While not perfect, Fallout 3 is my game of the year
Fallout 3 is in every sense of the word, a role-playing game. It’s not a role-playing game that has come to be associated with Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior but rather, a game where you get to choose a specific role for your character and play that role throughout the game. I consider Fallout 3 to be more an adventure game first and foremost, with minor RPG elements. You can honestly just play through the game looking for rifles and shooting at enemies, and not even really worry about the stats and Perks you want to assign your character.
In this day and age where almost everyone has played Call of Duty 4, they understand what assigning perks to your character means though. In short, I think the gaming world has grown up a little such that Fallout 3 can and should really be played by everyone. It’s the best single player game released this year. I still firmly believe that if you enjoyed BioShock and want something with more depth and satisfaction, then Fallout 3 should be the next purchase you make. And if you haven’t played BioShock yet, what’s wrong with you?
Good
- excellent recreation of a post-nuclear DC wasteland
- immersive gameplay that can have you playing hours without even noticing
- no set way to go through the game allows for playing the game in many different roles
Bad
- level cap stops progression too early in the game
- lack of a variety of enemy types
- lack of a minimap window on the main screen (but map is accessible in menu)
Intro
The Fallout series has been a cult classic among PC gamers for many years. Fallout 1 and 2 were originally developed by Black Isle Studios and released in 1997 and 1998. The games were quite popular due to their unique post-nuclear setting and storyline in combination with an engaging turn-based RPG. While I never played Fallout 1 or 2 when they were released back in 1997 and 1998, I became a pretty big fan of the development studio after buying their subsequent releases: Planescape: Torment in 1999, Icewind Dale in 2000, and Icewind Dale II in 2002. All of these were excellent computer RPG games – Planescape: Torment especially so for its intriguing storyline.
In 2003, Interplay, the publishing company that owned Black Isle Studios, underwent some serious financial trouble. There was no choice but to let the entire team behind Black Isle Studios go, and the development studio was completely killed off as the developers were all let go and joined other companies. Interplay then went on to sell the Fallout license to Bethesda Softworks for a little under $6 million. Bethesda Softworks, the company that was already up to its fourth iteration in the Elder Scrolls games with Oblivion, wanted to develop a new Fallout title using their game engine and game mechanics.
While some hardcore Fallout fans are not happy with the way Bethesda Softworks handled the sequel and its jump to a 3D action-RPG game, the game has nonetheless been awarded high reviews all around and sold nearly five million copies worldwide. The game was released in 3 versions: a regular version, a collector’s edition with a bobblehead, a lunchbox, and a making of DVD, and a 3rd Amazon exclusive version that contains the collector’s edition as well a life-size replica of the Pip-Boy used in the game. Some consider this their game of the year for 2008, and I am in that same camp as well.
Celebrating your 10th birthday in the Vault without a care in the world…
Storyline and Premise
Fallout 3 takes place in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC in the 23rd century. In this world the main character (male or female) is born in Vault 101, a fallout shelter that is locked up to prevent its inhabitants from the remnants of nuclear radiation. As the main character grows up in the vault, he/she one day discovers that his father has left the vault. At this point the player also decides to leave the vault (much to the chagrin of the vault overseer) to discover where his father went and why.
Once the player sets foot into the outside world he sees what has happened. Irradiated bugs scorpions and bugs are running wild. Remaining human survivors are holed up in shanty towns trying to find access to fresh water. Nuclear radiation has crippled the physical features of certain humans, turning them into disgusting looking beings that are either still able to function in society or have become rabid in subway tunnels. Mutants slaughter innocent humans and bag up their body parts. With no police, even certain humans resort to forming gangs and rob/kill unchecked. Through all of this, the player must journey through and make sense of not only what his father left for, but help (or hinder) the DC area as its remaining inhabitants try to simply survive.
Fallout 3 is a very long game. It’s an adventure game first, where the player will travel the DC area (now known as the Capital Wasteland) looking for help, ammo, money, etc. simply to survive. It’s possible to stick to the main questline and beat the game in perhaps a dozen hours, but the sidequests that are offered in various towns in the game really should not be missed. Plus, helping people, finding equipment, and making money, will make the main quest that much easier to get through.
Customize your character enough and you too will be able to blow off enemy legs with ease.
Gameplay Mechanics
Character Customization: S.P.E.C.I.A.L. System
The most difficult part to playing Fallout 3 is understanding the character customization system. At its heart it’s RPG stat based. Fallout 3 does a wonderful job of “sugar-coating” everything though, so that you don’t actually have to wonder about numbers much at all. Still, if your only hesitance to jump into this game is worrying about how much of the game is RPG, try to see if you can handle my explanation. If you get it, then you should be fine.
