Fallout 3 Gameplay Thread

ok things are starting to pop up now, some non-essential characters cant be killed, they just become "unconcious" and get up again after having a clip of 9mm ammo plugged into their skull

EDIT: ok, ive just gotten to the part where you first get your pistol, i wont spoil anything but lets just say old debts were settled, hearts were broken and blood flowed...SO FAR SO GOOD!!

some parts i felt my freedom was blatantly and purposefully denied (SPOILER bb gun + birthday party is a no go), other parts were completely unrealistic (shooting someone in the head produced remarks such as "what are you doing?)

MORE EDIT: oookay now that im a bit into the game the disappointments come....SPOILER AHEAD i rented a hooker and nothing happens, she just lies down and gets back up...no action...nothing...are you sh*tting me? in fallout 2 i could suck Jet out of Mrs. Bishop's mouth before we did it doggy style on Mr. Bishop's bed, and after that i cracked her safe and stole her makeup! ....and now i get THIS? i can cut decapitate an old lady but there's no ***....uh-huh...

lockpicking SUCKS; they made a realistic model of a lock but then made the picking method completely unrealistic...why? i know how to pick locks in real life and i cannot pick an 'average' lock in this game...its pathetic; the instructions are terrible and the picking process itself is nothing like a real lockpicking (which isnt that hard and definitely not hard to model in-game), i forget what game did it well maybe someone can think of it but they had the profile of the lock so you could see the springs and the tumblers it was a very good implementation, cant remember what gamel; anyways ive just broken 20 picklocks in fallout with absolutely no progress on the lock or even any idea what im doing wrong considering they just invented the picklocking model based on complete fantasy and using a real picklocking technique doesnt do anything

anyways my short summary right now would be "oblivion with guns set in the post-apocalyptic USA"

 

I liked it

 

The epic environment

The gameplay & graphic performance.

No groin target shot!

The game will come to an end eventually.

I hope the Fallout MMO will live up to this latest installment of the series. Bethesda (sp.?) did a great job!

 

Having only played for about 2-3 hours so far I can say:
Ecstatic:
Nothing

Pleased:
The environment is very fallout, desolate, sparse and was thought through.
The voice acting is well done

Disappointed:
The combat, its ridiculous. There's no strategy, no thinking, its basically pop a couple of shots from afar then run in close use VATS and bam.
The quality of the landscape, the Oblivion engine needed to be upgraded or a different engine should have been used.
Facial movements, again this is tied to the Oblivion engine, its almost like watching a six year old with a playdo sock puppet trying to move it in sync with the voices.
The A.I. albeit I'm only 2-3 hours in but the enemies are not the brightest sparks.

Furious about:
Nothing yet...although I have a sneaking suspicion that the game uses a level scaling system for enemies. Anyone want to comment who's deep into the game? By this I mean once we get to a certain level if I wanted to go smack around a creature I encountered much earlier in the game I should theoretically be able to one shot it, not have it scale to my level.

 

My brother bought it for the pc and I messed around with it for a bit.

Dissapointed :

No iron sights! The aiming is pretty poor even on the pc

 

ok more complaints:

1) why does a woman talk with me in a friendly voice when i just blatanly slaughtered half her town? why does entering a bar after brutally slaughtering every single person outside have no effect on the people in the bar who are friendlier than ever even though the outside of the bar is painted in townsfolk blood?

2) why does my karma go down every time i steal something when i just slaughtered everyone in the town? is that even stealing when all the owners are dead?

3) why arent there any descriptions to any of the items? all i know about my pistol is that its a 10mm...and my assault rifle is "chinese"...not very rpg-ish; even stalker had great descriptions for everything

4) combat - im not exactly sure why i should raise my small-guns skill because i can slaughter anyone in this game in real-time with a pistol just using my fps skills; the lockpicking and speech skills are properly implemented at least; meelee combat is laughable at best; guys can block my knife with wrenches (cant stab at all with anything, including weapons that are designed to be stabbing implements), so i swing my knife and the guy blocks it with his pipe...and so it goes until one of us either gets tired or i pull out my gun and decapitate him with my 10mm pistol (people decapitated with pistol rounds?! what?!)

