Introduction
"We're not going to suddenly do a top-down isometric Baldur's Gate-style game, because that's not what we do well."
Pete Hines, a used car salesman
Fallout 3 is the third instalment in the award-winning series beloved by children and young adults. The game continues mature themes of exploring a huge world, looting everything that isn't nailed down, killing anything that looks at you funny, and levelling up. While there were other games in the series, no one at Bethesda could remember Arena and Daggerfall, so they stuck with Morrowind and Oblivion for the purpose of determining what exactly they "do well".
Even though the box clearly states that it�s Fallout and adds a very convincing "3", it�s not a Fallout game. It's not even a game inspired by Fallout, as I had hoped. It's a game that contains a loose assortment of familiar Fallout concepts and names, which is why you start the game in a "Vault", get a "Pipboy" device, become buddies with the "Brotherhood of Steel", shoot some "Super Mutants", and stop the evil "Enclave" from doing bad things to good people in a post-apocalyptic "retro-future" America. The main plot revolves around water (Fallout 1 plot) and requires a G.E.C.K. (Fallout 2 plot), thus assuring you that you really are playing a 100% authentic, notary certified Fallout game. With, like, vaults and stuff. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
The Setting
"My idea is explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun."
Tim Cain, a Fallout developer
Once upon a time there was a big war that turned most of North America into a wasteland. Two hundred years later you emerge from one of the vaults that were designed to keep people safe during a nuclear holocaust. Since this is an action RPG, you discover that the wasteland is filled with many dangers and that you can�t walk very far without something trying to kill you. You explore a large chunk of land, eventually making your acquaintance with the order of knights sworn to protect humanity and rid the land of evil man-eating ogres once and for all. On this colourful canvas your epic adventure will take place.
The game is set on the East Coast, rather than on the West Coast like the first two games, providing Bethesda with a perfect opportunity to tell their own story. To show different communities that have formed on the East Coast, how they�ve adapted to the harsh new reality and managed to survive, and what problems they�ve caused and now face. Instead of this, Bethesda decided to populate the East Coast with the already familiar super mutants, Brotherhood of Steel knights, and Enclave troopers. Unfortunately, these groups left their depth over on the West Coast and have all the complexity of cardboard cut-outs.
Super mutants, the failed attempt to create super soldiers from normal humans, are now flesh-eating beasts keeping gore bags full of body parts as handy snack bags wherever they hang out.
The Brotherhood turned from an almost monastic order, too small to fight the super mutants on their own or to attract too much attention to themselves, into a holy order of knight-protectors keeping humanity safe and shooting at things on sight. In Fallout they didn't have enough equipment, in FO3 (100 years since Fallout and 200 years since the war) high tech weapons and armor are everywhere and fallen comrades with their Power Armor and laser rifles are left behind without a second thought.
Although the game tells you that it's been 200 years since the war, the gameworld and environments indicate that this is a lie the Matrix wants you to believe and that it's been only a few decades at most. Electricity, pre-war electronic equipment, powered and still working computers (just think about that for a second), working cola & snack machines, weapons, ammo, scrap metal (needed by many), and even unlooted first aid boxes are everywhere.
In fact, I'm not sure that the people you meet are even aware that they are living in a post-apocalyptic environment. One woman is writing a survival guide (a couple of centuries too late for that, don�t you think?), being genuinely curious about what happens when you step on a mine. Another lady is busy collecting Nuka-cola bottles and giving Nuka-Cola history tours. Makes sense, what else is there to do in a post-apocalyptic world?
Then there�s an android that managed to escape his evil master, get some facial surgery, wipe his memory clean, and started living as a human who doesn�t know he�s a robot. Yes, it�s, uh, complicated. The droid is helped by an organization dedicated to helping androids gain their independence. I'll repeat that. DEDICATED TO HELPING ROBOTS GAIN INDEPENDENCE. In a post-apocalyptic, almost destroyed world. Don't these people have real problems and things to do and worry about? Are their post-apocalyptic lives so empty and boring that they must invent stupid things to do and care about to kill time? Considering that your wasteland shack comes with a brand new, shiny robot-butler - an excellent source of clean water, which in turn is an excellent source of money and positive Karma, maybe these people really don't have anything better to do. That would make a very interesting setting - slowly degrading post-apocalyptic humanity living off the back of robots doing all the work for them, but once again, that's not the Fallout world.
