 2: Maybe…maybe…in his room?
Security guard 3: Nah, what he would be doing there on early morning? Not even knowing what’s going on, probably not even realising that his father escaped from the vault!
Security guard 1: Good thinking!
I took a pistol from her, wherever and however she’s got that from (oh yeah, her dad right?). My baseball stuff…I’ve got them from my birthday right? Damn, my room is sooo empty even after 18 years of living here, I didn’t know I’m such a boring dude.
When I found Amata and her dad- the Overseer, I didn’t know what was going on, what was the conversation about, because the guard attacked me right away. They shouldn’t have put that guard over there, so we could listen to their conversation. I totally didn’t know what it was all about, he was hitting her or something? The old text flowing from the first Fallouts would do the trick.
I don’t want to write about how I killed all the guards in the vault on level 1, without even using a stimpack. The difficult level is “normal”, and yes, like in the originals, you can change the difficult level anytime you want, not having to start the game all over again. So, I will just write an overall experience, on the end, of what I have just played (1 hour of playing or less). Just the last point on exiting the vault’s cave, let’s play as a detective here.
So what happened? In front of the door there are burned bones of someone with a vault police baton close to them. But, there are also burned bones (1 or 2 people) with a sign “Let us in Mother Fuckers” close to them. So, let’s make a scenario here:
The Vault was closed, but only one vault guard was left outside…to close the wooden door? And someone with a sign quickly got inside, with a hope that they will let him in because he called them “Mother Fuckers”
Security Guard: Sir, there is a guy outside who is calling us mother fuckers!
The Overseer: Open the Vault and kick his ass!!
But then, the bombs fell, the guard and the guy with a sign turned into grilled bones, but the sign and the wooden door stayed untouched…
You can make up many stupid scenarios like this.
Few stupid things before the end:
PIP BOY
How it happened that on the East Coast there is a Pip Boy 3000? Not 2000? How did they manage to change it? And why?
To reach the inventory, you have to enter a pipboy. Well, the inventory was in the pip boy previously, but every different option in the Pip Boy (inventory, character stats, map and quests) you could’ve entered by pressing different keys on your keyboard. Here, in FO3 by Bethesda Softshit, to enter all of these, you have only one key- a TAB key.
The item’s descriptions are gone!! Now, having a Chinese assault rifle, you need to close Fallout 3 game (or alt+tab it) and find some information about this kind of a weapon on the internet (Wikipedia for example). There is nothing worse than laziness in the game industry.
I didn’t check the perks, I’ll leave it to someone else. But Bethesda Perks-traits compression made my character creation feel like it doesn’t exist, and all Level Uping is like Tonics in Bioshock- an FPS game with some RPG elements. And every time you level up, there is a stupid, epic music – too loud and unnecessary. I remembered when I first time played Fallout, I didn’t know that I gained levels (I didn’t know that I could) and THAT was cool, the feeling that there is something more to this game.
Voice acting, and animated expressions.
Even if FO3 goes on minimum requirements, I don’t think the animations and expressions change in the game.
So, I will take this seriously.
Voice actors- there is one guy named Jericho (is that the name for The Prodigy’s debut album?), and he’s the only one in Megaton, who sounds like a Fallout universe’s dude. But, once he talks to me like to his enemy, and then changes his mood into a friendly ol’ pal. This is NOT because the voice acting is bad (don’t blame the voice actor), it’s because the dialogue and voice acting director were bad.
Other actors are pretty good (for now) with their acting, but not for a Fallout game, for TES game- yes.
Note: The game feels more like Morrowind than Oblivion. Morrowind with Guns.
Animated expression- When the actor laughs, or shouts (talk louder) or even being angry, their mouths move the same. The only expressions I’ve noticed were:
- the right or left (mostly right) hand moves the same way, up and down. Once only I’ve noticed when one character moved his hand while saying “No…”. So basically…no body language.
