Fallout 3 (PC) Review

The journey of the 'Lone Wanderer' begins right after exiting his or her mother's womb (greeted by the voice of Liam Neeson), inside the fallout shelter known as Vault 101; an intro that eventually sees the protagonist exiting this cosy home in the search for dear ol' papa somewhere in the Capital Wasteland, or Washington DC after a rain of nuclear bombs. Here's the thing with this, though. It is boring. Like, more than the already very boring intro of Fallout 2, boring.

In many ways, all Fallout introductions were somewhat boring... bar the one in the original, where, after a very brief cut-scene, you are thrown into the wastes to survive, something that manages to leave a much bigger impact, and doesn't take much time. It's understandable that Bethesda wanted to make you "connect" with the game world, and with an intro that also acts as a tutorial, but there's definitely a very serious reason why there's a mod that skips all that.

Sadly Fallout 3's intro is also an example of how the writing and overall atmosphere of the series has taken a beating. While many fans went nuts from getting to see the cave that leads to the wasteland from a first person perspective (amongst other things), the wasteland of Bethesda is not the wasteland of Interplay/Black Isles, something that has a lot to do with how the developer just focused in giving a Fallout re-skin to Oblivion, instead of re-capturing the magic of the older games.

...and it looks dull. Yes, the Great-War-torn Capital Wasteland does indeed have a bunch of post-card pretty vistas, but the overuse of grey, grey, and then even more grey, makes everything look identical; a tradition that even the, admittedly, much better (from a role-playing standpoint), Fallout: New Vegas continued, by adding an orange tint to everything... but, hey! At least you can shoot at funny-looking raiders and super mutants while '50s music bops along!

The real dullness, however, is that this is not the RPG it used to be, as it leans more towards a sandbox survival/exploration experience, rather than an open-ended adventure. Aside from interacting with NPCs to learn about what's going on or to start quests, the bulk of the experience is about walking around, doing some killing, and collecting stuff. Sure, the option to just choose a direction and keep walking towards it is still here, but there's not much role-playing to be done.

Sadly, when you do get to role-play a bit, it's disappointing to say the least, partly because of how weak the writing and, as a result, the available cast of characters can be, but mostly because this doesn't really understand the concept of choice. Fallout's charm used to be the ability to decide who you want to be, and Fallout 3 isn't very good at that, evident at how your stats, perks, and so on, don't really make you a different 'character,' but just a different kind of fighter/explorer.

Nevertheless, and despite the overall negativity, it's important to note that this is actually a good game… it's just that it's not a good Fallout game. Instead of a morally grey world, with believable characters and factions that "have a point," (even if you don't agree with it), here we simply have good and bad guys, and instead of a hostile, post-apocalyptic place where the outcome of war can be felt in the way humans have reacted to it, here it can be felt mainly in the way the land looks half-destroyed.

As for the atmosphere of it all, Fallout 3 is more quirky, retro-futuristic, and post-apocalyptic-ish, rather than 100% post-apocalyptic. Hell, even the design of the world feels artificial, and kind of, for a lack of a better word, game-y. It's hard to put it on text, but many locations, especially indoor ones, look more like movie sets than actually destroyed places where people used to live - not to mention the hundreds of occasions where things just don't make sense design-wise.

Of course, one could argue that it's possible to enjoy this by simply approaching it for what it is, not what it could be; as a FPS with a bunch of minor RPG elements. Well, this is exactly why Fallout 4 is so enjoyable. As an RPG it fails even more than this, but it works mighty fine as a Skyrim set 5000 years into the future - plus, while heavily flawed in terms of writing and storytelling, the latter at least cares more about its plot.

The second reason, though, is that Fallout 4 simply plays better. Both are first-person shooters, but combat in Fallout 3 feels a bit stiff, and, generally, somewhat… off, with accuracy being highly affected by your stats, instead of where you point your crosshairs at, leading to an overreliance in the powerful, time-stopping VATS system that lets one shoot at specific parts of the body. Long story short: the weakest Fallout installment? Well, there's always Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel…

Oh, but remember: Moira Brown is the best character ever made!