Fallout 3 (PS3, XBox 360, and PC)

Alright, I wanna talk about Fallout 4 but I should probably establish context for my thoughts and feelings first. Which means I could mention the previous installments and what influenced my expectations for the series… or I could do full reviews of Fallout 3 and New Vegas! If you want to kick it old school and see what Fallout was like in 2D check out my Fallout 1 review. (And don’t worry, sometime I will get to the golden gem that is Fallout 2)

Fallout 3 takes place on the East coast of the US this time around. Time to go to Washington DC itself, the heart of the country and the highest on the Geiger Counter — it’s the nation’s capital, you can bet the Chinese nuked the hell out of it. You play as the child of Vault 101’s Doctor (In case you didn’t know, Vaults are shelters designed to endure the nuclear pummeling the surface took). Trapped beneath the Earth your father longed to go to the Wasteland above, something about a Project Purity. But all interaction with the surface is expressly forbidden by order of the Vault’s Overseer. Your father, not a man who likes to be told what to do, escaped despite this. You, desperate for answers, follow and escape as well.

The wastes are not what you expected or were prepared for. Mutants, bandits, dangerous creatures, technologically advanced agents, and strange goings on await you outside the Vault Door. And as always these loose factions are embroiled in a bitter war for survival and dominance.

Rule 1: Don’t mess with the guy with the shoulder mounted, nuclear capable, catapult.

History

At this point in Fallout’s development history things were in rough shape. The combat heavy but story starved Fallout Tactics sold well but was considered non-canon and not as compelling as the originals. Interplay then developed and published Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a game very much like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance — and just as disappointing– which sold just as well its fantasy counterpart.

Black Isle Studio was developing Fallout 3 under the code-name Van Buren but in the face of their parent company, Interplay, filing for bankruptcy were forced to cancel. With the rights to Fallout and no way to keep the franchise going to life Interplay sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda for 1.17 million dollars. Long time members of the Fallout development team were saddened about not being able to continue the story.

Bethesda wasted no time using the Gamebryo engine and employing the same team that created The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion to create Fallout 3. Development started slowly but once all of Oblivion’s DLC and add-ons were completed development started on Fallout 3 in earnest. It would continue the legacy of the original games by sharing its focuses on non-linear gameplay, violence, and dark comedy.

Fallout 3 was released on October 28th, 2008. It’s competition was Fable II (XBox 360), LittleBigPlanet (PS3), and Command and Conquer: Red Alert III (PC).

Experiences

Fallout 3 is exceptional at building a mood and atmosphere. It’s filled with vast empty spaces and where there are people desperate for the necessities of life. It’s totally possible to wander 10 minute stretches without running into anything, dangerous or otherwise. There are picnic areas populated by nothing but skeletons, abandoned caves, and all sorts of locations with a little loot and perhaps the remnants of a sad tale.

Yet where there are people, even in the stable places, they’re generally in trouble or need. Between Underworld’s dwindling supply of scrap metal and Ashur’s daughter’s fascination with teddy bears, everyone needs something. And they generally don’t have the manpower to get it — and most self respecting mercs won’t got hunting for stuffed toys.

I don’t have a problem! YOU HAVE A PROBLEM!

But the point is that you can feel it. In the mutants, raiders, and townsfolk they’re all one bad season away from getting wiped out. The mood strikes the player and entices greed or charity. It forces the question ‘Do I give them what I have or keep it because I deserve it more?’

Gameplay

Fallout 3 is a first person RPG shooter. You walk around chat with the locals and if anyone gives you flack, gets in your way, or refuses to listen to reason — whatever excuse you prefer — you can perforate them or bludgeon them to death with your implement of choice. Alternatively, if you don’t trust your ability to click things — or just want some slick camera angles put on your killing — you can use the Vault Assisted Targeting System or VATS for short. VATS stops time and presents the ability to target specific enemy limbs.

