Fallout 3 First Impressions

[Aristes]

Haven't found anyone who's enamoured with the dialogue yet, so I assume it's standard Oblivion quality, but upgraded.

...but leaves something to be desired for those who enjoy reading eloquent, witty, or erudite dialogue.

 

Hey now! haha Seriously, I think dialogue tends to be tough for most of these games. It's not that every exchange has to be witty or eloquent or even euro... erou... smart. The thing that's hard for a lot of designers to convey in a few lines of dialogue is the horror of finding out that your family is dead or that someone from your town likes to snack on other people. The dialogue isn't bad. It's just isn't great. ...And it's failing isn't that it's not 'high falloutin' enough. It's that there is a disconnect in the range of emotions. I don't really mind, though. Looking back on Fallout 1 and 2, the dialogue wasn't always perfect there either. The voice over work really isn't very good, but voice over work usually sucks. Hell, I had to act once for a training video for the Venetian and my acting sucks. As long as I'm not cringing, it's not bad. So far, no cringe.

[Calax]

:sigh: I feel like i haven't done that much. I've yet to find many places that seem worth it and have been chasing dad all over the place... old codger gets around for seemingly not having any weapon skills.

 

I've also got a 1000 cap bounty on my head (learned about it after a pack of mercs tried to jump me... I blew them away with a mixture of my hunting rifle and my chinese AR). and I found Underworld!

[Strix]

...old codger gets around for seemingly not having any weapon skills.

 

 

He was once a member of the Brotherhood of Steel from what I've gathered so far - so he might have gotten some combat training from them.

 

[Atom523]

Really? huh, i did notice one super mutant with a rocket launcher nearby the drive in movie theater, but besides that 90% of mutants i saw outside the capital had hunting rifles, boards with nails in them and the occasional assault rifle. Now when i was in the capital there are some trenches going along the capital and i got hit by around 10 super mutants at once half of them having miniguns i got ripped to shreds in seconds.

 

Usually i have just as much trouble if not more from raiders. Also Talon Company gave me a hard time for a while until i got the metal armor, now it is a bit easier.

 

Where did you get the Chinese officer sword? I have yet to see it.

 

Vault 106

 

Have you done the quest where you rescue the Wastelanders from the Super Mutants? I only have one rescue so far, but got stuck in a house surrounded by four Super Mutants with two mini-guns, a shotgun, and a hunting rifle. Have you gone by Germantown? I'm loading up my rifle before I do the Big Town mission.

 

Ah, i went through Vault 106 but my computer and lockpicking skills are horribly low so i wasn't able to get to the real important areas.

 

I did rescue the wastelands and brought them back to Big Town. I have also rescued some random people but didn't escort them anywhere. I did go through the germantown police station. That was a bit of a pain to get through. That is where you rescue Red and her friend. I had to do a reload because they thought it would be fun to punch some super mutants after they ran out of the ammo i gave them.

I have been rather lucky when it comes to super mutants outside of the capital, they tend to be poorly armed. They attacked bigtown after i rescued both of the people but since i had small arms tagged i was able to teach the people how to shoot so only one guy died in the attack. Pretty worthless town overall though. My problem with bigtown was that the only gun i had a decent amount of ammo for was the hunting rifle, which made it harder to take down multiple mutants at once. though the towns people are helpful if you teach them to shoot first. If you do and you have some good weapons then the SMs should go down pretty fast.

 

Got some karma boosts i guess, not much else to do there. Got to utilize my medical training. Finally a use for tagging medicine.

 

My main goal now is to get the power armor training and then the money to fix up the power armor. Though i think it is a minus 4 perception. that is bad, my perception is only a 6, if it goes down to a 2 that will really make VATS unworkable.

 

i so should have tagged repair. I never realized how important it was going to be. I generally am low on cash, whenever i get some i spend most of it on repairs and the rest on extra stimpacks.

[Walsingham]

He went into VATS and used up all his action points to beat of this guy.

 

Your words, not mine.

[Calax]

I did like that you get a less than flowery view of the BoS when you enter the Underworld (ie the museum of history)

[Aristes]

Okay, if this keeps up, I'm going to go from cautiously enjoying to effusively praising the game. I've just now managed to force myself to stop playing (at 1:30am). Once I get to 40 hours of addictive gameplay, I refuse to go back on my word. We'll see if it keeps up the steam, but even if it doesn't, I've put in quite a few hours. Basically, I've been playing it most of each evening. Great game!

[Bokishi]

2 words: Power Armor

 

[Starwars]

Heh. Conflicting opinions, as we all expected, right? I won't even have the option of buying it till I get a new computer around January, so let's wait and see.

 

Haven't found anyone who's enamoured with the dialogue yet, so I assume it's standard Oblivion quality, but upgraded.

 

What's all this talk about invisible walls? Really?

 

Loved newc(?)'s mention of clever traps, honestly think that was the biggest missed opportunity with Oblivion. I got some amazing thrills in the first few hours with the traps they had and the nice animations, but it really sucked when that turned out to be the entire repertoire. With better traps (and more tactical environments instead of, uh, flat rocks) Oblivion dungeons might have been really fun.

 

A few of the traps have really gotten me so far, but you kinda learn to avoid them as well. Since the game is overall darker than Oblivion it's harder to see the triggers. But the first time you run into a trap in a dungeon area, you quickly become more cautious. So it is quite similar to Oblivion, just replace the traps there with rigged shotguns and mines etc. One simple thing that makes it work a lot better though is that you can disarm them for XP.

