Everyone has their own opinion on how to fix Fallout 3. Even fans of the game will say that the conflict between Enclave and Brotherhood wasn’t fleshed out enough, that morality plays like Megaton’s bomb were just pitiful, and so on. Those less charitable to the game might say it needs a total rework, to be set in an earlier time period and ditch the classic factions to tell a story more in line with series canon. Personally, I’m somewhere in between, because I think that Fallout 3 actually does have the potential for an amazing story, despite the innumerable problems with its writing. The change to make it all work would be shifting the emotional heart of the story from the Lone Wanderer’s father to another character who already exists, who gives you a quest that could also hold up the entirety of the narrative.
Moira Brown.
Yes, the eccentric shopkeeper in Megaton who wants your help writing the Wasteland Survival Guide, and no, I’m not kidding. The way that the quest works in its current state mostly puts you in the path of raiders, mirelurks, and mole rats, but consider how it would look with an expanded scope, with the goal being to catalog not just the major hazards, but factions and politics as well. It would play out similarly to the independent route in New Vegas, where your goal was to make contact with the major regional powers, and either do their quest to make an ally or ignore them altogether. In the case of this hypothetical new Fallout 3, the plan would be the same, to visit raider camps, Brotherhood outposts, the Enclave itself, hear all their perspectives on the world, and try to bargain with them to make life safer for the common wastelander. Just like how the base game allows you to put in a varying level of effort with optional objectives and stat checks, players would have a wide latitude for how involved they want to be. If they want to improve the wasteland by joining one of the factions, they could then choose to write the book in a propagandized, realistic, or disillusioned way, with more useful details coming with more time as a member. It’s a system that would encourage players to genuinely engage with each faction and learn everything they could, on top of exploring different regions and destroying nests of monsters. Just as the player shapes the guide, the writing of the guide comes to shape the wasteland, which has shaped the views of the player. That sort of expressiveness is exactly what an RPG like Fallout really needs to leave a personal impact.
So, where does Moira herself come into it? Well, she’s the embodiment of the question at the heart of a project like this, of how a single person with hardly anything to their name could heal a deeply troubled world. Think of how much we struggle with this question in real life, how so many of us look around and see nothing but collapse and disparity, and don’t know what we can even do about it. Moira represents that spark of action we have within us, even if we aren't sure how to use it, and whether her own efforts are naive, noble, or something in between is up to interpretation. Whichever way she's viewed, the harshness of the world outside enforces just how much it needs people like her, and not more soldiers. Fallout loves to say that war never changes, but a story like this could be the reminder that there's still hope. It’s people like her who can change the world.
Addendum on the DLC (includes spoilers):
If you’ve read my other Bethesda reviews, you know the drill. The date listed for this completion is for a replay, and I had only played the DLC once upon its release, so here’s the DLC for the review. Just like last time, this will be longer than the actual review, and this is where I drop all pretense of being clever and just make fun of the game fairly directly, which for this game, is probably what everyone was hoping for anyway. Also, there are a whoppin’ FIVE expansions to get through this time, so I hope you’re comfy.
Operation Anchorage might just have the strongest premise of any Fallout DLC. It’s a rare glimpse into the past, depicting a significant moment in the lore for the first time, and what makes it doubly intriguing is how it’s presented as a military-produced simulation. It’s the perfect opportunity to present how pre-nuclear culture distorted reality, to satirize the sort of politics that lead America down that path, and mix it with grains of truth that the player has to dig through for the real history. It would be Fallout’s version of the histories of Herodotus, which contain a mix of true historical insight next to biased legends meant to excite the crowd. It could even be combined with an alternate plot of trying to escape the simulation in a way that gels nicely with Fallout’s sci-fi influences, there are so many ways that a writer could run with this that the only possible conclusion is that none were actually involved in this project. The DLC starts with a short linear shooting section, then drops you into a small map with two objectives: blow up two fuel tanks and clear a base full of enemies. Then, another linear shooting section wraps it all up. Did they think Fallout 3’s combat was so fun that the game just needed more? Did they think the base game didn’t have enough already? I genuinely have no idea what happened here. There’s no substance, just a little under an hour of pure shooting. The only benefit to engaging with it at all is how the armor it rewards you with is bugged to have 9,991 times the durability it should. Classic.
The Pitt has a much simpler idea going on: sneak into the industrial hell that Pittsburgh has become, go undercover, and coordinate a resistance with the enslaved people. Having all your stuff taken from you to collect ingots in a factory overrun by mutants, scrounging for every bullet and stimpack, is an effective change of pace for highlighting the desperation of the setting, but that single mission is all there is to it. Afterwards, you fight in the arena, with the first enemies dropping great weapons that you can use to easily blast away the other two fights. Then, you get all your gear back. What happens next is particularly odd: you get called up to meet the boss of the entire operation and are expected to hear him out and maybe reach a compromise. However, knowing he’s a slaver and that I’m wearing 9,991 layers of power armor, I disagreed and chose the dialog option to kill him along with all the other bosses. This broke the DLC. Bethesda must have genuinely thought that the choice between maintaining the systematic enslavement of the entire East coast or killing a handful of slavers would be something I needed to really think about, because it made half the NPC’s dialog shut down. It also made the final quest entirely pointless, being a mission to overrun their base with mutants, even though everyone was already dead. So, The Pitt was a promising little plot for about 20 minutes, but after that, it completely ran out of steam. No interesting rewards or additions here either.
Broken Steel is perhaps the most famous of the bunch, thanks to its rewriting of the original terrible ending, but the new one has almost all the same issues. The Enclave’s overall motivation and their reasons for fighting the Brotherhood were hazy at the best of times, but with the purifier lost, their main base destroyed, their leaders killed, and the enemy in possession of a superweapon, what’s keeping them going? What’s their goal that we’re trying to stop? The closest we get is how their orbital satellite superweapon destroyed our giant robot superweapon, and now we want to get even. What they plan to do with it from that point, or why they didn’t just use it earlier, go largely unaddressed. So, the new finale of the Fallout 3 main quest is blowing up a base you learned of an hour ago, in defense of nothing in particular. I genuinely think this DLC was created just to pull the Lone Wanderer out of the grave that the writers inelegantly shoved them into, and the rest was an afterthought. Here’s a fun fact though: Broken Steel contains the only time in the main completion path where you visit the iconic Pennsylvania Avenue. While most players end up there while searching for Dad, players who did Moira’s quest first probably found Dr. Li in Rivet City, skipping quests from Moriarty’s bar, visiting DC, fighting mutants with the Brotherhood, and running errands for Three Dog. See, I told y’all that Moira was the best, she knows where to go.
If it wasn’t for Bethesda’s trademark lack of awareness, I would think Point Lookout was a parody of the main game. You join up with someone who’s entirely contemptuous of you in order to take down someone who’s essentially the exact same, with no firm reason established. Then, the other side tries to flip your allegiance, all without specifying a reason to do so. You really have no context for anything that’s going on and just dumbly shoot your way to the end, until you’re confronted with a pointless choice and an obligatory locker full of stuff. At the very least, this DLC has a full new map to explore, and I have to give credit for that, but it’s just not what this game needed. It’s like Bethesda asked what we wanted, and we yelled “More roleplaying opportunities!” and they said “Great! More shooting!” and served up Operation Anchorage. Then they asked us again, we yelled for more roleplaying again, and we got The Pitt, which asked us if we would be willing to end the murder of an entire generation if it meant the person running the operation would be really disappointed. Then the lag caught up at Bethesda HQ and they got the message that the ending was terrible, so they changed it to allow for more shooting. After we kept screaming for more roleplaying opportunities, we got a couple more square blocks of green mess to explore in a game that had miles of that already. Maybe the next DLC will finally give us what we want.
It took me an hour and a half to complete Mothership Zeta, I had started with 1,006 microfusion cells in my unique plasma rifle, and I ended with 96. So, firing 910 shots over the course of 90 minutes gives me 10 shots per minute, about once every six seconds. Since none of the enemies drop those cells and I never switched weapons, it’s a fairly reliable measurement. However, keep in mind this includes a couple times where I got lost, and all the time spent looting containers when the game is paused, so it’s more like a shot every 4 seconds. There were no story choices to make, so let’s put that at 0 meaningful roleplay interactions per second. Looks like we didn’t ever get what we wanted, huh. What’s sad is that they actually did have a decent premise in here: there are a bunch of people from different time periods and cultures that you release from cryostasis, and you all have to work together to escape the alien ship. Considering how Fallout is all about warring factions, wouldn’t it be beautiful to end the game’s saga with a story about how people can come together across culture and time to create the perfect team? Instead, it just means you can pick a companion with a shotgun, a rifle, or a revolver to shoot along with you. It blows my mind how a DLC that overtly apes Star Trek and classic sci-fi so thoroughly misses the underlying humanism.