5)ironsights, ironsights, ironsights

6)why can't i sleep in a bed when all the occupants have already taken a one-way ticket to the underworld?

7)why can i take the weapons off some dead bodies but not others, realoading a save game then killing them again i can take their weapon when before i could not

8)inventory system sucks terribly; just because fallout had it doesnt mean it was good, inventory screen was actually one of the most serious flaws of fallout 1/2; i understand its a console port so they couldnt do a standard box inventory but thumbs down nevertheless

9)why does it tell you whether the container is empty or not just by pointing at it with your cursor even if you've never checked it...kind of takes the fun out of exploring lockers (also it seems like every single locker in the game is in fact empty :/)

10)you can drink out of dirty old toilets to heal hp...gross but fine ill go with it, but why does drinking out of a toilet only heal 4hp and give you 17rads of radiation while drinking out of the dirty old sink next to it heal 30hp and only give you 5rads?!

11)terrain - why is everything covered with huge boulders? i could understand concrete rubble or garbage...but boulders? as far as the eye can see? lame

12)you can heal crippled limbs by sleeping a few hours or using a stimpack

13)computer hacking...what a joke..i cant even use my keyboard to type a word i have to click on it...terrible (this one just screams "console game")

14)firefights are a joke, assault rifles fire bullets so inacurately you'd think the barrel is bent, you'll be lucky to hit a guy at 20ft with an AK firing single shots, with the gun in 'good' condition and my small guns skill at like 50 (which i dont think even makes a difference)

15)no "sleep until healed" function, i had to guess how many hours it takes (not that many); also i was never told i could press T to fast-forward time, i just stumbled on it by accident

OK one piece of praise for the game is that you can take all the clothing and armor off of any dead body, something that few other games implement and frankly should be status quo from now on; GOOD JOB BETHESDA; there are also tons and tons of items all over that you can pick up, also good, more than half of them are useless but hey if i want to carry 10 coffee mugs around i can; also the fact that you can leave all the female corpses lying around in their underwear is a nice touch, hailing from the days of Morrowind; also i get bad karma for killing some people but not others, even though they are all 'good' citizens...weird

playing through Fallout3 feels like they never even let people playtest it, or they didnt get enough time to finish stuff because some of the omissions are pretty glaring that any playtester would notice

offtopic: i also played Dead Space today for the first time and its pretty good for a console game, it actually plays more like system shock 2 than bioshock and takes some very obvious "inspirations" from it, anyone that played SS2 will notice them immediately, some are blatant ripoffs but hey its great source material why not, and it works well; i can safely recommend Dead Space to any fan of the horror genre (im only on chaper 2 though)

 

That reminds me. Another annoying fact: I cannot kill everyone some people just go unconcious.

 

oh yea i think i mentioned that in my first post, like the vault people, why on earth wouldnt you be able to kill them they arent essential characters at all, and the kitchen robot (spoiler?), i chased after him with a baseball bat for 15 minutes, all for nothing lol

SPOILER: before i forget, the part where you can let the woman get killed by the bugs was a NICE touch..i really enjoyed that =) ..too bad they didnt eat her corpse... =(
END SPOILER

i figured out how lockpicking works and its even more retarded than i thought, funny since they obviously went through the trouble to make the lock, the torque tool and the lockpick look realistic

OK SOME GOOD THINGS: load times are almost instantaneous, the game world is huge, you can still play an evil character, and you can still kill kids with automatic weapons

 

OMG YOU CANT KILL KIDS....WHAT?! one of the best parts of fallout2 was being able to blow gaping holes in kids with a .44 magnum....oh bethesda ye have failed miserably

this is unexcusable, in oblivion it would be forgiveable but in fallout? failure

i lockpicked Flak's door and locked myself in and what do i see on the bed, a little girl sleeping, so i thought "wow this is a great time to test the power fist", but noooo she's INVINCIBLE, bullets go straight through her and power fist makes no contact, i ran around behind her with my assault rifle shooting clip after clip just to make sure, mowing down every other person in the process....laaaaame; lets hope there's a child-killer patch coming out... OH WAIT THEY DIDNT EVEN INCLUDE AN EDITOR SO PEOPLE COULD MAKE MODS.....FAIL

HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO PLAY YOUR ROLE AS AN EVIL CHARACTER IF YOU CANT EVEN KILL KIDS?!?!?!

no ***, no child-killing....thank god you can ****ing swear...THNX BETH

 

I was really thinking about buying this game, but can't really afford too. I was also worried about quirks that I heard about shooting someone in the head and they won't die until a couple more shots which is so unrealistic that the same thing in Morrowwind where you shoot someone in the head with an arrow really disgusted me. This thread has helped to save me money. This is exactly what I wanted to know about this game. Thanks anarky. I knew it was all hype. I'll just hold on to my money for more important things in life right now.

 

Is this game really that bad? I think its still going to be a decent game, but you never know until you actually play it yourself.

Sometimes you have to take the forums with a grain of salt. People tend to vent and rant about the negative aspects while ignoring the good stuff.

I'm easily entertained. As long as i can shoot off limbs and make some guy explode point blank with a shotgun im happy.

 

so you actually think that DEAD SPACE is better than FALLOUT 3??????? no comment.....
i'm playing both games right now and i can easily say that Fallout 3 is SO much better than dead space, although there's no way to compare a third person shooter with an RPG!!!!.....the first 3 hours in DS were terrific but after that things star got repetitive(just like doom3!!) and it was obvious that the game is all about pretty graphics.....also the game is rather shallow when you compare it to other third person shooter like RE4, i don't particularly like the monsters design(there are only few enemy types!!) and i don't think the game is scary at all!!!....i thought this game could be the ALIEN the game but clearly that wasn't the case....in the end, this game was made by EA!!!, so i guess that was expected!!....

as for your complaints about Fallout 3, i think you're taking the game seriously!!, it's just a game not a real-life simulation and these problems can be found in every game...so what????
as for your whining about the combat system i think you're playing the wrong game!, this is no FPS game!, this is an RPG and we all know that combat in RPG games suck because it's not the focus, yet the combat system in this game is better than most RPGs, did you for example think that the combat system in Mass Effect was better or deeper?????

graphics and sound are top-notch and the level design and art direction are just breatk-taking......the only complaint i have about the game is that the animations feel clunky and funny sometimes, they could've been a lot better...

i having alot of fun with fallout3 at the moment and IMO it's the best PC game ever since HL:EP2......

 

Well for me when I started playing Morrowind I liked it but the shooting enemies head and enemy not dying totally ruined the experience. I know as a roleplaying game you have to build experience points then you do more damage but come on a bullet or arrow doesn't need experience to kill you when it hits a vital point.

I want peoples opinion on this cause I'm really wanting to get the game but this could really disappoint me. How is the combat holding up for people that has played it for awhile now? Particularly with hitting enemies in vital places while youre charater still has low experience.

 

If you are looking for realism, this isn't your game by any means...

If you are looking for a grand story with a ton of content and to be entertained, it fits the bill perfectly.

 

OK HUGE SPOILER AHEAD

the suburbia level (you'll know it when you get to it) is GENIUS, in fact its the most fun ive head with a game in a while; it just so happens that it was on this level that i discovered that you could pick up dismembered corpses and move them wherever you want (press Z) and also that you could change your view to third person (press F)....needless to say bloody mayhem ensued

ahahaha Pint-Sized Slasher ftw...nothing like running at people with a knife and the torso of their dismembered spouse or tossing heads down staircases, i wont spoil any more stuff of this GENIUS level, the closest equivalent is the Mystery Party level in Oblivion for the Assassins Guild but this is far more original

END SPOILER

GOOD JOB BETHESDA THAT WAS SO ORIGINAL A+

 

Combat is still a little ridiculous but then again I don't really like the mechanics. Anyone that tries to tell you that the combat isn't 80% based on FPS is lieing. I pretty much use VATS now almost 90% of the time, its rare for me to just use realtime combat.