‘Don’t shoot for the legs’ they said. ‘It’s not as spectacular’ they said.

The SPECIAL system returns strong and presents numerical representations of a characters Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Which then determine a characters derived skills — which now has a much smaller list than the previous 2D games… goodbye gambling. Every level the character gains bestows skill points and perks! Perks give the character more specialized advantages such as earning more skill points per level or doing more damage to mutated creatures. Sadly, traits no longer exist and were scrapped for this title.

You’ll wander the wastes and find lots of people who need help. These are great opportunities to influence the wasteland for fun or profit, good or ill. Find a town beset by mutants? You can help ’em out for free and get some warm fuzzies, get a fair wage out of it, or gauge them for cash — you deserve it more anyway right? And besides, who else is gonna risk their neck?

Become that jerk merchant from the end of every RPG! ‘I can’t kill these ghouls for anything less than 1000 caps.’

These choices and actions determine how other people treat you by altering your karma. Karma comes in the good and bad varieties and has a subtle effect on how people treat you. It can even determine which companions will join you on your quest — ‘cept Dogmeat, he don’t give a damn who you kill or why you’re doing it.

Who’s a good boy?

 

The Gush

This game has so many goddam locations and almost all of them have something interesting going on. From the Rebublic of Dave’s current election woes to the mysteries of the Dunwich Building if you pick a direction and start walking you’ll eventually find something cool.

Speaking of places, I really like the settlements of the DC Wasteland. From Megaton to Rivet City I find it really interesting how the people of the wasteland try to eke out a living. They’re also all really well designed physically and efficiently.

Behold! Megaton! Pay no attention to the undetonated bomb in the village pond.

Two words, Three Dog. The player’s armbound computer has a radio and one of the stations on the air is Galaxy News Radio. GNR’s DJ brought the world of Fallout 3 to life for me, commenting on my accomplishments and failings. Three Dog also functions as a miniature tutorial, telling the player simple things about the game. And an opportunity to have some tone setting tunes from the 50s. He also gives the player hints about where to find quests. If Three Dog mentions a mysterious grove of trees out there, you can go find it!

The DLC in this game is really solid. The Pitt and Point Lookout present new environments for the player to explore and Broken Steel continues the game beyond its original finale. Mothership Zeta is… well disappointing but I’ll get to that. Overall it’s definitely worth the purchase — but maybe not at five dollars a pop.

The Kvetch

Why did the Mothership Zeta DLC get created? We could have gotten anything else besides aliens. Aliens were in Fallout 2 and those aliens seemed like they had some sort of mysterious agenda. It was really better left unspoken. But now we’ve got that aliens have no goddam agenda. I see what they’re doing but cannot make sense of it. Whatever, kill them and get some sweet laser guns.

I really don’t like how the finale punishes the player for being intelligent. Spoiler free, there’s a thing that’ll kill the player if they do it. Alternatively, the player can ask a companion who’s not susceptible to the danger danger to take care of it instead. The final cutscene then mocks the player for being unwilling to die an unnecessary death at the ripe age of 21. I guess it doesn’t pay to think creatively for this choice in the game.

The Verdict

Uhhhhh, yeah, this game is awesome. My greatest wish for this game is that I could wipe my memory of it and explore it all again. Now that I know what I’m doing, where I’m going, and what to expect there’s nothing left for me. That being said, this was only accomplished after hours of exploration, searching every nook. The game of the year edition is frequently on sale, full price it’s still only $20, and I highly recommend getting it with the DLC. Playing it again, it’s hard to believe that this game is 8 years old because it still looks fine, plays smooth, and is incredibly fun.

Next Week: Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout 1 (PC)

Look at that Windows 95 logo. Just look at it! Then look at that Mature Rating.

