I praised the environmental environments earlier but the one thing that Bethesda didn't do as well as I thought they could was in the characters themselves. For the most part they look OK and I think a little improved over what you see in Oblivion. The problem though is they move pretty stiffly and the animations just aren't up to the quality of the rest of the game. Seeing raiders run at you with their backs straight up, arms pointed straight, and almost gliding towards you while not horrible just doesn't look really well done.
Because it's an RPG, you'll be spending a lot of time talking to people. Character interaction is vital to the game and you'll be presented with various dialogue options when conversing with NPCs. What's really cool is depending on your skill-set, perks, and even gender you might be offered more options in your dialogue tree than available to other types of characters. It adds to the replay value as you can try different tactics when talking to people and having different outcomes. The voice work in Fallout 3 is really well done so the conversations were nice to listen to. It's this way that you'll get your missions in both your main venture and various side quests.
Speaking of quests, you can sometimes find various ways to complete them. An early example is when you try to escape from the Vault. You can go all gung ho and take out any person that gets in your way. I decided to kill the Overseer of the Vault the first time and that really pissed off my friend who incidentally was the daughter of the Overseer. The second time around I snuck around and avoided conflict as much as I could bypassing the Overseer and going straight for the Vault door. My friend this time was a lot more sympathetic towards me and I also had better karma going this route. There was also a part where I helped a citizen of the Vault save his mom from roaches. The first time I played I charged in but I didn't get to her time. He wasn't pretty happy with me after that. The second time I was able to convince him to go in by giving him my baseball bat and he took care of the roaches himself saving his mom. To show his gratification, he gave me his jacket. As you can see by these two examples, you can really get a different experience each time you play the game. I could easily save his mom, kill the Overseer and changed a few other outcomes before leaving the Vault. One great thing about Fallout 3 is you are presented with many choices each with their own set of outcomes and within all the combinations that are available you'll get a different experience many times over. How do I proceed this time knowing what I know from previous games? How can I maximize my chances? What would happen if I do this instead of this? These choices and variations really give you a ton of replay value.
While the main game might take you from 20 hours or so to finish by doing just the main quest (Two folks at Bethesda
beat it in 75 minutes), there are plenty of side quests to keep you busy so a game can easily last into the 100+ hour range.. Even after finishing the game you'll be nowhere near visiting every single local that's available. The world of Fallout 3 is indeed big with a great deal of places to visit. The end game is finite so you can't go back but you can replay the game and do different things and visit new places. Fallout 3 begs you to play it again because there are some exciting areas to visit that you'll no doubt miss the first time around.
Playing on the Xbox 360, I was very happy with the load times and the draw distance was really far. There were an occassional hiccup here and there but nothing too distracting. The graphics were clean and crisp while offering smooth gameplay. Thankfully, the game doesn't make you save at save points as you are free to save anywhere, something I'd like to see more console games do. I'm a PC person at heart though so when I go through the game again I'll probablly do so on the PC where my rig is a lot more powerful and I can enjoy using a mouse and keyboard.
Fallout 3 is another testament to Bethesda's ability to create engrossing, fun, and epic role playing game. There's so much to do and so much to see. Bethesda has really done well to combine the music, graphics, and style in carrying on the Fallout tradition. There are some small annoyances with the game but it doesn't take away from the whole package. Fallout 3, the long overdue sequel, will satisfy many RPG fans and fans of the first two. I know I'll be revisiting the game a few more times just to experience many of the areas I missed the first time. Bethesda should be very proud of their accomplishment and I hope we don't have to wait another
A-
Fallout 3 is an epic RPG with choices that affect a lot of how your game will play out. V.A.T.S. combat is over the top but normal FPS like combat isn't that well done. The music and graphics combine for a true recreation of the Fallout style of yesteryear. There's a tremendous amount of replay value here as well so you'll really want to play it over and over again. Fallout 3 is worth the wait and it's not surprising that Bethesda has done it again.
Page 3 of 3