- There was a boy, whose face looked sad- wow
On animation someone else should comment more specifically, someone who has a better PC or has a console.
Dialogue:
The dialogue, after playing for few hours, I can say the dialogue is crap. The people are so cheerful and trustful (the TES actors made it even more cheerful). For example- the sheriff in Megaton. He doesn’t trust Megaton’s citizens enough to look at the bomb closer, but he trusts a total stranger, who’s new to the town (me), because I was talking nice.
How stupid is that? And people are walking close to it anyway, like there is one guy who’s preaching this thing and tells everyone to drink the water around it (which is irradiated.
Gossips and Rumours from TES were replaced by “What’s the word around town?”
People are afraid of “The Wasteland”. They are always saying “The Wasteland this”, “The Wasteland that”…”…scary and violent”- like they were born yesterday.
Basically, the dialogue in FO3 comparing to FO1&2 is like it was written by bunch of pussies and Teletubbies’ fans, and the actors made it even more like this, NOT because of their acting, but because of their voice sounding and that is because of voice acting directors- which is Bethesda. They choose wrong characters from the wrong cartoon.
Music- shortly
“I am a mighty hero knight! Searching for good deeds and for a beautiful princes”
Some other, funny crap:
“Overloaded” changed into “Overcumbered”- is that even a word?
Guy1: Dude I’m overloaded!
Guy2: You mean “overcombered”?
Guy1: What?
“Waiting” does not heal you. You need to find a bed- how TES.
Mr Handy sounds like older Stewie Griffin from the Family Guy show.
VATS- nothing special about it. You’re just pausing the game and then “every time” (I think there is no “switch off” button anywhere) when you shoot a “low quality bullet time” sequence starts. Guy’s head blew away without a Bloddy Mess trait…I mean…perk. There are no turns, you have to go back to the real time (automatically) and run around and try to shoot them till the action points will come back (I have like 75 of them or something).
And before shooting anyone, it shows you how much of his health will be taken by this shot (there is a bar on the bottom with you enemy’s health). It very FPSish. In the previous Fallouts you had to gain a perk, that will allow you to see your enemies’ stats, and to be able to get this perk, you needed to have good perception.
Thanks to VATS I’ve beaten 3 riders, one with combat shotgun, and two with knifes (they all had better armours than mine), with few rounds in my assault rifle, and one mag in my pistol. I’M A GOD!!
There was one rider, who went too far away, shot at the car few times (which was behind him) and died with its blow.
Fast Travel- you cannot fast travel when you are overloaded…I mean “overcumbered”. I think Bethesda missed the point what is Fast Travelling about. It’s not about “running faster” it’s about “skipping the time of travelling”, so the player won’t get fed up of this during the game.
It’s a game assholes! Not a real life simulator.
But anyway, everywhere to everywhere is 5 minutes so we can live with that…painfully though.
And the last one!
I’ve gained a bad karma, because I’ve unlocked the back door to the bar in Megaton. And even that, when I entered, the bar’s owner was standing in front of me, looking at me.
So why did I get the bad karma if even the bar’s owner did feel bad about it?[/spoiler:1463ab47c0]
Overly and finally:
THIS IS NOT FALLOUT!
Please, don’t tell me I still need to play the whole thing! It’s boring!
In the next episode, some not-funny stuff and myths will be revealed!
On the start I want to apologise for my low quality images, it’s because my computer isn’t good enough to properly play this game. Don’t know why, but Medal of Honour 4: Modern Warfare runs nicely on the low graphical options, with resolution 640x480, and the graphics looked nice even with that. Unfortunately, in FO3 the lowest resolution is 1024x768. If there was 640x480 probably the game would work just fine- thanks Bethesda!
So I will not be commenting the graphical design of the game. Instead, let’s focus on the gameplay with VATS and FO3’s RPG side
[spoiler:1463ab47c0]“Life in the Vault 101”
As they said, we’re starting as a child born in the Vault 101.
