Fat Dragon
Arbiter
I just finished my first playthrough of Fallout 3 (little over 25 hours) and decided to give my impressions on it. Here we go. Big fucking post.
*** I'll start out with one of the things Fallout is most famous for, NPC interaction. It's actually not half bad in this game. In fact, it's just like in the previous games. Granted, the writing in Fallout 3 is rather mediocre. However, it's possible to say the wrong thing and completely piss a person off. Sometimes they'll attack you for it, or sometimes they'll refuse to speak with you causing you to miss out on any possible quests they could have given you. Character often have a lot to say, sometimes giving you history about the location you're at, gossip about anything that's been going on nearby, etc. Every character that I met had their own personality. None of those mindless droids like in Oblivion that would just repeat the same lines over and over ("the hero of kvatch").
There are many Speech skill checks in this game. Your fears can be put to rest, it's most definitely not a dump stat. It actually comes in handy during many conversations. You can use it to convince NPCs to give you more information than they normally would have, there's the classic option of asking for more money (which thankfully isn't considered bad in this game), and a lot of times you can use the skill solely to complete quests.
For example, in Megaton there is a woman writing a survival guide who requests your aid in helping, sending you out on tasks to help get survival tactics to put in it. It is entirely possible to complete all of these tasks...without even doing them. Leave her house for a few days, come back, and then lie to her. If you pass the Speech check she'll believe you and you'll complete the quest without having even done it.
Do that though and you'll forfeit any bonus rewards; many quests have optional objectives for you to do. Another part was with the guy Burkes. On a second character I made, a female, I chose the Black Widow perk which gives unique dialog options when talking to opposite sex. It gave me a speech check for Burke, allowing me to convince him to leave Megaton alone without having any blood shed. Nice.
I was able to convince a Ghoul named Gob to also give me a password to his boss's computer. I was able to get the info I needed by sneaking to the computer instead of paying the boss a shitload of money for it.
Sometimes you'll be given a unique dialog depending on what certain SPECIAL attributes are placed at. Unfortunately, only sometimes are they good. A lot of the Intelligence checks are just simply a line stating the obvious.
*** Skills. I'll start with combat skills. They work in a way very simlar to Deus Ex. Higher the skill, the more accurate and damage caused. Not too much of an improvement in the accuracy department though. Just like in Deu Ex you can still easily hit with weapons you aren't trained in but the damage dealt with them will be really low. No combat skill is worthless. It's entirely possible to be the game using nothing but melee or your bare hands if you want.
However, with a high sneak skill you can avoid large amounts of combat. There were multiple danger zones that I got through without firing a single bullet. Enemies in the dungeons travel on a scripted patrol route so just like in Thief it's possible to scout their route and then sneak on by when it's clear. Stealth boys come in handy too but I only ever found three of them during my playthrough. Lockpick isn't broken in this like in Oblivion. It still has a minigam that you can master through trial and error, however if you want to pick higher level locks you'll need to raise your skill. Same goes for computer hacking.
Barting lowers buy prices and raises sell. Repair fixes damaged equipment and determines the starting condition of equipment you find. Doctor and First Aid have been combined into Medicine and it only increases the effects of stims and chems; you can't just simply use the skill on the field like in past games. However, there was one time when I was able to identify the cause of death for some victims thanks to my character's medical knowledge. There are many instances like that for many skills.
SPECIAL attributes hven't been changed, they act the exact same way as in the older games.
*** Perks. Some are good, many are useless. The best ones are the ones that add unique dialog checks, which makes NPC interaction even better, such as the Black Widow perk. Some though are completely useless and others cheap. Most perks just simply give boosts to your skill set. One perk that has multiple levels allows you to put another point in SPECIAL. No idea how many levels there are though, but I got four of them before some actual good perks became available. Many perks also are rewards for completing quests.
Bloody Mess is fucking useless. Enemy bodies will explode into tiny pieces, making it a pain in the ass to loot them. Plus, the gore in this game just looks ugly. Don't take the perk and occasionally you pop a head off but that's it thankfully.
*** Combat. A mixed bag. Not bad at all, but not all that great. Just like in the past games taking targeted shots increases critical hit chance. However, there will always be a chance to miss. If you don't use VATs you're critical rating is lower but you'll rarely ever miss if you get the crosshairs on the enemy. Sneak criticals were for me always an instant kill, and in sneak mode accuracy is slightly incresed. VATs doesn't completely stop time, just slows it down so you can still be shot when your character takes his hot. The slow motion cutscene thing is annoying though. Often if you kill an enemy the camera will continue to stay on him showing him falling in slow-mo. Meaning you're not able to keep focus on the other enemies. While the camera stays on the dead guy other enemies can be blasting your ass off screen. Annoying as hell; slow-mo can't be turned off.