 In 2077 the world was plunged into a wave of nuclear fire. A 2 hour barrage of non-stop nuclear weapon launching left the world an irradiated wreckage. Humanity endured in small part to a series of underground vaults that were constructed with the purpose of saving people– well except for all those experimental vaults that destroyed their denizens in a myriad of terrible ways. It’s 2161 now and Vault 13’s water purification chip has unceremoniously died and if they’ve elected YOU to go get a replacement somehow. You have 150 in-game days to find a water chip and return it to the Vault but surviving in the wasteland will prove more difficult than the search.

I like how the starting equipment matches this image. You’ve got a small pistol and a knife, go kill some giant scorpions.

 

History

Fallout was developed by Interplay Entertainment, it was meant to be a successor to the apocalypse themed game Wasteland. Interplay couldn’t get the rights to the Wasteland name so Interplay’s boss, Brian Fargo, named it Fallout instead. A team of 30 pumped this game out in 2 years with 3 million dollars to burn. The opening music was supposed to be “I Don’t Want to set the World on Fire,” but a copyright claim had it changed to “Maybe” instead. Eleven years later, “I Don’t Want to set the World on Fire” would grace our ears as Fallout 3’s opening tune.

Producer, Tim Cain, pictured here programming the whole engine of Fallout 1 himself. That bag on his head is magical because he performed this feat in a mere 6 months.

The game was supposed to have complicated moral dilemmas, working with the sheriff to kill a crime boss sends the sheriff on a head trip but killing the sheriff fills the crime boss with enough regret that he reforms– I think that’s really cool and if the game dropped enough clues to these men’s true natures it could have been a really compelling turn of events– but we got sort of simple moral choices instead. There’s no easy way to put it, but this game was one of the first that allowed, but heavily discouraged– seriously, some NPCs won’t even talk to the player if tale of this heinous deed reaches them– the player to kill children. This lead to heavy and buggy censorship in foreign releases, the children’s sprites were just made invisible. They’re dialogue still hangs in the air and they can still be killed, invisibly leaving no gore, with an errant grenade or other explosives.

The game gives you a “perk” that calls you objectively evil (twice!) for killing children. Good on you, game.

Fun Fact: Fallout was originally supposed to use the Generic Use Role-Playing System– or GURPS for short– rule set but Steve Jackson Games was so repulsed by the levels of violence and gore in the game that they refused to license their system for it.

Fallout was released on September 30th, 1997. It was going up against Hexen II (PC), Grand Theft Auto (PC, PS1), and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II– that’s a mouthful– (PC). I guess it was just a time for violent videogames.

Nostalgia

Have any of you ever played a game that seemed like a game you played when you were a kid? I swear that I played Fallout when I was super young, too young to figure out what was going on or even how to play. I remember walking around in a wasteland town but that could have been any game that takes place in a dusty town. I probably didn’t play it at all actually. And why is it even important whether I did or not? Maybe I want to feel like I was part of the history, playing a game before it was classic. Maybe I just want to clarify the memory. Or maybe I need to accept that I might have dreamt it when I was 20 and that it doesn’t matter. I’m gonna go with option 3 and move on to the Gameplay section.

But it seems so familiar! Like every other dusty saloon in every other isometric game.

Gameplay

The main quest of the game is to get the water chip for Vault 13 so the player will have to do a lot of investigating and do a lot of travelling. An interesting point is that you can ask special NPCs about certain topics which requires you to actually type out the term you want to ask about. So, pay attention, it could lead to important information that’s NECESSARY to beat the game.

The wasteland is a dangerous place filled with raiders, mutant animals, mutant people, other mutant people, and mutant mutants– did mutant stop being a word for you too– so your character had also be really good at killing things unless he or she wants to end up on the menu for some mutant mutant. And I mean really good at killing dudes because you’ll typically be outnumbered, outgunned, or be facing an 8 foot tall beclawed monstrosity.

Or whatever this thing is.

