Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is an old game. The environment is worn down, destroyed and aged. The kitsch 50’s Americana theme harkens back to days long gone. Many of the male characters in the game are in their 70’s at least. Most of these ‘oldy but goody’ themes are highly entertaining and rewarding to witness. Fallout 3’s agedness is not all positive though. The voice acting, combat, environment and glitches all get old quickly, and it puts a damper on an otherwise ambitious and interesting experience.

The concept of Fallout 3 is incredible. You’re a wanderer in the midst of a completely fucked up hell of a wasteland. I’ve heard many people say the the east coast is already a shitty place to live, but imagine it after being raped by nuclear warfare. An even stronger effect than the radiation is the massive cloud of depression and hopelessness which almost every citizen of the wasteland has inherited. The world is cool, and the items which follow this world are great also. Bottlecaps have more value than American currency, your computer is a wrist mounted monitor with a GUI from an early 80’s PC, and a lawnmower blade and pilot light can be combined to make a flaming sword. All these crazy little things tie together to make an unforgettable environment set with warring factions, crazed irradiated wild life and you, the hero (or anti-hero) of the journey.

Being the hero comes complete with molding your heroes actions, and those actions do have minor consequences. Fallout 3 is not like “The Stanley Parable” where there are fifty different endings, but in between the opening and closing of the game it is quite the choose-your-own-adventure. Many choices along the way will make your guy or gal good or evil, but you can just do what I did and try to remain totally neutral. The karma aspect of Fall Out 3 is fun, but it left me wanting. There are only three level of Karma: good bad and neutral. Each level only has a few results. You can get some companions, some perks and you can get attacked by people that don’t like your standing. Your karma can also let you say some pretty funny stuff in dialogue.

Dialogue starts as a high point of the game, but quickly goes downhill after you’ve realized how little money Bethesda put into the voice actors. I’m sure that there are thousands of pages of script, but the dialogue starts to feel very awkward the longer you play the game and a few points in the game are just bad. Cursing for example comes off extremely awkward, and the way it’s written into the game sounds completely unnatural. Children dialogue is some of the worst in the game, and it’s clear that the writers have no idea how children talk. Maybe the radiation affected their brain that much. Your character himself has the ultimate brain disorder, as he never utters a single word for the entire game, reminiscent of a Link from the Zelda games. He must be really good at sign language. It’s sad that this kind of direction in games is still used even back in 2008. A couple of voice actors do stand out. Three Dog is pretty good and John Henry Eden is appropriately scary, but the rest just gets old quick.

Dialogue is one of the central mechanics of this game, but battles are the number one. Just like the dialogue, the battles are a very exciting part of the game that peter out eventually. I’d say the most unique part of Fallout 3 is the VATS system, where you freeze the game, pick targets and then let the game perform all of the attacks for you in slow motion. In 2008, this mode is what gave Fallout 3 the “WTF” factor. It’s really something you’d never seen in games before. Although it takes a while, the shock and awe of VATS mode does eventually wear off. In fact, the battle gets to be pretty repetitive later on when you just use VATS mode, run away, and use it again. Slow motion, run, slow motion, dead, slow motion, run, rinse, repeat, yup his head blew up, his body went ragdoll, turn around, aim, slow motion grenade, dead. There are a few weapons in VATS mode that are still pretty damn interesting to watch nearly every time though.

The weapons are one part of customization that I love in Fallout 3. In fact, I pretty much loved all the customization in the game, and I can easily say that the customization is the single best thing about Fallout 3. It’s what would make me want to play the game again and what makes playing your character so much fun. It’s your character. The perks are incredible. Almost all of them are funny, and they are all so different and crazy. Choosing multiple perks lets you pepper up all the skills and weapons you want and can result in some real weird in game effects. The weapons are another part of customization which are incredible. There are quite a bit of different weapon types ranging from the tactically militaristic to the just-plain-stupid-but-awesome-because-of-it.

So it’s a great time to celebrate this classic game on it’s fifth birthday. Fallout 3 isn’t an incredible game, but it is a really good game that had some problems fitting all it’s quirky parts together. I would easily give the game a rating of 8.5, because it’s a really unique game even with it’s shortcomings. For technical reasons, I’m forced to give the game lower. Fallout 3 was born with some birth defects, and even after multiple patches, the game still freezes, gets you stuck in the environment and has many graphical glitches. This has happened to me in game so many times (10+) that it went past being weird and funny to being annoying and interrupting.

Fallout 3! I’m looking forward to playing your DLC, which I recently purchased, and maybe these stories will help me see you come of age. Watching you grow up has been a lot of fun, and just promise me you wont get all weird once you hit puberty. I know that you have some serious problems, but I know the real you, and I like it. Happy Birthday dear Fall Out, happy birthday to you. (And many more.)