Fallout 3

War… war never changes. Once upon a time, back in 1997, there was a game called Fallout. It was a great game, probably one of the most hardcore tactical shooters since X-COM but it tempered it’s density with a Monty Python style of silly black humor.  You played as a survivor of a nuclear war, a denizen of a self contained fallout shelter called a vault. One day the water purification chip in the vault breaks down and you are sent on a quest to locate a new one, questing across the irradiated ruins of California. The sequel was just as good or better, with plenty more options, interactions and nasty surprises. And while I did enjoy the Fallout Tactics spin off there was really no true sequel to the series for 10 years. Finally in 2008 Bethesda Softworks has released Fallout 3, and in my opinion, it is ultimately a very good game.

Yes, I am placed in an interesting conflict, since the stuff I love as a fallout fan are the things I should hate as a critic. I am referring to the extreme graphic violence, the casual profanity and the barrage of pop culture references and juvenile humor. Still I feel that Bethesda has struck a good balance that while it is not tasteful it is not obscene either. Gone are the movie references and jokes about venereal diseases but many of the elements that make Fallout frightening (poverty, lawlessness, explosive violence) still remain. What you are left with is a world that is quite awful, but not one that exaggerates for humor and shock value. Instead Fallout 3 speaks to your most basic hunter gatherer instincts, dropping you into a harsh wasteland where food and shelter are scarce and your weapons require frequent repairs or replacement. While the game does not go into full blown simulation (requiring that you eat and sleep to stay alive) it does reward a healthy scavenger with little bonuses here and there.

Unfortunately this is one of those few stories that has a great beginning and culminates in a lackluster ending. Fallout 3 starts only seconds after you emerge from the birth canal, with your father speaking to you as a newborn infant. The game then jumps into brief episodes of your early life. For example it teaches you the controls as you learn to walk as a toddler and instructs you on social interactions by jumping to your tenth birthday party. Eventually you reach the age of 19 at which point you must find your runaway father who has left the vault for reasons unknown. Despite the many ways one can live their life in the wasteland there is really only a couple of endings to this tale with additional footnotes based on choices you have made. And this ending comes so abruptly and anticlimactically that it has left pretty much every player I have spoken to confused and wanting more.

Fortunately, outside of the main story, the game world contains a huge amount of non-essential content, by which I mean locations and events that don’t tie into the plot but instead serve as backdrops for the character to have their own unique experience. This includes abandoned baseball parks, half sunken fishing boats filled with beers, gutted 50’s style dinners, and deserted tourist traps. Maybe while you are exploring you might get attacked by raiders and mutated animals, or maybe you will just be left alone to contemplate the silent skeletal remains of post nuclear war America. This sense of place is of course much more heavily accentuated during the scripted encounters that take place at such scenic locales such as the Jefferson Memorial and the Museum of Natural History. These places retain enough of their former glory to make you wish you had a working camera but they are also bombed out enough to give you some Planet of the Apes style chills as you see monuments in ruins.

Still in the end all this setting amounts to little more than an apocalyptic sandbox for you to play in, so thankfully playing this game is really fun. It combines the multi branching narrative paths of an RPG with the streamlined action of a first person shooter. Also the game adjusts to your actions, both intentional and accidental. For example if an important character dies the game goes on but dialog options and world events change slightly to make up for that loss. On the other hand morality is an odd thing in the wasteland, since the type of character you would normally call an anti-hero comes out an angel in this game. Going through the game again I am playing as a doctor who lies, steals, abuses drugs and has even killed a couple of civilians in cold blood. Still I am having a hard time shaking his overwhelmingly positive reputation less I become a complete and total monster. For a game that tracks dozens of small subtleties it has a hard time passing complex judgment on your actions.

All in all Fallout 3 is a great game that is also supported by a capable publisher and the combined fan bases of Oblivion mod makers and Fallout fanatics. Besides whatever enjoyment you get out of the box you can also look forward to several mini expansions and tons of new free new content made by fans with the G.E.C.K. content editor. So yes, the best is yet to come…