Bethesda finally officially announced the Fallout 3 release date. October 28th . Everybody in the world already knew this, but it was nice to have Bethsoft officially say “Yeah, I guess that’s happening.” Definitely on my to-get list, but if it turns out to be Oblivion reskinned with a Fallout theme, there’ll be hell to pay.
I never played the first two games, but this one looks interesting. From the brief videos I’ve seen, the game actually feels closer to Bioshock than what I’ve heard people say about the first two Fallout games.
I have been waiting years for this game. I really hope that it lives up to all the hype. I"m not wild about the first person perspective but they have included the classic battle system is still in there plus the ‘bloody mess’ perk so I’m happy I think.
I think I’m gonna pass on this one. Doesn’t ring like the Fallout I remember. I’ll just swing on Fable 2 and Final Fantasy whatever number they’re on…
I’ll be getting it. I do enjoy Fallout styled games a lot. I hope it lives up to at least some, if not all of, the hype it is generating.
The lead designer has supposably come out and said the game is basically “Oblivion with guns”
They have said there is supposably a lot of skills and choices outside combat, but all they’ve really shown is combat and stuff related to it.
Wow, that’s incredibly depressing. Not entirely unexpected, but definitely depressing.
I wonder if they’ll hire more than ten voice actors, or if they’re going to stick with the Oblivion model of having a world with 10,000 people that only have about ten distinct voices.
Passing on this one, methinks.
I will definitely agree this was a very big problem with Oblivion. But I do have to say, in their defense, that almost all their money went into trying to get this incredibly complicated AI to work (they were going to give everyone in the game world an actual life, to live) – they ended up having to strip almost all of it out, because they couldn’t get the scripting to be reasonable. It kept being pathological.
Unfortunately, what was left was a game with decent writing, boring story, boring characters, and boring combat. There were a lot of things Oblivion did that were good, but the fundamentals really suffered. The result is predictable.
I think you forgot the bit about it not running on anyones computer. Even with more modern machines you can’t get 60fps… which speaks of poor programming rather than future proofing. I dunno, the 10 voices thing never really bothered me. The sheer amount of bugs and glitches did though. Especially on those escort missions where the person you’re supposed to be escorting gets stuck on a rock or nothing at all and then proceeds to let the nearest bee sting him to death.
Anyone who got this have any thoughts? I got it, but I my computer isn’t up to snuff to actually run it. 
I’ve been playing this thing on my X Box 360 for quite a while and I have to say that this game is very surprisingly good.
Graphically, it’s pretty good, not as high quality as Mass Effect, but good all the same.
The voice acting so far has been good too.
But if you ask me, one thing that makes this game shine is how open it is. Seriously you can travel anywhere and do anything as soon as you reach the surface, I’ve only played a bit of the main story and been immersing myself in the sidequests, all of which have some sort of story to them. I just finished a sidequest involving my character going after this gang that supposedly murdered a family in a village and ended up coming upon what I assume are this game’s answer to vampires. Another one had me going up against a small army of mutants, and another had me going up against a whole nest of fire breathing ants in an obvious tribute to the old B movie “Them”, even in the sidequest’s name, which is “Those!”.
The character creation is kind of similar to KotOR’s, and throughout the game your character makes choices in conversations with NPCs, those that are named actually have a bit of story to them as well, that decide whether your character will be good or evil or neutral (either way you get an achievement for sticking to that alignment) and through that influence events. These choices are kind of a mix between KotOR’s and Mass Effect’s, with there being a good, neutral, or evil response, but you’re also able to make special choices depending on a certain stats like thing which you get every time you level up.
That stats thing is known as a “perk”, which gives your character a certain specialty ranging from weapons, to affecting conversations with special choices, to increasing the likelihood of your enemies exploding into a bloody mess when you shoot them :twisted: .
The battle system is pretty good, especially in how you can target parts of the enemy’s body and the amount of damage you do to it through the battle can affect it (I’ve blown off countless enemy limbs and heads). Also you have a large assortment of weapons at your disposal including handguns, rifles, machine guns, lasers, explosives (from cherry bombs to miniature nukes), hammers, baseballs bats, the list goes on and on.
Money is actually scarce (and get this, bottle caps are the currency) and while food can heal you, it also gives you an amount of radiation that if left unchecked results in health problems for your character.
All in all, I’d say this game is definitely worth playing, though expect to put alot of time into it since traveling from place to place does take a while (though after you’ve visitied it once, you can instantly teleport to it similar to Fable 2) and fights with enemies are not always easy ones, so this will keep you entertained if you like a good challenge. As for what they say about this being Oblivion with guns, well…people I know who’ve played Oblivion said that’s not the case and sidequest wise, this game’s sidequests feel more rewarding.
