Fallout 3 discussion

[Lemur]

Is it wrong to giggle like a madwoman when I shoot a frag grenade out of a charging super mutant's hand, resulting in its one-hit demise?

No, Kek; in fact that is the essence of everything right in the world.

I went with my usual Fallout diplosnipe, with an emphasis on energy weapons. I'm not having a hard time finding ammo -- anybody else gone with either energy weapons or big guns? How's your mileage?

[rajpoot]

Oh ya! Oh ya! Just got off the phone with my cousine in Cardiff, he's got a copy and he's sending it to me by mail

[Kekvit Irae]

I haven't played with Energy Weapons yet, but I keep collecting a load of energy cells from fallen robots and other places, and a laser pistol is available early on. Plus, if you complete a certain android quest, one of the possible rewards is a REALLY nice plasma rifle.

[Crandaeolon]

Went with big guns, had slight problems at the beginning but found a flamer quite early, and then there's Rock-It Launcher (which has practically infinite ammo) available from Megaton. Rivet City has a steady supply of most kinds of ammo, getting there is not that hard if you aren't afraid of a few rads - just swim in the river to avoid the super muties.

[Veho Nex]

Well there are two things you should know. No matter which you chose, to blow up to un arm, the bomb in megaton all the people there will be wandering around or in the underground.

[Veho Nex]

I like the music. A bongo bongo bongo! No no I dont wanna leave the congo

[Kekvit Irae]

The first really major glitch I found (other than the game freezing up on me):

In Big Town...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

When I finished the Big Trouble in Big Town, I got the option to help people defend against the super mutants. Two of which were [SCIENCE] Fixing the robots in the junkyard and [SMALL GUNS] Help train the townsfolk in firearms. Unfortunately, every time I try to fix the robots, they go missing. There are no robots to fix! Not really a gamebreaking bug for me, since I could reload and choose the Small Guns option, but if you don't have an autosave or save before you made your choice, you are hosed as the townsfolk will stand around in the junkyard complaining about what I need to do.

It annoys me so badly to see a good quest gone buggy.

[LeftEyeNine]

It was a nice decision to edit the title. Thanks.

[frogbeastegg]

I completed Dead Space this morning. Fallout 3 will be go in a bit.

I'm aiming for a high intelligence, luck and agility character with small guns, barter and repair tagged. The tonne of skill points I'll get from high intelligence will be used to bump those skills plus some conversational skills, with science and lockpicking a bit further behind. Brains over brawn ... but with a pistol in case people get rough.

[Kekvit Irae]

I take back what I said about Oblivion-styled scaling. The random encounters you face in the Wasteland ARE scaled to your level. I'm currently level 14 and I'm seeing lots of super mutants and giant radscorpions now when I used to only see molerats and crap when I was a much lower level. THANKFULLY the individual enemies themselves do not scale. Running into DC at level 3 will get you murdered faster than you can say "War never changes," while plowing through slavers in Paradise City at level 14 is a cakewalk.

I'm aiming for a high intelligence, luck and agility character with small guns, barter and repair tagged. The tonne of skill points I'll get from high intelligence will be used to bump those skills plus some conversational skills, with science and lockpicking a bit further behind. Brains over brawn ... but with a pistol in case people get rough.

Meh, Barter early on isn't all that useful. You may want to tag Speech instead. The experience you get from a successful speech check is extremely useful for low levels. I'd hold off on Barter until you get to around level 5 or so when your inventory is bursting with items to sell.
If Speech isn't your thing (after all, you can always pick up Lady Killer/Black Widow at level 2), you can replace it with Science or Medicine. Sneak is useful if you plan on playing a stealthy character since the first hit you do with any weapon (read: classic sniper archtype) while [HIDDEN] will be an automatic critical with bonus damage. Often enough to kill someone. You can also automatically shut down robots with a certain perk later on.

[Sarmatian]

Even though I don't like where Bethesda has taken Fallout universe, I must admit FO3 is a very decent game. Of course, it's hard not to compare it to its predecessors and in that regard it is the worst in the series by far. As a standalone game, as a post-apocalyptic FPS/RPG it's okay I think. There are occasional moments where the game will live up to its predecessors and bring a smile to a face of an old FO1/2 fan, but those moment are rare...