The East Coast �wasteland� is anything but dead and empty � one of many inevitable changes brought by switching the format from a �classic�, isometric RPG focused on exploring through dialogue to a first person, sandbox RPG heavy on the action side. Running into enemies at every step is a traditional sandbox feature. Sticking with Fallout's "dead wasteland" atmosphere would have made traveling in first person unbearably boring. As a result, the "wasteland" seems overcrowded: hungry monsters, trigger-happy raiders, super mutants, and stray, hostile robots of all shapes and sizes are everywhere. Evil-doer hunting Regulators and do-gooder killing Talon mercenaries complete the picture.
The setting�s casual approach to nuclear explosion is especially jarring. You get out of the vault, look at this brave, new world, and someone promptly asks you to detonate a nuclear bomb inside one of the towns. Why? Because it's cool, apparently. Later on you will unavoidably run into a super duper mutant who can only be taken down by a several direct nuclear blasts that, oddly enough, have only a few meters radius and are harmless to people outside this radius. Shooting old rusty cars results in even more nuclear explosions, which makes you wonder if there really was a big War or if a simple car accident caused a chain reaction of exploding nuclear cars across the States.
Prolonged exposure to radiation has added magical properties to clothing. Putting on a dirty, old lab coat instantly increases your scientific knowledge (+10 to Science) until you take it off again. Most hats, including a simple bandana, increase your Perception (+1). Putting on Lincoln's hat imbues you with higher Intelligence and improves your speech. In other words, clothes are your typical magically enchanted fantasy fare.
Towns and locations deserve a special mention. Megaton, the first town you see when you step out of the vault, is basically the only real town in the game. The rest of the humanity is more than happy with 3-5 shack settlements, old hotels, and museums. Nobody does anything and how the hell these people survive remains a mystery. Exploring different towns and different ways of life was one of the most interesting aspects of Fallout, but sadly it�s not present in Fallout 3.
Instead of a consistent and logical world, we get "cool shit". What's cool shit, you ask? An excellent question. Cool shit is whatever stuff random Bethesda designers thought would be cool. To be honest, Fallout 2 was also sporadically guilty of this syndrome, but Fallout 3 takes it to a thoroughly different level.
A town in the crater of an unexploded bomb? - Cool!
A Peter Pan-esque settlement of invincible kids who expel people when they hit 16? - Awesome!
A Lovecraftian Cthulhu-dedicated "Dunwich horror" location - Pretty awesome!
A gang of blood-drinking vampire wannabies - Beyond awesome!
A howling radio DJ keeping the bored populace of the, uh, wasteland informed of your progress - wait, let me check my awesometer... my god, it's over 9000!!!
Overall, it would be easy to write a report worthy of an EU bureaucrat listing all the silly and stupid things Bethesda has shoehorned into Fallout 3. The biggest problem is not so much that it isn�t Fallout, but rather that the setting doesn�t make any sense whatsoever. Bethesda had an opportunity to craft a cohesive �living & breathing� world, but instead chose to build an amusement park with a bit of everything �cool� they could think of. To be fair, some things Bethesda did are brilliant and atmospheric, but they are isolated elements that never form a coherent and consistent world that makes even the most basic sense.
Character system
"Every aspect of the game should have choice and consequence. Even choices like picking your character's stats."
Gavin Carter, a practical joker
Fallout's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) was tweaked to allow any character to survive and beat the game. The consequences of this choice are that stats are less important, all characters' combat worthiness is about the same, and returns on stat investments are greatly decreased. Some examples:
Fallout 1 & 2:
hit points = 15 + (2 x EN) + ST
action points = AG/2 + 5
carry weight = 25 + (25 x STR)
skill points = 5 + (INT x 2)
Fallout 3:
hit points = 100 + (END x 20)
action points = 65 + (AG x 2)
carry weight = 150 + (STR*10)
skill points = 10 + INT
So, let's compare average values (5) with high (8).