The primary governance of your character relies on the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. As soon as you are born, you have to decide how you want them to be balanced out. I think that each of the seven attributes can be between 1 and 10, but you have a set number of maybe 35 points total so you can’t max everything. I believe it’s possible to simply go 5 for everything and just be completely normal (and boring!).
Because the attributes are introduced to you as soon as you are born, they are described in a childish way but make them easy to understand.
STRENGTH: “S is for Strength, and that means I am strong! I can carry more toys and swing stuff all day long!”
Strength allows you to carry more items in your pack (every item has a specific weight) and increases the damage you do if you want to be a melee-oriented character.
PERCEPTION: “P is for Perception, a long funny word! It means what I tasted, smelled, saw and heard!”
Perception allows you to notice your surroundings more, so you can spot enemies further away, avoid traps, etc.
ENDURANCE: “E is for Endurance, and that’s how long I can play! I’m always really healthy, and have energy all day!”
Endurance is related to how much life you have in your lifebar – the more endurance, the more damage you can withstand and at the same time, allows you to fight better barehanded.
CHARISMA: “C is for Charisma, it’s why people think I’m great! I make my friends laugh and smile, and never want to hate!”
Charisma is generally how other people will perceive you. If you have high charisma, other characters will tend to respond to you more favorably, whether through more speech options, better deals when selling and buying items, etc.
INTELLIGENCE: “I is for Intelligence, it means I’m really smart! I use my brain for lots of stuff, like science, math and art!”
Intelligence focuses on allowing you to heal more damage with med kits, repair equipment, and hack into computer terminals.
AGILITY: “A is for Agility, that’s how I get around! I move real fast and easy, and I never make a sound!”
Agility is associated most with how fast you can move as well as how sneaky you can be when trying not to be detected. It also allows you a higher action bar in the V.A.T.S. targeting system (which will be explained later).
LUCK: “L is for Luck, and it’s simple, you see! It means that good things always happen to me!”
Luck increases your chance to perform a critical hit on enemy targets, as well as increase your skills (explained next).
So upon first starting the game, you will have to decide how you want to play your character. Do you want him to be a strong, charismatic, and quick character? Then you’d put more of your points towards that. Or you could decide that you want him to be a highly intelligent and perceptive one. It’s all up to you.
If the attributes are too overwhelming for you, you can actually take an “aptitude test” that gives you a series of ten questions or so and how you would react to the situation. They are somewhat amusing too, like if your grandmother gave you a gun and asked you to go kill someone, would you do it? Based on your answers, all of the attributes will be determined for you.
Character Customization: Skills
Once you’ve decided which attributes in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system you want to assign, it’s time to move onto the Skills you want to master. While the attributes in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system are stuck and do not increase when you level up in the game, you receive skillpoints when you level up to assign to any of the skills you know. Each skill can go up to 100.
The skills are:
BARTER – the higher this is, the more money you make from selling items or the bigger discount you receive from buying items.
BIG GUNS – increases damage and accuracy on big two handed weapons like the rocket launcher, flamethrower, chaingun, etc.
ENERGY WEAPONS – increases damage and accuracy on laser and plasma weapons.
EXPLOSIVES – increases damage and accuracy with grenades and mines. It also allows you to disarm traps.
LOCKPICK – increases your ability to unlock doors, safes, cash registers, etc.
MEDICINE – increases how much you gain from using health items
MELEE WEAPONS – increases damage and accuracy on melee weapons like baseball bats, knives, etc.
REPAIR – increases the maximum condition which you can repair an item (equipment in this game degrades through use and if not repaired by the player, can generally be repaired by shop owners).
SCIENCE – increases the probability of being able to hack into a computer to access information, open doors, locks, etc.
SMALL GUNS – increases damage and accuracy on the general guns in the game like the assault rifle and shotgun.
SNEAK – lowers probability of being detected when crouched.
SPEECH – having a high enough speech skill adds new speech options when talking to other characters in the game, and the probability that the new speech option will be effective.
UNARMED – increases damage and accuracy when fighting barehanded.
The starting skill values for you in the game are determined by what attributes you chose in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, but you can work on any skills you wish throughout the game as you level up. You could spend the first few levels simply dumping all of your skillpoints into the Small Guns skill – maxing it out to 100 to become highly accurate and powerful with a rifle. Of course, that means you may have trouble in civilized areaas, as you may not be able to talk well with others or figure out ways to sneak into someone’s house.
