Is The Wasteland a place worth exploring or does it deserve more nukes?
Well that's the first question you get to answer in Fallout 3, and there is many more to come. For the players who has played Elder Scrolls IV or Star Wars Kotor, this isn't a new concept, but players who doesn't have any experience in these types of games might think that Fallout 3 is a FPS game, but that's not the case.
In the beginning Interplay, the creators of both Fallout 1 and 2, was going to create Fallout 3, but on December 8, 2003 Interplays roleplayingdivision Black Isle Studios had to be shutdown.
The Fallout title was now out on the market, and Bethesda Softworks producers of the Elder Scrolls series, where the one's who claimed the rights to keep the series going.
10 Years has passed since Fallout 2 was released and much has happen to it, the game is now played in first or third person. It can fool you when you watch screens from the game, it looks like a FPS but it's not. No Fallout 3 is a RPG, just as it's predecessor's. An other thing that the predecessor's had that is getting even greater in Fallout 3 is the dialogs and dilemmas the people in the wasteland have.
Dialogs in Fallout 3 are exactly as in Elder Scrolls IV, when you talk to a person you will be able to choose from several responses and approaches. This builds up many ways to twist and turn your characters personality. When approaching a person friendly most times result in a peace full conversation, it doesn't mean it's always the right thing to do to get the best result, but it sure helps being nice to the towns people, but on the other hand being a real bad ass can scare somebody and give a pretty neat result to.
Dialogs leads the player to the people of The Wastelands dilemmas and tasks, almost every place you visit will have a small quest chain, from picking landmines and getting food supplies, to shooting down people hit man style. It's actually really fun to walk the great Wasteland and discover all the small towns and factory's. And The Wasteland is a big place.
Your story begins at the day of your birth the year 2258, you are now a citizen in vault 101, one of the fallout shelters that mankind has used to survive from the nuclear war that took place year 2077, vault 101 was just one of many shelters but it was the only one the door out to the wasteland never opened for.
During the first 30 min's of the game you fast travel through time, to different period's of your life, in the end of these time jumps you are a 19 year old boy or girl, the year is now 2277. You wake up and your friend Amata is standing by your bedside screaming for you to get up. You ask her what is going on and she tells you your father has escaped the vault, and you have to do the same thing or the Overseer of the vault is going to kill you. And there the story of Fallout 3 takes it's start, it is time to find your father again.
The Wasteland is stunning to look at, the sun light dazzles you and the sandstorms has a natural feeling to them. But even if it looks amazing there is dangers out there in the wastes, and weapons and armors are necessary.
The weapons in Fallout 3 is on of the things I got a bit disappointed at. Some of the weapons in the game are really useless, take the laser gun for example. It looks like a square pipe and it doesn't do any damage at all, same goes for the laser rifle, this could have been done better, as the weapon actually shots laser beams. But that is not the biggest issue on the weapons front, the biggest issue is the recoil, almost every weapon in the game has Rambo recoil, there is not much feeling. But hey it's still amazing to shot down super mutants in V.A.T.S.
W.H.A.T I.S V.A.T.S?
V.A.T.S (The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) is a in combat option, where you can freeze time and select different parts of your enemy's body, and put a bunch of bullets in it. When entering V.A.T.S the enemy(s) will get there limbs marked and a percentage count will show how big the chance is that you hit that limb. A head shot might be more difficult to pull of then one in the leg, but it makes more damage, though a shot in the leg can prevent your enemy's from fleeing.
By killing enemy's or completing quest's you gain experience points, and gain levels. You can get to a level of 20 and each time you gain one you get to spend points in attributes that makes your character better at picking locks or aiming with smaller guns etc, these are known as Tag skills. There is also the Perks. Perks are also skills but instead of only boosting existing skills it grants you new one's and ability's, one of them makes it able for you to kill people while they are sleeping and another one makes it able for you to collect fingers from enemy's you kill, so you later on can turn them in for cash and so on.
The enemy's in general are either ghouls, raiders or super mutants there is other creatures and fiends out in the wastes to, but to be honest face one and you have seen them all, and that is one of the games downsides, not that there are to few different types of enemy's although it wouldn't hurt to throw in another hand full of monsters. No the thing that is lowering the score is that you can face 10 super mutants at the same time, go in to V.A.T.S and look through all of them, and realize that they all look the same, someone has a helmet an the other one doesn't okey, but come on is it that hard to at least make some different faces and maby a leader for each mutant group? And another thing that is a bit sad, is the lack of boss encounters, it would be easy to fit in several random boss encounters in the big world of Fallout 3 and maybe atleast a couple in the main story.
Overall Fallout 3 is a really really fun game, and it should be one of the games that stand in the RPG/FPS players shelf. Bethesda managed to keep the Fallout shelter alive and there will be no more bombs over the Wastelands for now.