If there’s a theme to all this, it’s how Fallout 3 has some nice little seeds of great ideas, which could have grown with some time and love, that just went nowhere. The Capital Wasteland is criticized for being a big green concrete ruin, but the harshness would have been really compelling if it was tied into a story about pushing forward when all seemed lost. Operation Anchorage’s premise is great, The Pitt is a setting just begging for more development, Broken Steel… shows that Bethesda is willing to listen to feedback, and so on. While I would love to say that the team just had to get their sea legs and would make the next Fallout amazing, we all know that didn’t work out. Fallout 4 was also a story that was basically about nothing, and Fallout 76 was entirely based around being about nothing. With such a storied legacy of nothingness, I don’t even know who I would tell to play Fallout 3 in this day and age. You don’t need to play this to see that New Vegas was good, and there are tons of games out there that are more fun to wander around in, overshadowing the one saving grace this game could be said to have.
Thus ends the Fallout 3 Survival Guide. As Moira said, “That concludes our exceptional expert endeavor. I have to admit, I was worried it would go over some peoples' heads…
...but it should be fine.” Thanks for reading this behemoth of a review, I think every Bethesda game I’ve covered has been the longest I’ve ever done at the time of its writing. Luckily, Fallout 4 only has two expansions.
Moira Brown.
Yes, the eccentric shopkeeper in Megaton who wants your help writing the Wasteland Survival Guide, and no, I’m not kidding. The way that the quest works in its current state mostly puts you in the path of raiders, mirelurks, and mole rats, but consider how it would look with an expanded scope, with the goal being to catalog not just the major hazards, but factions and politics as well. It would play out similarly to the independent route in New Vegas, where your goal was to make contact with the major regional powers, and either do their quest to make an ally or ignore them altogether. In the case of this hypothetical new Fallout 3, the plan would be the same, to visit raider camps, Brotherhood outposts, the Enclave itself, hear all their perspectives on the world, and try to bargain with them to make life safer for the common wastelander. Just like how the base game allows you to put in a varying level of effort with optional objectives and stat checks, players would have a wide latitude for how involved they want to be. If they want to improve the wasteland by joining one of the factions, they could then choose to write the book in a propagandized, realistic, or disillusioned way, with more useful details coming with more time as a member. It’s a system that would encourage players to genuinely engage with each faction and learn everything they could, on top of exploring different regions and destroying nests of monsters. Just as the player shapes the guide, the writing of the guide comes to shape the wasteland, which has shaped the views of the player. That sort of expressiveness is exactly what an RPG like Fallout really needs to leave a personal impact.
So, where does Moira herself come into it? Well, she’s the embodiment of the question at the heart of a project like this, of how a single person with hardly anything to their name could heal a deeply troubled world. Think of how much we struggle with this question in real life, how so many of us look around and see nothing but collapse and disparity, and don’t know what we can even do about it. Moira represents that spark of action we have within us, even if we aren't sure how to use it, and whether her own efforts are naive, noble, or something in between is up to interpretation. Whichever way she's viewed, the harshness of the world outside enforces just how much it needs people like her, and not more soldiers. Fallout loves to say that war never changes, but a story like this could be the reminder that there's still hope. It’s people like her who can change the world.
Addendum on the DLC (includes spoilers):
If you’ve read my other Bethesda reviews, you know the drill. The date listed for this completion is for a replay, and I had only played the DLC once upon its release, so here’s the DLC for the review. Just like last time, this will be longer than the actual review, and this is where I drop all pretense of being clever and just make fun of the game fairly directly, which for this game, is probably what everyone was hoping for anyway. Also, there are a whoppin’ FIVE expansions to get through this time, so I hope you’re comfy.
Operation Anchorage might just have the strongest premise of any Fallout DLC. It’s a rare glimpse into the past, depicting a significant moment in the lore for the first time, and what makes it doubly intriguing is how it’s presented as a military-produced simulation. It’s the perfect opportunity to present how pre-nuclear culture distorted reality, to satirize the sort of politics that lead America down that path, and mix it with grains of truth that the player has to dig through for the real history. It would be Fallout’s version of the histories of Herodotus, which contain a mix of true historical insight next to biased legends meant to excite the crowd. It could even be combined with an alternate plot of trying to escape the simulation in a way that gels nicely with Fallout’s sci-fi influences, there are so many ways that a writer could run with this that the only possible conclusion is that none were actually involved in this project. The DLC starts with a short linear shooting section, then drops you into a small map with two objectives: blow up two fuel tanks and clear a base full of enemies. Then, another linear shooting section wraps it all up. Did they think Fallout 3’s combat was so fun that the game just needed more? Did they think the base game didn’t have enough already? I genuinely have no idea what happened here. There’s no substance, just a little under an hour of pure shooting. The only benefit to engaging with it at all is how the armor it rewards you with is bugged to have 9,991 times the durability it should. Classic.
The Pitt has a much simpler idea going on: sneak into the industrial hell that Pittsburgh has become, go undercover, and coordinate a resistance with the enslaved people. Having all your stuff taken from you to collect ingots in a factory overrun by mutants, scrounging for every bullet and stimpack, is an effective change of pace for highlighting the desperation of the setting, but that single mission is all there is to it. Afterwards, you fight in the arena, with the first enemies dropping great weapons that you can use to easily blast away the other two fights. Then, you get all your gear back. What happens next is particularly odd: you get called up to meet the boss of the entire operation and are expected to hear him out and maybe reach a compromise. However, knowing he’s a slaver and that I’m wearing 9,991 layers of power armor, I disagreed and chose the dialog option to kill him along with all the other bosses. This broke the DLC. Bethesda must have genuinely thought that the choice between maintaining the systematic enslavement of the entire East coast or killing a handful of slavers would be something I needed to really think about, because it made half the NPC’s dialog shut down. It also made the final quest entirely pointless, being a mission to overrun their base with mutants, even though everyone was already dead. So, The Pitt was a promising little plot for about 20 minutes, but after that, it completely ran out of steam. No interesting rewards or additions here either.
Broken Steel is perhaps the most famous of the bunch, thanks to its rewriting of the original terrible ending, but the new one has almost all the same issues. The Enclave’s overall motivation and their reasons for fighting the Brotherhood were hazy at the best of times, but with the purifier lost, their main base destroyed, their leaders killed, and the enemy in possession of a superweapon, what’s keeping them going? What’s their goal that we’re trying to stop? The closest we get is how their orbital satellite superweapon destroyed our giant robot superweapon, and now we want to get even. What they plan to do with it from that point, or why they didn’t just use it earlier, go largely unaddressed. So, the new finale of the Fallout 3 main quest is blowing up a base you learned of an hour ago, in defense of nothing in particular. I genuinely think this DLC was created just to pull the Lone Wanderer out of the grave that the writers inelegantly shoved them into, and the rest was an afterthought. Here’s a fun fact though: Broken Steel contains the only time in the main completion path where you visit the iconic Pennsylvania Avenue. While most players end up there while searching for Dad, players who did Moira’s quest first probably found Dr. Li in Rivet City, skipping quests from Moriarty’s bar, visiting DC, fighting mutants with the Brotherhood, and running errands for Three Dog. See, I told y’all that Moira was the best, she knows where to go.
If it wasn’t for Bethesda’s trademark lack of awareness, I would think Point Lookout was a parody of the main game. You join up with someone who’s entirely contemptuous of you in order to take down someone who’s essentially the exact same, with no firm reason established. Then, the other side tries to flip your allegiance, all without specifying a reason to do so. You really have no context for anything that’s going on and just dumbly shoot your way to the end, until you’re confronted with a pointless choice and an obligatory locker full of stuff. At the very least, this DLC has a full new map to explore, and I have to give credit for that, but it’s just not what this game needed. It’s like Bethesda asked what we wanted, and we yelled “More roleplaying opportunities!” and they said “Great! More shooting!” and served up Operation Anchorage. Then they asked us again, we yelled for more roleplaying again, and we got The Pitt, which asked us if we would be willing to end the murder of an entire generation if it meant the person running the operation would be really disappointed. Then the lag caught up at Bethesda HQ and they got the message that the ending was terrible, so they changed it to allow for more shooting. After we kept screaming for more roleplaying opportunities, we got a couple more square blocks of green mess to explore in a game that had miles of that already. Maybe the next DLC will finally give us what we want.