Character Customization: Perks
Whew, this is quite a lot of info to take in at once, but here’s the last part of character customization: Perks. The Perk system is not unlike Perks in Call of Duty multiplayer – you are awarded the ability to learn a new Perk every 2 levels you level up in the game, for a total of 10 learnable Perks when you cap out at level 20. Not all Perks are unlockable either, as each one will only be usable based on if certain S.P.E.C.I.A.L attributes are high enough.
Here are some of the starting ones:
Learnable after Level 2:
DADDY’S BOY/GIRL – increases your Science & Medical skills [requires Intelligence 4]
GUN NUT – increases your Repair and Small Guns skill [requires Agility 4, Intelligence 4]
INTENSE TRAINING – allows you to increase one of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes by one [no requirements]
LADY KILLER (or BLACK WIDOW if you’re female) – allows you to deal extra damage to opposite gender in combat, as well as opens up extra dialogue options with the opposite gender [no requirements]
LITTLE LEAGUER – increases Explosives & Melee skills [requires Strength 4]
SWIFT LEARNER – increases Experience point gain througout the game [requires Intelligence 4]
THIEF – increases Lockpick & Sneak skills [requires Agility 4, Perception 4]
Learnable after Level 4:
CHILD AT HEART – more favored when conversing with children, and opens up extra dialogue options with children [requires Charisma 4]
COMPREHENSION – every skill book found in the game awards 2 skill points instead of 1 [requires Intelligence 4]
EDUCATED – gain 3 additional skill points to distribute per skill level [requires Intelligence 4]
ENTOMOLOGIST – deals extra damage to insects [requires Intelligence 4, Science 40]
IRON FIST – deals extra damage unarmed [requires Strength 4]
SCOUNDREL – increases your Speech and Barter skills [requires Charisma 4]
Learnable after Level 6:
BLOODY MESS – deal extra damage on all attacks, and victim always dies violently [no requirements]
DEMOLTION EXPERT – all mines, grenades, and missles deal extra damage [requires Explosives 50]
FORTUNE FINDER – increases money gain throughout the game [requires Luck 5]
GUNSLINGER – when using a pistol in V.A.T.S., accuracy increased [no requirements]
LEAD BELLY – take less radiation when drinking water from an irradiated source [requires Endurance 5]
TOUGHNESS – increases damage resistance [requires Endurance 5]
There are plenty more, as well as extra Perks you can learn from doing quests (i.e. these are not accessible through simply leveling up). But with several Perks being unlockable after every couple of levels, one can see how each player’s playthrough of the game can dramatically differ. While I may have chosen to pick a lock to get past a certain area myself, another player may either convince a civilian to unlock the door, or another player may even simply just go in guns blazing through the front door. But if you can digest this RPG aspect of the game, you should be all set.
General Combat
While the game can be played in third person, it is most playable in first person like a shooter since third person is a little “floaty”. It can honestly be played just like a shooter. Run, sneak, move, shoot, reload, etc. without worrying about taking turns attacking an enemy etc. The only thing that prevents this from being a “true shooter” is the accuracy and damage of your weapons, which still are determined by your stats. In a regular shooter, if you see an enemy hundreds of feet away and you lock your crosshair onto him, you can still pick him off as shooter gamers have pinpoint accuracy. In this game, the further you are away from the opponent, the lower the probability you have of hitting him, and this probability is even further reduced depending on how skilled you are with that weapon type. It’s realistic in sort of a way because it makes sense that you can’t be proficient with every single weapon type in the game (who are you, Rambo?) but at the same time it may not be immediately intuitive if you can’t hit someone even though you have him right in your crosshair. Of course, if you raise your skill enough in that particular weapon type, you will be able to pick him off if he’s right in your crosshair.
I’m a little disappointed in the lack of variety of enemy types in the game. I guess since it’s not a fantasy game and it’s supposed to be more realistic, we end up seeing mostly human based enemies. Over half of the enemies you will probably encounter in the game are the mutants, which have pretty much overrun and taken over all of the outside DC area. I got a little tired of fighting them, but to be honest, I’m not sure what other enemy types could have been included and still fit the setting of the game.
In VATS, each body part of the enemy has a certain probability of being hit if you aim for it based on several conditions.
V.A.T.S.
