Fallout 3 Reviews

Brilliant. Simply brilliant. It took a long time for Deus Ex to be knocked off of the #1 spot of my favorites list, but it was worth the wait. Bethesda has crafted a satirical masterpiece, a post-apocalyptic look into a world scorched by nuclear warfare and a world where survival of the fittest is pushed to its very limits.

Liam Neeson, the familiar voice of your father, immediately draws you in and welcomes you into a semi-recognizable future, locked in a steel underground bunker with a semi-functioning society—and then leaves. So begins your quest to leave the safety of this familiar setting and out into the real world, with all of its dangers.

To me, the most interesting thing to see was not the way groups of people managed to stick together and organize themselves in order to survive, but the bureaucracy that formed around them. The federal government still clings to control via robots patrolling the surface, though no one has seen the president nor a functioning government for many months forcing a majority of people to fend for themselves. One town may have a sheriff, another run by slavers. One may secede from the US to form their own Republic, another may secede from humanity and live off human flesh. The kinds of details Bethesda reveals about these settlements makes these outlandish ideas seem eerily plausible.

This immersion grants going out and doing quests much more gravity. You actually want to protect this defenseless town from certain death once you learn they are all sixteen-year-olds expelled from another town by some other bureaucracy. And the pleasures of the V.A.T.S. combat system become all the greater. I love the ease of use and the satisfaction of using V.A.T.S. It’s simple, efficient, balanced, and a great way to improve your strategy by pausing and letting you think about what your next best move will be.

While the main storyline is merely adequate overall, it’s bad that they make the game end by completing it. This game is about exploring and doing what you want. Art imitates life, and Fallout 3 is a masterful example. You—not the designers—you prioritize what you want to do.

Imagine playing Oblivion but in the year 2200, post-apocalypse. *drool*