On the start, hearing a disgusting vomiting-sound-like, we see the light and someone’s face. Liam Neeson says “It’s a boy! We have a boy!!”- when I’ve chosen to be a boy…because…I am a guy…and stuff. Then you can edit you’re look (your face basically, the weight and height doesn’t exist in this game- everyone is equal, HURRAY!!). Unfortunately, I couldn’t create a face which looks exactly like me. I made only a guy who looked like me but in a very American way (maybe). The low graphics might be the problem, so I don’t want to criticise it.
Then, my “mum” started saying that she doesn’t feel well, something was wrong. Nobody told me why…she just died.
Note: We don’t remember the moment of out birth. Thanks to Bethesda, we remember now!!
Note2: You can’t have a long hair!! That’s UNACCEPTABLE!!
Note3: There are more choices in beards than in hair styles.
Note4: The whole character creation is a pain in the ass.
Okay, let’s cut the “nice writing crap” and go with it shortly, hitting some major and minor things in the game.
Note: I’ve never heared Liam Neeson’s voice acting before, and I realised he kind of sound like my real father! He even looks like my dad and they’re both in kinda the same age. I haven’t seen my dad in years, so it’s a good thing…despite that my father is a dick, but still…never mind.
Bethesda said they wanted us to experience how the life in the Vault is like, like we lived it by ourselves. But they only showed us few scenes of “someone else’s life” in the Vault. It looks very scripted, and it seams you don’t have much of choices here. NONE choices! It’s like Watching a movie.
Do I even know this girl? Who the hell is she? When did we start to be friends? Was I asleep? It’s like having a huge gap in the memory.
-1 RPG
I think, the Overseer is a looking-nicer copy of the Overseer in Fallout 1. And it’s crap because in the first Fallout he looked cool and tough. This one looks like a wimp with Mexicans or Japanese roots.
Everything seems so…messed up and unfinished. When the Mr Handy fucked up my cake , Amata only said “Andy Noooo!”, and that’s it. On the same time when the cake was getting ripped off apart, there were like 3 people talking on the same time, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on! This is RPG (…right?), so every dialogue might be important, but probably Bethesda doesn’t know that.
-1 RPG
Dialogue:
In the previous Fallouts there was always an option which would resemble to something I would say in the conversation, in reality. Here, I didn’t know what to choose! Most of them seems so “the same” with the same meaning.
A 10 year old boy wouldn’t say such things like they wrote! Like with that woman (who came to me unexpectedly), she wrote a poem as a present for my birthday, and none of the dialogue options resembled what I would ask (you have only 3 options, 2 of them are negative, and 1 is positive- I guess, but it’s gay). It would be better to give another option, for example “What is a poem?”, then the dialogue would go deeper like in the usual RPG games. At least kids playing this game would learn something, but NO!
Note: Thanks to Bethesda, kids will stay to the opinion that poems are lame.
My scripted dad came to me and told me there is a surprise downstairs. Wow, I’ve got a BB fucking Gun. He told me that I can come down here and shoot some stuff whenever I want to. But, it didn’t happen, because after taking a stupid picture with him, next years in the vault passed.
-1 to game’s intelligence
+1 to Scripted Scenario (no choices and consequences)
G.O.A.T.:
This was supposed to be a serious test, right? Questions and answers were lame, too random, GOAT was too long (well tests are long, but I want to play a game, not experience the same old shit I hated in my life in school), and supposedly this test helps this vault to survive?? WOW!! Were they drunk when they wrote these questions?
Todd: We need to write some questions for GOAT, Pete.
Pete: Don’t worry about that <shows>
Todd: Oohh right. <smilled>
There was a question about a baseball team. Three answers were about being one of the team’s player, and the last one was “I like basketball”. Well…I don’t like baseball, neither basketball, and I don’t know much about them…so…what should I choose?
