Fallout 3 Discussion Thread

So!
Who is playing Fallout 3 right now?

From what I have already played, it's a very nice game, with a really good fallout feeling to it. Though some more "V.A.T.S." action in real fallout style would be appreciated, if you could switch to a "tactical mode" or something. It would make some messy situations way more overviewable.

Any way, allthough it's heavily based on Oblivion, and still has an oblivion feeling to it, it isnot as boring as oblivion, maybe because of the smaller world, which doesn't make travelling as boring as in obilvion.

That again makes it much more intresting to explore the world and do the quests because I dont think "urgh, now I have to travel ALL THAT EFFIN WAY". Thats what made Obilivion and Morriwind that kind of games where I soon just switch to godmode and slaugther people for fun, since it's way more entertaining than spending half an hour walking through nothing and just waiting for you to get there bacause you cant fast travel there as you havent discovered a certain location yet.

I like the concept of the open world, though It isn't all that open world as they claimed in the previews.

[ SPOILER AHEAD READ AT OWN RISK ]

E.g. I remember the guy saying "The world is totally open, for example, if i would want to i can go to the washington monument and go up the elevator" in one ov the E3 presentations.

Plays out, that a LOT of places in the main city are blocked by all that stupid rubble which prevents you from travelling directly to places like the said Washington Monument or the GNR building, which makes it very frustrating to find the subways and being forced to do that "linear" way.

For example, I had to go though the Friendwhatever subway several times, until I found out which way does acutally lead to the GNR plaza that I almost thought that it was the wrong way and that somewhere around town was some unblocked road to go there, instead, It WAS the right way, just too many options to go once youre inside there, and I hated to go all the way back again and over again. Really frustrating.

Also the radio station is very confusing, when Three Dog calls you a scumbag for blowing up megaton, and in the next announcement asks people to give you a pat on your back because you are such a nice boy/girl who is looking for his/her daddy. They should have made a more "free" way of doing that, like Three Dog refusing to talk to you and instead you get a different option about finding out about your father having been in Riwhatever city.

Kinda makes the "free world" thing not very believable.

[ END GAME SPOILER AHEAD READ AT OWN RISK IF YOU HAVENT FOUND YOUR DAD YET ]

Also, I read about someone finding Vault 112 sooner than the storyline expected by just wanting to explore the wasteland, and therefore all the dialogues was messed up, because people expected you to know about things you didnt had a clue about. They have should integrated an alternative path, in case you find that vault earlier. Or at least lock that goddamn door and require a key which you would have found along with your fathers personal records.

But all in all, it's a very nice game and I'd love to play it again going a different path (like not blowing up megaton for instance... I just wanted to see if the trailer didn't lie about that too)

Oh, and it would be nice if there would be more places you can find a doctor or some NPC that can repair your stuff. Made it kinda hard after I blew up that town.

Well, I havent finished the game yet, so theres yet much more to come and I am eager to continue playing!

you blew that town up? aww you bad boy :P

yeah i purchased the game today and made my first steps, megatron, killed my first 2 mutants, and of course i couldn't resist to get in bed with nova (nothing happens though, she lies down and instantly falls asleep - how lame... i remember the gothic2 tavern cutscene ) and am currently searching the "family".

never played oblivion, as i regarded it as a gothic 3 opponent (and you better don't fraternise with the enemy...) so i can't tell if it's oblivion-ish. feels good, anyway. graphics are cool, though the post processing makes it all a bit slushy.

i loved the 100% round based fighting system of fallout 1 and 2, this semi-tactical v.a.t.s. is not what i expected. but i can live with it.

and i remember the molerats to be much stronger. in general, the game appears to be quite easy at the beginning - except for those damn radscorps.

up to now, i feel that the overwhelmingly good press reviews are justified. let's see how it turns out after some more hours of playing.

One thing that's bothering me a bit is the overall difficulty of the game. It's very inconsistent, annoyingly so.

It does feel like Oblivion with guns, it basically ís Oblivion with guns, but it's definitely a LOT better than Oblivion. I haven't finished the game yet and am not that far, but already it's about a 100 times more interesting than Oblivion was.

Probably it's a matter of taste having a different setting and so on, but I mainly got bored by Oblivion's core gameplay,

Cheers

It is strange that they use shadows very seldom. It looks flat. Objects look bright where actually no light should be. The lighting is really off in this game. Maybe the Gamebryo-engine is a bit dated now.

The lighting of characters and world geometry differs a lot. So it does not fit.

