It's time to let the RPG speciality sites have the mike again. RPGCodex looks at the game again, this time in Edward R Murrow's Dissertation on Fallout 3 (it seems they might just keep posting reviews).<blockquote>The main quest is rubbish, pure and simple. Most every quest devolves into killing, and the only virtue of it is that you can skip most of it. It suffers also from another flaw of Oblivion, the player character is not the main character. Just like in Oblivion, how Martin was the true "protagonist" and you were more a glorified errand boy, you basically play this same role to daddy Liam and his pet project. Now, it's not being a “Chosen One” who must stop the ancient evil, which could be seen as a progress of sorts. Unfortunately, it's a case of being thrown out of the frying pan into the fire as you are the Chosen One's sidekick, who fights the mildly venerable evil. Also like Oblivion, it ends with you watching a big thing fight other big things instead of doing some ass kicking yourself. If I'm going to play a game riddled with combat, at least let me feel badass about it instead of cock-blocking me. Even in Bloodlines, when it devolved into a hackfest, my character was killing tons of stuff and wrecking house. I get to demolish the big players who had previously pushed me around, if I so chose to, not watch Smiling Jack fight them in his Mecha Battle Sarcophagus. But to make the climax something the player watches rather than participates in? What the hell, this isn't a jRPG you twats. Oh, and the ending is pure idiocy and to add insult to injury, they didn't even bring back the ending slides. Over 200 permutations my ass. It's more like one based on karma, one based on one choice at the very end, and one based on another choice at the very end.
And thus quests are basically where Fallout 3 again falls flat as an RPG. There are too few good ones, and the rest are buried in mounds of Bethesda's awful dungeon-crawling and terrible combat.
(...)
I'm left wondering what happened with this game. They had an existing engine, an existing IP, a multi-million dollar budget, and a large pool of human resources, but nothing, save a few nuggets of greatness in the quest department, in Fallout 3 stands out as anything higher than passable.
Ultimately, Fallout 3 is more Bethesda mediocrity in the vein of Morrowind or Oblivion. If those games tickled your fancy, you're bound to love this game, it's everything they do, but better. Or maybe you can look past the flaws and have a blast with it. I can't say I didn't enjoy parts of it, but I also can't say I wasn't almost always disappointed by Bethesda's general half-assedness. It's a mildly amusing timesink; but that's not saying much. Ultimately, it just doesn't work for me. It flies in the face of most everything I felt Fallout 1 did so well. Closing things off, Fallout 3 is a lot like a wasteland; you're searching through it looking for a little something good, something to keep you going, but to do that you have to go through a whole lot of bad and it just might not be worth it and you might not want to go on.</blockquote>GameBanshee also reviews Fallout 3 and essentially the reviewer didn't like it but can't deny that if you liked Oblivion you'll probably like this, giving it an 8.4.<blockquote>Sadly, Fallout 3 does not have a good PC interface, and it’s not even close. Some of the problems are no doubt because Bethesda designed the game for consoles and then didn’t bother to port it very well to the PC. That would explain why you’re not allowed to name your saved games (which, coupled with not including profiles, makes running multiple games really exciting), and why the hotkeys are so limited. For example, to see your weapons you have to press the tab key, then click on the inventory tab, and then click on the weapons tab. When was the last time you played a role-playing game, and you had to click three times to see your inventory rather than just press the “I” key? I know when it was for me -- when I played Oblivion, which used the exact same crummy system.
But PC-versus-console issues aside, there are some other problems with the interface. If you play using the third-person perspective, the targeting cursor is off, and so you have to keep switching to the first-person perspective to see what you’re really aiming at. Also, there is no mini-map -- probably to help with the game’s “immersion” -- but I like mini-maps because they show me where I am and where I need to go. To me, the best interface is the one that gives you the most options, and so I'd like to at least be given the choice of whether or not I want a mini-map enabled. Finally, the overhead maps are often worthless. Many of the locations in Fallout 3 have multiple floors that overlap each other, and having one map for all the floors combined doesn’t really help to show you where you are -- especially when the map has an incredibly low resolution and barely works even when there’s only one floor. In some ways it’s kind of fun that Bethesda mixed old technology with the future, but that doesn't mean that I want to view my maps on the PipBoy's small green screen. Please give me real maps.
(...)
The more I play Fallout 3, the more I consider it to be a “functional” game. It includes a big world with lots of places to explore and lots of enemies to kill, but there isn’t a lot to draw you in. The main questline isn’t especially involving, there aren’t a lot of enemies or types of equipment, and you might hit the level cap well before the end of the game, giving you a long stretch of time where you can’t improve your character at all. That is, everything about the game works, and you can spend a lot of time with it, but it isn’t always exciting.