HOWEVER, as I've gotten a few more hours playtime I like the story and the characters more and more. One thing I will say that Beth did remain true on is the character development, its pretty awesome.

Yes it does bug me a little that if you kill mass amounts of people you can't sleep in their beds but nothing's perfect.

Beth blocked the killing of kids because sadly because my own home country sucks. Australia has no R18+ for video games and thus banned the sale of Fallout3 and thus Beth dropped some of the offending content and the game's classification dropped to M. This is also the reason why you don't see people shooting up drugs or sleeping with prostitut*s. Never mind the gruesome limb amputation...retarded classification board.

Anyway, if you REALLY feel strongly as though you should be able to kill kids there is a bug that lets you do it but be warned SPOILER on how to do it:

Get the Mister Sandman perk (lets you kill any sleeping character) and find those sleeping kids...

 

lol i see you really looked into the child-killing problem...thanks for the tip ill be sure to try that; i just got the SPOILER Cannibal perk though, what leve is Mr Sandman? END SPOILER

another rant: since when doesnt ammunition weigh anything? im carrying like 500lbs of ammunition but i get away with it because it weighs nothing...pretty lame

one of the cool things about stalker was it made you use stashes since you could only carry maybe 3 guns max at a time

EDIT: OK, i would have let the child-killing thing go if i didnt just stumble SPOILER ALERT into a place inhabited entirely by kids...and not only can i not kill any of them (LAME LAME LAME) but i even got my gun automatically holstered and couldnt take it out...WHAT?! this is what clear sky did too and it bothered the hell out of me....terrible terrible terrible....you lose all suspension of disbelief when your weapon gets automatically holstered and you're in a place where everyone is invincible...this is not freedom of gameplay

EDIT2: the kids happen to be the ****iest *******s ever, its like they know you cant blow their brains out so they can get away with whatever they want

EDIT: 2 more things worth mentioning - you cant climb out of the water except at predetermined ramp points (retarded) and you cant activate certain levers until you've triggered the quest (also retarded, if i want to pull the lever and its not locked i should be able to pull it whenever i want)

EDIT: one more, there are no binoculars and no way to buy any, this is a game where they would really come useful

END SPOILERS

 

SPOILER POST basically:

Anarky to get Sandman its Lvl 10, Sneak 60

Binoculars would come in handy yes BUT at the same time I can "kind of" (and I'm reaching here) understand why they didn't include them. It would make the game a lot easier because basically if you have a fairly high Perception your radar lets you know where people are from pretty far away and thus if you had binoc's it would make killing/avoiding them probably a little too easy.


END SPOILERS

Besides that how're you finding the game? I'm slowly coming to terms with the combat system and doing every side quest I can find so I'm liking the game more. It'll never be in my Top 10, but its growing on me.

 

SPOILER

lmao i just sold Bubbles into slavery....i think thats the only time in a video game when i stopped and thought "wow thats some evil *****; (and the conversation between Bubbles and the Child Slaver...priceless) all the slavers pay respect to me since i dont think my Evil rank can go any higher (lower?)

yea i have to give my respects to Beth for making such a huge gameworld, i mean ive been playing it for what 2 days straight? its gigantic, there's definitely tons of places to explore; I found Little Lantern before i found Paradise Falls, and first thing i thought was "**** i have GOT to tell the slavers about this place when i find them"

one thing im stuck on though, in Little Lantern the 'teacher' boy told me that he transferred all the files onto a computer terminal, and someone else said that they have a vault door right in the cave, i cant find either; there's some sort of a door that might lead to a vault but it says that the terminal isnt powered and there's nothing i can do with the generator next to it...?

little lantern is one of the most well-designed cave levels ive ever seen, definitely far above any caves that morrowind or oblivion had

also what are all those radio antennas with the SOS signals for? i keep turning them off but is there any purpose to it?

