Tagaziel

Morrowind with MCA. The original was a wee bit broken, as by level 35 you were a walking demigod (makes sense, you being the Nerevarine and all, but the challenge went out the window), MCA balances it out a fair bit, with logically placed levelled enemies... It's also awesome in terms of world design, story and characters. Shame IV isn't even remotely as great.

Point is, Fallout is a world after a nuclear holocaust and SHOULD be sparsely populated. Fo3 is compressed way too much, losing that wasted feeling. That's the main problem, in my opinion at least.

Unless you negotiate the ghouls' entry into the tower peacefully and then somehow manage to axe Roy Philips. This usally turns Mike Masters hostile, so you're saving the tower (minus Tenpenny) at the cost of two ghoul lives, one scumbag and one decent guy (and shopkeeper).

Fpr me, the primary reason is that visually it's vast, but in practice, most of these locations are exactly the same. Every ruined building interior uses the exact same set of assets, usually without so much as a single factor to make it unique. The game is basically composed of four different places to explore - a cave, a ruined building, the subway and the access tunnels. I'm currently replaying Morrowind, so I have a decent comparison - the Dwemer ruins. They look awesome, have a great atmosphere and everything, but except from a handful of locations, most if which are in the Red Mountain area (Dagoth Ur Facility, Citadels Odrosal and Vemynal), they look exactly the same and have the exact same set of generic loot. What's missing is the backstory, something Emil Pagliuro seemingly hates, preferring to tell the story through gameplay, even if it doesn't make any sense in the context of the game world (Vault 106, 108, lights on 200 years after the war, Tenpenny..). Personally, I felt that Fallout was bigger, it simply felt like a big world. Fallout 3, sadly, doesn't have that feeling, since it's possible to get to DC from Andale just by jogging for a few minutes.

I would like to take this opportunity to state that Mister Chris Avellon is one of the few people I'd willingly be a sex slave to.

Diablo 3, I wish they'd include a non-human player character, just for once. Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas, for painfully obvious reasons. Half-Life 2: Episode 3, just because it'll be awesome, it's Valve and Cryostasis made me love nuclear icebreaker. And anything else, provided it's awesome and coherent.

It's the best kind of birthday present one could hope for. Now tell me Chris Avellone will work on it and I will build a shrine dedicated to him.