I thought they would look flat for me as I play on the lowest of all low settings (even with a few .ini tweaks), well, seems it isnt because of that.

well, i don't feel that it looks flat. for my taste, it looks too soft. especially the metal huts in megatron, the colors are so washed out.

i think gamebryo and its use in fallout3 is amazing. the game starts in few seconds, has many settings to tweak the performance, is pretty fast, visibility range is greater than anything i've seen in comparable games (take gothic3 for example), saving and loading is almost instantly done, and all that with such a giant world! the number of items in the world, grass, garbage, people etc. visible at the same time on the screen is grand. seriously, i can't complain. i'd rather complain if it _had_ doom3-cutout-shadows...

I don't want to be blunt, but perhaps it's your hardware instead.

I don't have washed out textures and to be honest it makes little sense to say that the engine is out dated. Sure, it's no "Crysis", but the engine visibly has been updated. It's obviously not the same as Oblivion.

I'm not saying the game is visually perfect, but outdated engine? Heck no.

But at the same time I agree about the lack of shadows though. I've just realized what you meant there. It has no stencil shadows or something similar, the world never casts large shadows anywhere. That does indeed make the game look very sterile,

Cheers

it feels washed out because of the post processing filters, bloom or hdr. maybe it's just my impression.
textures like the road bits and rocks look awesomely crisp and detailled in comparison to the huts.

Hi,

I'm thinking of getting this game but after seeing the video previews they've released a few months ago I've been having my reservations.. It does look like a fun game to play, but I wanna ask here any Fallout 1/Fallout2 fans if I'd be buying a true fallout game or just another Larry 8 fiasco.

So.. I know the graphics are good. And I can live with the new 1st person/shoulder cam.. And even the real time fights don't completely ruin it for me.. But I'm more concerned about the gameplay and story which is what made the previous prequels.. So what of the following can you do in this 'sequel'?

• Can you kill everyone inside the world? And by everyone, i mean just that.. No key-Npcs bullsh*t like in oblivion..
• Do your Player attributes directly influence your dialogue options? In fallout1/2 if you had Intelligence 1 then all dialogues would be like: "If Megaton goes boom you give Chosen One Money?"
• Can you kick a rat in the groin?
• Can you get ass-raped by a big, green supermutant?
• Are your dialogue options as bad as in Oblivion like that joke picture i found on the net?
• 

I realise that without the original devs it's like asking for a Beatles reunion without George, John, Paul and Ringo. But did Bethesda at least 'tried' to capture the old titles' magic or are the fans right when they call it Oblivion with Guns?

Maybe the engine is top notch and my guess was simply wrong. But I still wonder why they did not achieve to add a shadow mapping shader to the geometry. It looks strange because many (especially animated) objects are well shaded.

And it makes not much sense to blame my hardware for this behavior. You can see it easily at videos and in images all over the internet.

Yes, just with a very very few exceptions like your own father.




Yes, they do indeed. I just discovered that yesterday infact when I got some more skills in Intelligence. If you have more skills in charm or other ones, you get other options aswell.



If you use unarmed combat, you ocassionally will kick. So yes



Yep



No, they are actually very authentic and very real (except for some "tunnel snake" dialogs in the beginning".

Have no fear, Fallout 3 is a worthy sequel, even if i would have liked a more fallout 1/2 oriented V.A.T.S. better.

Oh! And the storyline is huge and with lots of unexpected turns.

The lack of shadows? Yes, most videos definitely do show this, but I don't see this as an outdated game. It's a choice they made, perhaps because a full stencil shadow system would be too demanding of low-end PCs?

Anyways, no offense to you, but I've actually got the game and it definitely doesn't feel outdated. (It's my taste I guess.) Take for example a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R and it feels much more outdated (even though it doesn't matter for the game experience itself I must say).

I do blame the hardware for washed out textures and things like that, if you compare the Xbox360 version and PC version with the PS3 version you'll see hardware matters,

Cheers

yes, stalker looks much more aged.

and yes, actually objects throw dynamic shadows even on my low shadow settings (4),

Broozar, look here (there are many screen shots of F3):
http://www.fallout-hq.de/screenshot_bilder_pic_galerie.php

some characters cast shadows but most of them do not.

Look at this room. It looks fake, the chair and the table don't cast shadows, no ambient occlusion. It looks like they hover over the ground, faked, like a photo montage:



But the geometry has nice dynamic lighting applied. So the meshes do not look that bad because of the per-pixel lighting shaders. This is a bit bothering. At the one hand it uses modern lighting and features per mesh. But the world has weak or no lighting. It is not consistent.

Michael, your post really gave me hope because after some stuff I've read over the internet the past couple of years had me writing this game off before it actually got into development... So I tried to download the demo, only to find out there will be NO demo released and I thought.. that's a bit fishy... So I googled some more and that's what I found out..




