The post-apocalyptic legend returns in an unbelievable success from Bethesda Game Studios.
But first we need to make things a little clear. Fallout 3 is, yes, Oblivion with guns. But I beg you not to turn away. It's not the buggy Oblivion we've known, loved and hated. It's Oblivion minus ALL of the flaws it had, moved to a post-apocalyptic setting and made ten times better in every term and meaning of the word.The game takes place in a completely destroyed Washington DC. The reason is, as some may have already guessed, a nuclear war. With China, to be more precise. After nukes rained down on DC the place had become a wasteland of ruins, mutants, radiation and rare survivors. But things are not as hopeless as they seem. The war was imminent, and the American Government knew it long before the Apocalypse. So the Vaults were constructed - enormous underground strongholds designed to shelter some of the population from the nuclear disaster and preserve generations of residents.
The story takes off at one of these shelters, Vault 101. We begin playing from our first seconds - As we witness our own birth from first-person perspective. Without hesitation I can call it one of the most memorable moments in the whole game. As in every standard Role-Playing Game, there is not one predefined parameter of your character. You are free to choose your name, sex, race and change your appearance. From the first moments Fallout 3 shows that it definitely has succeeded in storytelling - It is captivating, interesting, and always tempts you to just get on with events and climb out of the shelter to explore the mysterious world outside.
After some key moments(including your 10th Birthday, when you get your first Pip-Boy, and your first GOAT test), at the age of 18 you find out that your father has somehow left the Vault, and all of the security is looking for you for answers. A brief tutorial-like level follows, where you traverse the Vault, killing guards and getting the hang of the game's core mechanics. After some time you finally witness as the steel door of Vault 101 rolls aside, and then, now behind you, seals for the last time. The second most memorable moment.
The prologue ends here, and as you step out from the caves you are blinded from the light - and after a few seconds your eyes adapt to the sun for the first time in your life, and you witness The Capital Wasteland in all it's glory and misery. The third most memorable moment.
From this moment on, everything that involves the story is up to you, your actions, your decisions and the game's innovations. So I'm not going to ruin it up anymore, and move on to other aspects.
The gameplay was our first and utmost subject of worry. How would the ingenious isometric RPG going to be moved to a 3D environment without losing it's charm and atmosphere? Bethesda proves itself yet again.
We can choose to look at the world from the character's eyes or from a third-person perspective, although the latter makes interacting pretty hard and is generally not a valid way to play. The DC is huge - and there's zero chance of any kind of transports after a nuclear war, so it's up to us and our swift feet to explore every single unique bit of the Wasteland. As an example I'll set a town that the 99% of all players visit after leaving the Vault - Megaton. The architecture itself is amazing and very creative. The town is built from the remains of a crashed airplane, and what's more - built around a dropped atomic bomb which didn't detonate for some reason. After a friendy chit-chat with the local Sheriff-and-Mayor, you are free to walk around and see what's what. And right then and there the game starts to amaze. You can start to investigate your father's disappearance from the nearby bar, or you can just turn away from the main storyline and start completing side quests. They are NOT like in other games. Most of the optional missions unfold into such complex stories of their own that you just want to stand up and applause. Some of them are typical quests given by key(Or not so) NPS-s and resulting with a reward, while others are unlocked by mere accidents, while traversing the Capital Wasteland for hours and stumbling by a little town. Completing the main storyline head-on equals not knowing more than a half of the game's potential.
The core mechanics of the game have, naturally, been developed from the ground-up. From RPG elements we have Leveling, XP, Perks, Skills of course, which are very varied and well-balanced, although genre veterans wil most likely understand some of the useless ones from the first glance. We have a very well-organized inventory which is displayed on The Pip-Boy(A portable computer on the character's hand). Apart from your items, the device also shows you everything else you want to know: Your health level, your social status, the world map with unlocked locations(Fast-travel is not forgotten), and what's most satisfying, it has a built-in radio. At first, there are only two frequencies available: The Enclave Radio which broadcasts President Eden's speeches and is believed by many to be pre-recorded; And The Galaxy News Radio, narrated by a friendly DJ Three Dog. He constantly talks new stuff like whereabouts of Raiders, general status on The Capital Wasteland and it's key locations, useful information regarding enemies or sometimes even about your heroic deeds. Simply the most ingenious motivational system in games up-to date.
