Fallout 3 will stink like Deus Ex 2.

[zerocool84]

I just ordered Fallout 3 from Amazon for $35 shipped and hopefully it'll be as good as SOME said it is.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: zerocool84
I just ordered Fallout 3 from Amazon for $35 shipped and hopefully it'll be as good as SOME said it is.

I think there are two main reasons why people end up not liking it. I think the first is that they view the first two games through rose colored glasses and the second is that the game is different from others in that a lot of what you get out of it depends on what you put in it.

I played the first two when they first came out and I bought them again (the originals were my brother's) from GOG and played them before I got Fallout 3 to refresh myself. A lot of the flaws of the first two games carry over to the third but some people seem to only associate them with the third, mainly as a result of preserving the same game mechanics and feel. Some of the skills are worthless. In the first game you used repair on less than half a dozen situations and science was rarely used too. Lockpick was not as useful in the first game. In the second game, they switched around some of the emphasis on the skills. Lockpick was much more useful but again repair was fairly worthless. In Fallout 3 I think they attempted to make all of the skills relevant. So while stuff like Barter, Lockpick, and Guns behave the same, others were changed to make them more relevant or required. Repair is definitely required because it no longer applies only to furthering quests since you now need to repair weapons. Sneak is more useful since you can get an extra critical when you attack in VATS using Sneak. Science is infinitely more useful since they added the hacking aspect.

The SPECIAL sometimes seemed to have little impact. You need to be aware of what they do specifically. For example, in the second game a very high charisma was only really useful for being able to have a large amount of NPC's in your group. At some point I do not think I noticed charisma affecting your dialogue tree and successes. The advantages of the SPECIAL is not exactly the same as in a traditional RPG so I think people expect them to do things that they don't. At least in Fallout 3 they remind you when you look at your stats how the SPECIAL affects your character. I also like in Fallout 3 that they will specifically label the dialogue options that were opened up by a skill, perk, or SPECIAL so that you can get a feel for how your character's structure affects the dialogue tree. This was nonexistant in the first game but I think the second game took this more into account, especially the low intelligence play through (I really need to do that one).

But the main thing I think that turns people off is that the game's story is driven by the player alone. Just running through and doing the main quest and nothing else gives you the minimum story. The story is created by your exploration, curiosity and actions. This was true in all of the games. You had to go out and find the quests and run through them to experience a story. But in Fallout 3, a lot of the stories require a little more work. For example, the vaults that are littered throughout the landscape each have a small story to them. The player has to search the vaults out and the player has to search through the messages on computers and such to find out what the story was. So you have to work to find out what the story is, otherwise you just find a vault, run through the location killing things and leave without gaining anything other than some more ammo and junk. The other thing that I did not like in all of the games is that your actions are generally isolated. In the first two games, you would come upon a town and you would do your good/bad deeds there and you would get the associated praise/condmnation and then move on. But often times it felt like you did not do anything in the long run. If I saved one town its effects never really propagated outside of the town with the exception for karma. The only time you got a sense for how your actions affected things on a larger scale was at the end of the game when they gave a little story for each location on how things turned out. In Fallout 3 I like the fact that the radio station GNR will sometimes broadcast updates on your actions so it gives a sense that you are affecting not just the little town where you had the quest but the events that will transpire across the entire wasteland. But it still feels like I could blow up an entire city and it wouldn't affect anything else.

One thing that I really like about Fallout 3 in comparison to the first two is the fact that you have to walk through the wasteland. In the first two, you just walked from point A to point B on an overhead map. The only locations you saw were the towns and the random encounters. But in the third game you actually see the landscape and have to walk through it, it is a completely different experience but fortunately you can still do the quick jumps back and forth if you need to. Another thing that as much as I grumble about it I think it is an improvement is the karma loss from pickpocketing and stealing. In the first game, I found that I could quickly max out some of my stats by stealing the books, caps, and items from the bookseller. Then I could sell her shit back to her in exchange for books. You would think that the women notice that I have been selling here the same .44 Desert Eagle for the past 36 hours. Plus, if I am supposed to be the savior of the wasteland, why should I be able to rob everybody blind without it affecting my character. I mean seriously, the first thing you when I got to a town was go through everybody's houses and take anything that wasn't nailed down. What's that Mr. Shopkeeper, you left you safe unattended, YOINK. And it had no effect on my karma. I do miss being able to steal all the ammo from a group of enemies before I engaged them. It was great when I had to fight a whole town of baddies and watch all of them run out of ammo after a single turn. I guess I could have done that in one location in Fallout 3 but I still hate losing the karma (but that's part of the design isn't it).