Fallout 1 & 2 (5 vs 8):
HP - 30 vs 39
AP - 7 vs 9 (the difference is, basically, an extra attack per turn, which is huge)
Weight: 150 vs 225 (50% more death dealing hardware and ammo)
SP: 15 vs 21 (40% increase)
Fallout 3 (5 vs 8):
HP - 200 vs 260
AP - 75 vs 81 (practically no difference; you need to put 3 extra stat points into Agility to get an extra shot with a pistol)
Weight - 200 vs 230 (15% more death dealing hardware; ammo, including missiles and nukes, is weightless)
SP - 15 vs 18 (20% increase)
Other than that, above average stats add dialogue lines and determine relevant starting skills' values (+2 per stat point). Instead of 18 skills featured in Fallout, we get only 13, but many are very useful and matter a lot. Skills go up to 100 and can't be increased further even by perks or books. You get 6 combat skills: Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Guns, Melee, Unarmed, and Explosives (which combines former Throwing and Traps) and 7 non-combat skills, out of which 5 are very, very useful:
Speech � used a LOT in the game. It won�t get you through the game, unfortunately, but when talking is involved, it�s good to have a developed Speech skill. It works in a simple, but very effective way. You are all familiar with a typical RPG situation: you need something from NPC X, but in order to get it, you need to do something first. Well, Fallout 3 Speech helps you get what you need without any extra work. It also lets you lie to people and claim that you did what they asked you to. I�ll get back to this later.
Sneak � If frontal assault aint your style, you can sneak and/or do some silent killing, courtesy of a silenced pistol and Mr. Sandman perk (kill silently any human or ghoul while they are sleeping). Sneaking isn�t a viable alternative to combat and if you are planning to do the main quest, then some killing is unavoidable. The sneaking mechanics remain awfully simple, but are effective. There are no noise or alertness indicators, but you can hear the noise you make if you step on an old tin can or bump a shopping trolley. You go from Hidden to Caution (people get that uneasy feeling that someone�s out there) to Danger (nuclear catapults are being aimed at you). The Stealth Boy (a cloaking field) will greatly increase your chances to remain undetected, but like all invisibility spells wears off after a period of time.
Lockpick � the game has a lot of locks to pick, so don�t skip this skill if you like finding even more junk. Locks difficulty ranges from 25 to 100. If you beat the skill check, you get to play a well-done mini-game. Overall, it�s a very well executed system and probably the best mini-game involving system I�ve ever seen.
Science � the art of hacking all those computers I�ve mentioned earlier. Sometimes science is an alternative to lockpicking (say, there is a locked safe that could be lockpicked, but can also be opened via a nearby terminal), but in most cases science will grant you access to all kinds of interesting files, so if you like reading different bits and pieces, science is a must have skill. Hacking difficulty also ranges from 25 to 100 and leads to a word guessing mini-game. You get several guesses and if you fail to figure out the right word (which isn�t very hard), the computer gets locked. However, you can easily �log out� if you aren�t getting close and start again without any penalties.
Repair � you can combine two identical items of poor quality into one item of higher quality. You pick an item, click on another, and it�s done. No fancy stuff like swapping gun parts, which would have worked well with the �hunt for better loot� sandbox aspect. It�s relatively easy to find all the best gear and once you got it, one of the reasons to keep exploring is gone. The bronze, iron, steel, etc progression of the previous Bethesda games should have been replaced by a �different manufacturers� system like the one that worked so well in Space Rangers.
Missed opportunities aside, the repair system works surprisingly well. Most items you find are in very poor conditions. Looking at a huge pile of armor sets and guns after a battle is a bit jarring at first, but once you reduce the pile to a few decent armor sets and guns (thus saving you a hauling trip or two � easing the drudgery for OCD pack rat types), you quickly see the beauty of the system.
Barter and Medicine aren't very important, but keep in mind that you won't end up a millionaire in FO3, and if aren't planning to invest in Repair, most of your income would be spent of fixing your equipment. I did see at least two Medicine dialogue checks in the game, so it's possible that it's more useful than it appears.
