RMG Reviews: Fallout 3 Part One

By: Michael Carusi | November 27th, 2009

Believe it or not, I hadn’t played Fallout 3 too much until this review, and I’d wanted to do a review for a while.  It hits fairly close to home for me since I go to college in Washington D.C. and you can even visit a Metro area very close to my campus.  I also feel like RMG is overdue for a western RPG review, and what better way to revive the genre here than Fallout 3?  Let’s take a look.  Be on the lookout for part two, which will feature a rundown of the expansion packs.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks and ZeniMax Studios
Genre: Action RPG
Console(s): Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC

The verdict: Even a year later, Fallout 3 is a profoundly engrossing RPG experience that will suck up hours of your time as you shape your destiny in post-apocalyptic Washington D.C.

You blink several times to let your eyes become adjusted to the sunlight you’ve never seen before.  As your vision focuses, a desolate, empty wasteland rolls away in every direction, and an eerie silence dominates the landscape despite the battle cries of raiders and the growls of mutated animals.  This is the world of Fallout 3 – the Capital Wasteland, formerly known as Washington D.C., is a symbol of what’s left of life. While post-apocalyptic settings haven’t received any shortage of attention in video games, few of them are pulled off as compellingly as that in Fallout 3.  Despite carrying some minor technical baggage from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3 is something that every gamer with even a cursory interest in RPGs should check out.

In the not so distant future…

In the year 2277, you are born in Vault 101, one of numerous underground constructs where you and several other vault dwellers live in the wake of an alternate timeline Great War that devastated all civilization.  The dim, metallic, claustrophobic environment gives off an undertone of oppression that will make your eventual journey into the open world that much more amazing.  Several important moments of your childhood are interwoven with your character development and there are hints of the superb choice system to come.  When a few bullies are picking on your childhood friend, will you talk them into leaving, turn them against each other, pick a fight, or even encourage them?  At age 19 your father James, perfectly voiced by Liam Neeson, abruptly disappears and Vault 101 is thrown into chaos initiated by the crazed leader of the vault.  As you leave the vault with the intent of finding your father, you’re only taking the first steps in an epic journey across Washington D.C.

The Capital Wasteland is a somber place, reflecting the aftermath of nuclear war.  Garbage and debris litter the ground, houses are skeletal and barely stand up, and water is fouled with unsafe levels of radiation.  Raiders in makeshift armor scrounge Chevy Chase, Bethesda, and other locales looking for valuables while other folk have managed to gather enough together to form some semblance of organized society in towns such as Megaton, ironically named after the undetonated nuclear bomb at its center.  Even irradiated wildlife roams the wastes, and you’ll encounter rabid dogs and mutated two-headed bison.  You’ll also be able to visit more famous landmarks such as the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument, but with the warring factions you’ll have to keep your head down and your gun loaded.  It’s a profoundly immersive place, right down to simple hikes across the desolate hills while you soak up the atmosphere.

Dystopian quests abound

The various civilians and factions that still exist in the ruined city offer so much content that it’s impossible to do everything in a single playthrough.  The moment you arrive in Megaton (the nearest town to Vault 101) a smorgasbord of questing opportunities opens up.  You can decide what to do with the bomb in the center of town, help a local by collecting data about the Wastelands for a book she’s writing, or collect scrap metal to trade it in for caps (the in-game currency).  There are quests involving exploration, combat, hacking, negotiation, and thievery, and this is only scratching the surface.  I wound up postponing the main quest to talk to a saloon owner for several hours because I was having so much fun doing the various side missions and just exploring the areas.

There are almost always multiple ways to meet an objective, some of which can have an effect on your karma.  In a nutshell, doing good by helping locals or protecting people gets you good karma, while engaging in activities such as picking the lock on a private house or killing a friendly civilian earn you bad karma.  The system offers some moral flexibility – you can still be good if you want to pick someone’s pocket if you need the cash every now and again.  It might sound like a schizophrenic system on paper, but it’s nice not to be irreparably penalized if you need to resort to minor crime in order to make ends meet.

Point management 101

As with many RPGs, character development and growth plays an integral part in your story.  As you level up to the maximum level 20 (30 if you have Broken Steel), you’ll get to pick Skills and Perks to enhance your character.  Skills are talents that you can put skill points into to improve your character’s proficiency with a particular skill.  For instance, a high Speech skill will improve your ability to negotiate with others, or a high Lock Picking skill will let you pick more complicated locks.  Perks are extra bonuses you can choose as you level up, whose effects are permanent and extremely helpful.  It’s a system that offers a lot of variety depending on what you want to focus on, but it also lets you balance out your skills and be jack of all trades as well.

Combat is both real-time and turn based, with turn based elements coming into play using the VATS system, which pauses the game and lets players carefully choose what body parts or even weapons to attack.  This maximizes damage because you can potentially cripple an enemy’s limb or disorient them with a targeted shot to the head, and it’s also a blast to watch VATS shots because they’re done from a dramatic camera angle in slow motion.  Real time combat also works well, featuring a wide variety of weapons categorized into small guns, large guns, energy weapons, and melee weapons.  There are times when real time combat feels clunky because there aren’t ways to take cover or properly defend yourself.  One memorable instance had me running backwards and awkwardly emptying shotgun shells into a Radscorpion’s torso to avoid its deadly stinger.  It still works despite these occasional odd moments.

Glitchy baggage

As beautiful as the Fallout 3 world is, it lends itself to some of the same problems Oblivion had.  It’s actually much easier than it was in Cyradill to get stuck inside or between objects because a town like Megaton features a lot of debris-laden grooves from which you can’t escape without reloading an old save.  There’s some occasional texture-pop in when large buildings are on the horizon and several times I ran past enemies who would get stuck behind a barricade or a piece of debris, then keep running into it.  As with Oblivion, NPCs still feel a little zombielike; when you talk to them, they can look a little too unnaturally stiff.  Thankfully the actual glitches only happened a few times during gameplay, and while they’re certainly present they’re never persistent enough to actually interrupt your fun.

Despite the technical problems, part of what makes Fallout 3 entertaining is how dynamic the world is and how it will really react to you.  The game’s retro futurism seamlessly blends 1950s-era elements with more futuristic technology, and there’s a deliberate sense of irony that makes certain conversations hilarious – just ask your robotic butler at the house in Megaton to tell you a joke.  You make enough of a presence on the Capital Wasteland to feel like you’re making a difference even though you’re just carving out a life in a vast post-war city.  I was even attacked one time by three mercenaries who had a 1,000 cap bounty on my head for being a “goody two shoes”.  Very nice touch.

Conclusion

Fallout 3 is a game you can log dozens of hours into without getting bored or even finishing the main quest.  The Capital Wasteland is wide open to be your playground whether you want to be persuasive charmer, a good hearted pickpocket, a ruthless killer, or anything in between.  Some recurring technical oddities are a small price to pay for an immersive atmosphere and environment and enough quests and exploration opportunities to keep even hardcore RPG fans busy for a long, long time.  Even this much time later, Fallout 3 is a fantastic title and one of the best games of this generation.