Fallout 3

If Bethesda has ever had a project in the works that could rival the multi-award winning behemoth that is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3 is it. The previous titles in the series hadn’t been as anticipated or well known as the third instalment, in fact a great majority of post-Oblivion Bethesda fans probably hadn’t heard of Fallout. The first two instalments of the series were still RPGs, but more of the conventional kind; its trademarks being the turn based combat and the Birdseye view over the character. However, Fallout 3 is the same as previous titles at heart but adapted to a more Oblivion-esque, modernised style.

The Fallout 3 is set in a post-nuclear America. A war against China led to a climax in which China nuked the entire country, creating the vast wastelands which you traverse, and also the vile mutations you battle against. However, some people were luckier than others, just before the bombs dropped, those who had invested in Vaults fled to them, leaving the less fortunate to die upon the impact. Only the rich could buy into these vaults, underground settlements that were guaranteed to protect its residents from the nuclear strikes above ground. Some of the vaults were designed specifically for accommodation, but others had different scientific purposes. Rumours have it that experiments were carried out in some of the other vaults scattered across the wasteland, each adapted to conduct strange observations, for instance one of the many vaults was inhabited by one man and dozens of women. Thankfully the character you play as wasn’t bought up in one of the experimental vaults.

You assume the role of a nineteen year old young man, who lives with his father in Vault 101, but it doesn’t start there. Your story starts where you life begins; you are thrust from your mother’s womb from a first person perspective into a lighted room. There isn’t much to do as a newborn apart from crying or tilting your view slightly, after a few minutes of dialogue your father leans over you, his features obscured by the lack of light and surgical mask. There is good reason for this later on in the game, as his facial and physical appearance depends on the one you are just about to create. Your father operates a strange device which has the ability to determine your character’s appearance when they come of age (how convenient), this is where the customization starts. A number of screens appear asking you to select your gender, your race, and the appearance of your face. Just like Oblivion, there are quite a lot of options available to how you customize the proportions of your facial features and it’s completely up to you how absurd of perplexing your character looks. Race selection doesn’t really have much reflection on facial appearance, as you can adjust the skin tone, and just like Oblivion, African American people have more of a reddish complexion than they do black. One notable plus is the amount of hair style and colour options there is, but don’t expect to be showing off your fro too soon, because for the majority of the game you will be wearing hats, masks, and helmets.

Once your character is finished, you’ll think everything is going fine until you see from the corner of your infantile eye that your mother is writhing in pain, you are ushered out of the room as your father rushes to her. Sadly, yes, your mother does die, and the game is forwarded by a whole year and depicts a scene in your father’s quarters where he teaches you to walk. You will notice that your father’s facial features are noticeable, and in most cases they will be very similar to your own, apart from extreme circumstances such as giving your character a huge beard, deformed face or fluorescent purple hair. Your time in the vault will depend on how much you would like to explore, but exploration is limited, and all primary locations are within short reach of each other. As you progress, you will leap up from one year old, to ten years, and then from ten to sixteen, and finally nineteen. Each stage of your vault life determines on what kind of character you will turn out to be when you finally leave. A system called S.P.E.C.I.A.L, identical to the previous Fallout games, is a measure of your primary attributes such as Strength, Endurance, and Agility, each offering support to many of the long list of skills available. Upon your tenth birthday you are handed the iconic Pipboy device, essentially an inventory and notebook accessible by the wrist. At the age of sixteen you will take a G.O.A.T (Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test) which will take an accurate guess at what skills you are best suited to. There a load of skills from Small Guns and Explosives skills, to Speech and Stealth skills, it’s best to specialise in at least one of the weapon skills, but each one offers huge benefits if you develop it enough. The G.O.A.T isn’t very accurate, but you can just skip it instead and select three primary skills, once this test is finished you will be thrust into yet another scene, your last moments in Vault 101.

With your father missing, and one of his friends, Jonas, shot dead on suspicion of aiding him, you are next in line for the chop. Unaware of your father’s intentions, you have no other option but to flee for your life. This is where Fallout first comes into fruition, you equip yourself with whatever you can find (ideally a baseball bat) and make your way for the vault entrance. Guards will patrol the corridors along with irradiated insects known as Radroaches, which will attack anyone they see. You will eventually come to the entrance after killing numerous guards and creatures, and open the door into the light. Upon leaving the Vault, the sense of claustrophobia will dissolve, and instead a mixed feeling of loneliness and bewilderment will follow, for now you gaze upon miles and miles of the barren, twisted wasteland…

The actual plot of the game outside of the vault is one in which you will spend a long time in search of your father, which will take to strange places, and undoubtedly force you to interact with some of Fallout’s strange NPCs. Of course, just like any self respecting RPG, like Oblivion, there is a ton of side quests, which can be obtained whenever, all over the wasteland. Settlements and villages will be scattered throughout the Capitol Wasteland, some offering a lot more than others in terms of trade and quests. However, the wasteland is so vast; it’s hard to work out where to go first. To begin with, your world map (built in to your Pip-Boy) will be a blank canvas, but as you explore, more and more icons will crop up which can allow fast travelling between locations at the press of a button. The first settlement you visit should be Megaton, a town constructed entirely from scrap metal and piping. This is where the game really begins…