Every time you level up you can choose a perk, improving your abilities (get more skill points when you level up, increase a stat, gain skill bonuses) or granting you new ones (the female only Black Widow perk, for example, gives you extra dialogue options with men and damage bonus against all penis-carrying club members).
Despite the level cap, it�s possible to max 4-5 skills somewhat early and lose another reason to explore, but overall, they�re done well and are a positive aspect of the game.
Main Quest
�God, is this too inaccessible for console players?�
Emil Pagliarulo, a console players� rights advocate
"Filtering through earth removes essentially all of the fallout particles and more of the dissolved radioactive material than does boiling-water distillation... In areas of heavy fallout, about 99% of the radioactivity in water could be removed by filtering it through ordinary earth."
Nuclear War Survival Skills handbook
The main quest is one of the game's biggest weaknesses. It doesn't make sense. The water contains radiation and thus isn't safe to drink. Maybe if people stopped playing with nuclear catapults and blowing up nuclear cars, the situation would improve� Anyway, even though it's relatively easy to purify radioactive water - see the quote above - top East Coast scientists, including your dad, have been trying to find a much more complex and unnecessary solution, known as Project Purity. They fail miserably at first, then you dad enters that "shall never be opened" Vault 101, raises you, but after watching a Blues Brothers rerun, decides to put the band together again and leaves the vault. You have no choice but to follow him, so the "shall never be opened" vault is opened again.
You spend some time searching for your father, asking everyone "have you seen my father, the middle-aged guy?", and that's the best part of the main quest and the game. Once you're reunited, the game hops on rails and takes you on a magical tour through one of the most idiotic game endings in the history of video games. Investing into a pair of good writers and story-tellers should be the top priority for Bethesda. The drop in quality, comparing the game to Daggerfall and Morrowind, is very noticeable and painful to experience.
Side quests and dialogues
�Dialogue wasn't a battle we wanted to pick. There were other things that were more important for us to spend time and energy on� we just don't have unlimited monkeys and typewriters.�
Pete Hines, a spokesperson for the Reading Foundation.
Side quest design is one of the strongest and most enjoyable aspects of the game. You have choices, consequences, multiple, often very different solutions, skill- and stat-checks, effective speech options, NPC reactions, etc. This design is very good (suffering only from poor writing) and I can only hope that it will be used extensively in future Bethesda titles.
Now, let me throw some quest examples at you to illustrate my points and explain all the praise. Needless to say, these are spoilers, so scroll down a bit if you don�t want to know.
One of the first Megaton quests is Blood Ties. It starts as a generic �deliver a letter� quest but quickly grows into something more complex. You discover that the family the letter was addressed to has been murdered (a successful Medicine check reveals the cause of their death) and their child is missing. Local residents inform you that a local gang may be responsible. You are given 3 possible locations where the gang could be found. No hand-holding. So, now the �deliver a letter� quest turns into a �save a kid� quest. Once you find the gang, you are free to attack them and save the kid. Or you can talk to them. Entering through the gate unmolested requires a bribe, or the above mentioned letter (it�s possible to initiate the quest without having the letter), or high speech, or a certain perk. When you talk to the leader, it transpires that it was the kid who killed his parents (which is a nice and unexpected twist) and the gang is helping him to control his urges. At this point, what you do is up to you. You can leave the kid with the gang or take him back (if you think this would be wise). You can still kill the gang ending the settlement�s problems with them, or you can broker a deal (protection for supplies).
Another, simpler, but more interactive example is the Big Town (no, it�s another 5-house settlement) quest. Once you�ve saved two local residents, you are informed that super mutants are a-coming. You can run away leaving them to their fate, you can kill the super mutants for them, you can teach the locals how to shoot if you�re proficient enough with Small Guns, you can fix a few broken robots with your Repair skill to defend the settlement, you can lay down mines, and you can use your Medicine skill to heal a local resident to help in the upcoming fight.
