Fallout 3

Rating Mature Genre adventure Publisher Bethesda

Fallout…Fallout never changes.

I’m glad it doesn’t.  Welcome to Eric M. Martin’s official vote for Game of the Year 2008.  This game is everything I wanted it to be and a whole lot more.  In fact, this game should get awards based on the sole fact that it’s the first game I’ve ever played that utilizes Bink Video and STILL WORKS!  Living proof that the people of Bethesda and ZeniMax have discovered and implemented Real Integratable Vault-Era Technology (or R. I. V.E.T.) during the making of Fallout 3.

Why does Fallout enjoy so much success?  Largely in part to its constant maintenance of the 1950’s atmosphere it so lovingly portrays.  This was a big draw for fans of Bioshock, one of the main reasons Sinking Island was attractive, and one of the best takes on a post-apocalyptic world that the video game universe has to offer.  Whenever your company takes its time to make a survival guide manual that’s chock full of those high school safety video illustrations, that’s a team that’s committed to their product and to the fact that they aim to sell primarily by product strength rather than a bloated reliance on advertisement buffer and peripherals.

On with the story.  You knew there was more than the Holy 13, didn’t you?  Fallout 3 centers around Vault 101, located near Washington D.C., now known as Capital Wasteland.  All is fine and good, except the Overseer of this Vault sees all, knows all, controls all.  Everyone here is born in the Vault, lives in the Vault, works in the Vault and dies in the Vault.  Needless to say, there has been no arguments over living space as the population of Vault 101 is on a steady decline.  After a complicated birth and the resulting death of your mother, your father raises you.  You experience your first year of live, your tenth birthday (where you are assigned a job in the Vault), your sixteenth birthday (where you take your test to determine your semi-permanent to permanent Vault assignment), and the day that your father escapes and that the Overseer seeks for your own death.  Upon escaping Vault 101, you search for your father and begin to learn about the new life on Earth.

Fallout 3 does a fantastic job of slimming down the myriad of personal skills that were found in the first two titles to a nice round number of thirteen.  The seven stats are the same as before, but the real bonus here is the amount of perks.  Perks rule the roost in Fallout 3, many of them having up to ten ranks of stackable goodness.  In an attempt to add realism, the Lockpick and Science skills have added features.  Normally, having a high Lockpick or Science skill would determine immediate success.  This time, you need a certain Lockpick percentage or Science percentage to attempt to pick a lock or hack a terminal, respectively.  There are now Lockpick and Hacking minigames, each with a difficulty set that’s proportionate to the challenge.

For basic gameplay, movement is standard WASD and attacking is with the trusty left clicker.  The difference here is with the new V.A.T.S. system.  Whereas combat in previous Fallout games was turn based, V.A.T.S. provides turn-based combat within real-time combat.  Depending on your AP points, which now restore over time, using V.A.T.S. will pause the action and pull up the famous percentile system that all Fallout fans will recognize.  Mixing V.A.T.S. with the real-life stuff can mean the difference between margins of victory and even death.  Humanoid opponents with crippled limbs are more likely to run, creature and animal models behave differently based on their damage levels and locations, and you as the player will also benefit and suffer from the same cripple chances as your opponent.

As the manual says, the game will eventually end, but the ‘when’ and ‘how’ will be up to the player.  Dialogue choices, story options, quest outcomes, all of that will be influenced both by your character’s decisions and genetic makeup.  As usual, higher stats in some areas will reveal different story options in both dialogue and adventuring.  Being good, evil or neutral will affect your relationships with friends, enemies and strangers alike.  Heck, I’ve hardly found a game that gives you the choice to save, co-exist, or wipe out an entire city based on the fact that they’ve colonized around an undetonated nuclear device.  Now that’s freeform gameplay with optional outcomes.  Choke on it, Fable 2!

Whatever your grain, Fallout 3 offers an enthralling adventure down each path that may turn up.  You may even find yourself making several games just to explore the options alone.  This is the first time I’ve ever encountered a title where I want to go through and eliminate everyone that’s not me and, at the same time, put my 1337 skillz to the test and see if I can make it through without harming a living soul.  Most likely, my endeavors will fall somewhere in between, because it’s a hard life out there.  The only thing that’s certain is that if there’s a loaded chamber somewhere out there, you’d better be either on the giving end or have a plan to avoid the opposite.