END SPOILERS

 

BEGINNER TIP (TINY SPOILER)

as soon as you get out of the vault turn around, walk around the hill and get onto the overpass, there's a bandit camp there and you can get some high-end weapons, including a sniper rifle, assault rifle (HK G4 i think?) and a flamer much earlier than you otherwise would

END SPOILER

another thing id like to mention is that they did a good job designing the 'towns'/'camps' to look realistic in the sense that it makes sense tha the town is designed to protect them against raids with moats, drawbridges and high fences with barbed wire, etc. the design is great, Clear Sky also did a great job with this, actually arguably a better one with ramparts and roof patrol bridges, but this is a pleasant surprise for a game made by Beth and i was not disappointed, bad part is like i said they didnt implement any patrol realistic patrol routes, anyone that played clear sky and saw the Cordon base knows what im talking about

MORE SPOILERS

lmfao i just got to Big Town...i love this place its by far the most pessimistic town ive ever visited in any game..where else can you say "im here to rape and pillage your town and set a few fires" and get let through the front gate...lolz...and the guy smoking a cigarette? "you're here to rape and kill us arent you?" priceless...

AAAAHhh Bittercup!! lmao im not even going to spoil this for you...OK i am lmao there's a hot depressed emo girl in Big Town that you can win over if you're badass enough which i was of course lmao; sucks you cant have people join your party (not that ive found a way yet.. i think you can since the slavers offered me a bodyguard, but all the people that i wanted to be in my party are unavailable, even if they like me)

END SPOILER


anyways to anyone still on the fence about this game it has won me over, go and buy it lol you have my approval

i want more games like this designed, with this setting i mean (post-apocalyptic)

first i thought this game would suck alot, but i have spent like 20 hours on it already and compared to some POS like Farcry2 this is a great game, the fact that they got equal scores from reviewers underlines how paid-off the reviewers are

 

Funny how your rant on Farcry2 mentioned a complaint about 6 hours into the game into getting hooked being far too long for the attention-deprived, yet in this game you invest 20 hours, make numerous rants on this forum and finally give your grudging approval.

 

Was gonna say that but... oh well Harley is always there

 

i ranted on fallout yes because it has tons of shortfalls but i never considered it even close to being as bad as farcry2 nor did i ever say that

there was never a doubt in my mind that i was going to finish fallout3, being a huge fan of fallout2 (one of the best games i ever played)

im pretty sure i mentioned before that i was hooked on fallout3 from minute1, despite all of it's glaring omissions and faults, the point i was trying to make was this could have been an EPIC game, instead its simply a "pretty good" game...farcry2 is NOT a good game imo

 

High expectations are one thing, but I suppose it's understandable why one game would be given preferential treatment over the other when the previous games in the franchise were personal favourites.

 

anyone find out who the "bad karma" npc's are that you can recruit? i got one, havent found any other ones yet, im at least 50% through the game... i want to recruit Bittercup but cant saaad

also how do you know what kind of weapons they're good with? i just guessed by trial and error that its pistols for my npc but it'd be easier if it said it, also there's no HP counter or defense rating or anything for NPCs....very simplistic party system, even more simplistic than fallout 2

i wish you could do stuff like recruit any merc for enough cash, recruit chicks that dig you, order your npc's to patrol certain areas so you could take over places like the super duper mart, demand tolls from people that pass through your territory, then go on raids together (party limit is only 3, not exactly a gang eh)

i wonder if the Fallout MMO is going to come out by the end of 2009, that should be a pretty sick game if they make the combat mechanics good, much easier to do raids and take over territory with other people than with dumb npcs

i do find it comforting how my npc chick pulls her scoped .44 magnum on anyone that even remotely shows aggression toward me, usually resulting in a big red splatter, havent yet figured out if she can take drugs, probably not

EDIT: nvm apparently you can only have 1 NPC not counting Dogmeat...oh you didnt know Dogmeat is in this you say? well sorry if i spoiled anything lol; anyways only being able to have 1 NPC sucks, alot; why not 2 or 3

 

Man I'm lost! They created to many unpassable locations for my liking. Like a little pile of rubble, that if only I could cross, I could get there... alas, I'll keep walking around aimlessly.