The previously mentioned android independence quest is probably one of the best and most interesting quests in the game, but you can discover that on your own.
The only problem, and it�s a big problem, is the writing. At best it�s passable, at worst it�s horrible, especially when it comes to dialogue stat checks. It feels like the writer had no clue what an intelligent or charismatic or perceptive person might say, so your intelligent lines often look absolutely idiotic.
I fight the good fight with my voice!
[intelligence] Ah, so you fight the good fight with your voice, eh?
I can see that you are very smart.
You see, Pete, that�s what happens when you think that any monkey can write dialogues. With a better storyline and well written quests it could have been a great game, despite any other flaws. Considering how solid the quest design is, not fighting the �dialogue battle� is unforgivable.
Exploration and visuals
�It's a wide-open world ... It's all about exploration and discovery.�
Emil Pagliarulo, author of the controversial �Fallout 3: What�s it really about� NYT bestseller.
Exploration is an undeniable strength of all Bethesda�s sandbox games and Fallout 3 doesn�t disappoint on this front. You have a huge world filled with all kinds of different places to visit. 85 locations, to be specific. A lot of locations are incredibly atmospheric like the Dunwich building and the Museum of Technology and simply must be experienced.
The war-torn environment is superb. Broken buildings, highways, and bridges, interiors, ruined subway stations, the remains of the capital city are done nicely and convincingly. It�s a fantastic work, even if it�s off the mark by 200 years.
Armor sets (particularly the raiders armor), clothing, and weapons are very detailed and well designed (insane attention to details, I�d say). I built a steam-operated Railway Rifle, which came with a nice idle (or poor condition, perhaps?) animation: the rifle�s steam engine starts coughing and sputtering, my characters hits it a few times and the engine starts working properly again.
Unfortunately, the previously mentioned design decisions cripple the exploration a bit. It�s relatively easy to acquire the best equipment and max your key skills before you see half of the gameworld. Considering that many places don�t have any �reward� other than killing and looting whatever inhabits them, it would have been nice to have something else to do there other than sight-seeing and looting.
For example, the Dunwich building has a great atmosphere and design. Very well done audio tapes lead you from one spot to another until your reach the obelisk room where Jaime attacks you, forcing you to kill him. You can�t help but think �That�s all?� Giving you an option to talk to Jaime or to find the book mentioned in the tapes or even do anything with the obelisk gaining some silly perk would have greatly improved the overall design and made exploring more interesting and rewarding.
The combat
"Violence done well is fucking hilarious."
Todd Howard, a boy-genius
Unfortunately, the combat system is mediocre at best and the only thing that could be described as "fucking hilarious" is Bethesda's failure to come up with something interesting and engaging.
Fallout 3 has two combat modes: real-time and slow motion. The real time mode is a mediocre shooter. You hunt things down with your cursor and shoot them until they die. Your character skills don�t affect things much or at all (apparently Bethesda�s target audience gets disappointed and confused when bullets don�t follow the cursor and are too young to remember Deus Ex ). No cover options a-la Gears of War or Mass Effect, no aimed mode. Right clicking does zoom in a bit, but it's basically useless. The real time mode eats ammo like popcorn.
The slow motion mode, called Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System or VATS for short, is equally uninspiring. It's a horribly conceived attempt to capture Fallout's turn-based targeting and atmosphere. At any moment you can click V and go into the VATS mode which freezes time and allows you to target the different body parts of foes, displaying your "to hit" % chances.
Anyway, you select several attacks (based on the weapon stats and your action points), click ok, and that's where this pretty good idea turns to crap. Instead of simply letting you target body parts, Bethesda went for cinematics. The slow motion mode kicks in, grabs the camera control away from you and shows you exploding heads and flying limbs. Considering the action focus of the game, you'll have to watch flying and exploding heads - in slow motion - a few hundred times. The slow motion thing would have worked for some rare critical shots, say one in twenty, making it special rather than ordinary. Having to watch it each and every time is extremely painful and annoying. When you are out of action points, the game kicks you back into the real time mode, and you can either continue shooting or run away and wait for the action points to be recharged. Rinse and repeat.
