Dan's Ultimate Fallout 3 Round-Up

by danielkempster

After having what may well be the worst morning I've lived through in recent memory, I'm in a pretty bad mood. The kind of mood where I want to bitchslap everybody I see because the mere sight of them seems to do me some grave injustice. So, I'm going to try and dispel all the nastiness by writing this blog. Hopefully I'll be at least moderately successful in this endeavour. Thankfully, I have a lot to blog about. The topic of choice today is Fallout 3, that other open-world free-form first-person RPG developed by the dudes what made Oblivion. I finished the game up yesterday, snagging my first ever S-rank on Giant Bomb in the process. This blog will be focused on my opinion of the game, and will also document my thoughts on all five of the DLC packs in simple YES-NO terms. With those facts laid out on the table, let's quit the jibber-jabber and press on with the matter at hand.

Fallout 3

This guy looks menacing... There's not much that I can say about Fallout 3 that hasn't already been said in earlier blogs. I think it's an awesome game. You all probably know that I think it's an awesome game. Yesterday, after sixty-seven and a half hours of traversing the Capital Wasteland, my stint with the game came to an end. Rather than showering praise on the game in the style of a review, I'm going to focus more on the little things that both made and broke the game for me at certain points.

The biggest selling point for me with Fallout 3 was the sense of atmosphere and the immersion that the game managed to convey (most of the time). The richly detailed world of the Capital Wasteland, and the colourful cast of characters that inhabit it, are what really made my Fallout 3 experience. Call me crazy, but I liked the game's desolate environment, probably because the whole post-apocalyptic setting is something that really set the game apart from other RPGs of this generation. I also loved the whole "retro values in a futuristic environment" concept. I guess it all boils down to this: Fallout 3 has a distinct personality, and it's a personality that I can really identify with. With regards to immersion in relation to Fallout 3, I know this is a hotly contested issue. For me personally, it's quite hit-and-miss. When I was wandering across the gameworld on my own from a first-person perspective, simply seeing what there was to see and discovering cool stuff for myself, I lost hours. In that respect, it's immersive.

The variety in Fallout 3's quests is pretty impressive Fallout 3's quests ranged from being awesome (The Replicated Man) to pretty dire (The Nuka Cola Challenge). I think it goes without saying that I had a lot of fun questing in Fallout 3, and one of the main reasons for that was the sheer amount of options the game gave me to play with. Right from the off I opted to build a good karma character specialising in ranged combat and social interaction, later deciding to branch out into stealth after maxing out my key stats. The result was a game experience that constantly presented at least two (but usually more) ways of dealing with the vast majority of problems. I elected to play a diplomatic game and tried to resolve things with words before resorting to bullets. At higher levels I incorporated stealth into my combat strategies, making some of the later fights real heart-in-mouth affairs. This multitude of approaches really helped in preventing the game from growing too stagnant for me, which is probably just as well considering I invested nearly seventy hours into my playthrough.

Insert 'Don't Lose Your Head' - style pun here For the most part, I enjoyed the combat in Fallout 3. The gunplay, while not exactly stellar, was broken up enough by the other aspects of questing that it never began to really grate on me (at least not in the main game, but more on that later). One thing I can say in the game's favour is that I found most of the guns in the game to be incredibly memorable, something I can't proclaim of many shooters that I've played. Most of the guns in Fallout 3, particularly the unique ones like Lincoln's Repeater and the Mesmetron, practically have personalities of their own. The other thing I loved about the game's combat was the extreme sense of satisfaction I got whenever I heard the "ka-ching!" and saw the on-screen notification that accompanied experience gain. So much so, in fact, that when I hit the level cap and stopped receiving experience points, the lack of notifications took a lot of enjoyment out of the game's combat for me. It's a silly little thing, I know, but after fifty-plus hours those sounds and notices became quite comforting, and it was difficult to adjust to their absence.

The most disappointing thing about Fallout 3 for me was its storyline. After the pretty promising start with your father's escape from Vault 101, the story seems to stagnate and doesn't really go anywhere meaningful. Maybe it's because of the game's free-form nature, which kept me distracted from the main quest line for prolonged periods of play, but I found it very difficult to care about what was going on with regards to the game's plot. Maybe I was just expecting more after the comparatively stellar storyline of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, or maybe I wanted a greater scope from a game I spent nearly seventy hours with. Whatever the reason, Fallout 3 just failed to deliver on the story front for me.

So that's my position on the game itself, but what about all the downloadable content packs Bethesda put out post-release? Fear not, ladies and gentlemen, for Dan has formulated opinions on all of those too! Presenting dankempster's Comprehensive Fallout 3 DLC Summary!

