Revisiting the Wasteland

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I went back to Fallout 3 for the first time since 2008!  The announcement of Fallout 4 got me really excited for the Fallout universe again, so I decided to revisit this game.  I loved it when it first came out in 2008, but I only played it for a few weeks before beating it and moving on.

How does it hold up today?

Well, it's pretty good, but not fantastic.  Everyone is so wordy.  The dialogue system breaks me out of the immersion in the world every single time I enter a conversation.  That's easily my biggest gripe.  But the tone and the world building in Fallout 3 are amazing.  They're still spot on.  The graphics are fine, not as sharp as modern day, but totally acceptable.  The combat is still fun and well done.  The VATS system is a joy.

Really, the game just holds up well, even after 7 years.

This time I played way differently than I normally do.

In a normal game I go down every speech path, try to talk my way out of everything, sneak, lockpick, stealth, and generally avoid conflict while trying to be a good person.

This time I was super evil.  I blew up Megaton.  I killed NPCs when it seemed like the shortest option.  I picked every evil option I could.  And I felt kinda gross doing it.  That's not me at all.  I have to actively force myself to play evil because it goes so against how I am in real life.

But, now I know more about the evil side of Fallout.  It's actually pretty amazing how much freedom you're given to do bad things.  I was honestly surprised.

In the end I played for maybe 4 hours, ended up sequence breaking the game and skipping over half the story, wandered around exploring, and then was done.  I just wanted a taste of the wasteland.  Now I'm happy to wait for Fallout 4 in November.

Comments

  1. AtherenJuly 13, 2015 at 5:11 PM

    I also re-loaded Fallout 3. I keep expecting it to freeze on Windows 7 but it hums along.
    I played through the opening and entered the Wasteland swinging a police baton like a boss.
    I decided I should have been more careful selecting my skills so I'll start over, and use some of the ten billion rounds of ammo you pick up in the vault.
    I can't think of a company quite like Bethesda who put so many moral choices in the game. I always want to be the good guy so I chose all of those dialogue choices very carefully. Sometimes I think they're trying to snare me into doing something rotten, or your choice is how to pick the least rotten of the choices.
    As always, I appreciate the fantastically huge open world where you can go anywhere you like.

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