So, no then.

I also found out you can't kill kids. In fallout 1/2 you could disembowel small innocent girls with a plasma minigun until there was nothing left, arms and legs flying everywhere..
You could also kill every main NPC like your Overseer, resulting in an alternate game ending (obviously..)




My research ended in disappointment here as well. Intelligence 1 doesn't make you talk like a retard in the entire game and completely change the course of the game since 90% of the quests you'd be locked out from since no-one could understand you.. (the bug men come for the moo moo's!) It just changes a couple of options here and there. lame




But can you specifically call an attack on the "groin"? Fallout 1 taught us that big green scary mutants fall down as easily as humans with a carefully placed kick on their charlies. :P




Seriously? :P Well that's one point for fallout 3 :P In which scene exactly do you get the honors..?




That's two points for Fallout 3... They definatelly seem to be better than oblivion.. It seems as they tried too hard on the profanity though. Just because every single NPC sounds like a crackhead from the Bronx doesn't make it Fallout worthy.


Anyhow, I know I'm nitpicking but I'm a huge Fallout fan and after I looked around today, I know this will be as bad as when Larry 8 got released without Al Lowe in it (Larry's creator). People would see my nickname and say "Oh yeah, larry I loved that game with it's funny mini-games and stripping chicks..." The bastards ruined me nickname


Anyway, I won't be buying this. I'll save my money for Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 which are being developed by their original devs..

The problem with "thenadays" and "nowadays" is, that if they would have made children killing possible, they would have never been allowed to release the game. And even if, they would have been sued in a matter of hours by hundreds of mothers who come crying that their little sonny is killing small girls in "that video game".

However, you can kill the overseer. No problem, I did that my first time around and suffered some consequences. Even a tad later in the game when I tried to return to Vault 101.




Oh well, a point for you, maybe they dont change the game as much as in the previous games, but they still do. But see it that way. There are THOUSANDS of dialog options in the game. Much much more than in Fallout 1/2, and every single one of them voiced. Just the sheer amount you would have to change just for every possible ability combination would be nuts. Not considering that you would need 2 DVDs to install the game. Even now, all the voice acting is around 2 GB, just the voices!



Well, not exactly. I took the rape and kicking thing in a not so literal sense.

The problem once again is in the legality nowadays. You just CANT release such a game.
I mean, look at GTA3, they had so many problems just because someone enabled a hidden mode that enabled you to have SEX with prostitutes! Can you imagine what scandals and legal problems Bethesda would get if you get raped by the mutants, kill children or specifically target the nuts of someone?

I am sure they would have if they could have, but I am sure, someone will come up with a Mod some day to enable all this. It's just, bethesda cant. And you also you wouldnt want the company who made the game you are enjoying at a given time to get in troubles.


----------

Anyway... Im disappointed after I finally finished the game. IT ISNT OPEN ENDED! And I havent finished all the side quests because I thought I can finish them later. Thats soooooo disappointing!

never forget, it's critique on a very high level. i'd be happy if i could create such rooms. i wouldn't call it "fake" or "weak". i think the developers had to face a serious problem: either they used static shadows which wouldn't go well with the dynamic lighting, the day/night cycle and the physics, or they tried dynamic shadows on all objects which would have made the game playable on year 2012 machines. so they gave us a slider that allowed us to choose the shadow quality, i'd be interested in test results, my machine is just too weak to test it all on the highest settings.

Yep, thats what I heard from other players. They also said that they didnt like how quick the main quest could be solved.

Im not sure if Ill be getting this game.

Well, you CAN finish the main quest fast, if you skip several parts. If you play it with all the side quests and even take on to explore some time and not just travel to key locations, you get well over 100 hours of gameplay.

Infact, you can pretty much finish it in a speedrun way. But thats not the way you are supposed to do it.

I did lots of sidequests and then took on a step from the main storyline every now and then. It's just that I didnt finish them all because I thought I can finish them later. Thats what is disappointing me. And I dont even have any savegame before I started that last part!

I still haven't finished the game, but I don't see how it matters whether the game is open ended or not. If you want to learn about all the different endings, you'll have to replay the game anyways.

I'm very much looking forward to playing through the whole game a couple of times.



So true. It's exactly why it doesn't make sense to call the engine outdated just because you don't like the choice they made.

Cheers

Ok, then the x-ray engine (powering Stalker) provides better lighting, full lights and shadows applied to every mesh, like you can see here:







What a huge difference this makes. But maybe the conversion from the console version of Fallout to PC is the reason for this.
A projection shadow shader would do the job for all the geometry, no matter how many polygons. It is calculated per pixel and needs a depth map for the right projection. There is no pc from the year 2012 needed for that.

