When I first heard Bethesda was taking on Fallout 3, I was terrified. Not because I thought they’d muck it up or anything like that, but because Oblivion took up over 240 hours of my life. It damaged my interpersonal relationships, brought my productivity to a crawl, and caused my skin to lighten by several shades due to a lack of sunshine. That scenario is likely to repeat itself now that Fallout 3 is here.

The world is in a state of ruin after an intense nuclear war. You live peacefully in an underground vault. Vault 101 to be precise. No one ever enters the vault, and no one ever leaves the vault. The giant metal door just stays closed at all times. Inside the vault, The Overseer keeps things running smoothly. Everyone gets a pip boy (think PDA for your wrist), and starts working when they hit age 10. Everyone takes the infamous G.O.A.T test at age 16 to determine what sort of work they’re best suited to, and life goes on quietly—or at least it did until the day your dad left the vault. Everything changed that day. The Overseer, enraged at your father’s escape, sent the guards after you, and you decided to head for the door, following in your father’s footsteps. Stretched out before you as you take your first steps out of the vault is a vast and graphically pleasing wasteland that once was Washington D.C. and the surrounding areas. The world map isn’t quite as big as the one found in Oblivion, but it’s much more densely populated. You don’t have to go very far to find a new building to explore, or a new settlement to visit. The land is covered in rubble, and the remnants of buildings that have long been abandoned. The presentation here is absolutely top notch. Everything looks suitably bleak and uninviting, but still manages to use some colors that aren’t brown and gray.

Bethesda did a fine job of setting a mood of hopelessness and despair with both their graphical choices, and their design choices. Each settlement you visit is little more than a handful of run down shacks. The walls of the towns are built largely from junk—pieces of broken down planes, scrap metal, and other such discarded items. Most of the time the residents of these settlements have some major problem, be it slavers, raiders, or super mutants. Their problems are your quests. You are often presented with the chance to help the various settlers, and/or help the people they’re afraid of. For example, I rescued several children from some slavers. While I was there, I got a stun gun and some shock collars from one of the slavers, along with a hit list of specific people the slavers wanted brought in. The moral choices each come with pros and cons. For instance, fairly early on I was faced with a hefty moral decision to make. If I chose to do the morally wrong thing, the monetary payout would be significant, but people would die. If I chose the right thing, a fairly large group of people would live to see another day, but I would remain poor as a pauper. I did the morally reprehensible thing, and a lot of people died because of it. A good long while later, as I was gunning down some super mutants with one of the guns I bought with my blood money, some bounty hunters came to try and collect the price that had been put on my head. I was surprised and delighted at the fact that the game included a consequence other than “bad karma” for my evil deeds. Far too often in games that include a morality mechanic the “penalty” for your evil deeds is no more than a shift in your appearance, and the fear of NPC’s everywhere. Fallout 3 actually punished me for my sins—the fight with the bounty hunters was intense, and it cost me a good bit of ammo and some health items I had been saving for a rainy day.

It’s very tempting to play Fallout 3 like a first person shooter. You spend a lot of time with a gun in your hand and a reticle in the center of your screen, but don’t let it fool you—Fallout 3 is very much an RPG. You can customize a large number of stats for your character, as well as add perks each time you level up. During combat, you have to make careful use of your items and weapons, and pick the right weapon for the job. You also have to learn to make use of the newly introduced V.A.T.S. (Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System). The V.A.T.S. allows you to pause the action for a moment to target a specific part of a specific enemy. When you focus your attacks on a particular part of an enemy, you will wear down that particular part, and eventually cripple it. If you cripple an enemy’s leg, they’ll slow down. Cripple their head, and they’ll become less accurate. Be warned: this applies to you too. Enemies can cripple your limbs, and in doing so, slow you down, and make you a much easier target. I was nervous that the V.A.T.S. would slow down the action, but it really doesn’t. It only takes a second to highlight the specific enemy and body part you want to attack, and watching your attacks hit home in slow motion is extremely satisfying—especially when you manage to turn your enemy’s head into a pile of goo.

It’s worth pointing out that Fallout 3 uses the Oblivion engine. As such, it has a lot of the same issues Oblivion had. When you bump into a table that has a couple plates on it, the plates will go flying. When NPC’s interact with each other, the conversations are stiff, and just feel a little off. Don’t get me wrong—this has been improved upon greatly from Oblivion, but it is still an issue. Doors will magically pass through you, or any NPC that happens to be in the way when they swing open. Last but not least, as was the case in Oblivion, it’s possible to get yourself stuck when trying to traverse parts of the landscape the developers didn’t intend for you to cross over. In both games, I found myself loading a recent save after getting stuck in between some rocks Bethesda clearly didn’t want me to climb over. All things considered, these are small annoyances that only slightly detract from Fallout 3’s overall level of quality.

If you liked Oblivion, or if you’re a fan of the Fallout series, you should definitely play Fallout 3. With an interesting plot, a huge wasteland to explore, a twisted sense of humor, and satisfying combat, almost anyone could find something to love in this game.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: Cross Platform, Fallout 3, PC, PS3, review, RPG, Sony, Xbox 360

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