It took me an hour and a half to complete Mothership Zeta, I had started with 1,006 microfusion cells in my unique plasma rifle, and I ended with 96. So, firing 910 shots over the course of 90 minutes gives me 10 shots per minute, about once every six seconds. Since none of the enemies drop those cells and I never switched weapons, it’s a fairly reliable measurement. However, keep in mind this includes a couple times where I got lost, and all the time spent looting containers when the game is paused, so it’s more like a shot every 4 seconds. There were no story choices to make, so let’s put that at 0 meaningful roleplay interactions per second. Looks like we didn’t ever get what we wanted, huh. What’s sad is that they actually did have a decent premise in here: there are a bunch of people from different time periods and cultures that you release from cryostasis, and you all have to work together to escape the alien ship. Considering how Fallout is all about warring factions, wouldn’t it be beautiful to end the game’s saga with a story about how people can come together across culture and time to create the perfect team? Instead, it just means you can pick a companion with a shotgun, a rifle, or a revolver to shoot along with you. It blows my mind how a DLC that overtly apes Star Trek and classic sci-fi so thoroughly misses the underlying humanism.
If there’s a theme to all this, it’s how Fallout 3 has some nice little seeds of great ideas, which could have grown with some time and love, that just went nowhere. The Capital Wasteland is criticized for being a big green concrete ruin, but the harshness would have been really compelling if it was tied into a story about pushing forward when all seemed lost. Operation Anchorage’s premise is great, The Pitt is a setting just begging for more development, Broken Steel… shows that Bethesda is willing to listen to feedback, and so on. While I would love to say that the team just had to get their sea legs and would make the next Fallout amazing, we all know that didn’t work out. Fallout 4 was also a story that was basically about nothing, and Fallout 76 was entirely based around being about nothing. With such a storied legacy of nothingness, I don’t even know who I would tell to play Fallout 3 in this day and age. You don’t need to play this to see that New Vegas was good, and there are tons of games out there that are more fun to wander around in, overshadowing the one saving grace this game could be said to have.
Thus ends the Fallout 3 Survival Guide. As Moira said, “That concludes our exceptional expert endeavor. I have to admit, I was worried it would go over some peoples' heads…
...but it should be fine.” Thanks for reading this behemoth of a review, I think every Bethesda game I’ve covered has been the longest I’ve ever done at the time of its writing. Luckily, Fallout 4 only has two expansions.
Graphics have aged like milk, but out of the non-isometric FO games, this one is still the best. It's a survival RPG as it should be. Choices matter.
here's my bold original take: fallout 3 is a bad rpg
This game pales in comparison to NV in almost every aspect but It's still a fun game for what it is.
The second best 3D Fallout game
Embarked on a journey to 100% complete this game again and get all the achievements on my current Xbox account (lost access to the account I originally did it on). The game is showing it's age but I still had fun! Nostalgia clouds my judgment but there's still something special about walking out of Vault 101 every time! Finding Megaton, traveling to Rivet City, exploring the ghoul-infested metros, and fighting Super Mutants in the ruins of Washington D.C. will forever be burned into my memory. No matter how many times I play, the Capitol Wasteland keeps surprising me with unmarked locations and subtle visual storytelling.
Glitches and crashes along with random bugs, broken quests, and horrible AI are tiresome and immediately break immersion. However, there is a theory brewing in my head, that if you let Stockholm syndrome set in, you will look past these problems and your mind will adapt to still pull enjoyment from playing. Bethesda really tanked the story in terms of respecting established lore, so that is frustrating. However, many threads of potentially fantastic stories are interwoven throughout the game. One can tell when the team had random, neat ideas they wanted to implement but the engine or time did not cooperate. And even though the main quest is the most vanilla, white-bread, cookie-cutter plot, there is enough to stay hooked through the world-building on its own.
Obviously, the soundtrack is phenomenal and this game sparked my interest in early to mid-20th-century music. And an interest in 50s Americana and culture also developed thanks to this game. So even if it has its issues - Fallout 3 stands as an early 2000s icon of gaming and is deserving of the praise despite the flaws!
Glitches and crashes along with random bugs, broken quests, and horrible AI are tiresome and immediately break immersion. However, there is a theory brewing in my head, that if you let Stockholm syndrome set in, you will look past these problems and your mind will adapt to still pull enjoyment from playing. Bethesda really tanked the story in terms of respecting established lore, so that is frustrating. However, many threads of potentially fantastic stories are interwoven throughout the game. One can tell when the team had random, neat ideas they wanted to implement but the engine or time did not cooperate. And even though the main quest is the most vanilla, white-bread, cookie-cutter plot, there is enough to stay hooked through the world-building on its own.
Obviously, the soundtrack is phenomenal and this game sparked my interest in early to mid-20th-century music. And an interest in 50s Americana and culture also developed thanks to this game. So even if it has its issues - Fallout 3 stands as an early 2000s icon of gaming and is deserving of the praise despite the flaws!
I played this in tandem with Disco Elysium and tbh I forgot how goddamn boring of a game this was, made for a good palate cleanser after any session of the former game. FO4 is considered either fairly disappointing or just quite bad due to its dumbing down on a lot of RPG mechanics (on top of a lot of other things). Yet going back to this game made me appreciate FO4 somehow since at least I thought some of the new additions in 4 were neat. There's really no reason whatsoever to go back to this when New Vegas exists. Hell, I thought by getting the DLCs I'd at least be adding some spice into this second playthrough but nah it just allowed me to get end game material at like, level 8. The biggest positive I can say this second time around was that it somehow managed to not crash on me every hour or so, god's blessing be upon me i guess. Overall it's just a really bland, monotonous and mind-numbingly easy game to go back to. Even Fallout 4 has stuff like factions and uncapped levels to entice another playthrough but if you go through GOTY (hell even if you've just played vanilla FO3, the dlc isn't anything you need to bother getting unless you want to sit through 2 hours of bad gunplay to get a Gauss Rifle and the best Power Armor in the first few hours of the game), you've pretty much seen everything. Not helped by the fact you can miss ~50% of the game and still get level capped, so why bother doing any other questlines. Here's a list of areas/questlines I didn't do because I didn't need the exp/weapons/money/karma nor did I want to waste anymore time with this than need be.
-The Agatha quest (I've never done this despite hearing this is one of the few good quests)
-The entire Arefu quest (other than getting the bobblehead here)
-Anything Oasis related
-Anything Tenpenny related
-The Canterbury Commons quest
-The grayditch quest
-The big town quest
-Anything Rivet City related that wasn't the main questline
And despite missing a good chunk of the game's locations and side quests, I capped my level and had a skill spread average in the 90s. And this was without getting any of the 'add bonus points into X skills' perks that were completely removed in NV. It was just an extremely mindless experience.
But at least Fawkes is good.
-The Agatha quest (I've never done this despite hearing this is one of the few good quests)
-The entire Arefu quest (other than getting the bobblehead here)
-Anything Oasis related
-Anything Tenpenny related
-The Canterbury Commons quest
-The grayditch quest
-The big town quest
-Anything Rivet City related that wasn't the main questline
And despite missing a good chunk of the game's locations and side quests, I capped my level and had a skill spread average in the 90s. And this was without getting any of the 'add bonus points into X skills' perks that were completely removed in NV. It was just an extremely mindless experience.
But at least Fawkes is good.
Going to be in the minority probably, but F3:GOTY is my favorite Fallout game in the franchise.
I finished this a few weeks ago but haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet because I'm Still playing it lol. I played this for the first time in 2022, and it blew my mind honestly. I find the world so interesting, and I absolutely love wandering around, finding places, and discovering their story with the clues left around. It also caters well to different playstyles. If you want an easy time and just wanna explore, just bring a companion or two around and maybe just depend on VATS. If you want an actual shooter experience you can also have that. A lot of people hate the quality of the story, but I didn't mind it much. It's not really what I was playing for. I'd give this game a 5 if it weren't for how tedious it sometimes felt to deal with bugs/crashes in addition to the pathing of the npc companions LMAO they can't traverse as well as MC so a lot of the time they will disappear for days on end. Bugs aside, I love this game if it's not obvious.
New vegastan sonra oynadığım ve onun çeyreği bile olamayacak oyun.
Coming from Oblivion, appreciated all the improvements like a great setting, better (or just plain more) voice acting, no more potato faces, good companion system, more satisfying combat and multiple DLCs. Helped me prep for New Vegas.
Um dia ja foi meu fallout favorito hj percebo que tem 1001 defeitos
i think that game is in the top 5 open worlds i've played, even if it received much hate, i think that this game is the beginning of the 3D fallout games, and just for that, we owe him respect.
it's not perfect, it have much bugs and problems... but (almost) all bethesda games are bugged.
it's not perfect, it have much bugs and problems... but (almost) all bethesda games are bugged.