Not really as the PC version and Xbox360 version just happen to have less graphical issues.

You've made a good point with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky game engine, but I guess the Fallout team had to meet their deadlines or something and decided full realtime stencil shadows was not an option. I agree with you though.

Cheers

@Michael_Schwarz, I think the main problem with games nowadays is that every single one of them is a multi-million dollar investment so it's hard to not take themselves seriously and do silly stuff like for example a special encounter in fallout2 where you run across Sir Robin from monty Python's Holy Grail while he was fleeing from the three headed monster. Or when Mike Tyson bites your ear off in a boxing game and as a result you get -1 in Charisma (plus, you get to carry your ear around in your inventory). And all this, special groin attacks and getting raped by a super mutant are signs of a game that isn't afraid to not take itself too seriously and as a result you get a really hilarious game.

But nevertheless, I think Black Isle today would somehow still be able to come through to the fans and build a better game, even if that meant having to face lawsuits from soccer moms

Off topic I guess, but:



True, but I do fear those 'soccer moms' and 'concerned parent groups' ultimately make it incredibly difficult even if developers are willing to go through the hassle of lawsuits and what more.. when WallMart or other important stores decide, based upon the always non-professional and incredibly biased opinions of these parent groups, to not to carry certain games because of their apparently 'offensive' content.

It's stupid, as there are 'normal' movies out there with more porn content than GTA that can be seen by 13 year olds... but currently there's little "we" can do about it. Same goes for sex, but it's even more true for drugs in movies vs. drugs in games.

I don't think investors would like to see their money go up in smoke just because a developer is kinda stubborn on the choice of content either,

Cheers

I have played Fallout for 3 hours now (not a lot, but to get an impression)

It is basically 80% Oblivion and 20% Fallout.

No question, there are a lot of Fallout elements used
in this game, but they seem to be somehow "stuck into"
the Oblivion Idea.

The VATS system is nice.
But a real roundbased combat would be my favorite still.
(Knowing that the younger gamers would not like such complicated things)

These things I miss from fallout:

-Pictures of the items you have
-descriptions of the inventory items
(the items feel like made by a "mass production" template system, there is nothing funny about them anymore)

-The nice background tone (the fallout 2 music is way better)

-text descriptions of ambient items you select (they are great in fallout 1+2)

-the SPECIAL + Perks interface.
If they would have been "brave" they would have kept this original Menu-page 1:1
But the Menu with the new Pipboy is annoying, unhandy to controll and does not look nice. Its clearly a decision to make it work better on the game-console versions.

-The "vault feeling".
I think the beginning of fallout 3 is crap, and very staged.
The vault feels like a small, scripted Oblivion dungeon,
not lieke a huge underground society.
There is no "attachment" with the vault, as in Fallout 1,
where the vault dweller had to save the vault.
In fallout 3, the vault is composed of boring or annoying people, that
want to bore or kill the player. I would not mind to press a button to blow up
this thing, and leave it behind, there is nothing of any interest in this vault.
Fallout 1 and 2 made these areas feel much more like an "island of savety"

-random encounters with dialogs.
I was running around a bit, just meeting raiders and dogs that attack righ away,
not this cool thing when enountering a caravan and trading with them.

anyway, I dont think its a bad game.
But it is not a sequel of Fallout 1 + 2
(its much better than Fallout tactics and this BOS though!)
Its a good Oblivion based roleplaying game in an endtime setting.
(with some Fallout assets)

Yes, i have thought the same after the first hours. But play i a bit more, dont concentrate too much on the main quest and do the side quests, you will find many surprises that will put a big fat smile on your face

They do have thought of many many detail, you just have to find it in that huge world.

when i went to the games store some days ago, i saw two piles of fresh pc games, one was far cry 2, the other fallout 3. after a short thinking (and having a look at the system reqs :P ) i went with fallout 3 (the fact that i waited for this game almost 7 years and far cry wasn't exactly a game that i'd take with me on a lonely island played a minor role in this war inside my head). now you make it sound like it was a mistake.

does anyone have those 2 games and can compare them?

You bought a german version , heheh poor you


I got me an uncut english one in Check yesterday

-> for the game: its my first view, I will see if I get a better
feeling when playing tonight.
The graphics are quite slow though in fallout3
Bethesda does not have a good 3d Engine.

Both games are very much worth their money, both games really give you good value for money.

