Fallout 3 stands out as Bethesda's strongest effort to date, and even taller as the best game you'll play this year.
By contrast, Oblivion left me limp. While technically more impressive, and despite revisions to combat, the world seemed less compelling, and I noticed a tendency to force myself to completion, just so I could give it a fair shake, then be done with it. Perhaps it was the mind numbingly repititious Oblivion gates that all looked and played the same, but took forever to complete. Perhaps the landscape, while graphically enhanced, seemed lifeless and lacking in atmosphere...I don't know.
But, when Fallout 3 came out, I feared more of the same and passed.
But, fate stepped in, by the guise of my local 7-11. I went to buy a pack of smokes, and saw that they were selling Fallout 3, and thought "Well, I played Fable 2...it can't be any worse." So, I told the clerk to toss it in, and with my nachos and menthols, Fallout 3 came home with me.
One area Bethesda often drops the ball, I find, is in their opening presentation. Outside of an awkward "stepping in of fate" like intro, the game just seems to dump you into a landscape like a cabbie who just found out you can't pay the fare, and say "best of luck buddy."
Fallout 3 offers the best opening of a Bethesda game to date. From second go, it tosses you into the plot, dripping in placenta, and piece by growing piece, your character, the world around you, and the story come into sharp focus. And, every second of the opening is utterly engaging.
Eventually, as with most Bethesda games, you end up in a new city, and become overwhelmed with a whole lot to do, and very little idea on where to go or how to do it. It's a big world, and while not quite as big as their previous ones...the world of Fallout 3 feels desolate, and I men that in the best way possible. It's barren, it seems terrifying, and devoid of hope.
Once I did a couple of quests just to gain my bearings, I set out along the main quest, and that's where the real magic of the landscape happens. While the game is littered with barren landscape and desolation, once you get to the Capital, and you see the Washington Monument, scavage through the Jefferson Memorial gift shop, sneak through the dark of the subway tunnels, the combination of intense danger mixed with some of the most familiar landmarks in American history, make the atmosphere deep, intense, and completely absorbing.
I found myself breaking off the main quest...not because I lost interest, but because I wanted to see EVERYTHING put into this game. I entered every possible building I could that had a door to open, just to see what was inside. I talked to every NPC I passed, trying to figure out if there was a story behind them. That was when I realized that wonderful feeling I hadn't uncovered since playing Morrowind...I was completely immersed in this game!
And, as cited before, while the world of Fallout 3 was no where near as large as Morrowind, the atmosphere was charged with far more intensity. Combat, which has often been the punch line to a bad joke in Bethesda games to me, was handled FAR better than any game they have released to date.
Also, the game LOOKED better than any game they have released. And, I don't mean graphically (in which the game is no slouch), I mean visually. Oblivion, by comparison, looks clunky compared to Fallout 3. It's polished very well, better than any game they have realeaed. Okay, maybe the super mutants begin to look a little absurd after you fight them for the umpteenth time, but mostly, people look and act largely like people. Monsters look, well, believable.
And, while I touch on reptition a bit, let's get to that point in every Bethesda game where it wouldn't be a Bethesda game unless it had some of this...repitition. Some environments, interiors specifically, begin to look alot the same after a while. Alot of buildings have a familiar floorplan. Subways are even worse, having a layout that makes it hard to distinguish one from another after a while. Both Morrowind and Oblivion suffered from this, and it'd be foolish to think Fallout 3 could escape this fate completely.
Also, combat has a sort of clunkiness to it...but only sometimes. Most of the time, combat is completely fulfilling. Most of that can be attributed to two things that are a first for Bethesda...VATS and stuff that blows up. Laying traps of mines for monsters and watching slow motion fatalities of their limbs flying off their once solid bodies is as satisfying as it is viciously graphic. But, every once in a while, you run out of AP, and catch yourself circle stafing an ant while wildly swinging a baseball bat, and for that little sliver of time, memories of Oblivion and Morrowind come to mind, as you swing at thin air because your crosshair was off by a fraction of an inch.
And, honestly...how hard is it to make a system to give commands to party members to do what you want them to? Really, if Mass Effect could do it...but I digress.
But, these criticisms are small, and did little to deter me from the game. In fact, the fact that the game had so few potholes along it's path of complete and utter immersion was a complete surprise to me. It's shown how much Bethesda has grown as a developer, and how much reverence they had for this project. The world of Fallout 3 is as immersive and complete as any they have ever created, and they managed to improve on every weakness their past efforts have had, namely combat and focus. This game has a sharper focus than any game Bethesda has ever made. Morrowind seemed to take a lifetime to really "get into", and Oblivion shoved a plot down your throat so fast, but seemed to forget to give you a compelling reason to follow it.
Fallout 3 always has it's eye on the ball, never losing it's focus, even in the mind boggling array of sidequests and terrain, offering up an experience that is engaging, intense, rewarding, and most importantly, a world that rewarded my time spent playing greater than any game in recent memory.