Fallout 3 is Lame

[David Brasher]

When I first got Fallout 3, I played it for a couple of weeks, didn't like it much, got distracted, and never got back to it. Never even beat the main quest. Then my computer died and I did not immediately install Fallout on my new one.

 

Now about a year later, I get around to installing the game again. I am mystified why so many people like the game and why a popular sequel, which I never bought, has been released. So I start a new character and play hard, trying to beat the main quest. The game is still lame, even the second time around.

 

The subject matter of Fallout is very depressing and downcast. Cyrodiil is a pretty place full of magic and wonderment. I spend more time than I like to admit playing and modding Oblivion because I am in love with that fantasy world. Why would I want to spend all my free-time in a world where nuclear war has destroyed civilization and life is nasty, brutish, and short?

 

You can get shot like 14 times before dying. I thought guns were sort of fatal. In real life, if a person is wounded by one bullet, he or she is usually hors de combat. I know that Oblivion is pretty fake in this respect too, but it is a lot easier to swallow when there is magic and monsters and healing spells and the whole world is fantastic rather than realistic.

 

200 Years? The storyline and lore is all wacked. Looking at the game world, I would say that the war was like 20 or 25 years ago. Not 200. Everything is so fresh and new. Do you really expect paper and cloth to hold up for 200 years out in the weather? And what about all this food? Scavengers would pick everything clean in 20 or 25 years. There would be nothing left to scavenge. There certainly isn't going to be food in stores and cola in machines after 200 years of intense scavenging. And would the food be any good? NO! I don't care how many preservatives you put in it. I know some survivalists who horde food. Most foods in the store reach their expiration date within a year. Most foods you store go bad within 7 years. (And they don't taste good at this point. I have eaten enough old food to know.) A few things might be kept 10 or 15 years, but they are going to be so rancid and stale that you can hardly choke them down and might get sick. That makes that nice fresh rad roach meat look pretty attractive if the packaged food is 200 years old.

 

Massive ammunition factories. Fallout is not like any movie you have ever seen. (Think of Mad Max, The Road, The Book of Eli. Ammunition is scarce!) Civilization has fallen but there are still a lot of mines, chemical plants, and factories all focused on supplying the raiders with lots and lots of high quality ammunition that is fresh and has not expired. (Old food tastes bad or rots. Old ammunition has lots of rounds that become duds or jam the weapon. Certain things could become unstable and explode or spontaneously combust. And if your powder is not dry, it is not going to work.) So it is good to know that all those people still have good jobs in the ammunition industry and that civilization has not completely fallen.

 

VATS is regressive. Okay. It looks cool watching the movies from different angles. But turn-based games are old-fashioned. It was thought to be a great advancement to have live-action real-time video games where you have to stay focused, think fast, and have good reflexes. It seems like a step backward having the combat be like VATS is. The enemies are fast and tough, and ammunition is a little expensive, so that I want to conserve it. I am not skilled enough to cope if I don't use VATS. The computer shoots faster and more accurately than I do in real-time mode. But enter into VATS and I become the best markman the world has ever seen. I can hit moving targets. I can hit targets that are mostly concealed. I can choose to shoot one bodypart. It is ridiculous. It is like I am a master marksman, and am at a shooting range with a rifle with a scope, and I can use a bench rest and and decide to shoot a hole in any part of the paper target that strikes my fancy. VATS is just so unrealistic!

 

Gore gore gore. It is kind of ugly and nasty, but that is how war is. But what annoys me is unrealistic gore. So I shoot this raider in the head and chest several times. He falls dead and his severed leg fly off. What? I didn't shoot his leg! Why is it severed? I shoot this other raider in the chest several times and his whole body explodes in a splash of blood. Give me a break! I was not using dum dum bullets. I did not use a grenade. I did not use an RPG. This was not an artillery round. Bodies don't explode like that! That is just stupid. They should save the exploding bodies for when there is grenade or a mine or someone gets hit by a long burst from a heavy machine gun or something.

 

I think I will try to keep playing and beat the main quest, but I really don't think I am going to start a new character after I get done or rush out to buy New Vegas. I just don't understand what all the fuss is about when it comes to Fallout.