I don’t know, maybe it was a joke about how education system is dump these days or maybe they (Bethesda) just thought “Everyone likes baseball, or at least basketball…duhh.”
Note to Bethesda: I’m not into sports. I would only prefer volleyball.
The last thought came into my mind when I was doing this question “Wow…they have a baseball field in the Vault??”
-2 to game’s intelligence
Last day in the vault:
Amata woke me up, she told me everyone is looking for me. Well…I was in my room, they didn’t check the room?
Security guard 1: Where is he? We checked the lockers, restrooms, and even garbage bins! Where else could he be?
Security guard 2: Maybe…maybe…in his room?
Security guard 3: Nah, what he would be doing there on early morning? Not even knowing what’s going on, probably not even realising that his father escaped from the vault!
Security guard 1: Good thinking!
I took a pistol from her, wherever and however she’s got that from (oh yeah, her dad right?). My baseball stuff…I’ve got them from my birthday right? Damn, my room is sooo empty even after 18 years of living here, I didn’t know I’m such a boring dude.
When I found Amata and her dad- the Overseer, I didn’t know what was going on, what was the conversation about, because the guard attacked me right away. They shouldn’t have put that guard over there, so we could listen to their conversation. I totally didn’t know what it was all about, he was hitting her or something? The old text flowing from the first Fallouts would do the trick.
I don’t want to write about how I killed all the guards in the vault on level 1, without even using a stimpack. The difficult level is “normal”, and yes, like in the originals, you can change the difficult level anytime you want, not having to start the game all over again. So, I will just write an overall experience, on the end, of what I have just played (1 hour of playing or less). Just the last point on exiting the vault’s cave, let’s play as a detective here.
So what happened? In front of the door there are burned bones of someone with a vault police baton close to them. But, there are also burned bones (1 or 2 people) with a sign “Let us in Mother Fuckers” close to them. So, let’s make a scenario here:
The Vault was closed, but only one vault guard was left outside…to close the wooden door? And someone with a sign quickly got inside, with a hope that they will let him in because he called them “Mother Fuckers”
Security Guard: Sir, there is a guy outside who is calling us mother fuckers!
The Overseer: Open the Vault and kick his ass!!
But then, the bombs fell, the guard and the guy with a sign turned into grilled bones, but the sign and the wooden door stayed untouched…
You can make up many stupid scenarios like this.
Few stupid things before the end:
PIP BOY
How it happened that on the East Coast there is a Pip Boy 3000? Not 2000? How did they manage to change it? And why?
To reach the inventory, you have to enter a pipboy. Well, the inventory was in the pip boy previously, but every different option in the Pip Boy (inventory, character stats, map and quests) you could’ve entered by pressing different keys on your keyboard. Here, in FO3 by Bethesda Softshit, to enter all of these, you have only one key- a TAB key.
The item’s descriptions are gone!! Now, having a Chinese assault rifle, you need to close Fallout 3 game (or alt+tab it) and find some information about this kind of a weapon on the internet (Wikipedia for example). There is nothing worse than laziness in the game industry.
I didn’t check the perks, I’ll leave it to someone else. But Bethesda Perks-traits compression made my character creation feel like it doesn’t exist, and all Level Uping is like Tonics in Bioshock- an FPS game with some RPG elements. And every time you level up, there is a stupid, epic music – too loud and unnecessary. I remembered when I first time played Fallout, I didn’t know that I gained levels (I didn’t know that I could) and THAT was cool, the feeling that there is something more to this game.
Voice acting, and animated expressions.
Even if FO3 goes on minimum requirements, I don’t think the animations and expressions change in the game.
So, I will take this seriously.
Voice actors- there is one guy named Jericho (is that the name for The Prodigy’s debut album?), and he’s the only one in Megaton, who sounds like a Fallout universe’s dude. But, once he talks to me like to his enemy, and then changes his mood into a friendly ol’ pal. This is NOT because the voice acting is bad (don’t blame the voice actor), it’s because the dialogue and voice acting director were bad.