Speaking of guns, ammo is weird in this game. It isn't scarce like Todd said it was but you run out of it rather fast. Enemies can sometimes take a good fucking deal of punishment. However it's easy to replenish, and all ammo is weightless so you can just haul around a fucking shitload of different ammo types and a couple of weapons and be good to go. Melee weapons like the powerfist and ripper and such no longer require ammo to use.
*** Exploration. Just like in Oblivion. There is a quest compass, however it doesn't ever tell you if you're on the correct floor or nearing your objective like Oblivion's. It just simply points you in the right direction. Can't be turned off. Also like in Oblivion there are timy blips on the compass that you can head towards that help finding locations. Fast travel is in too. Red blips appear on your compass to represent enemies. The higher your PER, the faster they appear.
Almost every dungeon area is unique and not copy/paste. The only ones guilty of that were the subway tunnels but that' to expected really since there's not much you can do to make those totally different from another. There aren't too many though. I was able to make it through a great deal of the dungeons using stealth, and rarely had to engage in combat while in them. You can't do that outside of them though, since enemies seem to just appear randomly then.
I thought the environments were pretty good. There's the big ruined city of DC which I thought looked very nice though it's dangerous to explore for low level characters because there are many enemies hiding out in the buildings with sniper rifles and rocket launchers. There are a lot of interesting places to find in the ruins though. Outside of the city though things are rather ugly. A few burnt out copy/paste houses here and there, but mainly just rocks and empty landscape. This is also where mole rats like to roam. Mole rats spawn like Morrowind cliff racers in this game. Annoying.
Towns are well designed though. All of them seem to be designed with defense in mind; an improvement over the last games which had towns with houses just thrown around randomly that could have easily be overtaken by raiders, like the Den for example.
Well, that's it. Good as the old games? Not by a fucking longshot. Better than Oblivion? Much better. A good game to play? I'd rate it slightly above average. It turned out far more enjoyable than I had expected.
If you've any questions about the game ask and I will answer.
*** I'll start out with one of the things Fallout is most famous for, NPC interaction. It's actually not half bad in this game. In fact, it's just like in the previous games. Granted, the writing in Fallout 3 is rather mediocre. However, it's possible to say the wrong thing and completely piss a person off. Sometimes they'll attack you for it, or sometimes they'll refuse to speak with you causing you to miss out on any possible quests they could have given you. Character often have a lot to say, sometimes giving you history about the location you're at, gossip about anything that's been going on nearby, etc. Every character that I met had their own personality. None of those mindless droids like in Oblivion that would just repeat the same lines over and over ("the hero of kvatch").
There are many Speech skill checks in this game. Your fears can be put to rest, it's most definitely not a dump stat. It actually comes in handy during many conversations. You can use it to convince NPCs to give you more information than they normally would have, there's the classic option of asking for more money (which thankfully isn't considered bad in this game), and a lot of times you can use the skill solely to complete quests.
For example, in Megaton there is a woman writing a survival guide who requests your aid in helping, sending you out on tasks to help get survival tactics to put in it. It is entirely possible to complete all of these tasks...without even doing them. Leave her house for a few days, come back, and then lie to her. If you pass the Speech check she'll believe you and you'll complete the quest without having even done it.
Do that though and you'll forfeit any bonus rewards; many quests have optional objectives for you to do. Another part was with the guy Burkes. On a second character I made, a female, I chose the Black Widow perk which gives unique dialog options when talking to opposite sex. It gave me a speech check for Burke, allowing me to convince him to leave Megaton alone without having any blood shed. Nice.
I was able to convince a Ghoul named Gob to also give me a password to his boss's computer. I was able to get the info I needed by sneaking to the computer instead of paying the boss a shitload of money for it.
Sometimes you'll be given a unique dialog depending on what certain SPECIAL attributes are placed at. Unfortunately, only sometimes are they good. A lot of the Intelligence checks are just simply a line stating the obvious.
*** Skills. I'll start with combat skills. They work in a way very simlar to Deus Ex. Higher the skill, the more accurate and damage caused. Not too much of an improvement in the accuracy department though. Just like in Deu Ex you can still easily hit with weapons you aren't trained in but the damage dealt with them will be really low. No combat skill is worthless. It's entirely possible to be the game using nothing but melee or your bare hands if you want.
