Fallout 3

I want you to try to imagine for a moment that your entire childhood was housed over a single roof. Born into a self-sufficient society that's locked away and governed by a post-modern system reminiscent of a dictatorship - but then again, how would you know? Let's say that upon reaching adulthood you managed to escape this oppressive habitat, thus coming across your first taste of daylight. What you see leaves you with a mixed bag ranging from glorious freedom to fear for lies ahead. What will you do to survive? Will you use your skills to save lives of the innocent despite the evident struggle, or will you cave-in to the dark forces and let greed consume you? The choice is yours.

A nuclear holocaust occurred about 200 years ago, and now society must live with the fallout that has accumulated in the year 2277. Washington DC takes the reins as the game's setting, situating a vast and desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland. While the environment is noticeably flat and barren (it is a wasteland after all), one of Fallout 3's largest successful assets is its setting and by extension its world. While laser weapons and commonplace robotics lie amongst the wasteland's scope, this is by all means a retro-futuristic world. Even though nothing is explicitly explained, the game is situated within an alternate timeline that branches off from the very exaggerated commercial era of the 1940s and 50s. Remnants of corporate propaganda have survived through all those years, heavily prominent with such aspects such as the iconic vault boy. Various aspects of this influence can be pervasively found, right down to the game's main HUD and the fact that soda bottle caps have become currency. Nearly everything further resonates the contrasting blissful tone of the propaganda in a rather ironic yet complementary way.

Indoctrination isn't the only element of Fallout 3's overall world that makes it as compelling as it is. The overarching oppressive nature of the wasteland's main settlements and its very survivors can be equally attributed to its success. Megaton, for instance, displays all the homes as rather worn-down shacks, presumably made from all that they had. Nothing from the main storyline suggests anything about the origins of this significant or why there's even a monolith bomb sitting in the middle. Put in the work to ask around a bit and you'll learn the settlement is in fact named after that bomb - and that it's still active; thus opening up some quests you wouldn't have experienced. A majority of the information dealing about the rest of the world is gained in analogous ways, which is through your own effort. Various dungeons contain either audio logs, notes, computer terminal, or even a unique visual design to provide its own backstory for what may have occurred before the bombs. This is one aspect of Fallout 3 that personally resonates with me. The Last of Us attempted to achieve something similar, but those moments were few and far between in the grand scheme of things. Almost every marker on the map has a story or some sort of origin along with it. Named quests may not have been attached to all of these locations, but they never ceased to intrigue me within my 70 hour trek.

Fallout 3 begins with one of the most impressive introductions to ever appear in a video game. You witness your birth, your first steps, your initial encounters with grade school-esque bullies, and a morbid equivalent to the SATs. Along the way, you gradually get to know Liam Nees--I mean your father and scientist, James. Both of you live in harmony for several years with the other citizens in Vault 101; a stronghold in which no one gets in or out. However, you awake one night to hear that your father has fled the vault, with his assistant murdered. Following the incident, the entire vault erupts into pure mayhem and anarchy. With security and the very people you grew up out to kill you, there's no other option left but to brave the wasteland and find your father; and thus, we have Fallout 3. Despite the game's long length, not a lot of that contains info-dumps on the main story. Of course there are moments to solve some the main mysteries, but more than half of the main storyline consists of simply going from town-to-town searching for your father. If this was a lesser game, I'd say the narrative elements of Fallout 3 are disappointing for the sheer brevity of its required plot points; but Fallout 3 isn't a lesser game. All of that seemingly absent plot aspects are there, you just need to look for it. It's a form of storytelling I really admired. Its bare basic story is enough for most to be moderately satisfied, but dig a little deeper and you'll find something special.

Don't be fooled, Fallout 3 is by no means a standard first-person shooter; it is a complete and immersive RPG that just happens to have first-person shooting components. Either way, this is the most obvious deviation from the original Interplay games, which were both turn-based. On paper, it may seem odd for the series to evolve into what essentially looks like Oblivion with guns, but Bethesda has thought one step ahead and crafted something so much more. With the simple addition of VATS, Fallout 3 not only provides an appropriate call-back to earlier games in the franchise, but also a dynamic and satisfying combat system. VATS essentially stops time in battle for you to select which limb or part of the body you want to shoot at. The amount of shots you have is dictated by your AP points, which can only be replenished outside of using VATS. Effectiveness of these shots and their chance to hit the target is determined by RNG dice rolls, but it is shown through a percentage given within the system's interface. Since the actual shooting is admittedly a bit lacking, I found myself using VATS almost every chance I had; and it never got old.