Operation: Anchorage

Snow, guns, and Communists

YES

Awesome Rewards - The Winterised T-51b Power Armor stayed equipped on my character more or less from the end of the DLC right through to the end of the game. 'Nuff said.
Welcome Change Of Environment - The snowy cliffs of Anchorage, Alaska were a world away from the desolate Capital Wasteland, and made for a nice vacation.

NO

Too Much Combat - Operation: Anchorage was a very combat-focused DLC pack, and the gunplay-heavy action did begin to grate towards the end.
Lack Of Lore - For a DLC pack that professes to deal with a major event of Fallout lore, the subject isn't explored much in Operation: Anchorage. I was hoping for more nods to the background that made the main game so memorable.

The Pitt

Industrial...

YES

Grey Moral Choices - Gone were the black-and-white, blow-it-up-or-disarm-it, clear-cut choices from the main game. Upon completion of The Pitt's storyline, no matter what course of action you choose, you don't come out of it feeling like you've definitely done the right thing.
Great Quest Line - I found The Pitt to have the best story of all the DLC packs. From the introductory segment leading you to the train tunnel, through the arena fights and culminating in a dramatic stand-off, The Pitt spun a pretty good yarn.

NO

Artificially Lengthened - While it's not obligatory, the collection of one hundred Steel Ingots in The Pitt feels like a cheap attempt to artificially lengthen the DLC's play time. At least the Bobbleheads in the main game took you to different locations, and there were only twenty of those!
Uninspired Setting - While it was certainly a different kind of locale to the Capital Wasteland, The Pitt was a pretty drab place. With the exception of the bridge leading into The Pitt, there was nothing particularly memorable about the environments in my eyes.

Broken Steel

The Heavy Incinerator will always have a place in my inventory, and in my heart... *NOTE* - I never finished Fallout 3 before downloading Broken Steel. Opinions may therefore be affected accordingly.

YES

Raised Level Cap - Although I never maxed out at that point, Level 20 seemed like far too low a level cap for the game. Level 30 seems like a much more reasonable cap, especially in light of the additional content provided by the DLC packs.
Memorable End Game Quests - Had I completed the game before downloading Broken Steel, I think Take It Back! would have been quite the anti-climax. Who Dares Wins is a much more memorable conclusion to the game's campaign in terms of set pieces (although the story is still considerably lacking).

NO

Albino Radscorpions - The designer who thought that the inclusion of these bastards would be a great idea needs a slap upside the head.
Half-Arsed Perks - To me, with the exception of Puppies!, most of the perks beyond Level 20 seemed like they weren't really given much thought. Consequently, most of them didn't seem to be of much use.

Point Lookout

Sloth's post-Goonies career was short-lived

YES

Best Quests - Point Lookout has the best quests of any DLC pack from a gameplay perspective. A healthy mix of combat, exploration and character interaction ensured that the gameplay in Point Lookout didn't stagnate.
Longevity - In terms of length of content, I think Point Lookout is the DLC pack that most justifies its price tag. After clocking six hours focusing solely on the main quest line, with a little sight-seeing and one side quest cleared, I believe that Point Lookout could very easily hit ten-plus hours with some thorough exploration.

NO

Hard As Nails - I went into Point Lookout at Level 25 with most of my combat-related skills maxed out, and within the first hour of play had my arse handed to me by the "residents" no fewer than three times. I didn't expect a pushover, but man, combat in Point Lookout was tough.
Janky As Hell - With the exception of a couple of VATS-related incidents in The Pitt, I hadn't run into any problems with the other DLC packs. Point Lookout crashed on me a grand total of seven times. Not cool, Bethesda.

Mothership Zeta

Much like dinosaurs and Led Zeppelin, space will always be cool

YES

Best Concept - Alien abduction. Close encounters of the third kind. Crazy extra-terrestrial technology. 50s B-movie sci-fi influences. Outer space. Mothership Zeta definitely boasts the most awesome setting of all the Fallout 3 DLC packs.
Alien Weaponry - Most of the guns in Mothership Zeta were wonderfully unique and a lot of fun to use, not to mention pretty damn powerful. This, plus the addition of the wonder-material that is Alien Epoxy, means I'll probably be using my Alien Disintegrator fot a long time to come.

NO

Is This DOOM? - For all Mothership Zeta's awesome aesthetics, I couldn't get past the fact that it seemed to be little more than a two-hour long corridor-based shooter.
Sally - If I'd have been playing the PC version of this game, I'd have downloaded the Killable Kids mod within thirty seconds of meeting this annoying bitch.

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...Whoa, that's a whole lotta blog. Thankfully the whole cathartic aspect seems to have paid off, because I'm feeling a lot better now. Anyway, I guess I'd better sign off. Thanks very much for reading, guys. I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony (X360)