Also, while in the VATS mode, you only take 10% of damage for some reasons, which doesn't make much sense. Considering that VATS is a generally much more effective way of dealing with your enemies, it becomes almost a cheat "insta kill" mode against single enemies.
Now, at this point I expect to hear some "Turn-based is unrealistic too!!! It allows you to kill things while not taking any damage at all!" type arguments. It's true that you are not in any danger at all during your turn. However, when your turn is over, you are a sitting duck and that's where the tactical aspect comes in. You have to prepare for the enemy's turn while you have the chance. The enemy's turn is what balances out your own. Bethesda�s VATS doesn't provide it. You are free to take a few shots in VATS, then hide behind a wall and wait for the enemy to come to you while your points are quickly recharging. Nope, that�s not tactics son, that�s an exploit.
Overall, the VATS idea had merits but was butchered during the execution. Still, the combat is challenging*, dying is easy, and blasting things with a large variety of weapons is rather entertaining. The first mod that removes the mandatory slow-motion, flying and exploding heads, and damage reduction from VATS will greatly improve the game.
* Some people complain that the combat is too easy and that they go through the game without dying and ever using stimpaks. I have no explanation for this phenomenon. Could be a bug, could be a different (leaked?) version.
Karma
�That's really an AI thing. There is no guard system, there is no police system, basically you alert the opposing team when you kill someone or steal something.�
Pete Hines, a leading expert on karma and dharma.
Fallout 3�s karma is a busy little feature, constantly watching and judging you. The game is watching too and will respond accordingly. Good characters will be hunted by Talon mercenaries and will be rejected by evil NPCs. Evil characters will have to answer to Regulators and won�t become friends with good NPCs. Let�s ignore the instantly traveling wasteland news aspect of karma for now and look at the big picture. So far, so good. Now, let�s add ridiculously easy ways to change your karma and watch the system as it departs the world of good design and flies straight out of the first available window.
There is a thirsty person outside of Megaton who will accept as much clean water as you can spare, increasing your karma for every bottle. Your robot-butler can give you as much clean water as you need. See where I�m going with this? These thirsty people (there is one outside the Rivet City too) give you a convenient �do whatever you want, then pass some clean water bottles around, and you�re holier than the pope� card.
If you are a good person, who�s being discriminated against by evil people, all you need is to steal something. Items that don�t belong to you are marked in red. Fill up your bag with someone else�s stuff and you are soon the scourge of the wasteland. Pass some drinking water around and you are a saint again. Another potentially good, but butchered idea, that hopefully will be fixed by mods.
Occasionally, the karma system doesn�t get the latest memo about the gameworld changes and slaps you with evil points for doing good things. Overall though, it�s a step into the right direction, but it will take way more than one baby step to get there.
And in conclusion
�Fallout 3 will be very, very different from Oblivion (or any other TES game). It won't be "Morrowind with guns". It won't even be "Oblivion with guns".
Steve Meister, an aspiring prophet
It�s a good and entertaining action RPG provided you can ignore the fact that it was supposed to be a Fallout game and mentally block that aspect of it, and if you can do the same about the silly �amusement park� setting. The game looks pretty good, offers you a huge world to explore with many atmospheric locations, challenging combat, and quite a few interesting quests.
Compared to the first two Fallout games, Fallout 3 is a pale imitation that may anger many fans of the original games. However, comparing Fallout 3 to similar games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Gothic, Two Worlds, Assassins Creed, etc presents a much more favourable reaction. I think that it�s the best game Bethesda have produced since the Daggerfall days and that really says something about the game. The most important feature of the game is the promise of great things to come from Bethesda in the future, so let�s get those monkeys out of the office and kick some ass. God knows, it�s been long overdue.
Technical notes: Surprisingly, the game runs flawlessly (a single CTD due to some alt-tabbing) on my 3 year old computer.
Pentium D processor 930, Dual Core, 3GHz, 800FSB
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM, 533MHz
nVidia GeForce 6800, 256 MB
Special thanks to my buddy Andy who single-handedly restored my faith in the British education system.
(Hope no one minds)
