Two similar visions of a post-apocalyptic world
On Thanksgiving, I arrived at my parents’ home a bit earlier than the rest of the family, so I had quite a bit of free time. I used most of it — four hours worth — to read Cormac McCarthy’s excellent post-apocalyptic novel The Road straight through in one go. It narrates a couple of months in the life of a father and son who have survived an unspecified apocalypse, but every description in the book — from bright flashes on the horizon during the incident, to the dusty, sunless world, to the skyscrapers in city centers whose metal frames were melted and then solidified back into torturedshapes — left me believing that this Armageddon was of the decidedly nuclear variety.
Naturally, on the day after Thanksgiving, I started playing Fallout 3, which is (as if you didn’t know by now) set in a post-nuclear-apocalyptic future. I must say, reading The Road was a great thematic introduction to the environment in Fallout 3, even so much as dealing with the some of the same tropes of cannibalism, scarce resources, and morality in a survivalist world that no longer has a place for it. Walking along decrepit ancient highways in the barren Capital Wasteland, with its gloomy skies and shattered landscapes, and picking through the wreckage of a former civilization, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was walking the same road as the main characters in the novel.
I will give The Road more points for being realistic, because just one decade after the apocalypse pretty much everything scavengeable is gone and the only food remaining is the occasional canned good or fellow human. Fallout 3, despite taking place two centuries further out from the apocalypse, is still full of pre-apocalypse goods, such as the bizarrely ubiquitous Nuka-Cola vending machines that still contain product. Oh, and there’s the mutants. But I’ll let this slide — The Road’s intent is to be a good novel, while Fallout 3’s intent is to be a fun game. Some concessions to gameplay are necessary and acceptable.
I’ve only reached level 5 so far (after quite a bit of time put into the game), but my overall impression is very positive. I pretty much agree with Grokmoo’s take on the game, and could potentially see myself playing it as much as he has. The game is superbly put together, and thanks to auto-travel, there’s never a boring moment (I’m looking at you, Far Cry 2). It’s also not too easy — I’ve had to make use of quick load on quite a few occasions — which is something I appreciate because most of the games I’ve played recently I’ve been able to steamroll through without much of a challenge at all.
I’ve also been floored with the scope of the choices available in the game, especially early on. The first town I came across, Megaton, is built around the crater formed by unexploded nuclear ordnance. One of the first things you can do in the town is to either disarm the bomb or set it off, thus completely obliterating the city. Several hours after choosing not to destroy the city, I’m still working on quest chains originating in it (and I even own a house there). My experience with the game would have been completely different had I destroyed the city; who knows what base of operations I would have ended up at? That’s definitely something to try out in the next play-through.
I appreciate that the game doesn’t hold your hand and enforce compliance to a narrowly envisioned narrative. Most NPCs can be killed, which led to a hysterical situation where I spectacularly failed a quest by killing everyone on both sides, including the entirety of the inhabitants of one town on a crumbling highway overpass and all of the vampire denizens of an abandoned Metro station. I didn’t get the quest completion experience, and I did permanently eliminate two towns, but it was still worth it, thanks to the sheer quantity and quality of supplies I got from the vampires’ lair. The fact that Fallout 3 even allowed such a potentially game-breaking choice to be made, without then actually breaking the game balance, earns it much respect in my book.
So, in the end, surprise surprise, I agree with pretty much everything that any other reviewer has said about Fallout 3. If you haven’t played it yet, go get it. If you know any PC or even console gamer who hasn’t played it yet, Fallout 3 would make a great holiday gift. It’s great to see gaming fully embracing the free-roaming open world concept across a wide variety of genres, and I hope this trend continues.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Glad to see you’ve finally picked this game up. I sunk more than a few whole weekends into this title, not regretting it a bit, which is something I haven’t done with a game in years. I so rarely get to offer praise like that…