Game has a piss filter and the gameplay is kinda meh for me. At least the story was alright and the DLC wasn't bad either. Beat the game start to finish but I wouldn't actually suggest anyone else bother playing it nowadays.
seria melhor se os inimigos n fossem tao bullet sponge
full review: https://medium.com/@pr0thean/lets-talk-about-fallout-3-2008-1254b364e01b
TLTR: As I grow older, I realize my favorite games don't need to be the best written, the best graphically. Perhaps Fallout 3 isn’t the best in the series, but it’s my favorite. It strives to do what it wanted to do, to make a love letter to a series it grew up with also. It falls short at times, it tries many new and old things. It’s funny, lonely, depressing, broken, and at times, unremarkable. This game is a love letter to the series. It might not be special, but there would be no more Fallout games without it. It’s not the best Fallout, but I love it regardless. It’s my Fallout, and it might not be your favorite Fallout, but it’ll always be yours too.
TLTR: As I grow older, I realize my favorite games don't need to be the best written, the best graphically. Perhaps Fallout 3 isn’t the best in the series, but it’s my favorite. It strives to do what it wanted to do, to make a love letter to a series it grew up with also. It falls short at times, it tries many new and old things. It’s funny, lonely, depressing, broken, and at times, unremarkable. This game is a love letter to the series. It might not be special, but there would be no more Fallout games without it. It’s not the best Fallout, but I love it regardless. It’s my Fallout, and it might not be your favorite Fallout, but it’ll always be yours too.
I had never played Fallout 3. My entry into the Fallout Franchise was Fallout New Vegas. And if you know anything about the discourse surrounding these games, the general consensus is that New Vegas took Fallout 3 and improved on everything that F3 lacked, including the classic RPG chops that Obsidian is known for but Bethesda has never really excelled at.
And I really didnt want that to be the case. Obviously it will always be somewhat unfair to compare a game to the one that came after on the same engine, being able to skip one of the most time consuming aspects of Game development. I really wanted to be able to say that whilst lesser, F3 had its own strengths and the world is big enough for both but good god did that end up not being the case.
Fallout 3 is just Oblivion with Guns, as they say. The long, dull, overlong opening that did not really even make me sympathise for any characters or a struggle or anything was pretty bad but on a first playthrough is even slightly tolerable. The character writing and quest designs seem so dull. The combat is awful, even worse than New Vegas and far too easy. This would be fine usually, the combat in New Vegas kinda sucks too but it had the good core of story and role playing to keep it interesting. I cant speak to the Super Mutants, they are all hostile to me, maybe they explain later if they have some sort of leader like the Master or Tabitha commanding them to shoot humans on sight but I will never know.
Time and time again all Fallout 3 seems interested is combat, combat combat combat. By the time I was 4 hours in in New Vegas I had helped repel a gang from a town, helped a rebelled prison and then double crossed them to ingratiate myself to one of the major factions, learned a lot about the man who shot me, flirted with a Gay quartermaster, gotten my first companion in the form of an alcoholic merchant, had some combat yes, in the form of the various expertly designed and placed gang ambushes and met Caesar's legion in Nipton, and their atrocities.
By contrast 4 Hours in in Fallout 3 I went through a long dull intro, reached Megaton, disarmed a NUCLEAR BOMB with 25 explosives skill, raided a super market filled with raiders for a wasteland guide (that quest was at least semi interesting), did a dull quest about some fire ants and spent fully 25 minutes trying to find the entrance to the stupid chevy chase district (oh silly me, of course you had to use a specific metro station) and everything else was just shooting at everyone and everything.
More than anything, Fallout 3 is far too wasteland-y for its own good. This is a world where the bombs dropped centuries ago, people should already be in the process of having rebuilt SOMETHING. Where are the farms? I didnt see any. "The water is irradiated, no crops would grow" then they'd all be dead mate, there would not realistically be enough blamco mac and cheese lying around for hundreds of years. Even beyond the incoherence of the world building its just DULL, a world filled with raiders, orcs, monsters etc without interesting settlements beyond a handful is a boring world. Its a world filled not with characters but target practice. And again, the combat sucks, so its not even compelling on the level that a Stalker Game would be (which even that had better RPing).
Ill admit I did not get very far, maybe this game has good things to offer but whatever they are, they're certainly not apparent in 4 hours of playtime, and I have much better things to get on with. What a slog.
Edit: Also worth mentioning the Bethesda brand Random Encounters TM. Unlike finely crafted combat encounters designed to be interesting and challenging you just suddenly get hit with a random encounter of three cows or radroaches or whatever, utter Filler
Edit 2 : In Columbo Voice : "Oh and just one more thing", this game has really insulting sound effects/melodies. Like when you leave the vault after the intro thats good enough on its own, but they dont trust you to feel that on your own so they add a cringe inducing little (I think its called leitmotif or something like that? might be the wrong term) jingle so you feel awe. A bunch more obvious, tell-you-how-you-feel sounds that insult your intelligence
And I really didnt want that to be the case. Obviously it will always be somewhat unfair to compare a game to the one that came after on the same engine, being able to skip one of the most time consuming aspects of Game development. I really wanted to be able to say that whilst lesser, F3 had its own strengths and the world is big enough for both but good god did that end up not being the case.
Fallout 3 is just Oblivion with Guns, as they say. The long, dull, overlong opening that did not really even make me sympathise for any characters or a struggle or anything was pretty bad but on a first playthrough is even slightly tolerable. The character writing and quest designs seem so dull. The combat is awful, even worse than New Vegas and far too easy. This would be fine usually, the combat in New Vegas kinda sucks too but it had the good core of story and role playing to keep it interesting. I cant speak to the Super Mutants, they are all hostile to me, maybe they explain later if they have some sort of leader like the Master or Tabitha commanding them to shoot humans on sight but I will never know.
Time and time again all Fallout 3 seems interested is combat, combat combat combat. By the time I was 4 hours in in New Vegas I had helped repel a gang from a town, helped a rebelled prison and then double crossed them to ingratiate myself to one of the major factions, learned a lot about the man who shot me, flirted with a Gay quartermaster, gotten my first companion in the form of an alcoholic merchant, had some combat yes, in the form of the various expertly designed and placed gang ambushes and met Caesar's legion in Nipton, and their atrocities.
By contrast 4 Hours in in Fallout 3 I went through a long dull intro, reached Megaton, disarmed a NUCLEAR BOMB with 25 explosives skill, raided a super market filled with raiders for a wasteland guide (that quest was at least semi interesting), did a dull quest about some fire ants and spent fully 25 minutes trying to find the entrance to the stupid chevy chase district (oh silly me, of course you had to use a specific metro station) and everything else was just shooting at everyone and everything.
More than anything, Fallout 3 is far too wasteland-y for its own good. This is a world where the bombs dropped centuries ago, people should already be in the process of having rebuilt SOMETHING. Where are the farms? I didnt see any. "The water is irradiated, no crops would grow" then they'd all be dead mate, there would not realistically be enough blamco mac and cheese lying around for hundreds of years. Even beyond the incoherence of the world building its just DULL, a world filled with raiders, orcs, monsters etc without interesting settlements beyond a handful is a boring world. Its a world filled not with characters but target practice. And again, the combat sucks, so its not even compelling on the level that a Stalker Game would be (which even that had better RPing).
Ill admit I did not get very far, maybe this game has good things to offer but whatever they are, they're certainly not apparent in 4 hours of playtime, and I have much better things to get on with. What a slog.
Edit: Also worth mentioning the Bethesda brand Random Encounters TM. Unlike finely crafted combat encounters designed to be interesting and challenging you just suddenly get hit with a random encounter of three cows or radroaches or whatever, utter Filler
Edit 2 : In Columbo Voice : "Oh and just one more thing", this game has really insulting sound effects/melodies. Like when you leave the vault after the intro thats good enough on its own, but they dont trust you to feel that on your own so they add a cringe inducing little (I think its called leitmotif or something like that? might be the wrong term) jingle so you feel awe. A bunch more obvious, tell-you-how-you-feel sounds that insult your intelligence
Fallout 3 opens with the birth of your character, you go through a relatively long prologue through the years upto the point where you're forced to get out of the secluded protection of the vault. It grounds your character in the setting in an organic way, more so than any other Bethesda in my opinion. Which is why I find it funny that I felt least connected to the setting and my character of this game than any other.
These games have always have always had a theme-park design to them, sandbox with toys to play around for you. But if you decide to meet the games half way, acknowledge the limitation and roleplay within the confines of the sandbox, they can be some of the most immersive experiences in gaming. But here I felt really hard to connect myself to the world. The writing and the quest design lacked the extra oomph for me to get immersed in the characters and their struggles. The main story is supposed to be deeply personal to the PC, but the none of the main characters have enough depth to make you care. It felt more like playing an outside observer briefly looking into the stories of the people in this worlds and way too happy to kill some mutants and raiders. It really was like being in a theme park.