 

Well how about this then... I never played Fallout 2 nor the original FarCry, and I still think Farcry 2 was a complete POS and I love Fallout 3...

I'll also point out that I didn't enjoy oblivion, but Fallout 3 has made me love this style of rpg

 

you've never played fallout2?! blasphemy!

New Reno alone was worth the price of admission, no other game can match the dialogue options of Fallout 2....Salvatore, Big Jesus Mordino, Bishop...oh those were good times indeed

fallout2 is a much more 'involving' game, everything can be examined, every item has its own creative description, dialogue options are incredible, kids can be shot burned and mined with explosives, doors can be mined with explosives, people can be overdosed with drugs, death animations are great and very varied, there's ***, etc. etc. ... did i mention you can put live grenades and explosives into people's inventories and run away? you can start a fight with almost anyone through dialogue options; some people you say one wrong thing and you'll be shot (walking into big jesus mordino's room and talking smack got my brains blown out after 2 lines), or intimidating Salvatore's bodyguard, who you can push to the very edge but have to stop right there where he's about to explode from anger otherwise he'll kill you (i forget his name but it was effin hilarious insulting him over and over as he raged more and more)

its a true classic

i would also highly recommend fallout:tactics, fallout3 took some inspiration from fallout:tactics, not just fallout1/2

 

OK, so I love this game, but I do have a few gripes.

1. The Sniper Rifle is hideously underpowered... hideously.
2. My joy that the accuracy is more realistic given the quality of most of the weapons you're using is marred by the fact that my enemies don't seem to suffer the same penalty.
3. You have to be on a completely flat surface to jump, which is annoying - I know no-one likes a seamwalker, but come on!
4. The enemies are definitely scaled, and rather than giving them better weapons or armour, the devs just upped their health, which makes me sad at how difficult it becomes to headshot-kill a raider past level 8.
5. Exploring just isn't the fun it was in morrowind or oblivion, there's so much area that's just... blown up concrete with no enemies and no purpose.

I'm sure I'll think of more later. That said, it's an amazing game, though a realism mod might be nice, along with one to increase number/weapons/armour of random encounters, rather than just upping health...

Well, Jericho in Megaton for one, though i spose you aready blew him up ...

 

Nothing personal but your situation is completely different from anarky's simply because his position is the complete reverse of yours. I have no opinion whatsoever on your likes and dislikes on particular games since that's your position, all I stated in earlier posts was a individual's willingness to forgive a game's faults and perservere yet not do the same for the other. If you have a problem with that stance that's your issue.

 

yea i already blew up Jericho of course...what is an evil NPC doing in Megaton anyway? why isnt he doing guard duty in Tenpenny Tower or something? lame

then again you can only have 1 NPC at a time anyway and Crystal or whatever her name is is doing a great job.....im sure someone will mod it having more NPCs..someday

 

Fallout 3 is AWESOME.


However I have one big gripe. Where are you supposed to find a bed to rest in?? Most RPG's let you rent a room to sleep, but not here.


The closest I have come to finding a reliable bed is the Supermarket.



BTW thanks to everyone for using the spoiler tags, I do my best to avert my gaze whenever they come up in a paragraph.

 

Help!! SPOILERS::!!

Im trying to do that one quest to get the Declaration of Independance, and I cant get to the freakin National Archives, the entire washington dc area is sectioned off, its so frustrating because the wall of rubbish seem to extend forever.

Anyone find that place?

 

you have to take the subway tunnels to get anywhere in DC, its very frustrating

also, i have a bug: Eulogy disappeared along with his 'bodyguard'.....it sucks because i need him for quests...i searched everywhere he's nowhere to be found

EDIT: lmao just found him he was in the back room of the hospital stuck behind the doctor's bed with his gf, if anyone else has this problem

SPOILERS AHEAD

ok i found the Temple of the Union but i cant get any dialogue options about it with Eulogy, which doesnt make sense, there HAS to be a way to sell them out to Eulogy just like Little Lamplight, or even worse

anyone figure this out?

