PC Game Fun Time

After spending about a week with Fallout 3, I think I have experienced enough to write a decent review.  I haven’t spent much time on the main quest, so I won’t be able to talk much about that.  However, I do have a character currently at level 11, and have seen a pretty fair fraction of the game world.

Being a high profile, hyped title, Fallout 3 automatically received glowing reviews from the majority of the mainstream gaming press.  However, there has been a very real concern from much of the fan base that the game suffers from being to much like Oblivion.

It is true, Fallout 3 does feel similar to the previous major title from Bethesda.  If you totally hated Oblivion, you will probably hate Fallout 3.  If, instead, you thought Oblivion was a pretty good game, but marred by some serious flaws, there is a good chance you will love Fallout 3.

First of all, Fallout 3 takes all the strengths of Oblivion and makes them its own.  The immersive nature of a first person game with gorgeous graphics is definitely here.  The annoying stuttering issues with Oblivion while outside are gone as well.  More importantly, Fallout 3 also has an incredible atmosphere going for it.  Everything from the wastelands to the scattered settlements to the Washington D. C. ruins fits beautifully into the game to create a sense of immersion far greater than anything seen in Oblivion.  The use of some of the most recognizable landmarks in the United States, such as the Capitol building and the Washington Monument, creates a sense of awe, something rarely seen in a video game.  (Disclaimer: I live and work in the D. C. area.)

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It’s finally here.  Fallout 3, the sequel I (and many others) have been awaiting for nearly a decade.  In fact, it has even been four years since Fallout 3 was officially announced.

While I have only barely scratched the surface of this game, it is telling that I found it quite difficult to tear myself away long enough to write this mini review.  Like every high profile title these days, Fallout 3 has received pretty much nothing but glowing praise from the mainstream gaming press.  Unlike many of those other titles, it is looking like Fallout 3 may deserve it.

Here are a few of the things I have found notable so far:

• Quest design is damn good.  I haven’t really gone anywhere with the main quest yet, but I have done a couple of the larger side quests.  Both have been very well written and engaging.  They have been a mix of exploration, dialog, combat, and a tad of puzzle solving.
• Dialog options are vastly greater than in Oblivion.  This game has a ton of dialog - I have spent a significant fraction of my time so far just talking to people.  You tend to have several interesting responses to choose from in most situations, as well.
• VATS is a lot of fun.  The much vaunted VATS combat system is actually pretty cool.  Not only is it useful for carefully planning out tougher encounters, it is also quite cinematic.  Watching heads get blown off and then roll down hills has never been so much fun.
• Real time combat is fine, but not amazing.  It does feel very fast and somewhat hard to control.  In the end, it just not of the same quality as a good shooter.  I personally don’t have a problem with this.  Fallout 3 is not a shooter, and if you want to experience some fun combat, just make use of VATS.
• Visuals are great.  Graphics quality is very high and everything looks just like it should.  If I had one word to describe the game’s visuals, it would be “immersive”.
• The game does not hold your hand nearly as much as Oblivion.  It is hard to find a good balance between hand holding and being frustratingly non-specific.  So far, I have found Fallout 3 to do this exceptionally well.

While my impressions are pretty much strictly positive so far, your mileage could vary.  Note that I (obviously) loved the original Fallout games, and also had quite a good time with Oblivion.  I ultimately spent an inordinate amount of time working with mods for Oblivion to fix various flaws.  Many of these were not all that apparent until I had spent quite a bit of time with the game.  So, while my first impressions have been good, I am not completely sold on Fallout 3 yet.

Now this will be interesting if it holds up to further scrutiny: A gamer has managed to get his hands on an early copy of Fallout 3, and reports his impressions that it is eerily similar to Oblivion. Fallout 3 was created by Bethesda Software, the same studio responsible for Oblivion, and they heavily reused code from Oblivion in creating Fallout 3 (basically the entire game engine, if reports are to be believed). As a result, Fallout 3 apparently feels a lot like Oblivion, just in a different setting and with (thankfully) different level-up mechanics.

So the real question is — is this a good thing? Now I’m not going to accuse Bethesda of being lazy, because, as a software developer myself, I know how important code reuse is, and if I have a perfectly good engine sitting around, I’m going to adapt it for use with a new task rather than create something new from scratch. And I did play Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV a fair amount, and I did like it. So that isn’t automatically a negative on Fallout 3. What’s really at issue here is if you spent a lot of time playing Oblivion to the point that you got bored with it (like Grokmoo did): are the similarities with Fallout 3 going to be a negative? I could see an eerie sense of deja vu developing.

Still, I’m eagerly looking forward to the release of Fallout 3, and I’ll report back here regarding whether I find it disconcertingly similar to Oblivion.

In light of the large amount of feedback from our first Fallout 3 related post, I think it is a good idea if we do another one.  This will also give me a chance to respond to those who charged I was being overly negative.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that Fallout 3 has great potential, and I don’t think any of the things mentioned in my previous post are going to be major concerns once we are actually playing the game.  Also, I am not one of the Fallout 1 & 2 diehards who think that any change in the formula of the originals or any influence from other games (especially Oblivion) is a bad thing.

In fact, I quite liked Oblivion, and played it quite extensively.  It did, however, have some flaws that ultimately limited the long term replay value of the game.  So, my hope for Fallout 3 is that it marries the best aspects of the previous Fallout games and The Elder Scrolls series, and avoids the worst.

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