Things that Fallout 3 did right!

TheChosen1 said:
If there is anything you can bet on making it into F4 then radios playing old music will definitely be at the top (right after a dog named Dogmeat). After all, the spirit of Fallout is shooting people in the head to 50's music.
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Yeah but that's the thing. High emphasis on background music while you travel, almost zero emphasis whatsoever on a growing society's use for radio communications. I think the only time anything gets close to that is Vault 101's radio help call. Surely music can't be the only way they can think to implement radio into the world of Fallout when it's such a crucial long distance communications technology.
 
I honestly cannot think of a single aspect of Fallout 3 that was actually done well. People talk up the exploration element, but the design of the world is fucking tedious to traverse especially downtown DC and there is so much wasted space that could have been populated by actual shit to do. The Pitt and Point Lookout suffer from the same emptiness and still suffer from the lack of an actual moral middle ground.
 
joevonzombie said:
I honestly cannot think of a single aspect of Fallout 3 that was actually done well. People talk up the exploration element, but the design of the world is fucking tedious to traverse especially downtown DC and there is so much wasted space that could have been populated by actual shit to do.
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I think in fact the parts of Fallout 3 where you're not doing anything, not fighting, not talking, not questing, are really far and away the best parts of the game. The atmosphere, when not penetrated by the bewildering stupidity of the plot, or the characters, or the like can be quite good. I think that's almost the entirety of why people like it.
 
The issue I have with the whole "atmosphere" argument is there aren't even that many interesting locations in the game and the few that are there...there's not a lot to do beyond looting. Look at the Dunwich building, Wouldn't it have been awesome if you could have talked to Jamie or at least done something of real note there? Point Lookout got a little more extra mileage out it, but still nothing substantial.
 
The Dunwich building had some interesting little moments to amp up the creep factor, like the poltergeist activity--doors opening by themselves, stuff flying off shelves, and that one bizarre "flashback" moment where you're transported to the Pre-War era for an instant.

Other than that, you're right: there's just not a lot of substance there even with the Point Lookout add-on.

I might be more forgiving towards Dunwich since it's basically a dark little corner of the map you explore at your leisure, but this general kind of half-assedness/lack of substance is prevalent throughout the entire game.
 
Honestly, i think Beth did quite a few things right with fallout 3. Before coming to NMA i had no idea how hated this game really was. Most of the arguments against it are quite valid, but it is a game i enjoy and still play regularly.
Although dated, even when it came out, i really like the art style. The buildings, the enemies, just the overall atmosphere really captured the essence of a post apocalypse to me. (regardless of scientific accuracy) Unfortunatly gamebryo sucks and makes everything look generic, but i like the concepts. The weapons, especially the unique variants and the dlc weapons. Trying to collect them all adds to my overall hours played greatly. In particular, i really liked the weapons in mothership zeta even though the whole dlc was a bit over the top. Dlc was done well, really worth the money compared to other triple A devs. Really if you compare Beth to most triple A studios, they put a lot more thought into their games, now wether that is just a sad observation on the video game market or not, it is true. The little details are really interesting to me as well. The ham radios that give you morse code signals, the terminal stories, the random encounters, etc.. they make the world feel more alive where as the rest of the game lacks in that aspect. My biggest problem with the game and other beth arpgs is their engine. Call it gamebryo or creation, the engine is too limiting to make a truly realistic world. IMO but the games believability =/= the enjoyment i have playing it. As an rpg the game falls short in many ways. But as an action/adventure game it excels. I can understand why people say the game is easy, due to the massivly exploitable special/skill/perk system and the terrible enemy AI, but if you just play an average character with the difficulty up to very hard some quests can become pretty difficult. For instance i just played through reilys rangers with a lvl 28 character. on every floor of the statesman there was at least one sm overlord and multiple masters. an overlord with a tri beam will kill a power armored player in 3-4 shots and even with 100 in energy weapons, the alien blaster takes at least 8 shots to drop an overlord. Reavers and albino scorpions have similar strengths. The arguement can be made that they are just bullet sponges, and their AI is still iffy at best but they can kill you quick. Had i not had the ghoul mask the 4 reavers that spawned in the presidential metro during broken steel would have absolutly annihilated me.i agreethat overall f3 is not a very difficult game but the combat being as user friendly as it isnt and the enimies being able to tank your sorry ass can give you a bit of a challenge. But the concept that its too easy because you are automatically made godly is bs because you can play without exploiting their poorly balanced system. Overall as previously stated i enjoy Fallout 3. It may not be a great Fallout game or a masterful story; but it succeeds as being a game that is fun to play and a great world to explore.
 
The guy that wanted you to blow up megaton, Mister Burke. I liked that guy. He was legit.

Then came Three Dog... Three Dog is the Jar Jar Binks of the fallout universe. Sigh.
 
Except people like Mr Burke?

Well... ummm... it had Deathclaws in it (although they were too weak). And they kept the special system which is always nice. And the gunplay wasn't bad. Not killing Harold was pretty good. They selected some decent tunes. The 50's vibe was pretty well done. Yupp, that's about it. I think I'm done. Sorry. Most of the quests were pretty stupid, or to be more accurate... "braindead".
 
I hated 3-dog, to me he felt fake. Bethesda fake. He felt too.... "placed".... is the word I'd use, not only in terms of location. And he had an annoying voice.

If other people loved him then great, but he brought me out of the game.
 
Yeah, Mr New Vegas was a class act :)

Always wished that there was more of his content, I heard all of his lines during my first playthrough.
 
TheChosen1 said:
Indeed, Mr New Vegas is a much better radio host. And he doesn't stalk your every action.
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I think "the radio reflects the news" is a really great idea, I just believe that the news should be delivered second-hand unless the radio host was actually there for some plausible reason. People are going to notice stuff like "the monorail blew up" because that's newsworthy, but they aren't necessarily going to know the specifics about how it happened. You're better off not making the protagonist a celebrity in the game world just because they've done a few things. You should also be careful not to do radio sounders for really trivial stuff that has no reason to be part of the news. I mean, Fallout 3 has the "Christ, talk about your slow news days" as part of the sounder for when you turn in all the bottles of Nuka Cola Quantum. That should probably have clued them in that they'd be better off leaving it out entirely.
 
Except it's not an RPG, it's a sandbox adventure with RPG elements, just how Mass Effect is a 3rd person shooter with RPG elements.
 
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