Exploration is essential, as it makes up a majority of the actual gameplay. When you're not shooting down commonplace raiders or Rad-roaches, you're probably wandering the wasteland, roaming a nearby settlement, or looting the nearest corpse or file cabinet. Simply wandering and looting around will provide you with a better opportunity to obtain better gear or even quest-lines. Every enemy you kill will be searchable with some form of equipment to loot, not quite every variation but almost all. Not only that, but some abandoned settlements will have its entire aftermath lootable, usually providing its own sub-narrative through data pick-ups. However, the mere task of walking around and possibly talking to NPCs along the way has its merit as well. I personally found myself using the implemented fast-travel system less than in most games, simply because I just wanted to walk through the wasteland. It should be noted that all of this can be done within a third-person perspective as well, but I found it to be very unintuitive, so I don't personally recommend it.

In between your treks through the desolate DC area, you'll meet a fair share of resistance groups and learn of their true intentions. This is where karma comes into play, letting you choose whether you want to be the good guy or the bad guy. It has no effect on the main storyline, but revolves a lot around the NPCs of the game. If you choose a good path, citizens will randomly gift you items out of nowhere for simply helping them. Choose an evil path and...you get to side with the Enclave and a town full of bigots. Personally, I couldn't recommend the positive route enough, as not only does it have the morality benefit, the rewards tended to be more applicable to me.

Many of the quests, whether they be within the main story or objectives to complete on the side, take you to all parts of the wasteland; from the empty regions to downtown Washington DC. Many portions of the wasteland are highly radiated, and if you get radiation sickness and don't treat it, you're looking at an inevitable death. That's why throughout the capital, there's an integrated subway system to reach your various destinations - and they're the weakest portions of the game. While there's nothing wrong with the subway tunnel sections from a design view, you have to traverse them way too much. Not only that, but the designs of the tunnels are rather bland as it is, and I found myself getting lost within the identical passages several times. Thankfully, they were utilized less during the second half of the game, but I still would have much rather had roam around the destroyed streets of DC.

At its core, Fallout 3 is an RPG, and the game's progression system adheres to this. For every enemy you kill, lock you pick, or terminal you hack, you gain experience points that go towards leveling up. Every level-up you obtain you get to distribute a certain amount of skill points into specific categories, ranging from your handling of special guns to your speech, which effects branching dialogue. After distributing these skill points, you get to select a perk. Perks provide beneficial gameplay features you wouldn't be able to achieve otherwise, but let's be honest here, why wouldn't you choose "Bloody Mess"? This role-playing advancement system is coherent and dynamic, leaving you to outfit the Lone Wanderer for whichever play-style speaks to you. Do you want to take a stealth approach or march in guns blazing? Do you want to break into an area using lock picking, or do you want to use your speech to get by? It's all up to you, and the game is designed in such a way to adhere to all forms of varying approaches to the main game.

On a technical level, Fallout 3 can be an atrocity. Not that it looks particularly bad, even though the animations do seem very dated in 2015. It's the multitude of bugs and glitches that brings this game down on all platforms. I played this game off Steam on the PC, and this is simply one of the worst ports I've ever seen. The game is downright unplayable on a modern operating system from Windows 7 onwards, as it is severely unoptimized. Crashes can occur as often as every half-hour, and loading from different screens will always keep you holding your breath because you haven't saved within the past five minutes. That said, I ran this game near-flawlessly on Windows 8.1...with some mods. With these specific mods installed to fix the crashing bugs, the PC version suddenly becomes the objectively best format to play Fallout 3. Console editions are good enough, but between one or the other, go with the PC edition.

Despite its deceptive contrasting look, it's actually quite astounding how similar Fallout 3 is to its Interplay predecessors in ways outside of combat. You've got a specialized character creation which highlights your play-style, leveling up, perks, an incorporated Karma system, similar conversational perspectives, a branching dialogue system based around choice, weight limits, recurring items, post-WW II propaganda, and much more. Considering the original Fallout's ridiculous difficulty (I really sucked at that game) and the mainstream attention it's achieved, I think Fallout 3 is worthy and arguably superior successor with the Fallout title. Even though the animations are a bit awkward today, the PC version requires mods to merely play, and the subway tunnels got old fast, I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed playing every second of this game. Its choices felt meaningful, VATS was always gratifying, and the backstories were intriguing. I completely maxed out this game; I did every quest across the main game and all the DLC, I found all the bobble-heads, and I reached the level cap. Why it took me this long to play Bethesda's masterpiece, I'll never know, but now I couldn't be more hyped for Fallout 4.