Notice how I said that these two stations are available "at first". Intrigued? You should be, because that's all I'm going to say.
Now, about the combat. Yes yes and the new VATS system too. The gunplay itself is pretty well-made for an RPG, but is definitely outdated compared to today's FPS games. You have a gun, you shoot and that's it. Well not exactly. The basic shooter rules like "crouching increases accuracy" and "strafing is critical for success" are in works, yes, but more useful then them is the V.A.T.S(Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System), which pretty much is all that is left from the turn-based machanics of the prior games. In mid-combat, you press the "V" button, and the world freezes. You get a close up on one of your enemies(Or another, you are free to change targets in-range), and are given a choice to shoot at a specific location on his body(No bad thoughts). Along with it comes a percentage of the possibility of hitting that particular part, and the ability to hit multiple limbs or even chain the targeting on a few enemies. After you've chosen your victims you press "E" and take a deep breath. You get a close up on you or your foe(The camera work, I must admit, is impressive) and see as your every predefined hit finds it's target, or misses. The most interesting thing is that during this cutscene you have absolutely no control over your character, and the world isn't frozen anymore, you can easily get hit or even die during VATS. Of course, all of this lasts mere seconds. But we all know how valuable seconds are in action sequences.
Hopefully the number of shots you can make from VATS depend on your Action Points(AP) Which are pretty limited but recharge over time themselves. So you wont be a slo-mo superman, no, you will be trying to find more and more ways to use VATS economically and gain a tactical advantage over another unfriendly Supermutant.
The weapons themselves are extremely variable and there are just too many of them. Sometimes you even need to find schematics, develop a certain skill and obtain parts of a particularly powerful gun to build it yourself. The mother of all weaponry here is entitled "The Fat Man", and fires, ahem, mini-nukes. You can guess the firepower.
And now about the presentation, and the main problems of the Oblivion game engine. Let's get the worst out of the way first.
Yes, the graphics are not as good as we'd like, but almost, almost. It's an enormous RPG, if nothing. You have to take that into account. But then again, the polygon count and texture size isn't everything. The horrible animation from Oblivion is here, and shines out whenever the moment permits. But it takes only minutes to get captivated by the game, and once that happens, you don't care ONE BIT about how unnaturally that ghoul moves or why are the faces so emotionless.
What I want to say is that with a game so complex even isometric graphics would do and we'd still be praising Bethesda, but they even let us take a look at some next-gen features. Great HDR, Bloom and amazing draw distance are what make the picture from Fallout 3 stand out. and a great optimization for PCs.
What really crowns the experience though is the sound design, which is simply gorgeous. There were a scary amount of people invited to voice the hundreds of characters in Fallout 3, the music is just great, and makes a big chunk of the atmosphere. Along with some classical score pieces you have some really nice 80's licensed songs, which just deepen the involvement and, I am clearly overusing the word, atmosphere even more.
It's impossible to believe but Bethesda actually did it. A perfected Oblivion formula met with a post-apocalyptic world and the two were fused with a very rare ingenuity. And the very feelings that everyone experienced when leaving the underground vault from Fallout 1 are replicated to the core here in Fallout 3. The series fans will have a great nostalgic time reviving the good old times in a next-gen setting, while newcomers will see what made Fallout so great, that it's still king of the RPGs over ten years later now.
P.S. I sincerely apologize for such a long and unbalanced review. It constantly happens to me: I just get carried away, and text compression just isn't my thing. But I had to pour this out somehow :)