END SPOILERS

 

I just got it yesterday and was thinking to myself what the hell is all the hype about until I finally made it out of the vault.

Before I started though I by passed the autodetect settings and set the graphics to max out everything and it played at 40-60 in the vault with all the people at the party until I came to the scene where I open the vault door and when the smoke came out it dropped below 20 and then when I got outside it was consistenly dropping below 20 so I was disappointed.

By the way I have a Toshiba x305 with 9700m gts. Anyway I exited the game and used the auto detect settings and it picked and choosed the perfect resolution and settings without compromising the look to much, I love how it looks, and it stays at a constant 60 fps! So I would suggest anyone who owns the game to let Fallout 3 decide on the settings for your rig.

Anyway outside of the vault is way less restricted and now I can see where all this hype is coming from. I hear people complain of the graphics not being state of the art and I think to myself are they blind? I don't care if it's the Oblivion engine. It's an enhanced, updated and not so hardware demanding engine that looks freakin AWESOME! This is how it should be and not pushed so much that consumers have to wait for hardware to be invented.

Anyway I'm another bit by the Fallout 3 Bug and it's 4 in the morn so I just wanted to let out my joy, but I'm sleepy now. Oh and to think Anarky almost made me not by this until I read how he had a change of heart.

Edit: People also complain about the combat. I love it. It's not bad as I thought it was gonna be even playing in realtime fps. Well thought out and implemented.

 

combat sucks in this, especially in realtime its a mess, reminds me of Deus Ex when you had to fight more than 2 people at a time in close quarters, and VATS gets boring FAST, i hate how i cant switch between pistol, rifle and grenade with 1 button, really makes combat tedious

in a certain mission i had several people following me, so i walked over to one that was being rude to me before and i blew his brains out (never forgive, never forget -_- ), and none of his friends even said anything, but 10 minutes later he somehow magically respawned and was following me again, so i killed him again, decapitated him and hopefully that will make sure he stays dead

im about 80% into the game, so i can make some more remarks, there are TONS of locations but in more than half of them there's nothing at all to do, to manipulate, the computer consoles cant be destroyed, lights cant be powered on/off even with working generators (why are they working after 50 years?), its just uninvolving in that regard, houses and indoor places are all distinct areas which means you can't look out the windows or climb through a window, etc., there arent any destructive environment physics at all, well lots of things really to gripe about

i am impressed with the game in terms of its sheer scope like i said, but make no mistake im playing this through and then MAYBE ill play it through again as a good character but probably NOT, since every good character in this game is an overthetop ****y for some reason, which disgusts you and makes you want to sell everyone to the slavers or just execute them and pile their dismembered corpses in the bathtub

like i said if they make a Fallout MMO that would be killer, this game's setting is just begging for MMO implementation, tons of factions, great environment, desperate camps made from piled up junk and rusty sheet metal, realistic weapons (most of them)

Interplay is working on the MMO btw if anyone didnt know

also, anyone else notice how they totally ripped of Stalker for the "head concussion" effect? its the effect that you got when you came within range of a Controller in Stalker

 

you can hotkey weapons too numbers. so switching weapons is quite easy.

There are alot of places to explore in this game, Im 22 hours into the game and Ive probably finished 5 sidequests, its ridiculous how involving exploration is because Im not playing slowly either.

There are alot of details in the game that is commendable, for example light seeping through crevices in the builds actually coordinate with the day/night cycle. While settlement themselves arent perfect, the design of the settlement is really fresh.

Megaton is the epitome of the post apocalyptic craze thats bound to turn up: the whole town is built upon torn machinery and debris left from the catastrophy. The religion of the town is founded on the atom bomb: which is ironically the cause of the devastation itself (points toward the hypocritical theme that permeates through the game. And I found the quests very appropriate: fixing sewage pipes cause obviously the settlers lack the resource for a top notch city, collecting scrap metal to maintain the city, etc.

Rivet city is built on a battlecruiser: it makes perfect sense. Its naturally isolated from threats by the ship's design and water itself. The city opens to you by extending bridge (testimony to its defense stance), the city's history makes perfect sense also. It was founded to take advantage of technological resources, and the founders had to solve the problem of mutated crabs within the ships first.