There are only about two negative things I can say about both games;

FarCry 2 has enemies respawning at places you've been before. So... this means if you visit one place twice, you'll have to defeat the same guys twice. Quite annoying, but it makes sense as it would become boring otherwise.

Fallout3 isn't open ended even though it sort of gives you the impression it is. It lacks a bit of the good old Fallout humor and isn't that over-the-top at times where it should have been. It's kind of a shame, but it's nitpicking. Times have changed and I guess a lot of the old 'joke' stuff would only mean adding difficulties to getting the game published.

Both games have their quite memorable moments and are really fun to play. I bought Fallout3 first because I expected it to have more depth, but Farcry 2 followed (very) soon.

In general it's quite noticeable that developers seem to 'care' more and more about casual players though, so don't expect hugely challenging games here, especially early on,

Cheers

I don't think anyone is saying Fallout 3 is a bad game here. Even the reviews about it are raving to say the least. I think it's one of these games where if you haven't played the prequels then you'll like it. I mean, to all the people praising Fallout 3 in this thread, how many of you have honestly finished both Fallout 1 and 2? Because I find it hard to believe that after you've experienced the true freedom and uninhibited humor of the first two titles you can still appreciate this one. It's like that tv show "Joey". As stand alone, it's an okey series, but whenever I catch it on tv it just makes me wanna see Friends again.

On the bright side, when crappy sequels like this come up leave it to modders to make things right again.. I'm sure it won't be long until an awesome Fallout1-2 mod comes up.. This fact alone is a reason for me to get this game..

well, _i_ did finish fallout 1 and 2, but it was in 2001 and 2002 or so, it's always been a "classic" for me since i didn't play it for the graphics or anything like that but for the atmosphere and the turn based fights.

i avoided fallout tactics, because its reviews were so discouraging, and BOS, because it didn't come for PC. so this game is my long-awaited fallout experience for years and years.
maybe the fact that i didn't play oblivion makes me like this game so much more than you do, i simply can't see oblivion's gameplay and quirks in it at all.

Fallout 3 is a good game,
but just not what I see as prequel to the two original titels.
The athmosphere is somehow similar but not really the same.

Things like: "you are not allowed to sleep in this bed, it belongs to someone else" (as if the Playercharacter would give a shit in the original Fallout),
or invicible children, or loosing Karma already by stealing a spoon, or having already a fat gun quite quick.
are just some examples of it.

Also everyone knows that you are a vault dweller, and how it is
to be in a vault. Making this vault thing not mysterious.

This is ok in a new game, but it really bugs me
when looking at the former freedom of the fallout world.

They both do a lot of things right and fail somewhat at bits that didn't make it, obviously for various reasons.

since i have never bothered so much as touching anything "Oblivion", Fallout 3 was my first Gamebryo experience. I finished Fallout 1 & 2 in their uncensored 2.5D beauty and was a bit put off at the very beginning of Fallout 3 (character creation). In retrospective, it wasn't that bad.

However, i don't see myself start that 80+ hours experience all over again just because i happened to get all surprised by triggering the end of the game without me really noticing it - and all sensible prior save point having been overwritten (by me)- my fault, obviously.

The SPECIAL, Perks and VATS systems have been successfully ported from the predecessors. SPECIAL and Perks might put off real-time-action-hungry folks all by themselves, but VATS totally blew off some pre-order gamesters in my vicinity - in VATS, your success to hit (or MISS) is noticeably defined by your character's skills. You'll also notice this during real-time action, but in VATS utterly crap stats will result in utterly crap shooting, even at very close range - and your characters untimely death, inevitably. Overcoming crap stats means leveling up and results in a sense of real achievement, RPG style. This mechanism isn't really "there" in Far Cry 2. The only mentionable 'upgrades' available in Far Cry 2 are "Accuracy" and "Realiability" upgrades for your (favourite) weapons, as well as extending the limitations of how much ammo you can carry around.

Both games have "ally" or "buddy" systems, which mean that virtual friendships with ingame NPC characters translates as a big plus to your gaming experience. In Far Cry 2, that means being given a second chance to get things right when you get downed by the enemy, in Fallout 3, you are no longer running around alone but with a friendly soul with their own firepower, which can facilitate a lot of the close quarters combat going on. There's also a dog you can adopt and bring along in Fallout 3, but if he dies, he's pretty much dead and he stays dead. It's a pleasure to see that NPC characters are far less suicidal than they used to be in the TWO prior Fallout incarnations (the other two that shall not be mentioned have got nothing to do with anything, really). Still, your climbing over rocks can result in your NPC running a million miles around the map to meet up with you again.

