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.