Maybe you’ve heard of the Fallout series.  It started more than 11 years ago.  Fallout and it’s critically acclaimed sequel, Fallout 2 were originally made by Black Isle Studios.

Both games are among my favoites, so could Fallout 3 succeed in the hands of a new development studio?  The game’s made by Bethesda who most recently released a pretty successful game in Oblivion.

So far, Fallout 3 has been given some high praise.  I have to say, I agree.

I picked the game up on release day a couple weeks back and have managed to play through to see several of the many possible endings.

The number one thing I come away with from playing the game is that the choice is in the player’s hands.  You can choose to be good or evil and there’s even a sliding Karma scale that players can keep track of throughout the game.  Your karma affects the way you’re treated by others and has a pretty big impact on what ending you see when you beat the game.

But please, when I say beat the game, by no means have I “finished” the game.  The world is MASSIVE.  It’s set in post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. about 70 years after the events in Fallout 2.  There are dozens of places you can travel.  You can run to the downtown ruins where there’s a shelled National Mall at your disposal, or head to the Wasteland where there are many different traps to avoid.

Gameplay-wise Bethesda tried to mix the turn-based combat of the originals with FPS mechanics.  That gives you the VATS system.  Essentially, it allows you to pause the game and target specific areas of an opponents body.  You want to blast the rocket launcher out of that mutants hand?  It gives you a percentage that you’ll be able to hit it.  You can aim at any limb, the torso or go for the headshot.  They did take away one target area from the originals, but this is a family site so I won’t say what it is.  All in all, I found VATS to be a good way of conserving ammo, but I could play just as well without  it. The best benefit from VATS is the cinematic-like cutaway that it does when you fire.

There are only 20 levels for your character in the game, so when you’re playing through that’s a good indicator of how close you are to “the end.”  Every level you’re presented with a variety of ways to improve your character.  You can improve small guns, big guns or plasma guns to increase how much damage you deal with a weapon.  Improving the unarmed skill makes you a better fighter.  When you pour points into the repair and medicine skills, it gives you better survivability.  You can get better prices from merchants by adding points to the barter skill.  You can add points to speech to open up new options when talking to characters in the game.

In addition to the points you distribute every level there are perks you can add once per level.  A multitude of options are at your fingertips.  My favorite is probably “Bloody Mess.”  It gives you a nice damage bonus and also gives your enemies a more visceral death.

Character development in the game is pretty important.  When making your character you get points to allocate in to 7 different categories.  They call it the SPECIAL system.  (Strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility and luck.) You can have between 1 and 10 points in each category.  I chose to specialize in strength, endurance and agility hoping those traits would carry me through battles.  I did use some perks while leveling to add points to intelligence.

So that’s your character, but what about the story?  It’s great. You are literally born into the game. You choose all of your traits for your adult character as a baby: hair, eyes, nose, a great number of combinations.  Then you have a little bit of developmental time running around in the Vault. The vaults were built to withstand a nuclear apocalypse and they did.  You are in vault 101.  From Bethesda “For 200 years, Vault 101 has faithfully served the surviving residents of Washington DC and its environs, now known as the Capital Wasteland. Though the global atomic war of 2077 left the US all but destroyed, the residents of Vault 101 enjoy a life free from the constant stress of the outside world.”

But this wouldn’t be a game if you were to stay in the vault the whole time.  Through a dramatic series of events you’re thrust into the world.  You have to defend yourself from giant insects, raiders, slavers, bounty hunters and yes, even Super Mutants.

You can choose to go the game alone, but there are certain party members you can pick up.  In my playing I was not evil enough to hire a mercenary in the first town I was at.  Later in the game though that paid off when I got another party member that was one of the toughest.  I even ended up picking up a dog and a super mutant as allies at points in the game.

There is a ton of diversity in the quests you can do and more importantly HOW you can do them.  Every decision you make has an impact on how your character is viewed in the Wasteland.  Most times it’s fairly straight forward.  Kill the bad guys, save people and you are on your way to becoming the Savior of the Wasteland.   On the flip side, stealing, killing civilians, and following bad guys orders and you’ll be even closer to becoming the Scourge of the Wasteland.   Sometimes though it’s a little more gray and you’ll just have to live with the decisions that you make.  There is at least one perk for those players who want to play both good and bad.  If you’re neutral you can become a better speaker with “Impartial Mediation.”

You gather a lot of the story of what happened to D.C. through dialog with characters in the game.  You can learn so much more by hacking(or using the password you obtained) into computers, reading the contents of people’s journals and listening to holotapes that are left behind in the game.  There is a good amount of flavor to the game from the likes of the original two games.

I saved the game before the final ending so I could turn around go back and explore other areas of the game.  I’m glad I did.  It’s given me the opportunity to travel the wasteland and see things that I missed following the progression of the main quest line.  It also gave me the chance to try and work the opposite side of the game’s karma system which was pretty interesting.

Graphically the game looked good on my PC, even though I couldn’t run it at the highest settings or with my resolution cranked to 1920×1200 on my monitor.  Coming out of the Vault for the first time and seeing the wasteland is quite a treat.  It’s not a bright game, being that you’re traveling around in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but the art direction is well done.

The third installment of the Fallout series has been a long time coming.  With the original coming out so long ago, this is a definite treat.  Bethesda developed the game in place of Black Isle Studios and it’s been great to play.  There have been a number of quality releases this year across all platforms.  Fallout 3 is a game you’re not going to want to miss.

As an end note, the game is rated M for a very good reason.  While it is superb in many ways, it is not a game meant for young kids.

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