Fallout 3 has been out for quite a while now, two months and change. However, there's a bunch that hasn't really been addressed about it. It seems as if the gaming community just glided over Fallout as "Oblivion with guns" and moved on to the next big thing, Gears 2. But Fallout man, Fallout is S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (I'm a terrible person).

Now, I'll come right out and say I never played Oblivion. I did play Morrowind, but Morrowind couldn't really grab me, for whatever reason. Put a few hours into it, and just abandoned it. Skipped over Oblivion because I didn't have a 360 at the time of release. Fallout grabbed me, in a way, I think because it has a different approach to the RPG.

Fallout, and indeed most Bethesda games in general, are quite buggy and easy to exploit. The framework can be broken easily if you try (I'm currently lugging around 2 companions, a dog, and about 12 copies of what is supposed to be a unique weapon), and the game is far from stable. Character animations are wooden, melee combat feels disconnected, and the third person view still looks and plays like utter shit. These flaws would really bring down any other game- and they bring down Fallout, to an extent. However, despite these flaws, Fallout is still the game I've pumped the most time into recently, probably this year (With the exception of HALO).

Why?

Fallout 3 has been out for quite a while now, two months and change. However, there's a bunch that hasn't really been addressed about it. It seems as if the gaming community just glided over Fallout as "Oblivion with guns" and moved on to the next big thing, Gears 2. But Fallout man, Fallout is S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (I'm a terrible person).

Now, I'll come right out and say I never played Oblivion. I did play Morrowind, but Morrowind couldn't really grab me, for whatever reason. Put a few hours into it, and just abandoned it. Skipped over Oblivion because I didn't have a 360 at the time of release. Fallout grabbed me, in a way, I think because it has a different approach to the RPG.

Fallout, and indeed most Bethesda games in general, are quite buggy and easy to exploit. The framework can be broken easily if you try (I'm currently lugging around 2 companions, a dog, and about 12 copies of what is supposed to be a unique weapon), and the game is far from stable. Character animations are wooden, melee combat feels disconnected, and the third person view still looks and plays like utter shit. These flaws would really bring down any other game- and they bring down Fallout, to an extent. However, despite these flaws, Fallout is still the game I've pumped the most time into recently, probably this year (With the exception of HALO).

Why?

I loved both Fallout 3 ,oblivion and Mass effect one problem i have with Fallout 3 is the characters just stair at you when their talking no hand gestures or what ever. But Bethesda games are constantly getting better like in oblivion I swear they only had like 4 diffrent voice acters for all the diffrent charchters but in Fallout 3 every one sounds completley diffrent. Im looking forward to the DLC there realsing next year plus come on Bioware announce Mass Effect 2 Allready.

I adored Fallout 3, but my life is bugger than the game, so I haven't written anything about it. I agree with the majority of people who thought the ending was lame, but the journey... my, my and what a journey it was. I can't wait for the DLC, on my first play through (58 hours) I played a good character, I then started a new game with an evil character (7 hours), but I might wait for the DLC to dive back in. I got some games for Christmas and I want to finish those first. For me, Fallout 3 was the best game I played this year. Good luck with the Fallout 3 Megaguide, take care.

This game is sorta fun but there are huge faults that must be overlooked to find the enjoyment.
  VATS is a terrible system.  The dialogue feels so forced.  Enemies feel out of place even for post apocalyptic America.  However there is enjoyment to be had. I can not pin point where it comes from but it is there.  It sorta goes into the Dynasty Warriors category for me.  From a technical perspective both games are sub par but in terms of enjoyment, the game succeeds.  On a proper 10 scale i would give this game a 7.9 and on a giant bomb scale a 3.

My main problem with Fallout 3 was the bugs that carried from Oblivion. Things the developers must have seen and just never got round to doing anything about it. Otherwise it is an awesome game.

Content is something Bethesda work hard at and it shows, not only in the original copy of the game but the DLC that follows on for months after, and the announced extras for Fallout 3 look to add a good 10 hours extra in total gameplay.

Sweet, a mega guide! Gimme!

Fallout 3 is indeed one of those games that offers up such a vast amount of content, with the large majority of it being great, that it isn't hard to look past the flaws that it has. Like you said, most other games would have been ruined completely if they had the same amount of things wrong in it as Fallout 3 does. But this game just offers so much that is good about it that, well, the flaws are easily forgiven--even if they sometimes annoy the crap out of me. And I really do like that you are in a true open world that doesn't force you down any narrative path. And there's just so much to do, that it's very easy to reach your max level without ever touching the main story quests. And then there's still plenty to do!

The downside of this approach is that, like me, players can get burned out on the game before they finish the story. I barely touched the main story when I played Fallout 3. I just had such a great time exploring and doing all the side quests. But then I ran into some quests that didn't really go as well as I had hoped, courtesy of some bugs. So after numerous times of retrying (and luckily finally succeeding , I just had enough of it and put the game down. Now several weeks later, I still haven't picked it up again, sadly.

That's the thing with Fallout, is that there's so much to do. I can see how it would be easy to get overwhelmed or burned out.

Pick it back up when our guide comes out :)

im still burnt out on morrowind and oblivion.

I played the fuck out of morrowind to the point that oblivion was kind of meh.

Im going to leave it a little while before i pick up fallout.

You guys are machines!
A guide for Fallout 3, ITS GOING TO BE MASSIVE!
Nicely written btw Lies.

Everything is full of choices in Fallout 3 except the ending, I had a solution that would have worked flawlessly but the game would not let me do what I wanted. That was extremly disappointing.

I see where you're coming from, but Mass Effect felt more substantial, probably because it was more linear.

In Fallout you have tons of people to talk to, and tons of choices to make, but I never really felt like I was really engaging with it. How many times do I need to ask someone what it's like living in Megaton? And get a fairly uninteresting and uneccesary response?
In Mass Effect, you may only have a small amount of choices in comparison, but every choice feels a lot more weighty, a bit more consequential.

I also think that in Fallout, despite having so much content, it pretty much all plays out in the same way. Dialogue is always in that dry, old school, creepy constant eye contact manner, and while there are tons of items and weapons, essentially it's shoot, vats, consume. Whereas Mass Effect was cinematic and dynamic with it's story and dialogue, and combat  was a ton more varied depending on your weapons and magic (biotics?).