 

Biggest problem with dialogue and characters is... Well, have you played Shivering Isles? You would then know that characters do have personalities and quirks when compared to Oblivion which is great. The trouble is that many of them (many of the bigger characters) feel like cartoons. Mr Burke is your "mwahahaha" villain, Tenpenny is a weirdo who likes to dress-up, the girl who gives you the quest to collect info for the survival guide is over the top (and that's before you blow Megaton up, just wait until you see her if you decide to blow it up). Many of these characters are rather hard to relate to because they don't really display any signs of normal humanity. On the other side, there *are* belieavable characters as well, which is a great step for Bethesda. It's not a very consistant game in this regard though.

 

And yes, the invisible walls suck hard. Downtown is like a rats maze, constantly broken off by unconvincing piles of rubble.

[alanschu]

sweet spoilers!

[Gorgon]

Buildwise, the first time I got to lv4 with a build that tried to do everything and not enough points, this time started off buying a lot of boring stat improvements in the easy first few levels, At lv 6 now I have Intelligence 9, and I chose that perk that grants 3 extra points per level, so now I have 21, or 22 points to distribute every time level up, that really helps getting either Science or lockpick high enough to be worthwhile, theres even spares to throw away on things like barter and speech. I tagged, small arms, repair, and sneak this time around.

Edited November 1, 2008 by Gorgon

[Arkan]

Also, having just moved to the DC metro area, it's really weird traveling the the ruins of places I drive by nearly every day. It's really quite surreal. [Edit]Having said that, is it possible to travel to Bethesda, MD?

 

 

I found the Bethesda Ruins about 3 hours ago. Everyone there is dead now.

 

I was hoping for an easter egg or something, but that's it: Bethesda Ruins with some raiders inside.

 

 

Too bad. I actually work in Bethesda.

[Aristes]

The game actually kept me up and I'm glad. I put off doing something important in Megaton. I went all over and did other stuff and finally just dropped a 'lude and took care of some unfinished business. At that point, I was honored with a place to sleep and met Wadsworth. Huzzah! Finally some dialogue and voice over work I unreservedly enjoy! There was much rejoicing. I have to admit that I really like Moire. I have a friend who uses a fake voice just like hers sometimes. It's uncanny, but it makes her truly amusing to me. Over the top and all.

[Dark_Raven]

VATS is the only reason why I started to play this. I have a game where I can snipe from afar taking targeted shots.

[Gorgon]

I agree that Shivering Isles is underrated, the voice acting and art direction are miles better than Oblivion.

[Maria Caliban]

This game runs better on my computer than Oblivion did. It runs better than Dead Space, Far Cry, Mass Effect, Devil May Cry, Halo 2, or NWN 2.

 

And it looks really good.

 

How is that possible?

[Gorgon]

Smooth code I guess.

 

Although I have been getting sporadic slowdowns that weren't there before, which is strange. Doesn't seem to matter whether the screen is busy or not.

 

Also can anyone spoil me on a way back into vault 101. I want a certain item I forgot to bring with me. There's an access panel but it can't be activated, bug or something I did or didn't do.

[Maria Caliban]

Isn't the whole deal with Vault 101 that no one gets in or out? I assumed they disabled the access panel on the outside.

 

My favorite character so far is the girl I left in the vault. If there's a way to get back in and get on her good side again, I'd like to know.

[random n00b]

Anyone else getting mouse lag? It's not graphics lag as it's independent of settings, but it's driving me mad... Why can't ported shooters have 1:1 linear mouse controls, or at least the option to let me make the choice?

 

So far, it's my only complaint. The game is great otherwise. VATS is quite fun to use, but it makes the game too easy. It's a clever way of bypassing player skill completely and taking only character skills into consideration, so even Hades can play it no problem!

 

I'm stuck with the crappy dubbed version (they even removed the English VO from the build FFS), so I'll be torrenting me a proper, unadultered English game. Oh how I love living in a country full of uneducated idiots!

[Dark_Raven]

I discovered you can blow up cars and other vehicles in the wasteland. Burn baby burn.

[random n00b]

Ya, I found out that as well - after some super mutant blew up the car I was using for cover.

[Gorgon]

Nothing seems to happen to them when I shoot at them, maybe it needs better than pistol shots.

[mkreku]

I found out that cars could blow up the second I stepped on a trap that was rigged to a car standing near a bus. The explosion was so huge my poor lifeless body was flying for surely 30 seconds after I was killed

 

I really like the traps I've found in this game! One trap was just a bunch of grenades hanging from a string. Naturally, I never noticed it until my head hit it and the three grenades blew it straight off! Yes, I had to reload.. But it was cool! Never seen that kind of trap before.

[Dark_Raven]

Ya, I found out that as well - after some super mutant blew up the car I was using for cover.

Yeah that's how I found out. I was hidding behind a car and this super mutant kept firing at me and hitting the car. Soon it caught on fire than it exploded. I ended up with both arms and one leg crippled. Bastards.

[Enoch]

Also, having just moved to the DC metro area, it's really weird traveling the the ruins of places I drive by nearly every day. It's really quite surreal. [Edit]Having said that, is it possible to travel to Bethesda, MD?

 

 

I found the Bethesda Ruins about 3 hours ago. Everyone there is dead now.

 

I was hoping for an easter egg or something, but that's it: Bethesda Ruins with some raiders inside.

 

 

Too bad. I actually work in Bethesda.

That's a shame. I'll be moving there a week from today. Is there anything interesting in the Rosslyn-Courthouse area of Arlington?

 

Anyhow, the developers' offices are actually out in Rockville. You can see the building (with a "Zenimax" sign, which is their parent company) if you drive north on I-270 through the Rockville-Gaithersburg area.