Edited March 10, 2011 by David Brasher

[bazerka250]

When I first got Fallout 3, I played it for a couple of weeks, didn't like it much, got distracted, and never got back to it. Never even beat the main quest. Then my computer died and I did not immediately install Fallout on my new one.

 

Now about a year later, I get around to installing the game again. I am mystified why so many people like the game and why a popular sequel, which I never bought, has been released. So I start a new character and play hard, trying to beat the main quest. The game is still lame, even the second time around.

 

The subject matter of Fallout is very depressing and downcast. Cyrodiil is a pretty place full of magic and wonderment. I spend more time than I like to admit playing and modding Oblivion because I am in love with that fantasy world. Why would I want to spend all my free-time in a world where nuclear war has destroyed civilization and life is nasty, brutish, and short?

 

You can get shot like 14 times before dying. I thought guns were sort of fatal. In real life, if a person is wounded by one bullet, he or she is usually hors de combat. I know that Oblivion is pretty fake in this respect too, but it is a lot easier to swallow when there is magic and monsters and healing spells and the whole world is fantastic rather than realistic.

 

200 Years? The storyline and lore is all wacked. Looking at the game world, I would say that the war was like 20 or 25 years ago. Not 200. Everything is so fresh and new. Do you really expect paper and cloth to hold up for 200 years out in the weather? And what about all this food? Scavengers would pick everything clean in 20 or 25 years. There would be nothing left to scavenge. There certainly isn't going to be food in stores and cola in machines after 200 years of intense scavenging. And would the food be any good? NO! I don't care how many preservatives you put in it. I know some survivalists who horde food. Most foods in the store reach their expiration date within a year. Most foods you store go bad within 7 years. (And they don't taste good at this point. I have eaten enough old food to know.) A few things might be kept 10 or 15 years, but they are going to be so rancid and stale that you can hardly choke them down and might get sick. That makes that nice fresh rad roach meat look pretty attractive if the packaged food is 200 years old.

 

Massive ammunition factories. Fallout is not like any movie you have ever seen. (Think of Mad Max, The Road, The Book of Eli. Ammunition is scarce!) Civilization has fallen but there are still a lot of mines, chemical plants, and factories all focused on supplying the raiders with lots and lots of high quality ammunition that is fresh and has not expired. (Old food tastes bad or rots. Old ammunition has lots of rounds that become duds or jam the weapon. Certain things could become unstable and explode or spontaneously combust. And if your powder is not dry, it is not going to work.) So it is good to know that all those people still have good jobs in the ammunition industry and that civilization has not completely fallen.

 

VATS is regressive. Okay. It looks cool watching the movies from different angles. But turn-based games are old-fashioned. It was thought to be a great advancement to have live-action real-time video games where you have to stay focused, think fast, and have good reflexes. It seems like a step backward having the combat be like VATS is. The enemies are fast and tough, and ammunition is a little expensive, so that I want to conserve it. I am not skilled enough to cope if I don't use VATS. The computer shoots faster and more accurately than I do in real-time mode. But enter into VATS and I become the best markman the world has ever seen. I can hit moving targets. I can hit targets that are mostly concealed. I can choose to shoot one bodypart. It is ridiculous. It is like I am a master marksman, and am at a shooting range with a rifle with a scope, and I can use a bench rest and and decide to shoot a hole in any part of the paper target that strikes my fancy. VATS is just so unrealistic!

 

Gore gore gore. It is kind of ugly and nasty, but that is how war is. But what annoys me is unrealistic gore. So I shoot this raider in the head and chest several times. He falls dead and his severed leg fly off. What? I didn't shoot his leg! Why is it severed? I shoot this other raider in the chest several times and his whole body explodes in a splash of blood. Give me a break! I was not using dum dum bullets. I did not use a grenade. I did not use an RPG. This was not an artillery round. Bodies don't explode like that! That is just stupid. They should save the exploding bodies for when there is grenade or a mine or someone gets hit by a long burst from a heavy machine gun or something.

 

I think I will try to keep playing and beat the main quest, but I really don't think I am going to start a new character after I get done or rush out to buy New Vegas. I just don't understand what all the fuss is about when it comes to Fallout.