All in all, many design aspects of Fallout 3 follows extremely well with the post apocalyptic theme. I can tell that designers payed close attention to every detail and polished everything to great standards given the large scope of the game, its an accomplishment.

 

P.S. Where do you think stalker got the idea?

 

Why do people hate the combat system? Its way better than plain odd FPS.

The great thing is, you dont Have to use it. I personally use it to get kicks out of combat, seeing a head shot in slow motion is enjoyable when you choose when to take advantage of it.

It provides more diversity in shooting because you can strategically target body parts. I usually use VATS to knock the gun out of the enemies hands, and proceed to kill them in FPS mode.

You can see that the developers worked on various ways in which VATS is indespendable: vs turrets a hit on the sensor shuts it down, destroying antenae on ants make them frenze, shooting the stinger off a scoropion disable its poison, and crippling a supermutant provide its charging attack. So VATS feels very much a integral part of giving combat the tactical control that a full FPS lacks entirely.

Even the perks work with VATS to bring extra joy: the mysterious stranger perk is a fun sight to behold. This guy pops in during vats occasionally to finish an enemy off if you miss or cant do enough damage. The music changes into a funny whismical tune and it fits perfectly, (surprised @ your fortune that a total stranger popped in and helped you out?)

Honestly VATS cant detract from the game because its totally optional, if anything it makes Fallout 3 so much more interesting than other shooters. I use it for strategic purposes, or simply to revile in the sight of watching bullets fly pathing in slow motion as it collides with the enemies head, tearing it off with the fireworks of blood and gore. It doesnt get boring, ever, because the system itself is intricate enough to allow it.

 

how did you find out about the weapon hotkeys? really good advice thanks...makes things much less tedious

 

Love this game so much, but my only qualm is the underpowered weapons. My 30-06 with a standard soft point 180 grain round will punch through an inch of steel, and my 30-06 AP rounds will bunch through 4 inches of armor. The fact that it takes 10-15 shots to kill some non armored guy bugs me. Gun damage just doesn't reflect real life damage at all.

But outside that and the unpassable piles of rubble all over DC, the game engrosses me and I love it!

Anybody else lost trying to get to that point Three Dog sends you right after you leave GRN on your mission there?

 

i play it on very easy, anything more and the weapons are just too unrealistic, even on very easy i dont get instant kill from sniper rifle headshot


KODAK MOMENT!!!



the story behind the picture is pretty amusing, lets just say thats not a smiling super mutant and not an enclave soldier

 

Are there any graphics mods or tweaks for fallout yet? I've taken a look at the files for it, but could not find anything easily modifiable. I've got lots of headroom to increase visuals, even with 8xAA.

 

i played with the textures on max and they seemed low-res to me

 

Sleep-able beds are plentiful. I know for certain that there are two available beds at the Springfield Elementary School.

 

It tells you right in the Pip-boy.

 

This is pretty typical for a massive world RPG. Only game of this size I can think of that had better textures is GTA IV, but I don't even think GTA IV was quite as big as this. Perhaps a future expansion or patch will increase texture resolution, but not likely.

 

where? i looked and couldnt find it

 

I think your whole experience have been shaped by easy mode. Its not even close to what the game feels like @ normal and hard.

It totally makes sense why you're ripping on VATS now. On easy you don't even need it. I suggest playing the game on hard where ammo amount, weapon condition are far worse (its more realistic in the spirit of the post apocalyptic theme). In those circumstances, you need to conserve ammo and take the best chance as doing the most damage, thats why VATS is essential on harder difficulties. Consequentially, it feels like an integral part of the game.

I cant play on easy, I hate the idea that my "realistic shots can kill enemies in 2-3 hits" and it takes 10-15 of their "realistic shots" to kill me.

 

Ive been noticing some pretty funny trends with in the game with language.

1. Crab people evolved crab language
2. Super mutants talk like retarded ogres

use hide and listen to how they talk, its pretty halarious.