To appease the RPG turn-based fans of the original Fallout games, Bethesda Softworks included the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or VATS for short. VATS can be completed avoided the player throughout the entire game if desired, but it actually is quite useful. It’s essentially a queuing system that allows you to freeze the game, target specific body part of the enemy, and then unfreeze the game. Once unfrozen, the player will shoot at the designated targets of the enemy. Targeting specific body parts can have great results. For example, for enemies with melee weapons, shooting them in their legs will disable them from running to you to attack you, and for ranged enemies you can shoot the weapon out of their hands so they can no longer fight. Even with animals, certain body parts are far more damaging to them than others.
Why not use it all the time then? Well, there’s two caveats to the system. The first is that there’s a cooldown associated with using VATS. You have an action meter that refills when you are not in VATS, but once you use it a few times, it will deplete the meter so the next time you can use it again is after it fills up. This is obviously to prevent players from using VATS the entire game (although there’s a Perk at the max level that this meter to instantly fill up when you kill an enemy in the VATS system).
The second is that there’s only a certain probability to hit the designated body part in VATS. If you’re too far away and want to hit someone’s leg, it may be only at 5%. But if you move a lot closer, you’ll see that increase to 95%. It’s all situational when you freeze the game to enter VATS mode. If the enemy’s weakpoint is his back and you try to hit the back when you are facing his front, the percentage in VATS will obviously read 0%. So the VATS system is useful, but at the same time, it’s balanced to prevent it from being too powerful.
Weapons & Items
There are all sorts of weapons and items in the game. Throughout most of the game you will be using regular weapons like shotguns, assault rifles, hunting rifles, etc. But there are actually named “special weapons” in the game, that are extremely powerful versions of the regular weapons. Most of these can only be found through helping characters in the game. For example, helping a woman find out about her father allows you to receive her SMG, which not only does about double the damage of a regular SMG, but also has a much larger clipsize.
Besides weapons, clothing/armor (which generally give you attribute bonuses and reduce damage when worn), you’ll come across lots of random items. Some of these are quite useful like healing items, while others seem completely worthless like plates, cups, toy cars, etc. However, it’s possible to actually find schematics in the game to create weapons out of items you find in the game.
I ended up discovering my playstyle to be very scavenger-like. Wherever I went, I’d check desks, cabinets, bookshelves, etc. for anything of value and loot it. Each item has a specific weight to it, and when I hit the weight capacity that I could carry, I’d head back to my home and unload all of the stuff before going back out and continuing my exploration. I felt almost like Wall-E, where I was out digging through junk but finding whatever objects I thought would be useful and amassing them in my home. By the end of the game I was practically a Costco, with dozens of cartons of cigarettes, cases of clean drinking water, food, munitions, etc.
One of the Pip-Boy’s functions displays specific damage to your body parts.
Pip-Boy
The Pip-Boy has been a staple in the Fallout series since the first one, and is basically a wrist-bracelet with a screen that monitors and manages all of your personal statistics. It’s basically the in-game menu for you, and it manages your overall health (including radiation and your specific body parts), items, quests, quest notes, the map, etc. It even has a light so you can turn it on in dark areas.
Opening the Pip-Boy and checking out the global map allows you to quick-travel to any location you’ve already discovered. You can also check a more detailed map of your immediate surroundings to look for entrances or areas you have not explored yet. At its heart, the game is about exploring. The Pip-Boy does a great job of managing all of the notes you come across so you can re-read them when needed, or go back to areas to discover new paths. I would have ideally liked the detailed map in a window on the screen like when you play Call of Duty 4 multiplayer or are in GTA/Saint’s Row, but the compass in Fallout 3 suffices. Plus, I guess I just have to open the Pip-Boy to see the detailed map.
Depending on your Karma, you can recruit companions to help you on your adventure.
The Karma System & Companions
A Karma System exists in Fallout 3 where you get good or bad Karma depending on how you go through quests or what you do. If you’re noble and helpful, your good Karma will increase and you will tend to become more admired by good characters in the game, but at the same time neutral or evil players may not like you as much. The opposite is true of you move towards the evil path: kill innocent civilians, stealing items, breaking into people’s safes, etc. All of these result in bad karma which will ultimately make you an Evil character. However, the thing about the Karma system that is nice is that you can move from one end to another at any time in the game. If you start out Evil, it’s never too late to turn over a new leaf and perform good acts to become a good person (and vice versa).