[/quote

I didn't like F3 when I bought the GOTY edition.When New Vegas came out I bought it and learned how to play the game so I decided to try F3.I like F3 even better.Oblivion I can't get into for some reason so I guess it's personal choice.I'm not saying Oblivion is a bad game or eventually I won't go back and play more but to each his own.

[Ayatolah]

The world of Fallout (wich i played the FIRST game) is necessarily a dark and fairly depressing place, but... they have some elements that reminds me my favourite lore....

de WH 40.000 lore... a GRIMDARK environment with GRIMDARK enemies and friends who are enought GRIMDARK by themselves... readin some novels in this lore, you can see that F3 seems fairly enough to the description of "civilitzation" in the 41st millenia... so... for a lot of people who doesn't bound him/herself to the ES lore, es AWESOME...

[Herculine]

Personally I don't think it's fair to say that FO3 is lame just because it's not exactly like Oblivion. I think the appropriate term would be "different". Oblivion and Fallout are two totally different stories set in two totally different realities. To compare the two is like trying to compare Escape From New York to Conan The Barbarian. Obviously, they are two different types of stories.

 

But if we're determined to compare...

 

You mentioned that the damage you take from gunfire is unrealistic. Well, it's a game, after all. Dying every time you take a single bullet would make the game so difficult that far fewer gamers would want to play it. I can't think of many video games where your character gets killed by getting hit just once. Furthermore, Oblivion does exactly the same thing. I can get hit by a giant bastard sword 14 times and still win the battle, then cast a healing spell on myself and merrily skip down the hillside. This is realistic?

 

Of course the subject matter is depressing and downcast. Kinda hard to make the world being all but destroyed by a nuclear holocaust into a happy fairy tale. Oblivion isn't really all that cheerful. Hordes of demons from a fiery realm bent on destroying or enslaving us all isn't a cheerful fantasy tale in my opinion.

 

200 years? Once again I point out that it's a game and as such was intended to be entertaining, not to win the Nobel Literature Prize. The fact that everything resembles the remnants of the United States in the 1940s-1960s and yet we know in reality our world was not gutted by a nuclear holocaust in that era is an obvious indication that the story takes place in an alternate timeline and reality. Obviously it's not going to be historically accurate and we shouldn't expect it to be.

 

I will agree with you on a few things, however...

 

V.A.T.S. is indeed a turn-based sort of thing that I could have lived without. Turn-based combat is one of the reasons why I finally became disenchanted with the Final Fantasy franchise.

 

And the gore is indeed a bit over-the-top, even for a military combat game. They could still have included some blood without trying to be so anatomically correct.

 

Anyway, these are just my opinions.

[graymaybe]

You guys know there are plenty of mods to change the things you don't like, right? And there's no reason to complain about VATS, it's a callback to Fallout and Fallout 2, which were turn-based games. (And better than 3 IMO, thought I do love it.)

[Ayatolah]

You guys know there are plenty of mods to change the things you don't like, right? And there's no reason to complain about VATS, it's a callback to Fallout and Fallout 2, which were turn-based games. (And better than 3 IMO, thought I do love it.)

 

 

 

JAJA! now i remembered the LAME end of the first fallout^^

 

I remember the turn style of the previous games, especially the first, in fact, some weapons had something like the VATS (was the combat shotgun? i cannot remember)... i always preferred real-time action (in fact, that's one thing that attracted me of Oblivion, real time combat and 99% control over your actions, not point and see) than turns, but is a good detail to have... think about it... sniping for example, you will not try to shoot to an spot in the body when you have a buch of thugs over there.... but sniping, in sniping YOU HAVE to aim to a particular spot....

[ita]

some weapons had something like the VATS

 

You can perform aimed shots with pretty much every weapon in Fallout 1 and 2, even melee weapons. Unless you have the Fast Shot trait, of course.

[Ayatolah]

... i can't remember clearly i played looooong time ago...

[austinrocks]

will agree that I prefer Oblivion, got tired of not being able to leap over the obstacles in Fallout3, and the game is pretty depressing.

[Odile]

=(

 

Fallout and Oblivion are fairly similar in actual game quality. I think it really just comes down to plot-preference. The atmosphere and plot of the Fallout games appealed to me in a way that Oblivion never did (and I love Oblivion!). I enjoy the depressing atmosphere.

Edited March 12, 2011 by Odile