However, Your NPC friends can loot enemy corpses, and you can hand them selected weapons to improve their impression on the enemy, if you so wish. You can even discuss tactics a bit, make them wait or dismiss them rudely. In Far Cry 2, your ways are far more solitary. Your buddies don't make use of vehicle-mounted automatic weapons. You can't hand them any weapon to improve their firepower. Sometimes they turn autistic, sometimes they get hurt badly. Sometimes you can fix them with a syringe, sometimes they want you to shoot them in the head to end the suffering. If you get the latter, sysringes will kill them as well and the only way to revive them is to load from a prior save - or lose all the content from that buddy character.

Fallout 3 has you fight against greed with a limit of how much you can carry - loot and weapons and gear, ammo is free - so you could carry but one set of armor (or clothing, if you so fancy), a selection of firearms and 3000 rounds of ammo. you could also carry around 100 missiles, for sale where the price is right or for putting to good use whenever you bump into an enemy that lugs around a heavy missile launcher. kill enemy, grab launcher, blow everything up, drop launcher, move on with life. Fallout 3 offers much more personalized gaming experiences than Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 has you limited by only being able to carry around one of each type of weapon: Primary, Secondary and "Special". In Fallout 3, you can carry around as much weapons as you like, be it to make better use of the ammo you find, repair your favourite weapon in the field using same or similar weapons, or hold on to them for selling them to a trader later.

although i consider Far Cry 2 to be more repetitive mission-wise, i haven't yet seen the same main story mission the same way twice.

Take, for example, one mission in Far Cry 2: While i took a comfy luxurious Jeep CLOSE to a scenic view spot near the destination, sneaked past guards to assassinate the target, others went in by boat and fought their way up to the target using M249 heavy firepower - others set fire to the compound, which eventually killed everyone inside and around it. The immersive quality of you being able to choose from a range of very different weapons defines the way you experience Far Cry 2 - silent weapons might give you more time undiscovered, heavy firepower might help you blow things up so the enemy really has no time between hearing the first bang and not dying violently, blowing things up will result in utter chaos and confusion - have it your way, really. Far Cry 2 does this bit very, very good. If you're indecisive, stock up on diamonds, go to the arms dealer and try out the different weapons available until you find something that suits your fancy and that you want to stick to for a while. That will be your own flavour of Far Cry 2.

Far Cry 2 does a great job of bringing you a glimpse of what life (and, inevitably, death) in certain spots of modern day Africa can be like. "Immersion" has been mentioned by The factions and the goals they aim for are sometimes uncomfortably close to reality, really. The ever-replenishing guard posts have already been mentioned - this could be improved, f. e. by patrols finding the deserted posts and then bringing in reinforcements (in the morning). Something like this has already been implemented in a form if you decide to snipe and, preferably, wound a single enemy or setting fire to attract, distract, confuse or start hell on earth - the power's all there for you with decent AI that does manage to surprise at times and fascinating physics.

However, the curse of repetition struck me as being far more prominent in Far Cry 2 than in Fallout 3. The tasks you are asked/required to do are more varied in Fallout 3, BUT in Far Cry 2 you get to use vehicles, which can make exploring the beautiful landscapes and reaching a specific spot faster and more efficient, i. e. run over hostiles using your vehicle, using mounted automatic guns to wreak havoc (and conserve your own ammunition).

After a while of hiking through the post-nuclear world of Fallout, you'll be grateful for the "Fast Travel" option, which can also be found in Far Cry 2 in the shape of "Bus Stations". While "Fast Travel" enables you to quickly move to any location you have already discovered/visited, Far Cry 2's bus stations allow you to move from one bus station to another bus station, of which there are, of course, but a very limited number.

Then again, Fallout 3's open world experience gets a bit less open with lots of debris blocking lots of sensible path decisions, forcing the player to play dungeon master in decaying (but most of the time somewhat inhabited) subway stations, which players have found to be a bit too repetitive. Far Cry 2 doesn't do nearly as much blocking, it only sometimes puts diamonds in places that you will have to figure out how to reach. Doesn't take Einstein's brains to figure those out, still much better than Sudoku.