The Karma System directly affects companions in this game. In Fallout 3 you are able to have 2 companions at a time, although one of the two companions has to be the dog that you might find. I never found the dog on my playthrough, but from what I read it doesn’t seem worth it to get the dog since he can be killed off and won’t do a good job of sneaking with you if you want to play a more stealthy game. But the second companion spot is reserved for actually getting other characters to help you in your journeys. This is pretty unique since they will follow you anywhere and you can equip them with whatever gear you want. Of course, certain characters in the game are more evil bent and others are more good bent so depending on how they perceive you, they may not want to follow you around.
There are over one hundred different areas to explore in the game.
Achievement System
The Achievements are a lot better designed this time around than Bethesda Softworks’ previous effort on Oblivion. In that game it was pretty much Achievements for going through the main questline and becoming head of every guild. In this one there are still a few Achievements related to the main questline to sort of guide you to the end of the game, but I like that there are also several Achievements for the more notable sidequests. Many of these I probably would not have even encountered through Normal play if I didn’t know to hunt for them.
For the most part the Achievements in Fallout 3 are quite well-rounded in their design: some progression Achievements, some that are awarded based on whether you play a good, neutral, or evil character through the game, and the rest on accomplishing various optional tasks such as exploring over a hundred different locations on the map, finding collectable bobble-head dolls, and killing five “super bosses”.
Fallout 3 is not a particularly difficult game, so I have no major complaints from their design as I was able to get all of them with a little bit of planning and they did a good job of getting me to really explore the game world as well. The only thing I’m not a fan of here is missable Achievements, and there are a couple that are possible in Fallout 3.
First of all – the bobble-heads. You have to collect all 20 of them for an Achievement, and while I didn’t mind this collection Achievement as much in this game (each one you find gives you a permanent boost to your stats), I didn’t like that a couple of them are missable. Ideally what I like when I play video games is to be able to just play them sitting in my couch without having to run to the computer to check a collectibles guide every few minutes to make sure I didn’t miss something. Unfortunately for some, if you don’t pay attention to the bobble-heads early on enough, it’s quite possible to miss a couple.
The other way to miss out on a couple of Achievements in this game is to do certain storyline quests in an order different than what the developers imagined for you to do. There may be a certain main questline Achievement where you’re supposed to find out where your father went from X, but if you instead go to Y and find out there, it will pretty much end the quest to go talk to X and you won’t get the Achievement for it as you get started on the quest right after that. While it’s nice that the game isn’t super linear, having it so people are completely unable to get an Achievement from simply exploring the game only forces them to have to play “the right way”.
The dog companion ain’t bad in Fallout 3, but he can’t compare to the one in Fable 2.
Final Thoughts
Fallout 3 deserves my 2008 game of the year award because it succeeds most in what it tried to do compared to all of the other games released this year. While many titles released this year have multiplayer offerings, nearly all of them had problems. If your game is going to be primarily a multiplayer game, then make sure that it’s stellar and that it works (see last year’s Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3, for example). If your game is single player only, it better be interesting, engaging, and lengthy to be worth owning and playing through. Fallout 3 has achieved all of that and is recommended for all gamers regardless of what game genres you like.
I give the game an A. If you like playing games, you will enjoy Fallout 3. It’s pretty much that simple. At its foremost, it’s an adventure game that tasks you with exploring and surviving a nuclear wasteland. It successfully blends Resident Evil’s survival horror elements, BioShock’s exploration of a destroyed humanity, and Oblivion’s character development and world depth. How can you not like such a game as this? It would almost be as appalling to me as someone saying they like going to watch movies in the theater but don’t like action movies. This type of game was made for the gamer, just like action movies were made for the big screen.
While I loved the game, it was certainly not flawless (but what game is?). My only real quibble with the game is minor – I didn’t like that the level cap ended so early in the game. Considering how huge the world of Fallout 3 was, I was playing on Normal difficulty and I hit the level cap with perhaps half of the main quest still left and probably half of the map still unexplored. There was just so much left in the game to check out, but once I stopped gaining experience from everything, I was no longer as inclined to explore or fight and hurried through the rest of the game in the last 10 hours of my 60 hour playthrough.
For those that don’t want to end up level capping too early in the game like I did (as in you plan to do everything in the game and devote 100+ hours to it), try changing the difficulty to Very Easy. Apparently the difficulty affects how much experience you gain from enemies, so if you set it on the easiest difficulty, you will gain the least amount of experience so you will be able to keep exploring and leveling. Also keep in mind that unlike Oblivion, once you beat this game, it actually ends. You can’t keep exploring the world after the main questline so save it for last.