This is not to say I didn't have fun with it, the labyrinth of DC metro aside exploration is a lot of fun like all Bethesda games. There are a lot of attractions in this theme park, both quantity and variety. The comically evil choices also makes more sense with that perspective. I even got used to the janky gunplay after a while, it's oddly satisfying blowing up meat bags with bullets. That's why the positive rating here. Still, this is probably my least favorite Bethesda game.
These games have always have always had a theme-park design to them, sandbox with toys to play around for you. But if you decide to meet the games half way, acknowledge the limitation and roleplay within the confines of the sandbox, they can be some of the most immersive experiences in gaming. But here I felt really hard to connect myself to the world. The writing and the quest design lacked the extra oomph for me to get immersed in the characters and their struggles. The main story is supposed to be deeply personal to the PC, but the none of the main characters have enough depth to make you care. It felt more like playing an outside observer briefly looking into the stories of the people in this worlds and way too happy to kill some mutants and raiders. It really was like being in a theme park.
This is not to say I didn't have fun with it, the labyrinth of DC metro aside exploration is a lot of fun like all Bethesda games. There are a lot of attractions in this theme park, both quantity and variety. The comically evil choices also makes more sense with that perspective. I even got used to the janky gunplay after a while, it's oddly satisfying blowing up meat bags with bullets. That's why the positive rating here. Still, this is probably my least favorite Bethesda game.
I wholeheartedly believe this game is overhated. Sure it’s not better than New Vegas but if you appreciate it for what it is it’s a solid good game. Since it’s set in Washington DC instead of the Mojave Desert it’s gonna look more depressing but it actually feel more dystopian and fallout-like seeing these huge completly destroyed apartments everywhere you go compared to just a desert where it’s just sand. Also the main missions ain’t that bad and if you hate it just download a mod to skip it or do it later. After all it’s a bethesda game which means everyone does the side missions before the main.
This review currently only covers the base game and not the complete game experience including DLC content.
🕗 Total time played (approx.): 63h
🏆 Completion: 100% Base Game without DLCs (51/73 Trophies)
REVIEW:
From the moment I delved into the vast wastelands of "Fallout 3", I was struck by the game's immersive atmosphere and the depth of its open-world RPG mechanics. The ability to shape the fate of my character and the world around them was truly captivating. Whether I was exploring the ruins of Washington, D.C. or forging alliances with various factions, every decision felt meaningful and contributed to the unique narrative that unfolded before me.
Completing the base game at 100 percent was no small feat, especially when considering the technical limitations of the PS3. The occasional stutters, frame rate drops, and other performance issues certainly tested my nerves and resolve. Despite these challenges, my determination to experience the full scope of "Fallout 3" pushed me to endure and persist. The sense of accomplishment I felt as I conquered these obstacles was immeasurable, and it added a layer of personal satisfaction to the overall gaming experience.
It's worth noting that the allure of the trophies and my desire to fully immerse myself in the game's world motivated me to push through even when the going got tough. The joy of earning each trophy, and ultimately attaining the Platinum trophy, became a driving force behind my dedication to completing the base game. Each challenge, no matter how daunting, became an opportunity to prove my resilience and demonstrate my commitment to fully experiencing what "Fallout 3" had to offer.
As of my current status, I have yet to embark on the downloadable content adventures that await in the "Game of the Year Edition." Despite this, my experience with the base game has been overwhelmingly positive, even if it was tempered by the technical limitations of the PS3. The fact that I pushed through these challenges to achieve a 100 percent completion rate, as well as acquire all the trophies, stands as a testament to the engrossing nature of "Fallout 3" and its ability to captivate players despite its technological shortcomings.
In closing, "Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition" has provided me with a remarkable and memorable gaming journey. The depth of its storytelling, the allure of its trophies, and the satisfaction of overcoming technical obstacles all contribute to an experience that is both challenging and immensely rewarding. As I look forward to delving into the DLCs, I am reminded of the resilience and determination that defined my quest to conquer the base game. It is a testament to the enduring appeal of this post-apocalyptic masterpiece.
⭐ Rating: 4/5
🕗 Total time played (approx.): 63h
🏆 Completion: 100% Base Game without DLCs (51/73 Trophies)
REVIEW:
From the moment I delved into the vast wastelands of "Fallout 3", I was struck by the game's immersive atmosphere and the depth of its open-world RPG mechanics. The ability to shape the fate of my character and the world around them was truly captivating. Whether I was exploring the ruins of Washington, D.C. or forging alliances with various factions, every decision felt meaningful and contributed to the unique narrative that unfolded before me.
Completing the base game at 100 percent was no small feat, especially when considering the technical limitations of the PS3. The occasional stutters, frame rate drops, and other performance issues certainly tested my nerves and resolve. Despite these challenges, my determination to experience the full scope of "Fallout 3" pushed me to endure and persist. The sense of accomplishment I felt as I conquered these obstacles was immeasurable, and it added a layer of personal satisfaction to the overall gaming experience.
It's worth noting that the allure of the trophies and my desire to fully immerse myself in the game's world motivated me to push through even when the going got tough. The joy of earning each trophy, and ultimately attaining the Platinum trophy, became a driving force behind my dedication to completing the base game. Each challenge, no matter how daunting, became an opportunity to prove my resilience and demonstrate my commitment to fully experiencing what "Fallout 3" had to offer.
As of my current status, I have yet to embark on the downloadable content adventures that await in the "Game of the Year Edition." Despite this, my experience with the base game has been overwhelmingly positive, even if it was tempered by the technical limitations of the PS3. The fact that I pushed through these challenges to achieve a 100 percent completion rate, as well as acquire all the trophies, stands as a testament to the engrossing nature of "Fallout 3" and its ability to captivate players despite its technological shortcomings.
In closing, "Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition" has provided me with a remarkable and memorable gaming journey. The depth of its storytelling, the allure of its trophies, and the satisfaction of overcoming technical obstacles all contribute to an experience that is both challenging and immensely rewarding. As I look forward to delving into the DLCs, I am reminded of the resilience and determination that defined my quest to conquer the base game. It is a testament to the enduring appeal of this post-apocalyptic masterpiece.
⭐ Rating: 4/5
Fallout 3 to me will always be a odd game to rank or rate. Such being simply put down to the conflicting ideas I have on what this game is. Because on one end I can endlessly agree with all the aspects of Fallout 3 that others consider to be "Bad." The true ending being locked behind DLC, the story and quests feeling shallow, or iron sights. But on the other side I can also see the positives. Being the first game in 3D and all that they where able to introduce to the fallout formula from such, combined with the relatively good ability on the developers to port old fallout concepts and game play mechanics to a newer medium; and how, at the end of the day, Fallout 3 is still a fun experience, and a not bad game.
Que jogo chato!! Tedioso até demais, mas pensei que ia ficar melhor quando saísse do Bunker... Mas só piorou, tudo bem que eu carrego meio mundo de coisa, MAS POR QUE O PROTAGONISTA TEM QUE ANDAR TÃO LENTAMENTE?? ANDA MAIS RÁPIDO INFERNO!!! Ele anda tão lento que não me dá vontade nenhuma de explorar o que o jogo tem a oferecer, progressão muito lenta e a história e os mistérios não me cativaram, poderia até ficar melhor com o passar da gameplay, MAS O PROTAGONISTA NÃO GOSTA DE CORRER QUE NERVOSO
When I turn my brain off just a little, I find that this game really isn't so bad.
Playtime: Over 100 Hours
Score: 8/10
Bethesda's first entry in the Fallout series! My history with this game was interesting, as New Vegas was my first Fallout game and after loving that, I got this game and was a little disappointed by it at first. In comparison to NV, I didn't like how the metro tunnels were the main way to travel around the city, the repair skill being tied to weapon degradation, is logical to me now but back then I was so used to the streamlined nature of NV. But playing through it recently to get the platinum made me appreciate it more.
To start with the good, the story while straight forward is very enjoyable to play through, with Liam Neeson voicing your characters father to add that extra zing. The go where you want, do whatever you want mentality from Bethesda works well here, as you have a vast world to explore and fantastic side characters to meet along the way! The side quests are where the game shines, as that is really where the roleplaying aspect comes in (something Bethesda would sadly slowly move away from), as you can be good or evil, it really is up to you! The combat is basic but I don't really play these types of games for super-smooth combat, rather for satisfying roleplaying gameplay. VATS helps a lot in combat though as using it to blow enemies limbs off never gets old! Overall this game is a good balance of streamlined RPG mechanics but still feeling like a good roleplaying experience compared to later entries in this series.
