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FALLOUT 3: a sequel that never was. on Wed Nov 12, 2008 12:35 pm
Fallout3 is an abomination unto the gaming market. Captivating at first and appetizing with its references to its predecessors, the game's entertainment value as well as content plunges down a dark hole into the depressing boredom of "who do I have to shoot now?" As the game progresses the player comes into the realization of the things which he chose to ignore for the epic reputation of the series: the story is appallingly uninteresting and game mechanics are nauseating.
In fallout 1 we emerge from the vault 13, as if it is a sign of the mishaps our character has to endure. Fallout 2 proceeds with the same dark atmosphere by giving us the debatable "holy" vault 13 suit. Contrasting this dark atmosphere we are treated in fallout 3 as a baby, a naive school kid from the start. The atmosphere of the game is set as soon as we learn that we are in vault 101, a reference to basic level instructive courses, congregations, indicative of ignorance, noobness, and gullibility. And instead of fighting against the wheel of fate and whatever shit that might have hit it, we catapult ourselves into an inexplicably dull and self righteous quest of finding our "papa".
The game had some promises to keep, which were attempted to be kept poorly and I cite them below:
1-Explore (the same boring map again and again and again and again, wait I think I am circling around)
There are two kinds of maps in the game, Global map and local map. Global map has the checkpoints for areas of interest, and local map gives you the map of your surroundings. It is even less readable than it was in the original fallout series so pretty much useless. Exploring indoors depends on your ability to keep key locations in your mind's eye; they are not much complicated of course however a few complicated underground facilities will give you minutes of running in circles before finding an obscure exit door. Hurray for boredom of circling inexplicably circularly designed interiors which have arbitrarily collapsed stairs that will make you go back the way you came in contempt.
The game world was promised to be worthy of exploring, with famous landmarks, fancy graphics and random encounters. Famous landmarks are there to be honest and they are the only appealing attribute of the game. But then again I never wanted a virtual tour of a demolished D.C. On the other hand fancy graphics obviously means that everything should look like it is molded out of plastic and random encounters means there is a chance that a group of mercs will appear behind your neck as soon as you reach a checkpoint. These effects create the feeling of being suddenly thrown a bunch of plastic soldiers and lego blocks as you just were pulling your pants up after a nice session of shitting, and you find yourself startled and angry rather than anxious for a fight which might be your last. Talking about fights:
2-VATS (vault tech assisted tactical suckyness or whatever combat something lame)
The game promised that the VATTS or whatever would be innovative. If anything I learned from the recent market crash is that synergy and innovation did not help all those companies so why should it help to gaming industry.
The mechanism is as follows: you cannot really aim to 5 different super mutant masters unless you are some kind of fps prodigy and even then you might not hit what you are aiming for because it is all related to your skill. So pause the game, spend a number of completely arbitrary points which make no sense whatsoever to pick which body parts you will be shooting at and then sit back and enjoy the uber crappy slo-mo bullet time thingy which sometimes results with a gory scene that could be best imagined by a 5 year old.
You have to go through the slo-mo bullet-time every time you use VATS and you can chain yourself in next to beehive and beat it with a stick to have a vague idea how innovative of an idea it is. And just to be clear: yes it does feel like masochistic torture.
If there is any, the combats have been so crappy and boring that I did not notice any dirty talk, or any dirty talk that made an impression on me. Talking about dirty talk:
3) characters, NPC's etc.
They are extremely annoying, all alike, plastic, shallow, with gratuitous swearing, over voice acted. "Swearing, voice overs, those are good things right? you must be mad darkmoose!" I hear you say. As I said, if you say hello to some plastic face and he replies fuck off with no reason whatsoever (other than inexplicably feeling my aura of prophetic karma) just makes them look like angsty teenagers who are trying to cover their acne problem with too much make up.
I do not care if some random ghoul speaks to me with its rough voice unless he has anything better to say than "everybody is a tourist". It is a very nice example of failed attempt at dark humor. Yes there is dark humor in fallout3, if dark humor is seinfeld wearing emo make up.
To be honest again there was one or two interesting dialogues that I really felt like listening to, which incidentally did not lead to quests. Bravo bethesda you are not complete morons.
The characters constantly repel the player from the game. Thinking that bethesda ranted so much about fps induced immersion they might as well have spent some of their money on some nice writers. There is no bond between any of the characters, only "quest-reward" relationships. Everyone seems to be an isolated talking stick rather than being a part of the community. Yes you can go around and talk about Andy being a drug addict. But it does not affect anything, does not add anything, the responses you get are dry as a wood, it does not lead to fun quest.
The game was really interesting and I could tolerate the awkward VATS and stupid characters for a while, then I reached level 10 with my character. I had killed hundreds of people mutants and animals and here I was standing in front of a dildo begging him to tell me more about my "dad". Then I saved, killed everyone in town, cried for a while for that bethesda had transformed my favorite game into a dad seeking braindead fps. Now I am level 18 and I wish that I had never loaded back and had uninstalled the game at that moment.
