Now Playing: Fallout 3

When it comes to Bethesda’s big, open world RPGs, I have a predictable pattern: I will hopelessly fall for every other game that they release. When The Elder Scrolls: Arena was released in 1994, I was all over it. Then Daggerfall hit the streets, and I never got past the initial quests. Several years later I was hooked again, dedicating hundreds of hours to Morrowind; only to be left cold by the even grander follow-up, Oblivion. If this alternating outburst of enthusiasm sounds weird, there’s a simple reason for it: Bethesda’s games are so comprehensive that I can’t play more than one every few years. When Oblivion arrived to much fanfare, I found that I just hadn’t recovered enough from Morrowind; I was feeling like I was replaying the same game again. I knew how much I should have been loving Oblivion and actually bought it for all available platforms. But every time I stopped playing early on.

Enter Fallout 3! Hardly a classic Elder Scrolls game, but let’s be honest: I didn’t really buy this game because of the Fallout legacy. I bought it with one expectation, and one expectation alone: to get a post-apocalyptic Elder Scrolls to dig my teeth into. Additional time has passed since my Oblivion apathy, the game boasts a new, fresh setting – and I’m happy to report that I am once again hopelessly addicted to a Bethesda RPG.

There’s a simple reason why these games are so captivating: the entry barrier to the myriad of available quests and activities is low, and the completion of every task contributes to the advancement of the character. It doesn’t matter if I’m making headway into the Capitol Wasteland as part of the main quest to track down our father, or just selling off some scrap metal that I found in a little dungeon off the main path: every action feels meaningful, even when it’s just simple, aimless exploration. And as I complete one task, the next one is very easy to get into. Sure, it’s late and I should go to bed – but quickly checking out that old, abandoned subway over there can’t hurt, can it?
On top of this, Fallout 3 provides the great feeling of leaving a mark on the world. The Galaxy News Radio, whose DJ provides running commentary on the player’s achievements, is specific enough to make me feel good, but speculative enough to grow the myth of “Mr 101″.

The huge open world is key to Fallout 3′s success, but that freedom of choice can easily leave the player paralyzed. To add some structure to the beginning of Fallout 3, Bethesda has the player hunting down his father, James; the only friendly face in the brave new world outside Vault 101. This motivation works because there actually is a bond between the player and the father character. Too many times, openings of games ask us to accept that a person is important to the main character – even though we, as the players, have only just met the guy and couldn’t care less. Fallout 3 does a pretty good job at establishing James. Dad has been there from the beginning: he taught us how to walk and interact with the world, he showed us that we’re SPECIAL, and he gave us our first gun. And Liam Neeson is the perfect actor for this role – he has one of those voices that are familiar and reassuring, without drawing attention to the actor behind it.

Even so, I felt a familiar pinch of “Now what?” when I first emerged from Vault 101: a huge, monotonous wasteland without consistent roads and recognizable landmarks. Sure, that brings me on the same page as the game character, but it’s quite disorienting. Especially when you consider that the PIP Boy’s area map and compass UI aren’t sufficiently explained during the tutorials.

Then again, it’s the “Capital Wasteland”! That doesn’t sound all that different from the Washington DC that I remember! Of course Legend Entertainment was located just outside DC, and as much as I loved my time there, my memories of the actual area are that of a social wasteland: a city that nobody actually lived in, a suburbia dominated by lawyers, politicians, defense contractors (and other career people) that changed every four years with the administration, and a hot/humid climate that doesn’t feel too far off from the game. I recognize quite a few of the landmarks, and details like the square “honey-combed” ceilings in the subway stations are vintage DC. Very cool.

Through my time at Legend, I’m fortunate enough to know a few people who worked on Fallout 3. What can I say, they have done an excellent job! Sure, beneath all the euphoria there’s a few small gripes with the game: the UI is somewhat complicated; the soundtrack, as atmosperic as it is, gets repetative too quickly (but I’ll happily admit that this is the first time I’d ever heard the original version of Anything Goes – I’d only known the Indiana Jones version); and the game crashes my 360 occasionally (there’s reports of a few showstopper bugs, as well, but I haven’t run into any of those yet). But those are very minor quibbles, and they are immediately forgiven and forgotten when playing the game. Graphics are excellent for a roleplaying game of this size (only item on the wish list: better shadowing); the writing is good (love the idea behind The Church of The Atom!); the combat system works well with its mix of action points and straight FPS aiming; and the gameplay…well, we’ve already talked a lot about the gameplay. It keeps you hooked. All in all a great package, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to finish Fallout 3. And who knows: when the next Elder Scrolls arrives, enough time might have passed for me to have fully “recovered” from Fallout, and get into that one. I certainly hope so.