I've been told that some Oblivion people don't like the Fallout style and that certain Fallout fanboys (and girls) don't like the Oblivion engine. Felt a bit PC vs Mac to me, so i can only say that i hail from the Fallout camp myself. To sum it up - i've been waiting for a 3D Fallout to happen ever since i played the first one. I was worried about Interplay not being no more, i was worried about Bethesda picking up the pieces - but, all in all, i conclude that Fallout 3 definitely is worth its money. I don't like the multiple choice conversation bits, but i didn't like them in the original Fallout either - i can live with that. I haven't really waited for Far Cry 2 to happen, but the first sunrise, the first rain that put out my well placed fires, the first busted car i repaired - they all convinced me that, indeed, Far Cry 2 is worth its money, too. Two really good titles that are definitely worth playing. Go seek out more reviews all over the web to help you in your decision, i say BOTH are good. Fallout 3 will have you off the streets for a significantly longer time than Far Cry 2. Both require current hardware, mind you.

wtf, no XP beyond level 20? or is it just a bug?

oh, and XX09, thanks for that very long, very detailled review of yours. must have taken you ages to hack that i've just completed fallout3, so lat's see, maybe i'll get farcry2, too. i have never been a fan of the 1st one, though. i'm not yet sure about it.

Far Cry 2 is nothing like Far Cry 1. I mean, it still has a lot in common, but sometimes you won't notice it's Africa and not a tropical island in terms of how the game environment feels.

I can recommend Far Cry 2, but there's a bunch of things that might put you off.

I've only played the PS3 version and not that long. It's a good game, but it feels a bit more like playing Crysis without the sci-fi gizmos than playing Far Cry 1. There are some very awesome things, like realistic fire, pretty cool overall gameplay. But the malaria stuff is sometimes very confusing. Going in the wrong direction will kill you almost instantly in some places. Quite a bad design choice if you ask me, as it ruins the feeling of big wide space and freedom of choice as far as going where you want to go.

In some extent it takes getting used to, in others you'll feel very at home if you've played Crysis or Far Cry. I'd say it's a good shooter, but for my taste it has a bit too much console-stuff inside (I've played as said the PS3-version though),

Cheers

I finally gave in and gave Fallout 3 a try and I have to say I'm thoroughly impressed. Some parts still leave something to be desired when you've played 1 and 2 like the much higher dialogue quality from the originals and the painful black comedy elements but for the most part this game delivers. Many side quests to choose from like in the first two and a few nice new elements as well like the advanced npc AI and that immerse experience that only a 1st person 3d game can produce. All in all, I don't hate Bethesda as much now as I did in the pre-developing stages..

/me approves

Yeah, another thing I noticed is that the Fallout 3 world can feel rather empty. It's getting challenging along the way it seems, I'm still quite satisfied with the game,

Cheers

Im just happy because my new videocard can run farcry2 at ultra high, gotta save some money soon for f3

and, finally, yahtzee's comment on fallout3!
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/420-Fallout-3

I'd say he's quite spot on with his critique.

Here an article about US expectations about the future
development, wich is actually descibing petty much the
ficticious history in Fallout, that let to the atomic war between China and the US

Reasons: expected wars for Oil and other Ressources
between China (and other rising countries) and the US

http://www.n-tv.de/1056891.html

I don't see it happen anytime soon. Why didn't the US just nuke Iraq or Afghanistan? For quite obvious reasons. Let alone the fact that they wouldn't get away with it.

If there ever is going to be another all-out world war, there's no point in bombing the enemy back to the stone-age. It's stupid as it would ruin all the resources and what not the other country may have to offer.

Cheers

Cause Afganistan is no military power.

Its different when China, India or Russia would go
into an open conflic with the US.

the good thing about Nukes is actually that they!
saved the peace in the second part of the 20th Centure.
Because of the obvius danger to make the enemy have to use them.
Nevertheless, back then there was struggle between political systems, and not a struggle for ressources,
wich will develop in the next decades.

I know Afghanistan isn't, but didn't Iraq supposedly have weapons of mass destruction and what not? We now know there never were any, not even biological weapons (since at least 1998)...

Using tactical nukes on bunkers and important structures never happened because of contamination problems. It might have saved some coalition forces lives as far as casualties of war goes, or maybe not.

Actually nukes never really saved peace (you know, there were still wars in the 20th century), in fact those same nukes cost lives right up to this day and beyond and we don't even really use them anymore because of the risk of a MAD-situation (mutually assured destruction) and huge contamination problems.

Against true terrorism, just 'having the bomb' won't work anyways...



Why would it be any different? It's not different.

Cheers

Now: wich countries did have open war in the 20th century, wich both owned nukes?
None.

Im not talking about third-country placeholder-wars between the US and Russia (such as Vietnam), - but open war between nuklear powers.

The whole reason for a country to optain nukes is not to use them, but
to get shielded from attacks. (such as Iran and North Korea)
or even better: Pakistan and India.

Once they own nukes, they have a certain savety from open war with
big military powers.

The attack on Irak for example is a good indication, that the US did not believe they really own workable nukes...

that's quite an interesting theory, never thought it this way...