More critique of the game mechanics to follow.
In fallout 1 we emerge from the vault 13, as if it is a sign of the mishaps our character has to endure. Fallout 2 proceeds with the same dark atmosphere by giving us the debatable "holy" vault 13 suit. Contrasting this dark atmosphere we are treated in fallout 3 as a baby, a naive school kid from the start. The atmosphere of the game is set as soon as we learn that we are in vault 101, a reference to basic level instructive courses, congregations, indicative of ignorance, noobness, and gullibility. And instead of fighting against the wheel of fate and whatever shit that might have hit it, we catapult ourselves into an inexplicably dull and self righteous quest of finding our "papa".
The game had some promises to keep, which were attempted to be kept poorly and I cite them below:
1-Explore (the same boring map again and again and again and again, wait I think I am circling around)
There are two kinds of maps in the game, Global map and local map. Global map has the checkpoints for areas of interest, and local map gives you the map of your surroundings. It is even less readable than it was in the original fallout series so pretty much useless. Exploring indoors depends on your ability to keep key locations in your mind's eye; they are not much complicated of course however a few complicated underground facilities will give you minutes of running in circles before finding an obscure exit door. Hurray for boredom of circling inexplicably circularly designed interiors which have arbitrarily collapsed stairs that will make you go back the way you came in contempt.
The game world was promised to be worthy of exploring, with famous landmarks, fancy graphics and random encounters. Famous landmarks are there to be honest and they are the only appealing attribute of the game. But then again I never wanted a virtual tour of a demolished D.C. On the other hand fancy graphics obviously means that everything should look like it is molded out of plastic and random encounters means there is a chance that a group of mercs will appear behind your neck as soon as you reach a checkpoint. These effects create the feeling of being suddenly thrown a bunch of plastic soldiers and lego blocks as you just were pulling your pants up after a nice session of shitting, and you find yourself startled and angry rather than anxious for a fight which might be your last. Talking about fights:
2-VATS (vault tech assisted tactical suckyness or whatever combat something lame)
The game promised that the VATTS or whatever would be innovative. If anything I learned from the recent market crash is that synergy and innovation did not help all those companies so why should it help to gaming industry.
The mechanism is as follows: you cannot really aim to 5 different super mutant masters unless you are some kind of fps prodigy and even then you might not hit what you are aiming for because it is all related to your skill. So pause the game, spend a number of completely arbitrary points which make no sense whatsoever to pick which body parts you will be shooting at and then sit back and enjoy the uber crappy slo-mo bullet time thingy which sometimes results with a gory scene that could be best imagined by a 5 year old.
You have to go through the slo-mo bullet-time every time you use VATS and you can chain yourself in next to beehive and beat it with a stick to have a vague idea how innovative of an idea it is. And just to be clear: yes it does feel like masochistic torture.
If there is any, the combats have been so crappy and boring that I did not notice any dirty talk, or any dirty talk that made an impression on me. Talking about dirty talk:
3) characters, NPC's etc.
They are extremely annoying, all alike, plastic, shallow, with gratuitous swearing, over voice acted. "Swearing, voice overs, those are good things right? you must be mad darkmoose!" I hear you say. As I said, if you say hello to some plastic face and he replies fuck off with no reason whatsoever (other than inexplicably feeling my aura of prophetic karma) just makes them look like angsty teenagers who are trying to cover their acne problem with too much make up.
I do not care if some random ghoul speaks to me with its rough voice unless he has anything better to say than "everybody is a tourist". It is a very nice example of failed attempt at dark humor. Yes there is dark humor in fallout3, if dark humor is seinfeld wearing emo make up.
To be honest again there was one or two interesting dialogues that I really felt like listening to, which incidentally did not lead to quests. Bravo bethesda you are not complete morons.
The characters constantly repel the player from the game. Thinking that bethesda ranted so much about fps induced immersion they might as well have spent some of their money on some nice writers. There is no bond between any of the characters, only "quest-reward" relationships. Everyone seems to be an isolated talking stick rather than being a part of the community. Yes you can go around and talk about Andy being a drug addict. But it does not affect anything, does not add anything, the responses you get are dry as a wood, it does not lead to fun quest.
The game was really interesting and I could tolerate the awkward VATS and stupid characters for a while, then I reached level 10 with my character. I had killed hundreds of people mutants and animals and here I was standing in front of a dildo begging him to tell me more about my "dad". Then I saved, killed everyone in town, cried for a while for that bethesda had transformed my favorite game into a dad seeking braindead fps. Now I am level 18 and I wish that I had never loaded back and had uninstalled the game at that moment.
More critique of the game mechanics to follow.