As for the bad: the main story while enjoyable is very black & white and is probably the most linear aspect of this game. While there are multiple ways to approach and end side quests, the main questline forces you to be the good guy and doesn't allow for any real choice and consequence. The Brotherhood of Steel are the good guys and the Enclave are the bad guys, that's it, you have no say in the matter. The open endness of this game also works against it sometimes, as in my original playthrough, while I was exploring the wastes, I found an area where one of the later main quests takes place, I entered and ended up starting the main questline there essentially, missing out on some of the earlier main missions (and their achievements). The game is also very buggy, especially on PS3, where you will run into multiple crashes and bugs the more you play. My copy of the game is pretty much broken as no matter what I do (uninstalling the game, starting a new game, deleting my save data etc..) I can't play the game at all for 2 minutes without it crashing completely. I had to end up borrowing a friends copy of the game so that I could continue to pursue the platinum. Also, the other main issue, is how OP your character can get; from having more skill points whenever you level up (in comparison to NV); the ability to increase those skill points to over 20 and the fact that you can get a perk point every level, makes your character really overpowered and playing a specialised role difficult. I understand Bethesda wants you to be able to be a jack of all trades in their games, but I personally prefer a system where I have to make tough choices when building my character, which gives the game more replay value in my opinion. The Karama system is also weak as no matter how evil you be, you can always fix it by giving water bottles to hobos in the wasteland. Overall, though despite my gripes this is still a solid entry in the fallout series and I can definitely recommend it to fans; just be aware of buggy performance going in.
All Games I've Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
Bethesda Games Studios Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/bethesda-game-studios-ranked/
Score: 8/10
Bethesda's first entry in the Fallout series! My history with this game was interesting, as New Vegas was my first Fallout game and after loving that, I got this game and was a little disappointed by it at first. In comparison to NV, I didn't like how the metro tunnels were the main way to travel around the city, the repair skill being tied to weapon degradation, is logical to me now but back then I was so used to the streamlined nature of NV. But playing through it recently to get the platinum made me appreciate it more.
To start with the good, the story while straight forward is very enjoyable to play through, with Liam Neeson voicing your characters father to add that extra zing. The go where you want, do whatever you want mentality from Bethesda works well here, as you have a vast world to explore and fantastic side characters to meet along the way! The side quests are where the game shines, as that is really where the roleplaying aspect comes in (something Bethesda would sadly slowly move away from), as you can be good or evil, it really is up to you! The combat is basic but I don't really play these types of games for super-smooth combat, rather for satisfying roleplaying gameplay. VATS helps a lot in combat though as using it to blow enemies limbs off never gets old! Overall this game is a good balance of streamlined RPG mechanics but still feeling like a good roleplaying experience compared to later entries in this series.
As for the bad: the main story while enjoyable is very black & white and is probably the most linear aspect of this game. While there are multiple ways to approach and end side quests, the main questline forces you to be the good guy and doesn't allow for any real choice and consequence. The Brotherhood of Steel are the good guys and the Enclave are the bad guys, that's it, you have no say in the matter. The open endness of this game also works against it sometimes, as in my original playthrough, while I was exploring the wastes, I found an area where one of the later main quests takes place, I entered and ended up starting the main questline there essentially, missing out on some of the earlier main missions (and their achievements). The game is also very buggy, especially on PS3, where you will run into multiple crashes and bugs the more you play. My copy of the game is pretty much broken as no matter what I do (uninstalling the game, starting a new game, deleting my save data etc..) I can't play the game at all for 2 minutes without it crashing completely. I had to end up borrowing a friends copy of the game so that I could continue to pursue the platinum. Also, the other main issue, is how OP your character can get; from having more skill points whenever you level up (in comparison to NV); the ability to increase those skill points to over 20 and the fact that you can get a perk point every level, makes your character really overpowered and playing a specialised role difficult. I understand Bethesda wants you to be able to be a jack of all trades in their games, but I personally prefer a system where I have to make tough choices when building my character, which gives the game more replay value in my opinion. The Karama system is also weak as no matter how evil you be, you can always fix it by giving water bottles to hobos in the wasteland. Overall, though despite my gripes this is still a solid entry in the fallout series and I can definitely recommend it to fans; just be aware of buggy performance going in.
All Games I've Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
Bethesda Games Studios Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/bethesda-game-studios-ranked/
This review contains spoilers
Great game, it perfectly captures the atmosphere of a nuclear wasteland where everything has been destroyed and nothing remains except inter-waring factions and mutated organisms.
Unfortunately, this leaves the game an empty void of content, characteristic of the current iteration of Bethesda titles, Fallout 76, Skyrim and Starfield for example. Some people might not appreciate that game design, and might prefer something content rich like New Vegas.
But if you want to simulate how it is to live in a desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland, this game is perfect.
Unfortunately, this leaves the game an empty void of content, characteristic of the current iteration of Bethesda titles, Fallout 76, Skyrim and Starfield for example. Some people might not appreciate that game design, and might prefer something content rich like New Vegas.
But if you want to simulate how it is to live in a desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland, this game is perfect.
For some reason, It takes me multiple tries to fully get into a Fallout game. It took me like 5 times with Fallout 4, which eventually became one of my favorites, I've yet to fully get into Fallout NV though I have played about 10 hours, and it took me even longer to fully get into Fallout 3. Now that I have played over 80 hours of Fallout 3, I can say that this is pretty fantastic, and one of my favorite Open World games I've played.
Bethesda gets a lot of mostly deserved hate these days due to games like Fallout 76, Starfield, and games they published like Redfall. However, you can not deny, that before Bethesda's down fall, they were the very best at Open World RPGs, and this game, as well as some other titles, prove that. The Open World of Fallout 3 is not only fun to explore, but is Immersive, atmospheric, full of Unique locations, Unique Charcters, and Dangerous. The world Bethesda created, is harsh, hellish, and horrible. The world is full of things, things that only have one goal in mind, and that goal is to make sure you don't make it out of the Wasteland alive. It is quite possibly the most dangerous land to explore in any game, which can be said about almost every Fallout, but due to the great designs and mechanics of the enemies you encounter in the waste, this game feels just so much more brutal. The grey coloring and rough textures, though I really like those, create a depressing, oppressive atmosphere, one that I have yet to see replicated in anything else excluding the original Fallout games. Bethesda, at least to me, understood the Fallout product very well, and it shows in the world the created. In the other Bethesda games I've played, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Oblivion, Morrowind, the pure adventurous wonder they implement in each of these, is unrivaled, and is found here in Fallout 3 as well, with tons of places to explore and scavenge, as well as finding stories that the player allways feels is unique to their experience. Something I want to add really quick, the Towns and Cities you find in the world were all pretty memorable and interesting. Megaton is no doubt the best one, but Rivet City, Little Lamplight, and Big town, are all interesting places with interesting characters and unique themes that I love. Some left a little to be desired, but mostly no complaints, Fantastic job once again in the Open World department from Bethesda.
Besides the areas outside of DC, DC itself, though not as open or fun to explore, was scary, dangerous, and well done. I do wish they would've had the city more open, and though there are problems with the Metro system they make you go though, I thought they were still fun to explore. I just wish they didn't block the player off from exploring freely, hopefully that is something that can fix in a hypothetical Remake.
Moving on to something I wasn't as big a fan of, the Main Campaign. The best part of this game is the side quests. So I avoided doing the Main Quest a lot, just making sure I got stronger, because from past playthroughs the Main Quest has always been a struggle for me. I'm sure playing on Very Hard difficulty has something to do with that, but it's also due to the poor balancing of enemies in the game. Besides the tedious difficulty, the Main Story has one of my favorite beginnings to any game I've played. I agree it's definitely too long, which can be said about all Bethesda openings, but I also believe it was very well done and memorable. However, the rest of the campaign seems extremely rushed and poorly paced. I believe this is due to the struggles of trying to make things work on the hardware they had to work with, as well as the Engine Bethesda uses. I'm pretty certain they wanted this game to be much bigger, especially the Main Story. There are a lot of cool and good moments, but also there is a feeling of "I never got to experience the whole story".
The rushed story, as well as the bugs in the game, makes me think this is the game that is in most need of a Remake. Not a remaster to make it pretty, but a full Remake. Yes this game is great as it is, but playing this and realizing the potential it has for being the very best Fallout game makes me want one even more.
Moving on, the gameplay was good. From the RPG mechanics to the Gunplay and everything in between, I heavily enjoyed it. However, the Gunplay would be kinda shit without the V.A.T.S. carrying it. It's just ok by itself, which can be said about all Fallouts except 4 and 76, but the V.A.T.S. is so incredibly necessary. Besides the lack luster gunplay, the RPG elements are well done, and do seem to have a good amount of "Depth" behind them. My absolute favorite gameplay aspect, something that I touched on earlier, is the scavenging for recourses. I cannot describe how much I enjoy doing this in games. I don't know what it is, but just scavenging around for useful shit in games is so satisfying for me. Fallout 3, might just be the best at this. So much stuff to find, but also a lot fo stuff you can miss that makes it even more satisfying to find. I found it so awesome when you would literally have to pull out a little wooden bin and find some chems or bullets the devs randomly thought to enclude. It takes the Immersion to an entirely different level, and I couldn't get enough of it.
