Last week we went to town on Fallout 3… in a good way. You may have noticed our daily updates on this highly anticipated game, which has people either very nervous, or very excited. How will Bethesda handle this revered mythology? Will it sit happily alongside its decade old brethren in the pantheon of gaming godliness or become the video gaming equivalent of Aliens vs. Predator: the diabolical rape of something awesome.
This week we spent over three hours with the game and its executive producer Pete Hines. We saw the game’s intro, the inside of Vault 101, the combat, the conversation system and we took those first steps out into the apocalyptic Washington DC of the far future. We experienced characters of different levels, from rookie biatch through to power-suit, mini-gun carrying combat God. We completed quests, betrayed whole towns and watched our faithful canine companion bite it. We saw something special. Here are more facts than you could possibly count that we gleaned from the experience.
A bloody birth
Fallout 3 is funny. Black funny, but still damn funny. There is plenty of dumb, fun laughs to be had from the one-liners thrown about by the (often mutated) residents of the new landscape of the USA. There is wittier stuff through posters, naming conventions and character interaction. And there is just some outrageous situational comedy. Together it gives the entire game an amazing amount of charm with is very difficult not to love. And the laughs start at the very beginning.
Bethesda has gone down a remarkable path with the RPG concept in Fallout 3. The norm has you going through a few screens of character creation and then materialising fully grown in the world tasked with rising from nobody to hero over the forthcoming 50 hours. In Fallout 3, when the game starts you emerge from the womb… literally. You don’t crawl out as some rumours had suggested, but you do get a gross-out blood splatter: although some may find getting picked up and cradled by a guy voiced by Liam Neeson seconds later equally as chilling.
From there you jump forward to key moments in your life – the ages of 1, 10, 16 and 19 to be precise – and on that journey you will be introduced to seemingly innocuous things that will ultimately define your character and teach you the ways of the HUD. You would have seen screenshots of a baby book where you learn about and select stats for Charisma. That blood splatter on your screen wasn’t a good omen though as it seems as your mum carked it, leaving you with the soothing-as-a-hammock voice of Mr. Neeson to guide you through life’s little decisions, each of which will determine the character stats your will soldier on with.