I agree. As a fan of the first two games, I like many others was worried about it not living up to them. Well, by that I mean loosing the Fallout ‘feel’, changes in technology alone will guarantee some differences. But after playing it for a while I have to say, I’m not disappointed… See you around Wastelander. 8)
Wow, thanks for all the info. Sounds really great. I’m going to have to get a new PC pretty soon, cause I can’t run any of the new stuff and it sounds like I’m really missing out.
There’s so many things I that I dislike about this game, mainly how far it strays from the original 2, or at least to what I was expecting. I didn’t even realise it was in stores at the time of it’s release so I was quite happy to hear this, then went a bought a copy thinking ‘sweet fallout 3’ but then when I realised bethesda made it I somewhat lost my hopes. I started playing it on my PC, which is top of the line and brand new, and there was a nice big “games made for windows!” label on the top so I figure “Hell it’s gotta work”.
I install the game and start playing, not really knowing what to expect, then it starts up and begins to look a lot like Oblivion only with a fallout shell on it. I was quite dissapointed as there was more variety and difficulty in the first 2 with some very nice open ended gameplay, so I can only expect this from the 3rd of the series. Sure enough it was open ended but it didn’t really feel all that great, and it likes to override your standard mouse settings so even when I crank it up to max speed in the game settings it’s slow as hell to me, which I didn’t really like. Some parts have horribly places invisible walls that seem to have no point other than to hold you in one area for maybe one minute of the game, yet stays as a wall the whole game, which I found quite annoying to be honest. The game loved to freeze during even the most mundane actions, adding to my frustration.
i would also be walking along rubble and get stuck like Homer Simpson the time he was 300 pounds working from home for the plant. as in I would be somehow trapped between a small little gap of in the rocks, and couldnt’ walk or jump out, more or less forcing me to restart and avoid that area. I could go on with more bugs and things I dislike but I don’t want to turn this into more of a rant than it already is 
Call me old fashion but i think it lost the heart and soul of the original and I feel it should have been named something different from Fallout 3, since it doesn’t really feel like fallout to me.
However I do have friends that tell me they love it, and I can see how they would like it and I’m sure if I took it for what it was(and if it stopped crashing/freezing) then I would probably enjoy it, but to me it just doesn’t seem good at all, at least with the ‘fallout’ label tacked onto it. Oh well, just another coaster for my desk. 
Well, I just got a new computer, and I haven’t had any of the technical difficulties you mention, other than very, very occasionally getting stuck in some rubble. I sympathize with those who feel that it doesn’t live up to the original games. I’ve felt that way about games in other series that I played when they were new, so I understand where you’re coming from. But I think Fallout 3 is amazing. I only played Fallout 1 a few months ago, and I was not that impressed. The story was interesting, but the interface was clunky and combat was tediously time-consuming. It was a decent game, but compared to the praise it regularly gets, I was underwhelmed. After playing it, I was really on the fence as to whether to get 3, but I loved Oblivion, so I gave it a shot. I’m now on my second playthrough and still going strong. I’m not sure I’ve ever had so much fun with a game, except possibly Civilization, which is so different that it’s hard to compare. Between this and Oblivion, anything Bethesda makes in the future; I’ll be there on Day 1.
Yeah I was more a fan of the second than the first, but I’m not surprised I didn’t like the third though, just didn’t realise it was the oblivion engine before I bought it.
Pretty much a given the interface won’t be as smooth as new ones but i’m just a purist when it comes to my games so I just had really high expectations about what I thought it would be but then it turned out to go a different route that I liked far less.
Although I do have some faith in the future that the kind folks of the ‘no mutants allowed’ website and their numerous mod teams will complete one, since they share quite a similar vision to the original series line of thinking. So I do look forward to checking out what they come up with in the future, as well as future stability patches from the company themselves. I’ve looked into many of the freezes and it’s not my computer it’s just certain parts of the game that people like me tend to make break with too much keyboard input at the wrong times, but even being cautious it would sometimes freeze or crash due to poor coding in some areas.
so i’m glad you are enjoying it and I wish I could too , if I liked oblivion I am sure I would have liked this much more than I did, but I am sadly one of those who fell victim to overhype thinking of Black Isle 
I think a lot of it was also to moving the setting which i believe is undue flack. Interplay was based in California so it made a setting in California where it was familiar with. Bethesda is based in Maryland, so it made a setting where it was familiar with.
The other part obviously comes from it’s priority on FPS/3PS gameplay and downplaying RP.
I never really thought about that point but I agree, That’s why I’m not too upset and at the same time not too surprised about how it turned out, I do like FPS games but it just totally wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, which is pretty much my fault for not looking into it a little more before I bought it, something I tend to do more now I suppose partially as a result, hehe.