Ever since I bought Fallout 3 on Friday afternoon, I’ve been struggling to think of a way to introduce the game to people through this site. What should I talk about first? The massive choice in the game? The masterfully-constructed storyline? My new Vault Boy bobblehead that I received with the collector’s edition? Eventually, I decided the best way to get into Fallout was by introducing the storyline. So here goes:
Fallout 3 (and indeed, all of the Fallout series) is set in alternate future. Not a possible future, but a future that may have once possibly occured. Err. Well, we’re off to a great start. Here it is: After the second world war, America was gripped in several different manias. On one hand, the promise of nuclear energy gave an incredibly bright future. On the other, the communist threat, coupled with dwindling resources of petroleum and uranium, set to tear the world apart. In this past, the Americans never invented the microchip. Instead, they managed to harness Fusion power, and most commonly-found appliances run on Nuclear power. Because they still use vacuum tubes, though, the whole thing has a sci-fi 1950’s feel; computers are incredibly advanced, yet they are still the size of a van. Meanwhile, Timmy plays marbles with the kids down the street without fear of Pedophiles, and husbands are probably still allowed to hit their wives if they overcook a meatloaf. Essentially, the resource war flared up between the United States and the rest of the world, and a nuclear war ensued, lasting two hours. The series takes place years after the bombs have dropped. In the USA, the government, in partnership with a private company, built massive underground vaults, each meant to hold 1000 people, supposedly acting as “fallout shelters”. The player character in Fallout 3 is born in vault 101, located just outside Washington, DC. In vault 101, no-one ever enters and no-one ever leaves; it’s one of the few vaults still unopened by the survivors, 200 years after the war (the year of the game is 2277). However, one day your father mysteriously abandons the vault, and you become the second person to ever leave Vault 101 as you search to find him in the hostile wasteland.
Well, I’m three paragraphs in and I haven’t really mentioned the game yet. Simply put, Fallout 3’s tutorial is incredible. It’s always seemed to me that tutorials inevitably break the game’s immersion. After all, why does Gordon Freeman; a physicist, for Christ’s sake, have to be taught how to jump over obstacles or crouch under debris?
how dus i jump?
That’s why Fallout succeeds. The very first control the player has over their character is at the age of one, as their father (the player’s mother died after childbirth) teaches them to walk. Already, the game has found a way to incorporate tutorials in a way that makes sense. The game then fastforwards to the player’s tenth birthday, were they are given their own little wrist-mounted computer thingy and taught how to shoot using a BB Gun (ah, the political incorrectness). Another skip takes the player to their 16th birthday, where they take a job aptitude test which also allows them to choose their skills in the game. The main action takes place in the next skip, though, to when the character is 18/19.
Fallout 3, judging by what I’ve seen so far, is staggeringly choice-laden. Of course, like any self-respecting RPG these days, you can choose to be good or evil, though Fallout 3 also introduces the concept of neutral, where neither saintliness or demonic spawn is chosen. The whole moral thing gives some weird choices. Starting out, I wanted to be a computer nerd who although lacking in combat skill, was a genius at computers and lockpicking. I wanted to be evil, basically. But as soon as Daddy started being proud of me for taking my first steps, my heart melted and I stayed on the straight and narrow. The player’s father is excellently voiced by Liam Neeson, and it’s difficult not to make an emotional attachment with almost all of the Vault characters. Which is why it hurt me so much in the next loadup I played, where I was a total dick to everyone but Dad; getting into fights with the Greasers (yeah, they’re still around in this time period) and shooting one of Dad’s coworkers with my BB Gun.
Fallout 3 is also about letting you play however the hell you want. I, for instance, read a report of a playtester beating the game with only one kill under his belt (which is a compulsary RadRoach kill on your tenth birthday). Then again you could go in guns blazing, as I did my second time around, and kill everyone you can’t steal from or use to your advantage. Oh yeah, I also slept with a whore for $120, then charmed her into telling me her bosses’ computer password. Oh yeah; needless to say this game isn’t for the kiddies (MA 15+ for Drug use, Coarse Language, Heavy Violence, Sexual References, Adult Themes, etc, etc). To wrap this up, I’m going to mention a quest available in the game. Possible spoilers:
Very early on in the wasteland you will find a town called Megaton, so named because it’s built around an Atomic bomb. Yeah, bad civic design, but I guess it brings in tourists. Anyway, you either have the option of defusing the bomb (which has been curiously active for 200 years) or following the request of a shady character in a bar and blowing up the whole fucking town. It was a pretty easy decision to make for me.
OH SHI--
And the thing is is that the game doesn’t punish you either way. If you save the town, you get a house, and obviously friendship and quests from the citizens. If you blow it up for the wealthy businessman, you’ll find yourself in a penthouse apartment taking high-paying jobs from people of quesitonable moral fibre. Either way, you still get quests, and it’s good to see they don’t push you either way.
Apparently, there’s about 200 different permutations (heh, mutations) of the endgame based on how you played, though I’ll have to finish it at least once to see if this is true. So I’m getting right back into it. Basically, if you enjoyed Oblivion, Bethesda Softworks’ previous game; like the 1950s Nuclear Golden Age (there must be at least someone out there) or just want to see the world burn (why so serious?), I heartily reccomend Fallout 3. Word of warning though: It’s an RPGFPS, with focus on the RPG. IF YOU DO NOT ENJOY LOTS AND LOTS OF OPEN-ENDED QUESTS, COUPLED WITH LOTS OF DIALOGUE AND QUITE A FEW STATS, DO NOT FOLLOW MY RECCOMENDATION. HOWEVER, IF YOU ENJOYED OBLIVION YOU PROBABLY WON’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT. I’M GONNA POST UP MORE OF FALLOUT 3 AS I FIND IT, AND MAYBE EVEN SOME OF MY OWN TALES IN THE WASTELAND. I’M ALSO GONNA STOP SHOUTING NOW.
I Love You, Vault Boy.
Tags: A $120 dollar whore is probably either too cheap or too expensive, Mr Handy.... He's sooooooooooooo Handy, The Vault Life is the Right Life
November 1, 2008 at 2:22 pm |
I WANT IT.
I think I’ll be Evil.
November 4, 2008 at 8:17 am |
HURRY UP AND POST!
IT’S BEEN 4 DAYS!