I no I'm late to this convers but I was addicted to this game for the passed 3 weeks now and felt like putting in my two cents. I ve only played the secend fallout prier to this along with Oblivion and was pleased with the blend of both worlds. I felt It was slightly lacking in storyline content considering It took me close to a year of solid play to fully unravle every mystery of Fallout 2 were as 3 too me till now(3 weeks),yet I did find Fallout 3's main sorry line to be more griping than its predisesor with the implementing of SPOILER your father and his death and all. SPOILER OVER

Favoret thing:
From some one that loves millitary games and RPGs the one thing that stands on out the best in this game is when your walking along the top of a hill or high point and you see in the distance a small settlment. Looking at the terrain and objects surounding it(cars,trucks,bolders,ect.) along with the weapons at your disposal you can plan your aprotch not knowing wether or not its hostel which I havent had the pleasure of doing in any other game. Wether I plan to stand on a far hill side in the hidden position and pick them off one by one with the sniper rifle or get up on the large rock face closest to them and tose a couple hundred frags,nukas, and plazmids desimating all in there so called save haven. To to say the hell with trickery and blow open there gates with a Miny Nuke from a Fat Man and then charge in with my Assult rifle(or plazma cant alway make up my mind on those 2) and gun down the suvivors HAHAHAHaHahaha!sigh.
Just something fun to do.

And now some hints for beginners:
when making your skills make sure you Enginering is 35 so you can do the defusing the bomb quest so you get a how in megaton to store your spare parts for making homemade weapons which are usually better than the conventional with the exepthing of the dart gun.

Also focus on getting you small guns up first as they are the most used weapons in the first half of the game due to there abundancy which alows for free reparing by yourself.

as for perks you can only have 20ty so think hard on each one. I know its temping to get one like here and now that instanly lvls you but having perks that increase your combat efishancy or adds to your skills or attributes are far mor worth it in the end cause ones your lvl 20 the only way to rase those skills is from clecting bobble heads and reading books o and a bobble head hint the streagth Bobble head is in the Republic of Dave on the shelf in the Museum of Dave your on your own for the others.

O and So you dont make the same mistake I did with the Strickly Business quest Which was this guy told me to go out and inslave ppl which was wrong cause my first char was a good boy so I thought I would be better to shoot him in the head and lay waste to Paridise Falls and free the slaves. But the hint is if your worried about attracting bad karma from this quest just do the quest then do what I did because for every slaver killed and slave freed you gain good karma and you dont evan loose Karma for stealing from the slavers shops.

And another quest I screwed myself on Is SAVE 30 NUKA COLA QUANTUMS for the nuka cola challenge quest. I turned all myin into nuka gernades to desamate...well every thing. so remember to save 30.

The only things I found wrong with this game were not in the actual game play itstelf but in the unexpected freezes and random character glitches were some characters sudenly suspend in mid air. Although this isnt to often aslong as you stay on the path of the main Quests,but if your like me and enjoy searching the farthest depths of a game world you'll end up seeing alot of this. And Im not sure if it would be a factor but my ver is an Xbox 360 Verson of the game.

Final last minite thoughts:
Fighting raders=FUN
Fighting Supermutants=challinging FUN
Fighting weak animal(Mole rat,dog,ect.)=quick target practice
Fighting Strong animal(DeathClaw, Rad Scorp)= Frustration from wasting ammo and time after running bacwards shooting wildly and still managing to get pumiled in the process.

So theres my 2 cents on Fallout 3.

Dude, what the hell? Some of us are still playing this game..

The game-story unfortunately ends too quickly,
although there are such a huge amount of side quests left.

They should at least have implemented a "continue playing" options.

Basically I play the game, avoiding the last steps of the main quest, just to see the sidemissions.
This is not the best gamedesign.

They should have extended teh main story by including more of the many
sidequests as mandatory to continue.

i suppose they wanted to simply keep the "required" time low, to
finish the main plot.

Another thing:
the game is not well balanced when playing a long time.
After a while you get to be a super badass, killing everyone
without any difficulty.
Only some Deathclaws might pose a little thread then.

They should have included a part of the world as "superhard" area, where even hightrained characters have problems.

Gothic 1+2 solved this much better by using "Chapters"
where all creatures respawned / world got refilled, and got to be tougher new creatures.
(but not like in Oblivion, where they simply got harder to beat)

Sorry my bad Larry. Its just after reading the treads and looking at the dates of them that got ahead of myself and assumed that the majoridy already beat the main storyline due to its short langth. again my appolgy to you and anyone else that wasn't there yet and if your reading this before my first post i'll now warn you(even though late) theres a storyline spoiler in it.

hehe, just got it... I killed butch and it made me happy.