NMA: Fallout 3 review

[Brother None]

Since the reviews are still going in hot we figured it was time for us to pipe in. Our guest writer Vince D. Weller, known around the world for his Oblivion review, courteously accepted our invitation to write down his thoughts for us, and that he did. So we present NMA's Fallout 3 review.<blockquote>Instead of a consistent and logical world, we get "cool shit". What's cool shit, you ask? An excellent question. Cool shit is whatever stuff random Bethesda designers thought would be cool. To be honest, Fallout 2 was also sporadically guilty of this syndrome, but Fallout 3 takes it to a thoroughly different level.

A town in the crater of an unexploded bomb? - Cool!
A Peter Pan-esque settlement of invincible kids who expel people when they hit 16? - Awesome!
A Lovecraftian Cthulhu-dedicated "Dunwich horror" location - Pretty awesome!
A gang of blood-drinking vampire wannabies - Beyond awesome!
A howling radio DJ keeping the bored populace of the, uh, wasteland informed of your progress - wait, let me check my awesometer... my god, it's over 9000!!!

Overall, it would be easy to write a report worthy of an EU bureaucrat listing all the silly and stupid things Bethesda has shoehorned into Fallout 3. The biggest problem is not so much that it isn’t Fallout, but rather that the setting doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Bethesda had an opportunity to craft a cohesive “living & breathing” world, but instead chose to build an amusement park with a bit of everything ‘cool’ they could think of. To be fair, some things Bethesda did are brilliant and atmospheric, but they are isolated elements that never form a coherent and consistent world that makes even the most basic sense.
(...)
Exploration is an undeniable strength of all Bethesda’s sandbox games and Fallout 3 doesn’t disappoint on this front. You have a huge world filled with all kinds of different places to visit. 85 locations, to be specific. A lot of locations are incredibly atmospheric like the Dunwich building and the Museum of Technology and simply must be experienced.

The war-torn environment is superb. Broken buildings, highways, and bridges, interiors, ruined subway stations, the remains of the capital city are done nicely and convincingly. It’s a fantastic work, even if it’s off the mark by 200 years.

Armor sets (particularly the raiders armor), clothing, and weapons are very detailed and well designed (insane attention to details, I’d say). I built a steam-operated Railway Rifle, which came with a nice idle (or poor condition, perhaps?) animation: the rifle’s steam engine starts coughing and sputtering, my characters hits it a few times and the engine starts working properly again.</blockquote>

 

[Public]

Good read, but I don't like the ending.

Hopefully this review will be noticed.

 

[Drakehash]

Nice review.

Towns and locations deserve a special mention. Megaton, the first town you see when you step out of the vault, is basically the only real town in the game. The rest of the humanity is more than happy with 3-5 shack settlements, old hotels, and museums. Nobody does anything and how the hell these people survive remains a mystery. Exploring different towns and different ways of life was one of the most interesting aspects of Fallout, but sadly it’s not present in Fallout 3.

Sad to hear this, i mean one of the best part of fallout games was the interaction with npc on diferent towns, i guess like the review say, is not a fallout game but is the best game that Bethesda have done since daggerfall so i guess i will give it a try.

And i guess this resume everything why is not a fallout game:

"My idea is explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun."
Tim Cain, a Fallout developer

I feel sad when i read this

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Good read, but I don't like the ending.

Hopefully this review will be noticed.

Sorry to be so negative but of course it won't

Us NMA people are all a bunch of bitter little fanboys in the eyes of all the 'real' Fallout fans, remember?

 

[Eyenixon]

I fight the good fight with my voice!
[intelligence] Ah, so you fight the good fight with your voice, eh?
I can see that you are very smart.

I found that to be particularly humorous.

I don't exactly agree with his assessment of the prominence of choice and consequence (or lack thereof), as I found it to be generally lacking in its lax extremity with few decisions providing any significantly differing results, and mistakes or failures met only with limp wristed slaps of the hand. That's just my opinion of course.
For the most part, I found the review to be quite informative and thorough, a very well done job.

 

[Public]

Good read, but I don't like the ending.

Hopefully this review will be noticed.

Sorry to be so negative but of course it won't

Us NMA people are all a bunch of bitter little fanboys in the eyes of all the 'real' Fallout fans, remember?

At least we can have good hopes

Just like people hoped FO3 by Bethesda will be a good sequal.

