I know that fallout 3 has been reviewed out the wazoo, even within the confines of this blog it has, but as a major fan of the original 2 games (to the point where I have named my dog Dogmeat much to the dislike of my fiance) I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t speak out on why Fallout 3 falls short of its pixilated predecessors. That’s right, I’m sure that some of the fanboys are yelling so loud that Obi-wan can hear them through the force but it’s the truth.Somewhere between Megaton and Rivet City the spirit of what is Fallout has been lost. Yes the graphics are better, yes they have the classic, even iconic groups, The Brotherhood, The Enclave, Super Mutants, Deathclaw and my personal favorite, Radscorpions. There are even the classic weapons, the 10 millimeter machine gun, the Plasma Rifle, and even the Turbo Plasma Rife (the android’s gun). So what is missing? Soul, I know that sounds cheesy but the first two fallouts had something that went beyond game play.
Fallout one and two had depth, you could play through over 8 times and still find little things that weren’t there before. That is really hard in fallout 3, I played through two and a half times and found pretty much everything (I know because I read the strategy guide cover to cover twice as well). Amazingly enough fallouts one and two NPCs inspired more empathy in me than fallout 3. Perhaps that was because the NPCs in fallout 3 stared beyond you, perhaps deeply into your soul searching for meaning…or because they were basically stolen from Oblivion, but more on that in a second. There was nothing new, the mutants were the same, the raiders were the same, yeah behemoths are cool but nothing bigger and better was added, in fallout 3 it was fallout 2 with a twist..
Fallout one and two felt epic, maybe it’s nostalgia, but I feel like the dark humor has been lost. The sprawling worlds filled with great depth and humorous characters turned into a first person shooter with a pause button. V.A.T.S. was fun, but despite the reviews I did get tired of shooting a super mutant in the head. There is one last point to be made here, Bethesda did a great job with Oblivion, it was a great game and the exclusion of the D20 system from Morrowind was a good choice. The jump to Fallout seems to have been more of a hop really. If any of you watch Zero Punctuation then you’ll find the following familiar, if you don’t then google him and you’ll laugh. The worlds of Cyrodil and Washington DC are surprisingly similar if you do a pallet switch from green to brown and trees to ruins. Yes, they had to make new characters, yes they had to program new quests and yeah, they made some new characters from fallout one and two (by which I mean the Yau Guai, but other than that they had most of the character types and general world figured out for them) but in the end the games were and are surprisingly similar.
Having said all of this I did greatly enjoy Fallout 3. By the standards of today’s games it was very well done and had I not been hoping for something better (such as Fallout 2) I would have been blown away. It did snare me enough that I played it through a couple times and downloaded Operation Anchorage within 20 min of it being released. So in the end Fallout 3 is fun, but if you want a real experience, splurge 20 bucks on the fallout dual case and play the first two.
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2 responses:
I definitely agree about Fallout 3 being soulless (with respect to the first two). It's a great game, but Bethesda sacrificed some of the best parts of Fallout and Fallout 2 in order to modernize the style and graphics. I wandered the DC Wasteland for about 60 hours, but I only found 2 characters that I liked (actually, maybe it was three, but I didn't have the right karma for Fawkes to join me, so I planted a grenade on him and called it a day). I saw some attempts at humor in the scattered vaults, but it was delivered in the form of boring journal entries and technical manuals.
I do have to raise the topic of Tranquility Lane. I thought that it had the potential to be one of the most adventurous and impactful scenes in all of video gaming. There was something missing for me that took away from this part, but I still feel that it can be counted in the plus column as far as Fallout 3 goes.
Operation Anchorage is pretty awesome, and I think Bethesda is missing out by not being able to release this as a standalone downloadable game for the XBL Arcade. It would have the potential to grab a lot of people who are turned off by the RPG-ness of RPGs.
I had the unique experience of being given Fallout 1 and 2 right before buying the new game. I played the Fallout 1 non stop for about a month, and I agree there is something about it, perhaps it is the relative minimalism of the graphics that make the story and characters potentially more compelling than those of the series newest addition. Perhaps letting our imaginations do a bit more of the work actually goes a long way. What I love most about Fallout 3 is that it reminded me of Fallout 1, but rather than obsessing over items or combat like I did with the original game, Fallout 3 let me just be THERE, in the moment, thinking less and doing more. That's one aspect I really did appreciate.
On a personal note, I'd take the voice over talent of Patrick Stewart over Liam Neeson any day. Sorry Robroy...
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