Fallout 3
Friday, November 7, 2008
After the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Bethesda has worked on Fallout 3. Fallout 3 was previously the middle of its development by Black Isle Studios, owned by Interplay Entertainment, which unfortunately went bankrupt, Bethesda took the chance and went in and bought the license, it was a good choice? … Read on.
The beginning of the End
Fallout 3 probably has one of the better prologues I have encountered, they use a clever way for the character creation. As you start the game you get born, yeah that’s right out of the womb and then uses some kind of device to see how you would look when you’re all grown up. The tutorial is also very interestingly made because you learn how to navigate and control the game when your character is a baby.
The world itself is set in a future post-apocalyptic Washington DC, the year 2077, so when you take your first step out of the vault, you’ll get introduced to a pretty realistic view of how a broken and bombed wasteland looks, and I must say I was very impressed with both graphics and sound effects at that moment. For those who have played The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion before will sense that the game is form the same developers because the navigation and the overall feel is pretty much the same.
The story of the game develops at the pace you want it to be developed, you yourself decides the pace since many will spend countless hours just exploring the vastness of the wasteland instead of going on the story quests. Even though the main missions does a good job of sending some players around the wastland, most people will find it enjoyable to gear up and head out into the wasteland by themselves.
Life as a wasteland explorer
Like in real life, you start at the bottom, you’re thrown outside of the vault with the whole game in front of your feet and the view is amazing. This in itself gives a wonderful sense of freedom, you can go anywhere you want and you do not necessarily need to follow the markings to help you towards the next quest. Much of the game’s charm lies in the fact that you are free, and can go anywhere you want on the world regardless of experience level.
Eventually, you will probably get hold of weapons and other equipment that helps your exploration and you will learn how the VATS system works. The VATS system is an assist system that helps players to aim at individual or multiple body parts of an enemy. This is complimented with a percentage number showing how big of a chance they will have at hitting the right bodypart.
When you use VATS the time is stopped, this lets players calmly decide where he / she wants to hit. Factors such as how experienced you are with some weapons, even the perception and the distance between you and your enemy determines how easily you will hit with the weapon. How many body parts you can hit is determined by your character’s AP (Action Points), in order to limit the shots your character can fire in the short period after activating VATS.
During the game you will meet many characters and I must say Bethesda has done a better job this time. The characters whom are important to the plot or side quests are actually quite interesting, they all have different personalities and different voice actors, which is very refreshing since Oblivion only had a few.
However, it’s still a pretty big problem that most characters do not have good facial expressions. It’s easier to relate and feel a more personal relationship to the characters when they show emotions other than their voices, the lack of these expression have a pretty big impact on the immersive-ness of the game. During the game you will encounter dozens of different enemy types, not as many as you would think but still enough to feel that the game is not devoid of life.
Since Fallout 3 is an action-RPG, it also has western RPG-elements. It has a basic level system where you can choose some basic attributes, in this case, “SPECIAL skills” such as strength, charisma, agility, etc. as well as smaller skills such as “Big Guns, Small Guns, Explosives, Medicine, Science.” The whole system is designed to make the player become specialized in a particular field. Do you want your character to be a stealthy thief who only use sniper-rifle and pistols, you can, do you want him to be a dumb muscular club-waving kind-of-guy , you can.
The only thing I have to complain about is that the system not complex enough.
Especially Big Guns and Small Guns are way too simple, Small Guns in this aspect is the whole spectrum of guns (handguns) and rifles (assault rifle, sniper rifle, etc.). I find it illogical that a person that is good with handguns would automatically be good with rifles, or that a person who is good with the sniper rifle is also equally experienced or good with a typical rifle (assault rifle).
The world of fallout 3 is unlike Oblivion filled with interesting places and extremely detailed environments. The environments that have loadtimes to get to, usually have an interesting history behind them. It’s always interesting to sneak into an old vault and hack some computers to find out why there are dozens of corpses laying around, you can always find some interesting diaries or logs of interesting events that have occurred. You can count on experiencing some bizarre stuff while you’re exploring.
The overall environmental design is seasoned a little extra with the games view-distance. The developers are trying to follow the rule: “What you can see, you can reach” and they have succeed quite well. It is often one sees interesting buildings and monuments far away on the horizon and it’s a really smart way to keep the players interested and moving from one place to another.
The graphics and Music/Sound Effects
Now we come to the the infamous graphics department, the graphics in Fallout 3 are really good, good enough for you to actually believe that you are in a wasteland and not in a game. Fallout 3 shines the most with its’ eye for detail. All signs have a pictures and metal cans has labels and logos. The games’ lighting is really nice and the view-distance is amazing.
However, even I have small complaints, the game is clearly optimized for slightly older computers and is not much more demanding than Oblivion. It is built on the same engine and, like Oblivion do not have real-time shadows. This is very disappointing I would like the option for dynamic and static shadows, there are some elements of fear in the game and dynamic shadows would most definitely enhance the experience.
The only time you encounter dynamic shadows is when you see items,objects and characters that actually move. Buildings, destroyed cars and the like have no shadows. One more negative aspect is that the nights are not dark enough, I feel that it would much more scary to move about at night if it was darker and you would make the player get some kind of flashlight or night-vision goggles to actually feel safe. Another minor graphical issue is that the textures in the game are already “pre-shaded”, this can mostly be seen on rocks, they look great at a distance but when you come up close it’s not so good, acceptable though. Despite this Fallout 3 is a wonder for those with low and mid-end computers.
The music,sound effects and voice-acting does a good job to keep the experience enjoyable, there is nothing here that bothered me on during my play-through.
Conclusion
Fallout 3 with all its aspects is a really good game, you can easily spend 40 hours in the game just exploring without even touching the main quest, it’s the feeling of freedom that makes the experience so amazingly good. Earlier parts of the series has been 2d turn-based RPGs, but now the series has gone into the three dimensional world and I must say, I think they have succeeded very well to capture the feeling of past games. They managed to bring the series into the future in such a way that would satisfy the old and newcomers to the series.
The game has its drawbacks, but you don’t want to miss this one. 5/5 Stars.