Fallout 3, especially compared to New Vegas and even 4, doesn't give you much choice on in what you can do. I'm pretty sure it has to do with hardware limitations and the amount of quests, but that doesn't change the fact that in Fallout 3, you are either really good, or really evil. Sometimes it doesn't even give you a choice between the two. In NV, I felt I didn't just have two choices, I felt like I could be neutral, I could be good, but go about it 3 different ways, and vice versa with being evil. Now I always just do the morally right things in games anyway, but it would've been so much better to get more options on how to go about missions.
Speaking of things Fallout NV and 4 do better than 3, especially NV, the Dialogue was honestly, at times, bad. Now the dialogue for the NPCs were usually fine, though there was way to many lines that they just randomly through in a "Fuck". The main Dialogue issue is what options they give the player. I swear, you can either be a generic hero, or a cornball psychopath. You can ask other stuff sometimes, but compared to NV, for every 3 Dialogue options in Fallout 3, Fallout NV has 7-8 options on how you can respond. Just disappointing, but it wasn't to bad.
The Soundtrack of Fallout 3, like all the Fallouts, is nothing short of fantastic. From GNR to the music without the radio, it all gives off this unique atmosphere and tone. There are times GNR messes up the tone of the area you're in, so I would just turn it off for those.
As I mentioned earlier, the cast of characters you find around the wasteland, Three Dog of GNR being the best of all of them, improves your experience and tone of the game. From your dad, Amata, the Overseer, Moira Brown, Lucas Simms, Three Dog, Sentinel Lyons, Elder Lyons, Liberty Prime, Doctor Li, Fawkes, Dog Meat, Moriorty, Gob, Nora, Mccreaty, Riley's Rangers, Harold, President Eden, and many more, Bethesda did and always does a pretty great job making memorable and interesting characters.
Now, there were 5 DLC's in the GOTY edition. These include Broken Steel, Mothership Zeta, The Pitt, Operation Anchorage, and Point Lookout. I'm going to give all of these their own little reviews, as well as their own ratings.
Starting off with: Broken Steel
Broken Steel was the first DLC, and that's how I'm going to review these, in the order I beat them. Broken Steel honestly shouldn't have even been DLC. The Game should've just continued on anyway after beating it. That being said, this was a solid DLC, though definitely in the "Fall of Duty" category of Bethesda Fallout DLCs. I do wish there was a bit more to it, but there is a lot of fun action and memorable moments, and it does let you continue the game. All and all, even if it is a bit disappointing, it was still a solid expansion to the base game.
Score: 3.2/5
Letter Grade: B-
The Pitt:
The Pitt was my most anticipated of the bunch, and I was hoping for much more than the end product. It was still good, but again, like a lot of the DLC in this game, it was a bit disappointing. I didn't even mean to start this DLC when I did, but I'm glad I did. It starts off much more interesting than it eventually becomes, but the story throughout is good, but it has the same feel of the Main Story, the feeling that "I feel like I didn't get the full experience". Besides the story, I've gotta give props for the great job Bethesda did on making the area of "The Pitt" in which you explore. It honestly makes my skin crawl, as it is just full of radiation, dying people, disease, slavery, and fire. I know that sounds bad, but that's exactly what they were going for, and they set the DLCs tone, pretty much to perfection. I do wish you could do more, especially after you finish the DLC, and I do wish the characters were more intriguing, but the area they created is very well done, and the story is good enough to keep the player wanting to play it more.
Score: 3.4/5
Letter Grade: B
Operation Anchorage:
The worst DLC by far. It's just straight up mediocre. Not only is it tedious and difficult as hell, they just didn't do the concept of a "VR war Simulation" that well. It could've been so cool with the Brotherhood Outcasts, but the decided to do this weird war simulation instead. You do get some good loot at the end, and it does start out cool, but eventually just becomes tedious, and the leat Fallout feeling DLC.
Score: 2.7/5
Letter Grade: C+
Mothership Zeta:
The DLC I was most pleasantly surprise by. People often say this is the worst Fallout DLC, but I honestly might like it more than Broken Steel. That's not a very high bar, and the rating I'll give Mothership Zeta isn't going to be that high, but still, I was expecting a mediocre mess, but I got a Solid and Unique well done concept. Though yes, it is definitely way to difficult. I came in with about 120, maybe more stimpacks, and I left with, no joke, 0. The aliens are just bullet sponges, and a bit annoying to take down. The best parts about the DLC, are the characters you meet on the ship and exploring the ship. Not just exploring the ship is well done, but the design of the spaceship was nailed by Bethesda. They did a lot better with the Sci-Fi aspect than I thought. It would've been cool if there was more, like maybe stuff you could do with the Aliens, but all and all, I thought it was fun and had good moments(especially the blowing up the ship part) and characters. It also gives you some really good loot.
Score: 3.2/5
Letter Grade: B-
Last but not least: Point Lookout
Talk about "Saving the best for last". I'm so glad this was the last DLC I played. This is by far, and it's not even close, the best Fallout 3 DLC. It is the only DLC in the game that I would consider "Complete". It's a whole new open area to explore, with fun to quests, new interesting characters, and though the loot you get leaves much to be desired, feels like a rewarding experience through and through. I do think the main quest could've been a little better, but I heavily enjoyed this DLC. A great sendoff for my playthrough.
Score: 3.8/5
Letter Grade: B+
After all that, after all I've played, I can say that this is an experience and playthrough that I will not forget. It has it's flaws no doubt, from the bugs to the flaws in the Main Quest, and the lack of "openness" of DC, it has it's problems that I'd love to see fixed. But besides that, the Open World, the Soundtrack, the DLCs, the Characters, the Quest Lines, the Gameplay, the Gunplay, the choices you make, the Tone, the Mood, the Atmosphere, all of that, adds up to one of gamings finest experiences. If you like Open World games, or Video games in general, I'd recommend Fallout 3.
Score: 4.5/5
Letter Grade: A
Bethesda gets a lot of mostly deserved hate these days due to games like Fallout 76, Starfield, and games they published like Redfall. However, you can not deny, that before Bethesda's down fall, they were the very best at Open World RPGs, and this game, as well as some other titles, prove that. The Open World of Fallout 3 is not only fun to explore, but is Immersive, atmospheric, full of Unique locations, Unique Charcters, and Dangerous. The world Bethesda created, is harsh, hellish, and horrible. The world is full of things, things that only have one goal in mind, and that goal is to make sure you don't make it out of the Wasteland alive. It is quite possibly the most dangerous land to explore in any game, which can be said about almost every Fallout, but due to the great designs and mechanics of the enemies you encounter in the waste, this game feels just so much more brutal. The grey coloring and rough textures, though I really like those, create a depressing, oppressive atmosphere, one that I have yet to see replicated in anything else excluding the original Fallout games. Bethesda, at least to me, understood the Fallout product very well, and it shows in the world the created. In the other Bethesda games I've played, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Oblivion, Morrowind, the pure adventurous wonder they implement in each of these, is unrivaled, and is found here in Fallout 3 as well, with tons of places to explore and scavenge, as well as finding stories that the player allways feels is unique to their experience. Something I want to add really quick, the Towns and Cities you find in the world were all pretty memorable and interesting. Megaton is no doubt the best one, but Rivet City, Little Lamplight, and Big town, are all interesting places with interesting characters and unique themes that I love. Some left a little to be desired, but mostly no complaints, Fantastic job once again in the Open World department from Bethesda.
Besides the areas outside of DC, DC itself, though not as open or fun to explore, was scary, dangerous, and well done. I do wish they would've had the city more open, and though there are problems with the Metro system they make you go though, I thought they were still fun to explore. I just wish they didn't block the player off from exploring freely, hopefully that is something that can fix in a hypothetical Remake.
Moving on to something I wasn't as big a fan of, the Main Campaign. The best part of this game is the side quests. So I avoided doing the Main Quest a lot, just making sure I got stronger, because from past playthroughs the Main Quest has always been a struggle for me. I'm sure playing on Very Hard difficulty has something to do with that, but it's also due to the poor balancing of enemies in the game. Besides the tedious difficulty, the Main Story has one of my favorite beginnings to any game I've played. I agree it's definitely too long, which can be said about all Bethesda openings, but I also believe it was very well done and memorable. However, the rest of the campaign seems extremely rushed and poorly paced. I believe this is due to the struggles of trying to make things work on the hardware they had to work with, as well as the Engine Bethesda uses. I'm pretty certain they wanted this game to be much bigger, especially the Main Story. There are a lot of cool and good moments, but also there is a feeling of "I never got to experience the whole story".