 

[Dork Mage]

One of the forumer's over at iron tower studio gave a well written short synopsys of F3:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=575.msg18276#msg18276

Conclusion: There are nuggets of good in Fallout 3, it's just they're buried in mounds of awful stuff. I wish it were a total wash like Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, or Jade Empire...where on the RPG front they failed so very hard...but Fallout 3 showed a lot of potential and that makes it almost painful to see good design and designers squashed by Bethesda idiocy.

 

[ushdugery]

"My idea is explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun."
Tim Cain, a Fallout developer

I made a better plasma gun I killed some regulators and did some other stuff and they made my plasma gun better.

 

[Eyenixon]

"My idea is explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun."
Tim Cain, a Fallout developer

I made a better plasma gun I killed some regulators and did some other stuff and they made my plasma gun better.

Noooo! Do you realize what you have just done to the fabric of the universe?

 

[Sytxferryman]

Shooting old rusty cars results in even more nuclear explosions, which makes you wonder if there really was a big War or if a simple car accident caused a chain reaction of exploding nuclear cars across the States.

I laughed out loud when I read this.

Very well written article. Hits the nail on the head.

 

[Dionysus]

I think that's good review. I don't really agree with the "overcrowded" complaint that I see here and elsewhere. I don't think a realistically paced wasteland would be very entertaining. The original games certainly didn't make me feel like I was traveling through an empty wasteland. They made me feel like I was watching a red reticule move across the screen, which was interrupted every 45 s or so with a random encounter of some sort. I suspect that the developers of all of the FO games understand that a realistic sim wasteland wouldn't be a whole lot of fun. It's also worth noting that the FO3 game area is supposed to be like an extended Boneyard rather than a huge section of the east coast.

 

[ushdugery]

"My idea is explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun."
Tim Cain, a Fallout developer

I made a better plasma gun I killed some regulators and did some other stuff and they made my plasma gun better.

Noooo! Do you realize what you have just done to the fabric of the universe?

I guess you never did those quests in adyton...

 

[UncannyGarlic]

I think that's good review. I don't really agree with the "overcrowded" complaint that I see here and elsewhere. I don't think a realistically paced wasteland would be very entertaining. The original games certainly didn't make me feel like I was traveling through an empty wasteland. They made me feel like I was watching a red reticule move across the screen, which was interrupted every 45 s or so with a random encounter of some sort. I suspect that the developers of all of the FO games understand that a realistic sim wasteland wouldn't be a whole lot of fun. It's also worth noting that the FO3 game area is supposed to be like an extended Boneyard rather than a huge section of the east coast.

Oh I think it could be an incredibly fun adventure game, I just think that wandering FPP around the wasteland or through the wilderness is generally going to be boring. Wow, how amazing, traveling isn't exciting, so explain to me why the fuck Bethesda thinks that FPP and walking around is the best for RPGs? Now I do think that a more empty wasteland would work great in an RPG that you have to wander through if you used a vehicle to travel it in (one of those many nifty cars in Fallout 3), like in Mad Max. Actually I think you could do some interesting things with that by having maintenance, modifications, and lots of crap that you could do to your car. Fallout probably isn't the right setting for that but a PA RPG that mixes car travel with spelunking in ruined buildings could be extremely interesting, though I'd imagine it'd be a hell of a lot of work due to the joys of hybrids.

 

[Verum]

"Our guest writer Vince D. Weller, known around the world for his Oblivion review"

Wow, this is a well known reviewer? That review was horrible and full of hypocrisy. It was like the O'reilly factor for people who pose as fans of the fallout series. I'd really appreciate seeing more fallout fan reviews of Fallout 3, instead of people who play an hour of Fallout to belong to an "exclusive" fanboy club and pirate Fallout 3 so they can tell everyone how they think the original, which they still haven't beat, was so much better.

As an example of how much "research" this author did, here's a quote from the review:

"You have a huge world filled with all kinds of different places to visit. 85 locations, to be specific. A lot of locations are incredibly atmospheric "

85 locations huh? There's an achievement that requires going to 100 locations, and after getting that achievement you'll still have half the map left.

I do agree that the first two were better, but seriously, Fallout 3 is great and lives up to it's predecessors. I can only hope that Fallout 4 will surpass them. I mean we could've been stuck with another brotherhood of steel.

 

[Dionysus]

Oh I think it could be an incredibly fun adventure game, I just think that wandering FPP around the wasteland or through the wilderness is generally going to be boring. Wow, how amazing, traveling isn't exciting, so explain to me why the fuck Bethesda thinks that FPP and walking around is the best for RPGs?

It doesn’t matter whether it’s FPP or a bird’s-eye view. Exploration in realistic wasteland sim wouldn’t be a lot of fun. This isn’t really about immersion or any of that crap. It’s a question of how you can make a fun videogame. There isn’t much merit to the “not realistic” criticism in this case. Realism would suck.