Other actors are pretty good (for now) with their acting, but not for a Fallout game, for TES game- yes.
Note: The game feels more like Morrowind than Oblivion. Morrowind with Guns.
Animated expression- When the actor laughs, or shouts (talk louder) or even being angry, their mouths move the same. The only expressions I’ve noticed were:
- the right or left (mostly right) hand moves the same way, up and down. Once only I’ve noticed when one character moved his hand while saying “No…”. So basically…no body language.
- There was a boy, whose face looked sad- wow
On animation someone else should comment more specifically, someone who has a better PC or has a console.
Dialogue:
The dialogue, after playing for few hours, I can say the dialogue is crap. The people are so cheerful and trustful (the TES actors made it even more cheerful). For example- the sheriff in Megaton. He doesn’t trust Megaton’s citizens enough to look at the bomb closer, but he trusts a total stranger, who’s new to the town (me), because I was talking nice.
How stupid is that? And people are walking close to it anyway, like there is one guy who’s preaching this thing and tells everyone to drink the water around it (which is irradiated.
Gossips and Rumours from TES were replaced by “What’s the word around town?”
People are afraid of “The Wasteland”. They are always saying “The Wasteland this”, “The Wasteland that”…”…scary and violent”- like they were born yesterday.
Basically, the dialogue in FO3 comparing to FO1&2 is like it was written by bunch of pussies and Teletubbies’ fans, and the actors made it even more like this, NOT because of their acting, but because of their voice sounding and that is because of voice acting directors- which is Bethesda. They choose wrong characters from the wrong cartoon.
Music- shortly
“I am a mighty hero knight! Searching for good deeds and for a beautiful princes”
Some other, funny crap:
“Overloaded” changed into “Overcumbered”- is that even a word?
Guy1: Dude I’m overloaded!
Guy2: You mean “overcombered”?
Guy1: What?
“Waiting” does not heal you. You need to find a bed- how TES.
Mr Handy sounds like older Stewie Griffin from the Family Guy show.
VATS- nothing special about it. You’re just pausing the game and then “every time” (I think there is no “switch off” button anywhere) when you shoot a “low quality bullet time” sequence starts. Guy’s head blew away without a Bloddy Mess trait…I mean…perk. There are no turns, you have to go back to the real time (automatically) and run around and try to shoot them till the action points will come back (I have like 75 of them or something).
And before shooting anyone, it shows you how much of his health will be taken by this shot (there is a bar on the bottom with you enemy’s health). It very FPSish. In the previous Fallouts you had to gain a perk, that will allow you to see your enemies’ stats, and to be able to get this perk, you needed to have good perception.
Thanks to VATS I’ve beaten 3 riders, one with combat shotgun, and two with knifes (they all had better armours than mine), with few rounds in my assault rifle, and one mag in my pistol. I’M A GOD!!
There was one rider, who went too far away, shot at the car few times (which was behind him) and died with its blow.
Fast Travel- you cannot fast travel when you are overloaded…I mean “overcumbered”. I think Bethesda missed the point what is Fast Travelling about. It’s not about “running faster” it’s about “skipping the time of travelling”, so the player won’t get fed up of this during the game.
It’s a game assholes! Not a real life simulator.
But anyway, everywhere to everywhere is 5 minutes so we can live with that…painfully though.
And the last one!
I’ve gained a bad karma, because I’ve unlocked the back door to the bar in Megaton. And even that, when I entered, the bar’s owner was standing in front of me, looking at me.
So why did I get the bad karma if even the bar’s owner did feel bad about it?[/spoiler:1463ab47c0]
Overly and finally:
THIS IS NOT FALLOUT!
Please, don’t tell me I still need to play the whole thing! It’s boring!
In the next episode, some not-funny stuff and myths will be revealed!
) doesn't seem like it's grammatically correct. Basically, they should have just had encumbered and immobile.