The rushed story, as well as the bugs in the game, makes me think this is the game that is in most need of a Remake. Not a remaster to make it pretty, but a full Remake. Yes this game is great as it is, but playing this and realizing the potential it has for being the very best Fallout game makes me want one even more.
Moving on, the gameplay was good. From the RPG mechanics to the Gunplay and everything in between, I heavily enjoyed it. However, the Gunplay would be kinda shit without the V.A.T.S. carrying it. It's just ok by itself, which can be said about all Fallouts except 4 and 76, but the V.A.T.S. is so incredibly necessary. Besides the lack luster gunplay, the RPG elements are well done, and do seem to have a good amount of "Depth" behind them. My absolute favorite gameplay aspect, something that I touched on earlier, is the scavenging for recourses. I cannot describe how much I enjoy doing this in games. I don't know what it is, but just scavenging around for useful shit in games is so satisfying for me. Fallout 3, might just be the best at this. So much stuff to find, but also a lot fo stuff you can miss that makes it even more satisfying to find. I found it so awesome when you would literally have to pull out a little wooden bin and find some chems or bullets the devs randomly thought to enclude. It takes the Immersion to an entirely different level, and I couldn't get enough of it.
Fallout 3, especially compared to New Vegas and even 4, doesn't give you much choice on in what you can do. I'm pretty sure it has to do with hardware limitations and the amount of quests, but that doesn't change the fact that in Fallout 3, you are either really good, or really evil. Sometimes it doesn't even give you a choice between the two. In NV, I felt I didn't just have two choices, I felt like I could be neutral, I could be good, but go about it 3 different ways, and vice versa with being evil. Now I always just do the morally right things in games anyway, but it would've been so much better to get more options on how to go about missions.
Speaking of things Fallout NV and 4 do better than 3, especially NV, the Dialogue was honestly, at times, bad. Now the dialogue for the NPCs were usually fine, though there was way to many lines that they just randomly through in a "Fuck". The main Dialogue issue is what options they give the player. I swear, you can either be a generic hero, or a cornball psychopath. You can ask other stuff sometimes, but compared to NV, for every 3 Dialogue options in Fallout 3, Fallout NV has 7-8 options on how you can respond. Just disappointing, but it wasn't to bad.
The Soundtrack of Fallout 3, like all the Fallouts, is nothing short of fantastic. From GNR to the music without the radio, it all gives off this unique atmosphere and tone. There are times GNR messes up the tone of the area you're in, so I would just turn it off for those.
As I mentioned earlier, the cast of characters you find around the wasteland, Three Dog of GNR being the best of all of them, improves your experience and tone of the game. From your dad, Amata, the Overseer, Moira Brown, Lucas Simms, Three Dog, Sentinel Lyons, Elder Lyons, Liberty Prime, Doctor Li, Fawkes, Dog Meat, Moriorty, Gob, Nora, Mccreaty, Riley's Rangers, Harold, President Eden, and many more, Bethesda did and always does a pretty great job making memorable and interesting characters.
Now, there were 5 DLC's in the GOTY edition. These include Broken Steel, Mothership Zeta, The Pitt, Operation Anchorage, and Point Lookout. I'm going to give all of these their own little reviews, as well as their own ratings.
Starting off with: Broken Steel
Broken Steel was the first DLC, and that's how I'm going to review these, in the order I beat them. Broken Steel honestly shouldn't have even been DLC. The Game should've just continued on anyway after beating it. That being said, this was a solid DLC, though definitely in the "Fall of Duty" category of Bethesda Fallout DLCs. I do wish there was a bit more to it, but there is a lot of fun action and memorable moments, and it does let you continue the game. All and all, even if it is a bit disappointing, it was still a solid expansion to the base game.
Score: 3.2/5
Letter Grade: B-
The Pitt:
The Pitt was my most anticipated of the bunch, and I was hoping for much more than the end product. It was still good, but again, like a lot of the DLC in this game, it was a bit disappointing. I didn't even mean to start this DLC when I did, but I'm glad I did. It starts off much more interesting than it eventually becomes, but the story throughout is good, but it has the same feel of the Main Story, the feeling that "I feel like I didn't get the full experience". Besides the story, I've gotta give props for the great job Bethesda did on making the area of "The Pitt" in which you explore. It honestly makes my skin crawl, as it is just full of radiation, dying people, disease, slavery, and fire. I know that sounds bad, but that's exactly what they were going for, and they set the DLCs tone, pretty much to perfection. I do wish you could do more, especially after you finish the DLC, and I do wish the characters were more intriguing, but the area they created is very well done, and the story is good enough to keep the player wanting to play it more.
Score: 3.4/5
Letter Grade: B
Operation Anchorage:
The worst DLC by far. It's just straight up mediocre. Not only is it tedious and difficult as hell, they just didn't do the concept of a "VR war Simulation" that well. It could've been so cool with the Brotherhood Outcasts, but the decided to do this weird war simulation instead. You do get some good loot at the end, and it does start out cool, but eventually just becomes tedious, and the leat Fallout feeling DLC.
Score: 2.7/5
Letter Grade: C+
Mothership Zeta:
The DLC I was most pleasantly surprise by. People often say this is the worst Fallout DLC, but I honestly might like it more than Broken Steel. That's not a very high bar, and the rating I'll give Mothership Zeta isn't going to be that high, but still, I was expecting a mediocre mess, but I got a Solid and Unique well done concept. Though yes, it is definitely way to difficult. I came in with about 120, maybe more stimpacks, and I left with, no joke, 0. The aliens are just bullet sponges, and a bit annoying to take down. The best parts about the DLC, are the characters you meet on the ship and exploring the ship. Not just exploring the ship is well done, but the design of the spaceship was nailed by Bethesda. They did a lot better with the Sci-Fi aspect than I thought. It would've been cool if there was more, like maybe stuff you could do with the Aliens, but all and all, I thought it was fun and had good moments(especially the blowing up the ship part) and characters. It also gives you some really good loot.
Score: 3.2/5
Letter Grade: B-
Last but not least: Point Lookout
Talk about "Saving the best for last". I'm so glad this was the last DLC I played. This is by far, and it's not even close, the best Fallout 3 DLC. It is the only DLC in the game that I would consider "Complete". It's a whole new open area to explore, with fun to quests, new interesting characters, and though the loot you get leaves much to be desired, feels like a rewarding experience through and through. I do think the main quest could've been a little better, but I heavily enjoyed this DLC. A great sendoff for my playthrough.
Score: 3.8/5
Letter Grade: B+
After all that, after all I've played, I can say that this is an experience and playthrough that I will not forget. It has it's flaws no doubt, from the bugs to the flaws in the Main Quest, and the lack of "openness" of DC, it has it's problems that I'd love to see fixed. But besides that, the Open World, the Soundtrack, the DLCs, the Characters, the Quest Lines, the Gameplay, the Gunplay, the choices you make, the Tone, the Mood, the Atmosphere, all of that, adds up to one of gamings finest experiences. If you like Open World games, or Video games in general, I'd recommend Fallout 3.
Score: 4.5/5
Letter Grade: A
bethesda is a fucking joke not even mods save this shit xbox 360 nostalgia will blind you all pseudo rpg lovers
One of my favorite games of all time and my first entry into the Fallout series. Only below a 5 star because of some issues with game crashes.
Replayed it last year!
The Fallout 3 experience, to me, Is the best out of the new Bethesda games, Even better than New Vegas, mostly because of how awesome walking around the DC feels with the Power Armor and a nice equipment. The quests are also nice (A bit shallow, but I don't care) and it made me turn on my X360 and play it during the night, after a long time without doing it! Great game.
The Fallout 3 experience, to me, Is the best out of the new Bethesda games, Even better than New Vegas, mostly because of how awesome walking around the DC feels with the Power Armor and a nice equipment. The quests are also nice (A bit shallow, but I don't care) and it made me turn on my X360 and play it during the night, after a long time without doing it! Great game.
Hundreds on hours on PS3 finally on PC. If you can get this game running on a modern rig which I finally did after a year by God get ready for one glorious experience. Modding like in NV and 4 make the game even better and allows you to do things like get Iron sight etc. My favorite fallout.
And if you guys need a modding guide I got you covered with both essential and QOL mods: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945198896
Heres a bonus. Full modded walkthrough here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZSV6Ef0rTR4zTp9KlXQZAFX5oNg2TI1Q
And if you guys need a modding guide I got you covered with both essential and QOL mods: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945198896
Heres a bonus. Full modded walkthrough here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZSV6Ef0rTR4zTp9KlXQZAFX5oNg2TI1Q