Additionally, I find the exploration in FO3 to be more engaging than the exploration in any of the previous games. I know that kittens can be enthralled by laser pointers, but I’m not really engrossed when watching a red marker move across a map in FO1&2. FO3 gives me much more to negotiate when exploring.

 

[Sytxferryman]

As an example of how much "research" this author did, here's a quote from the review:

"You have a huge world filled with all kinds of different places to visit. 85 locations, to be specific. A lot of locations are incredibly atmospheric "

85 locations huh? There's an achievement that requires going to 100 locations, and after getting that achievement you'll still have half the map left.

You are talking about the little map tags that appear when you discover a location. I believe he is talking about actual towns and places, not metro entrances or other things like that. If you take off the metro dungeons there is a whole lot less.

As for the overcrowding... in the world of F1 and F2 it was miles and miles and miles and miles you would traverse before running into anything other than ... mo rocks no watta, hence you carry a handy Vault 13 canteen to prevent dehydration . And rightfully so after nuclear holocaust wiped out everything. This playing field (F3) is limited by the 3D engine as it can't support things being that far apart and hope no one notices that everything is within a farts distance of each other instead of a good month's time (in game) trekking across the map.

 

[bazola]

Excellent review.

 

[Verum]

You are talking about the little map tags that appear when you discover a location. I believe he is talking about actual towns and places, not metro entrances or other things like that. If you take off the metro dungeons there is a whole lot less.

As for the overcrowding... in the world of F1 and F2 it was miles and miles and miles and miles you would traverse before running into anything other than ... mo rocks no watta, hence you carry a handy Vault 13 canteen to prevent dehydration . And rightfully so after nuclear holocaust wiped out everything. This playing field (F3) is limited by the 3D engine as it can't support things being that far apart and hope no one notices that everything is within a farts distance of each other instead of a good month's time (in game) trekking across the map.

I haven't taken an exact count, but there's probably 30 or so metro entrances. I mean, even then saying "85 to be specific" isn't accurate.

As for the overcrowding, I'm lost as to what standard people are measuring this by. Are people upset because there isn't a ticker telling you that several days have passed, even though in reality it took about ten seconds? Back on my 150 MHZ processor it did take a minute or so to travel any great distance, but even then I'd have preferred that I traveled faster. Fallout 3 is also based within a city instead of a state, which is why everything is within a "farts distance of each other". All in all the entire argument is arbitrary because the distance traveled in either game is an illusion. I mean, if we start arguing semantics, if that little ticker said that I'd only been traveling for seventeen seconds instead of several days what I literally saw on screen would've remained the same.

 

[Kindo]

An interesting and entertaining read, that's for sure.

One of the largest cause of frustration is - aside from the constant dungeon-crawling - the so-called 'news' on the GNR-station. I assume they got the idea from the way news is handled on radio in GTA, but here it just feels random, limited, and insanely repetitive. If you haven't done anything new worth of note, he will just constantly blurt out the exact same stories, over and over again. It bugs me when all I want to do is tune in to some good oldies' music, I have to listen to him reporting (again!) that I'm an insane psycho killer/vague neutral wander/wasteland savior who was involved with some events in Big Town, for example. Yeah, he apparently knows exactly what type of person I am, and therefore starts each broadcast with describing what an asshole I am, and then continues on a seemingly unrelated note on how I saved some poor folks in the settlement known as Big Town. It's horrible - just horrible.

I also realize he's supposed to be your typical radio DJ, and they are always annoying and over-the-top, but in an attempt to shut his damn mouth for good, I went to his place at night and shot him in the head with my magnum. This made no difference whatsoever! The radio station didn't suddenly go dead - his stupid voice was still there even after I left the area. If there is one type of mod I long for, it's one that removes the absolutely moronic news broadcast on GNR. In fact, I would like the radio banter to be reduced overall, so that I can listen to the music instead (Agatha's station is a favourite, but she always interrupts the great melodies with repeated talk about her many lovers).

I really needed to vent, I see now.

 

[Leon]

I also had an interesting experience with Three Dog and GNR. I blew up Megaton and did a few other dastardly deeds before meeting ol' Triple Canine and on the radio I heard him call me all sorts of mean things and insinuate that I did all those things I did. And then I met him, and didn't pick the outright bastardly dialogue choices, which caused him to say that I was "giving off a pretty sweet vibe right now." It sounded odd, since after I left the station and tuned in again, he went right back to making me look bad. Two-faced asshole.