Fallout 3

Fallout 3 initially is promising, given the track record of the series, but instead of creating an interesting open world with sharp writing, excellent quests, genuine choices, and a great story (like Morrowind), Bethesda watered down Fallout. And if there’s one thing Fallout should never be, it’s watered down. The only positives about this game are the occasional well written characters, subtle environmental storytelling, and interesting quest. What holds back these already sparse positives is the rest of the game. You can’t really find environmental story telling or an out of the way quest when you’re trained to only follow the arrow.

I wonder what i would think of this game had i played it now. I played it when it came out and i loved it, but then again it was one of the first wrpgs i played, and it was the first in the series. After playing, and loving Fallout New Vegas, i can understand much better now why so many people disliked this one. But i cant deny the hundred of hours i sank into this game.

The saying Oblivion with guns was cliche back then, but i would still argue it manages to describe this title pretty well. Its better as an exploration game than actual rpg, but its fantastic in the amount of freedom it offers. I just loved exploring this world. Its filled with little environmental stories and easter eggs, and the great majority of buildings have no quests tying them, so you really explore them at your own will. Nothing really on the level of New Vegas, but its pretty fantastic on its own right. Its because of the exploration that i have no doubt that this one would grab me for more 50 hours if i replayed it, no matter how repetitive some of the dungeon design can be. Its very addictive.

One thing that i always prefered fallout to oblivion though is because of its atmosphere. The cool jazz soundtrack combined with the grim apocalypse setting and common use of black humour really manage to combine to form an atmosphere thats very unique to this series.

Unfortunatly mechanically the game is really limited. The weapons are clunky to play, and because of the rpg mechanics it means that bullet sponge enemies are frequent, and these are never fun in a rpg. It also really flawed as an rpg proper, as the rest of the world scales with you in a way thats just ridiculous. The quests are not particularly great, but they are servicable and most offer quite a few choices to make. Its also a really buggy game, even after a ton of patches.

Fallout 3 has a bit of a tarnished reputation throughout the years, and i can understand why. I still think its a great game though, and quite a few miles ahead of the more recent Fallout 4.

Before its release, Bethesda showed so little of Fallout 3 that the media's collective mind, along with forum hype, turned a low-key title into a supposedly generational-leap in video games. Part fanfare for the Fallout franchise and part Oblivion mod, Fallout 3 is bound to disappoint anyone expecting a game unlike anything they've ever seen. It will disappoint anyone looking for a Call of Duty action pace in an open-world. Fallout 3 is a disappointment in the same way the Xbox360 initially was. It doesn't blow away the highest expectations imaginable, but that's the public's fault. What we have here is a refinement of Oblivion that changes settings and makes the journey feel less broken.

Oblivion was a huge world that I didn't want to be a part of. In this sense, Fallout 3 is no different except it's for entirely different reasons this time -- the right ones, at that. The wasteland feels real in a way that is hard to handle, the threats feel enormous, and the scope is daunting. Every complaint I had about Oblivion has been answered here. The graphics are finally able to display the world's scope properly on the 360 (no more gross pop-up trees), the main quest is actually decent (no 9 cloned dungeons), and the fighting system is fun and works. Fallout 3 doesn't quite meet my dream of sandbox game with Call of Duty/Half-Life production-level set pieces, but it's fair to say that the most throwaway of the game's missions would be the equal of Oblivion's best.

I honestly don't care for open-world games. I appreciate the effort put into creating a massive world, but I rather have a smaller, more convincing one. Fallout 3 is the first game in this pseudo-genre to open my eyes to the possibilities; for the first time, I felt the consequence of an action I chose 10 hours ago. There is usually so much "dead space" in these games that ironically diminish whatever efforts the game designers had to make you feel a part of the world -- a problem which Fallout 3 solves: the radio disc jockey comments on your latest conquest, townsfolk will talk amongst each other about up-to-date events, and the world is filled with unique characters and their own problems. You'll find yourself happen upon major events that the game willingly allows you to miss, where a lesser game would guide you to it -- a result of a designer's grudge against letting hours of his life go unnoticed by any player of the game.

I could rate GTA4 5-stars based on the world, but it always comes down to: is it fun? Fallout 3 is fun. It's not Bioshock, Half-Life, or Call of Duty. What it is, is the ultimate open-world dungeon crawler of its time. You go through stock, uninspired environments -- say that it is a product of the world, but that doesn't excuse unoriginality and recycled areas -- and take on random quests to see the final conclusion and what loot may come of it. You become evil to see the horrific consequences, you do good for the moral reward, and you walk between because the inner-moral conflict resides on a completely palpable level. Fallout 3 fails to immerse in the way a triple AAA shooter will, fails to reward in the way a more traditional RPG might, but it offers a world of possibilities and things to see. With so many possible things that Bethesda could of forgot or just got wrong, you have to appreciate it when a per-chance moment in Fallout 3 resonates on the same level a major set piece in another game might.

I used to be in love with this game along with NV, but in my recent TTW playthough I just realized how boring and exploitable the game is.
I might be a veteran (I remember playing this on my PS3 around 2013), but this completely fell off for me. The game is unbalanced in anyway, uncharming, and while the early Fallout games had the right atmosphere, those 3D takes are pretty one dimensional and bad looking.
Those games are highly modded because they are a great blank canvas, just that...

This was the second Fallout game I`ve ever played after Fallout 4. My opinion on this game has changed a lot over time, but I have ultimately come to the conclusion that while this game can still be a somewhat enjoyable experience it is by far the weakest game in the mainline Fallout series.

It didn't age very well, especially with its very clunky and slow controls and poor gunplay/combat. The story and quests are also way too linear for an open world fallout game. The main story is one of the worst stories I have ever played. Dozens of plot holes and for a game that claims to be very open with many different endings and choices it literally tries to force you into only a single outcome which isn't even that satisfying.

Don't get me wrong there still are some very enjoyable and creative quests with good writing in this game but they are very hard to find and mostly the exception. Additionally this game has some really good world and level design here and there. Nobody does environmental storytelling quite like Bethesda does. I personally usually don't mind clunky controls too much because while they do take a while to get used too they can usually be saved by a good story or other good aspects but as already mentioned this isn't really present here. Also this game is insanely unstable especially on modern operating systems. I had multiple cases where the game would just crash randomly or get stuck on a loading screen and I even had to restart my computer once or twice because I couldn't tab out and close the game anymore.

So in conclusion Fallout 3 is a game with bad controls, a bad story, mostly uninteresting and unengaging side content with a bunch of bugs, frequent crashes an dated visuals. You'll still be able to get some fun out of it if you're nasty and you're willing to play through dozens of hours of doodoo to get to the good parts but as a whole this game only has very few redeeming qualities and they're not nearly good enough to consider this to be a good game.

janky and largely boring sepia game, when I'd die for its orange reskinned counterpart :)
oh, choices matter do they? blow up or save megaton? that's very morally grey and interesting. thank you
wait, the brotherhood of steel are the good guys?????? fuckkkk!
this game was the first step in running fallout to the ground. having supermutants as brainless grunts.