So some of the complaints that people have had would apply to the first two games as well. SPECIALS and skills were often a bit of voodoo before and sometimes were not as useful as you would have liked (though I do think that for better or worse they have pared down the skills and made most of them more relevant this time around). In the previous games you never had to worry about food or water. In the previous games each location existed as an isolated microcosm. I guess this is good if you want change the way your character is going. You may have devastated one town but you can decide to save the next but it I would like things to become more interconnected. Starting out it seems difficult to be effective with weapons. You always needed to be close to get a hit on and targetting a specific body part was hard. Once you got really good in your skills and got some perks under your belt it often gets to be the opposite. It's really easy to hit what you want and it becomes less of a challenge. In the first game, once you max out energy weapons and get the modified plasma gun and power armor you are pretty much unstoppable. I think the level cap in Fallout 3 keeps this from happening but there are mods out there to remove this if you want. Plus, the repair skill helps your weapons to also advance in quality as it goes on.

So that's my take on the game. I have a lot of other opinions about it but in essence I think it keeps a lot of the spirit and mechanics from the first two while making some concessions for keeping it along the lines of modern games. I think the gameplay of the previous games was a bit polarizing and this game isn't any different. Either you can get really into it or you can't. But if you can get it for $35 I would say it is a really good buy. Especially in light of the size of the game and the upcoming mods that are coming from both Bethesda and the gaming community at large. So if you really like the game, you have two play throughs (good and evil) with one of them where you might be inspired to try as many sidequests as possible (which will take a good amount of time). There are a few mods coming from Bethesda which should be pretty high quality and hopefully the mod community can put out some good packages too. So there is a lot of game time that you can pull out of it.

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: Born2bwire
But the main thing I think that turns people off is that the game's story is driven by the player alone. Just running through and doing the main quest and nothing else gives you the minimum story. The story is created by your exploration, curiosity and actions. This was true in all of the games. You had to go out and find the quests and run through them to experience a story. But in Fallout 3, a lot of the stories require a little more work. For example, the vaults that are littered throughout the landscape each have a small story to them. The player has to search the vaults out and the player has to search through the messages on computers and such to find out what the story was. So you have to work to find out what the story is, otherwise you just find a vault, run through the location killing things and leave without gaining anything other than some more ammo and junk. The other thing that I did not like in all of the games is that your actions are generally isolated. In the first two games, you would come upon a town and you would do your good/bad deeds there and you would get the associated praise/condmnation and then move on. But often times it felt like you did not do anything in the long run. If I saved one town its effects never really propagated outside of the town with the exception for karma. The only time you got a sense for how your actions affected things on a larger scale was at the end of the game when they gave a little story for each location on how things turned out. In Fallout 3 I like the fact that the radio station GNR will sometimes broadcast updates on your actions so it gives a sense that you are affecting not just the little town where you had the quest but the events that will transpire across the entire wasteland. But it still feels like I could blow up an entire city and it wouldn't affect anything else.

Great post, but this is the point that nails it. Throughout the entire game, I rarely forgot the main theme of the game about the world having been entirely nuked. Essentially, I got into it, which made every detail feel like "more" than it really was.

Others will probably argue that it's the job of the game to immerse you. To that I say 'whatever'.

 

[martensite]

Fallout 3 is just awesome. I am about 15 hours into the game and I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Probably the best game this year.
Maybe I am a bit biased since Oblivion was my favorite game, and the gameplay mechanics of FO3 seems to be quite similar, which is a good thing as far as I am concerned

I never played the first two Fallout titles, so I had no expectations coming into the current one.

 

[Maximilian]

Fallout 3 is awesome! I played oblivion before and it was okish... castles and fantasy crap isnt my thing really.

Its definately a contender for my GOTY, along with GTA IV and mass effect.