The player enters combat automatically when he approaches an enemy or concludes dialogue that would lead to a conflict. The combat is turn based in which each character has a set number of action points determined by their perks and agility. Certain weapons and attacks cost variable action points so smaller weapons can get fired more in a turn as opposed to that honkin’ sniper rifle that takes 8 action points to fire. Moving, reloading, and opening your inventory also cost action points.

Check out this character sheet! I know that having a higher skill percentage is better but I don’t know what the actually difference between 50 and 52 small guns is.

The game’s attributes effect your skills starting values and you tag 3 skills which get a 15% boost and level up twice as much when skill points are spent on them. Strength also effects your character weight carry limit and melee damage, Perception effects a lot of skills and effects how close enemies start in random encounters, Endurance effects a few skills and gives the player more health, Charisma increases Barter and Speech and allows the player to recruit more companions, Intelligence effects a bunch of skills and gives the player more skill points to spend at level up, Agility increases the amount of action points and when they act in a turn, and Luck effects all skills a little bit and increases the players critical hit ratio– luck also increases the chance of finding beneficial random encounters on the map.

LIKE FINDING THE TARDIS!

The Gush

There is stuff everywhere in this game. There are computer terminals with lore and lockers filled with items.

Just about every skill is useful– I’m looking at you Traps skill, YOU’RE ON THIN ICE!

There are traits that give the player useful attributes that come with penalties so you can customize your character in such a way that suits your play-style.

The claymation and voice acting for this game is really good. The claymation heads show a lot of emotional range, even if it’s a little simple as does the voice acting.

You can also use the Vault Assisted Targeting System– VATS for short–  to aim at particular areas to hinder your opponents.

This can prove to be really useful, blinding opponents or making it impossible for them to use larger weapons.

Did I mention the simple fact that this game has…

…UFOS!?

The world feels appropriately desolate. It will feel like you’re wandering around a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Kvetch

The camera lacks a zoom so it’s difficult to see small objects on the ground. If you drop a grenade in a cave it’s basically lost forever.

This game is unpleasantly difficult. I’ve started combats in which the first turn is just me taking three times my maximum health in damage and getting blown away. I guess I walked into the wrong neighborhood.

Time for a rant. You only have 150 days to get the water chip and if you fail it’s game over. I saved my game with 12 hours of play with only 10 days left on the clock to find the chip. Long story short, I was super far from where it was because I got a lot of lost. I didn’t have multiple saves so that save was just doomed. There was no way to salvage it and no way to get the water chip in 10 days so it was just in an infinite game over cycle. Veterans of this era in gaming would call me a fool for not having multiple saves for one character but I was indeed a fool… and I wasted 12 hours… so that’s “fun”.

It seems like 150 days is more than enough time but only if you spend all your time looking for that chip. Side questing has to be kept to a minimum. It’s all about getting that XP and those clues until you get the water. At least that was my experience– and it was a really stressful one.

It’s really easy to break the game, sort of. If your gambling skill and luck are high enough then you’ll never lose a gambling game, this gives the character a theoretically infinite amount of currency if they’re willing to mash some buttons for awhile. That being said, all the money in the world won’t buy you enough to live. No matter how many stimpacks you have it never seems like it’s enough.

The Verdict

It’s unfair to judge a game based on its sequels. This game was incredible for the time but I’ve been so spoiled by modern gaming that I found it to be un-fun levels of hard. I’d say that I’m playing it wrong but I looked up character building guides, quest completion guides, and full spoilers for wear to find the water chip but I still couldn’t get my shit in order enough to fight Super Mutants. If it’s the only game you’re going to play all year then it definitely has the content to support that through all the deaths. But there are so many games now that it’s unreasonable to ask for such a commitment from the player.

Bottom line, play this before you play any of the other Fallout games if you want to really enjoy it, however unlikely that is to happen. If you’ve already played Fallout 3 or New Vegas and still want to play the classics then go ahead, it’s fun just to experience the past. But if you want to play a classic that’s better designed then I recommend skipping to Fallout 2.

Next Week: Chrono Trigger