Review
Release Date: 10.28.2008
Platform:
Xbox 360Developer:
Bethesda Softworks Inc.Publisher:
Bethesda Softworks Inc.Reviewed by
Samuel Altersitz on 11.28.2008
| Review Rating: 8/10 | User Rating: 8.5/10 |
War. War never changes. These iconic words have meant one thing to many gamers over the years: the opening to a
Fallout game. Nearly a decade after the release of
Fallout 2,
Fallout 3 has finally arrived. However, this isn’t the same Fallout of old; with a different developer at the helm, things have changed. But war; war never changes.
Bethesda Softworks, creators of the
Elder Scrolls games have taken up the helm of developing
Fallout 3; and it does show in many ways. The default perspective, the amount of things to do and find and some changes to how certain plot specific (an non-plot specific) characters are handled when it comes to being able to kill them or not.
However, Bethesda has managed to capture the overall feeling of the Fallout universe, for the most part. This is something many people, including myself, had worried about. I’m glad to say that--for me at least--those worries were unfounded.
For those new to the
Fallout universe, a little back story is in order. The basic premise is a world that never really got past the ideology of the 1950’s. Cars, billboards, music, etc. all have a very retro feel to their design and sound. Cars have the tail fins of old, billboards and other media have a look pulled straight from Norman Rockwell paintings, and the music is from the late 1930’s and 1940’s. Then, in the year 2077, war came to the planet. Nuclear war. And the world was thrown into a nuclear winter the likes of which had never been imagined. Some people, though, escaped the worst of the blasts by hiding away in underground facilities known as vaults. It is in one of these vaults that players begin their journey, 200 years after the bombs fell.
Now without going into any real details that can spoil the plot, obviously players will leave the vault and begin traversing the areas in and around Washington D.C., now known as the Capital Wasteland. Along the way, players will find little settlements, bigger “cities,” random encounters, and maybe just a few odds and ends that may make them take pause.
Obviously, this is a fair bit different from the previous
Fallout games, which took place on the West Coast and in a very different third person isometric perspective.
Fallout 3 moves the action over a few thousand miles and into a first person perspective. While both of these changes seem like they’d be a risk, they both actually work out very well. The detail given to the graphics, while they definitely take liberty as to what would actually still be standing after a nuclear war, is astounding; and the first person view actually makes everything seem almost too realistic in its destruction. While I still feel that
Fallout can work as a good third person game, the first person view does work well for how Bethesda wanted to show the world.
Roaming around the Capital Wasteland gives players a feeling of desolation, and struggle. Destroyed buildings, ragtag shanty towns and the overall bleakness of the environment can really pull players into the post apocalyptic world. Radiation is everywhere, from the rivers to the food and it affects everything in the world. Add in mutated creatures, roving bands of raiders and super-mutant humans that all pose dangers to players as they explore what was once a thriving metropolis and its suburbs and we can see why this area is called a wasteland.
The first-person view also changes the formerly turn-based combat into a much more real-time driven system. Now, while this gives the appearance of the game being a first-person shooter, it isn’t. Just aiming and shooting does not guarantee hits and kills; as your skill with the type of weapon is taken into account. The small guns skill helps projectile pistols, shotguns and rifles; energy weapons is for laser pistols and rifles; and heavy weapons is used for Gatling guns, rocket launchers and the like. A better skill with each weapon type helps to ensure hits and increases the potential damage when using those weapons. This can cause problems, though, as you still can miss a point blank shotgun shot to the center of mass of an opponent.
Players can go to a third-person view, but the game is nigh unplayable in it. Like Bethesda’s latest outings, Morrowind and Oblivion, it is more useful for just seeing what the character looks like. Combat is near impossible and the animations the player character does look just horrid. Stick to first-person, or pull the camera in very close over the shoulder if one desires to play in third-person.
