03. Fallout 3

(PS3/Xbox360/PC, Bethesda Studios, 2008)
In recent years, something has become commonplace in adventure gaming, the concept of creating a character of your physical design and then building a moral code of your choosing for them. Many recent RPGs feature this model, with Mass Effect, Oblivion, Fable II and many others all allowing much leeway in your choices to make a man or woman of your choosing, then sending them out into a fully inhabited world to act as noble or despicable as you see fit. Truly, we are in an age where we have some say in how a game plays out, even if, at the end of the day, we don't really have control over the story's events.

Fallout 3 is a great example of this. A sequel to a franchise that had lost its way, Fallout 3 returned the series to its hardcore post-apocalyptic RPG roots. Fallout 3 tells the story of an individual who escapes the "comfort" of their totalitarian bunkered vault to venture into post-war Washington D.C, now just a smouldering mess of rubble, despair and broken buildings. Once out of the statistic building vault section, The player is free to explore the world, following the game's plotline or performing the very many side quests that litter that bleak and terrifying landscape. A cast of hundreds inhabit the world, each with a story to tell and their own attitude towards the socio-political climate that they find themselves in.

Essentially, Fallout 3 is as good as YOU make it, you choices, actions and decisions will decide whether the game is a hundred hour journey of discovery or a twenty hour action movie. By giving the player carte blanche to search, help, loot or kill as they see fit, Fallout provides a stage for the player to become the wasteland hero or scourge they choose to be. People can be befriended or killed, robbed or saved, teamed with or turned against. A side quest can end in bloodshed, resolution or revelation. All of this builds and builds to a climax that sees the shape for civilisation's future forming.

Fallout's story, dialogue and missions are well written and do well to provide solid immersion. The game's faults (if any) are mostly technical. Using the almost archaic-by-today's-standards Oblivion engine, the game suffers from terrible glitching, vanishing skies, ghosting characters and awkward textures and animation. Whilst conversations can go in a wide variety of directions, the character models are very flat and unemotional, lacking the body language and facial features of say, Mass Effect's characters.

For me however, these issues can be easily suffered. Fallout 3 provides me with an exciting, deep and frightening universe, populated with interesting characters that I respect or despise in equal measure. A great selection of missions ranging from the political to the downright crazy await all who wish to explore the capital wasteland and the various expansion packs. Fallout 3 is a game that I can load up and literally spend three hours playing without achieving much more than discovering new places and making the world a better (or worse) place. There's nothing I enjoy more than scouring the lands for Slaving rings and putting those guys out of business at the barrel of a 12-gauge. I'm the Captial Wastelands answer to Frank Castle.

I've done pretty well to summarise Fallout 3 in this entry as I can truly discuss this game for hours (as my long suffering friends can attest to) I havnt even gone into all of the perks, weapons, armours or far reaching moral dilemmas the player will encounter. But hopefully, I've done enough in this short space to sell that Fallout 3, despite its technical shortcomings, is a game that is as addictive and as enjoyable as you choose to make it. Fallout 3 rewards exploration, dedication and deliberation, as opposed to just pulling the trigger on anything that moves. It is very apt that this game should have the fortune to appear so late into this project, as it is a great example of everything that is divine about videogames.
Fallout 3 is not a perfect game, it may not be the best game ever..
But it's dangerously close.

See you in the wastelands brother.