For such a huge RPG, Bethesda really needed to nail the gameplay if Fallout 3 was to be a success. The game plays out pretty much the same as Oblivion in terms of movement and combat with the exceptions of using guns and batons instead of bows and sword. Fallout 3 is completely played out in real time, the combat, and the exploration, making it a more comfortable game to adjust to for eastern gamers, and fans of first person shooters. You are given a health, experience, and action bar on-screen, and can switch alternatively from first to third person view at any time with the press of a button. Enemies will be all over the wasteland, and can attack at anytime. Once in combat, you simply draw out your weapon and attack using action buttons, mimicking Oblivion’s basic gameplay style. However, Bethesda have gone out on one to make Fallout differ from their other smash hit, and so installed the V.A.T.S (Vault Assisted Targeting System) system. Instead of firing rounds and rounds of shells, or slashing wildly like a madman, Fallout 3 allows players to stop the game and bring up the V.A.T.S screen, displaying all of a targets body parts. While on this menu, you simply select the desired target and body part(s) and when you are happy with your selection, press the action button; the game will then skip into a quick third person scene in which the player character shoots are the enemy, which looks kind of cool to begin with, but seems pointless after a while, especially if you don’t achieve a critical hit. It’s a satisfying system, and brings a fresh feel to the first person shooting segment of the game, but you can still miss even from a foot away when using V.A.T.S. As in any game, when you are the one taking damage, your health bar will deplete, hence why it is a good idea to carry chems around with you, or other remedies come in the form of sleeping in a bed or visiting doctors. Just like Oblivion, you carry healing items and buffing items; Stimpaks and food are used to regenerate health whereas drugs such as Psycho and Jet buff your character’s stats, making them more effective in combat. However, there is a downside to using buffs. If you use a certain drug too often you will soon become addicted and suffer from withdrawal systems if you run out, but not worries, you addictions can be suppressed by visiting doctors. Another risk from combat is crippling your limbs. If one of your limbs is taking too much of a battering it may become crippled and can result in all kinds of downsides, apply Stimpaks to crippled limbs to heal them up fast.

Raiders, Radroaches, Super Mutants, and Mole Rats aren’t the only dangers in the Capital wasteland, the environment around you can also erode you health bar through harmful radiation. There are many ways to contract radiation sickness, pretty much every inch of the game’s layout is festering with hazardous sources. The most common outputs of radiation come from food, pretty much every item of food will be listed with a statistic within your inventory. A scale displayed on your Pip-Boy indicates how irradiated you have become, each source of radiation contracting different doses of it. The scale will build up as you consume irradiated food, and will also go up if you either: drink contaminated water, swim in contaminated water, approach nuclear waste or if there is an enemy close by that emits radiation. Avoiding radiation is a key point to survival, if your scale reaches critical levels, your stats will lower, you become sick and can even die without the aid of RadAway, an ailment that lowers your RADS scale.

Health isn’t the only aspect that affects gameplay either, the Karma system can also reflect on how your destiny unfolds. Karma is the in-game measurement of how morally good or evil you are, be nice to people and they will respect and like you, however treat them badly, and they will avoid you and fear you. It may sound cool to be a badass in Fallout 3 but it does have its downsides, especially if you’re in the wrong crowd. Good Karma is usually achieved by bringing people to justice or simply helping people with tasks, whereas you lose Karma for stealing, pick-pocketing or for carrying out any criminal activity. There is no guard patrol system like Oblivion, but people will attack if you insist of stealing from them, and relationships with entire settlements can be severed as a result of evil deeds too.

Developing your character is one of the best parts of Fallout 3. Apart from making and customising your own weapons with scrap material found around the wasteland, you can gain experience points through just about anything from picklocking a door to stamping on a Molerat. When you level up you are awarded with around twenty points to upgrade your skills, making you more precise in each field which can trigger loads of benefits. Also, you gain a “Perk” for every level gained, these perks being abilities that can raise skill points and give you bonuses on pretty much anything such as the Ladykiller perk which grants you extra damage to female enemies.

The setting for Fallout 3 is amazing, just like you would imagine a post-nuclear America; houses burnout, debris and rusted metal littering the cities, and skeletons cropping up every now and then. Some cities and settlements look pretty awesome but a sense of repetitiveness soon kicks in after a few hours of gameplay. It may have damaged the setting of the game, but Bethesda could have gone a little out of their way to ensure that not all the in-game environments were identical. When you’re not above ground gaping at the end plains of dust, you’re underground in a network of Metro stations that drag on into infinity. Character design is again, good in some places, but the game is haunted by the emotionless husk-like NPCs familiar to the denizens of Oblivion. Facial movements when talking is rusty, and doesn’t align with the dialogue, sometimes the NPCs won’t bother opening their mouths at all while talking to you. However, the game doesn’t go without its set-pieces, one worry of Fallout 3 was that it wouldn’t have those gaming moments that were shone upon so much in Elder Scrolls, such as the Dark Brotherhood quests, or Thieves Guild, but you would be wrong in thinking so. Fallout 3 offers tons of memorable scenes, such as your first encounter with the Brotherhood of Steel, an in-game faction, or blowing up Megaton alongside the mysterious Mister Burke.
Graphically and sound-wise, the game also takes bits from Oblivion, the dreadful voice acting of the Oblivion cast is present in places, which can make you chuckle, but doesn’t suit some of the in-game characters at all. The music also Oblivon-esque consisting of short melodies over the silence of the wasteland, but if you want something different to listen to, there is always the Pip-Boy radio, on which you can listen to stations such as the mysterious “Enclave Radio” which loops 50’s style American music as heard in the initial game trailers, giving the game an authentic tap on a science fiction canvas. The visuals are a mixed bucket; you will notice that above ground the graphics will dominate that of the underground stages, such as the Metro tunnels described earlier.