To help with combat, and to allow some feeling of its predecessor’s turn-based combat, Bethesda introduced the Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System, or VATS. VATS allows players to pause the action and target specific body parts on specific enemies. When the VATS queued moves activate, the action is shown in slow motion with the effects of said action also played out in slow motion. It’s an interesting effect, though at times it can feel a bit too necessary to even score a hit. Just a note: cool critical hits that result in the death of your opponent become far less cool if one takes the bloody mess perk.
Speaking of perks, they are little extras granted each level. Some increase stats, some increase skills, some make players able to find more bottle caps or ammunition and some are specific to completing certain quests. Not every perk is necessary, nor is every perk useful for each play style. But they can help in advancing players’ characters a bit more.
Unfortunately, this brings us to a big problem I have with Fallout 3, and that is the leveling of characters. Quite simply, I find that I level up far too fast in Fallout 3. While this normally wouldn’t be a bad thing, there is a level cap of level 20 in the game. And, honestly, with how many random encounters I came across and my incessant need to complete as many side quests as possible, I pretty much hit the level cap well before finishing the game and with still at least half of the Capital Wasteland to discover. I find this problematic, because it really made me not want to continue on finding quests and new areas because I would no longer be getting any character advancement from doing these things. For a game with so much to do, this is a huge let down.
This is compounded when you discover you get experience for lock picking, hacking, and even making speech successes when given the opportunity. Add in free form quests where you are allowed to just turn in items for experience (and money), and I just found myself leveling far too fast. I really hope a level cap removal patch comes out, even if they decide to make skills cost more to raise after level 20, it would greatly increase my desire to discover the entirety of the Capital Wasteland and complete all the quests I can find.
Unfortunately there is also a problem with how skills are gained and what attributes are necessary to adequately go through the game. Tagged skills no longer gain points at double the rate, as they did in
Fallout and
Fallout 2, instead they just get a one time bonus of 15 skill points. Granted, Bethesda limited the skill maximum to 100 instead of 300, but it is still a let down. Because of this, though, Intelligence is a necessary stat for every play style. Since intelligence dictates how many skill points you get per level, the higher the better. The other attribute that is far too necessary is strength, even if you never intend on using melee weapons or going hand to hand against enemies. The reason? Becoming over encumbered. As players pick up loot to sell or whatnot, they become encumbered. A higher strength means the ability to hold more, which is infinitely useful; this also make the strong back perk almost a necessity, since it allows for players to carry an extra 50 pounds.
Also, while the graphics and sound in
Fallout 3 are normally top notch, there are some complaints in those departments—mainly in the form of glitches. There can be horrible graphical glitches that actually make the game unplayable until the Xbox 360 is turned off and turned back on. One example was in one town where if I looked towards a certain building the screen went nearly completely white with large broken up polygons emanating from the center. Sound glitches normally pop up in the radio station hearing the exact same thing said a few times in a row. Seriously, for a game that has been in development for over three years these sorts of glitches are simply unacceptable.
Another problem is the auto save feature. Basically every time you open a door that loads a new area, the game auto saves. The problem here is that you can sometimes end up in a death loop as you enter a door and get killed almost immediately. Players should use their ability to save anywhere fairly liberally to help alleviate this.
While Bethesda was able to capture the feeling of
Fallout, for the most part, there are also times that
Fallout 3 really does feel like “
Oblivion with guns.” While this feeling is pretty minimalistic most of the time, there are a few times it really starts to feel like this—mainly when you just keep getting one random encounter after another. However, the main quest is a good 20 or more hours when you include travel time and fighting, and with the optional side quests and the immense Capital Wasteland to discover, the game could literally go on for near a hundred hours for those so inclined. A word of warning though: at a certain point in the main story (almost the end) the game becomes very linear, since you cannot leave the area where the story finishes... and in a horrid twist, when the main story is over, the game is literally over for that character. If players wish to explore more on that character, they should be sure to have a save set up before the game becomes linear.
Overall, though,
Fallout 3 is a very enjoyable game that does live up to the name
Fallout, no matter how vehemently the more vocal detractors decry it. The story, immensity of areas to explore and things to do, setting and feeling of desolation really do bring me back to the older
Fallout games; even if some of the game play doesn’t.
