those of you who've read my posts know my basic top 5 list of things FO3 epically failed at, but for those who don't, here they are in no particular order:
* S.P.E.C.I.A.L. has been rendered almost completely meaningless and is need of serious repairing.
* Dialogue - it is, for the most part, the most embarrassing, corny, and predictable stuff i've seen in a long time.
* Choices & Consequences - as in "it'd be nice for an RPG, especially one in a series which C&C has thus far been an intregal part, to contain some"
* 'Sploshuns - enough is enough already.
* A.I. - much improved over what i've seen from the "make fun of Oblivion's AI" videos, but still. the word "Oblivious" comes to mind regardless.
now, i know what you're thinking...but you're wrong. this is actually a positive post. i had about an hour to kill last night and flipped the game on (since it's such a time-sink it's perfect for these moments) and came upon one of the Aqua Pura quests. the one with Griffin (don't worry i'll use spoilers when appropriate) the ghoul. i've long held that FO3 is at it's best when it pays attention to meaningful sidequests (re: more than just fetch quests) and this was just one of those moments for me, albeit a very brief one. just about everything about this quest seemed "Fallouty" to me and more so than much of the rest of the DLC and the vanilla game (though they've all had their moments). but what really hit me like a ton of bricks was such a simple thing. something most people probably overlooked or consider trite, but it symbolized something greater to me: it was the first moment since FO3 came out where i actually really felt that Fallout spirit of the original games.
now while this may seem, as i've stated earlier, trite to some...i remain confident that if Obsidian and even Bethesda were to be able to pull off these types of meaningful in-game reactions and remain truer to this type of creative humor and atmosphere i'd have a whole lot less to complain about and a whole lot more to be excited about.