When I play a role-playing game, I always hope for interesting characters, quotable dialogue, and memorable story elements. Fallout 3 just doesn’t offer these things, and, in fact, many of its story elements feel like they’re warmed over retreads from the original Fallout games (like when you learn how the supermutants came into being, or when you discover who your real enemy is). However, I’d describe Oblivion in about the same way, and a whole bunch of people liked that game, so I suspect a whole bunch of people will like this game as well. Fallout 3 isn’t a bad game, but it isn’t a great game, either, and my guess is that it will only really appeal to the Oblivion crowd.</blockquote>Additionally, GameBanshee put in a whallop of Fallout 3 info. Not much we don't have, but they did beat us in the pretty picture department.
And thus quests are basically where Fallout 3 again falls flat as an RPG. There are too few good ones, and the rest are buried in mounds of Bethesda's awful dungeon-crawling and terrible combat.
(...)
I'm left wondering what happened with this game. They had an existing engine, an existing IP, a multi-million dollar budget, and a large pool of human resources, but nothing, save a few nuggets of greatness in the quest department, in Fallout 3 stands out as anything higher than passable.
Ultimately, Fallout 3 is more Bethesda mediocrity in the vein of Morrowind or Oblivion. If those games tickled your fancy, you're bound to love this game, it's everything they do, but better. Or maybe you can look past the flaws and have a blast with it. I can't say I didn't enjoy parts of it, but I also can't say I wasn't almost always disappointed by Bethesda's general half-assedness. It's a mildly amusing timesink; but that's not saying much. Ultimately, it just doesn't work for me. It flies in the face of most everything I felt Fallout 1 did so well. Closing things off, Fallout 3 is a lot like a wasteland; you're searching through it looking for a little something good, something to keep you going, but to do that you have to go through a whole lot of bad and it just might not be worth it and you might not want to go on.</blockquote>GameBanshee also reviews Fallout 3 and essentially the reviewer didn't like it but can't deny that if you liked Oblivion you'll probably like this, giving it an 8.4.<blockquote>Sadly, Fallout 3 does not have a good PC interface, and it’s not even close. Some of the problems are no doubt because Bethesda designed the game for consoles and then didn’t bother to port it very well to the PC. That would explain why you’re not allowed to name your saved games (which, coupled with not including profiles, makes running multiple games really exciting), and why the hotkeys are so limited. For example, to see your weapons you have to press the tab key, then click on the inventory tab, and then click on the weapons tab. When was the last time you played a role-playing game, and you had to click three times to see your inventory rather than just press the “I” key? I know when it was for me -- when I played Oblivion, which used the exact same crummy system.
But PC-versus-console issues aside, there are some other problems with the interface. If you play using the third-person perspective, the targeting cursor is off, and so you have to keep switching to the first-person perspective to see what you’re really aiming at. Also, there is no mini-map -- probably to help with the game’s “immersion” -- but I like mini-maps because they show me where I am and where I need to go. To me, the best interface is the one that gives you the most options, and so I'd like to at least be given the choice of whether or not I want a mini-map enabled. Finally, the overhead maps are often worthless. Many of the locations in Fallout 3 have multiple floors that overlap each other, and having one map for all the floors combined doesn’t really help to show you where you are -- especially when the map has an incredibly low resolution and barely works even when there’s only one floor. In some ways it’s kind of fun that Bethesda mixed old technology with the future, but that doesn't mean that I want to view my maps on the PipBoy's small green screen. Please give me real maps.
(...)
The more I play Fallout 3, the more I consider it to be a “functional” game. It includes a big world with lots of places to explore and lots of enemies to kill, but there isn’t a lot to draw you in. The main questline isn’t especially involving, there aren’t a lot of enemies or types of equipment, and you might hit the level cap well before the end of the game, giving you a long stretch of time where you can’t improve your character at all. That is, everything about the game works, and you can spend a lot of time with it, but it isn’t always exciting.
When I play a role-playing game, I always hope for interesting characters, quotable dialogue, and memorable story elements. Fallout 3 just doesn’t offer these things, and, in fact, many of its story elements feel like they’re warmed over retreads from the original Fallout games (like when you learn how the supermutants came into being, or when you discover who your real enemy is). However, I’d describe Oblivion in about the same way, and a whole bunch of people liked that game, so I suspect a whole bunch of people will like this game as well. Fallout 3 isn’t a bad game, but it isn’t a great game, either, and my guess is that it will only really appeal to the Oblivion crowd.</blockquote>Additionally, GameBanshee put in a whallop of Fallout 3 info. Not much we don't have, but they did beat us in the pretty picture department.