However, with a high sneak skill you can avoid large amounts of combat. There were multiple danger zones that I got through without firing a single bullet. Enemies in the dungeons travel on a scripted patrol route so just like in Thief it's possible to scout their route and then sneak on by when it's clear. Stealth boys come in handy too but I only ever found three of them during my playthrough. Lockpick isn't broken in this like in Oblivion. It still has a minigam that you can master through trial and error, however if you want to pick higher level locks you'll need to raise your skill. Same goes for computer hacking.
Barting lowers buy prices and raises sell. Repair fixes damaged equipment and determines the starting condition of equipment you find. Doctor and First Aid have been combined into Medicine and it only increases the effects of stims and chems; you can't just simply use the skill on the field like in past games. However, there was one time when I was able to identify the cause of death for some victims thanks to my character's medical knowledge. There are many instances like that for many skills.
SPECIAL attributes hven't been changed, they act the exact same way as in the older games.
*** Perks. Some are good, many are useless. The best ones are the ones that add unique dialog checks, which makes NPC interaction even better, such as the Black Widow perk. Some though are completely useless and others cheap. Most perks just simply give boosts to your skill set. One perk that has multiple levels allows you to put another point in SPECIAL. No idea how many levels there are though, but I got four of them before some actual good perks became available. Many perks also are rewards for completing quests.
Bloody Mess is fucking useless. Enemy bodies will explode into tiny pieces, making it a pain in the ass to loot them. Plus, the gore in this game just looks ugly. Don't take the perk and occasionally you pop a head off but that's it thankfully.
*** Combat. A mixed bag. Not bad at all, but not all that great. Just like in the past games taking targeted shots increases critical hit chance. However, there will always be a chance to miss. If you don't use VATs you're critical rating is lower but you'll rarely ever miss if you get the crosshairs on the enemy. Sneak criticals were for me always an instant kill, and in sneak mode accuracy is slightly incresed. VATs doesn't completely stop time, just slows it down so you can still be shot when your character takes his hot. The slow motion cutscene thing is annoying though. Often if you kill an enemy the camera will continue to stay on him showing him falling in slow-mo. Meaning you're not able to keep focus on the other enemies. While the camera stays on the dead guy other enemies can be blasting your ass off screen. Annoying as hell; slow-mo can't be turned off.
Speaking of guns, ammo is weird in this game. It isn't scarce like Todd said it was but you run out of it rather fast. Enemies can sometimes take a good fucking deal of punishment. However it's easy to replenish, and all ammo is weightless so you can just haul around a fucking shitload of different ammo types and a couple of weapons and be good to go. Melee weapons like the powerfist and ripper and such no longer require ammo to use.
*** Exploration. Just like in Oblivion. There is a quest compass, however it doesn't ever tell you if you're on the correct floor or nearing your objective like Oblivion's. It just simply points you in the right direction. Can't be turned off. Also like in Oblivion there are timy blips on the compass that you can head towards that help finding locations. Fast travel is in too. Red blips appear on your compass to represent enemies. The higher your PER, the faster they appear.
Almost every dungeon area is unique and not copy/paste. The only ones guilty of that were the subway tunnels but that' to expected really since there's not much you can do to make those totally different from another. There aren't too many though. I was able to make it through a great deal of the dungeons using stealth, and rarely had to engage in combat while in them. You can't do that outside of them though, since enemies seem to just appear randomly then.
I thought the environments were pretty good. There's the big ruined city of DC which I thought looked very nice though it's dangerous to explore for low level characters because there are many enemies hiding out in the buildings with sniper rifles and rocket launchers. There are a lot of interesting places to find in the ruins though. Outside of the city though things are rather ugly. A few burnt out copy/paste houses here and there, but mainly just rocks and empty landscape. This is also where mole rats like to roam. Mole rats spawn like Morrowind cliff racers in this game. Annoying.
Towns are well designed though. All of them seem to be designed with defense in mind; an improvement over the last games which had towns with houses just thrown around randomly that could have easily be overtaken by raiders, like the Den for example.
Well, that's it. Good as the old games? Not by a fucking longshot. Better than Oblivion? Much better. A good game to play? I'd rate it slightly above average. It turned out far more enjoyable than I had expected.
If you've any questions about the game ask and I will answer.
. From what I've seen this game is worth picking up(which I will if I'll ever upgrade). The bad after taste of Oblivion will taint the experience though. If FO 3 would be released after Morrowind I believe the reaction would be more positive.