I've tried playing with a high INT/CHA character with speech, science and repair skills tagged and it was pretty much impossible. The opportunities to use those skills were rare and pretty much any encounter in the wastes forced me to reload. It's very hard to escape, especially if you've encountered multiple opponents with guns. If you do manage, you'll probably lose most of your HP in the process. Tagged skills aren't that important since they improve at the same rate as all other skills, basically you just get a one time bonus of 15 points when you tag a skill.

CHA/STR/END/LCK are rarely useful. There are not many opportunities to use CHA. With each point in strength you gain +5 to how much you can carry (with 5 STR ist's 200, with 6 it's 205 - not that much of a difference) and a bonus to melee weapons damage (which you will rarely, if ever use, except on critters not worthy of wasting ammo). END may be more useful, giving you more HP but it's not crucial. LCK governs only your chances of a critical hit, but there's a perk later on which gives better results.
Go for perception, agility and intelligence, that's my advice.

And, the stupidest thing from Oblivion is back - you have to constantly repair your weapons. I mean, there may have been some logic behind it in Oblivion, where there were no firearms or energy weapons, but it still was silly to have my sword deteriorate after 5-10 hits. Of course, it's even sillier to have your gun deteriorate after 50 shots have been fired. It has deteriorated and it now fires worse bullets?

Better then Oblivion, but in most ways, the only connection with old Fallout games is the name.

[naut]

Basically, people just shouldn't think of it as a Fallout 3, but Oblivion in post-apocalyptic setting. That way it can still be an enjoyable game... Yes, it will be hard for die hard Fallout fans to do that, but hey...

Guess I can add it to my, "maybe when it's in a bargain bin for 10-20 bucks" pile then.

[Whacker]

I'm sure you all have been waiting with bated breath for my post here. /dripping with sarcasm

So crusty cranky ol' Uncle Whacker decided to give it a go, one of my unfortunate friends decided to buy the game, Collector's Ed. Went over to his joint on Sunday and played it for about 2-3 hours. It is exactly what I thought it would be.

What it isn't: Fallout. An RPG (by any stretch of the imagination).

What it is: A "semi-deep" post-apocalyptic FPS with some hopeful potential, once the modders fix it. In other words, Oblivion with Guns.

Let's start with the bad. Bethesda has essentially done exactly what they were expected to do with the Fallout IP. They utterly gutted SPECIAL and the skills system. The vast majority of the "perks" I see on the list are basically related to pumping skills. Characters can become "god" and do any task provided they pump the right skill, just like what Beth did with the Elder Scrolls games. There is NOTHING turn-based about the combat whatsoever, VATS is basically a cheat bullet time mechanism with an annoying "death cam" mode that can't be turned off. Furthermore, the way they did the actual gun mechanics were just horrible. Apparently the "cone of fire" range that bullets can travel off of the crosshair reduces as you put points into the relevant skill, but it does not affect damage. They should have done the exact opposite and reversed those two. If I'm going to play an FPS, I expect my shots to go on target minus recoil and modifiers, like movement (Crysis did this great). Repair... ugh, I can't stand how they implemented the whole repair skill, won't get too deep into it. The interfaces are utterly rotten, but hopefully something like btmod will be released that will fix much of this. Radiant AI makes a great return as well, still waiting for the "I saw a radscorpion the other day!" conversation. Level scaling is also in, but it doesn't seem to be as bad as it was in Oblivion. Another thing that I felt is far too contrived was the setting and landscape. Things seemed far too washed out and drab, FO1 and 2 were actually rather vibrant games and had varied landscapes and scenery. Some areas were rather washed out and drab, like the "dead" cities and the raw desert. Other areas were rather colorful, like the settled places, brotherhood compound(s), LA, Reno, etc etc etc. I also think they did a poor job with strewing random debris and junk all over the place, just to force the landscape to be broken up. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not advocating absolute "realism" when it comes to landscape from an atomic attack aftermath, but the whole thing doesn't sit well with me how they did it. Normally this kind of stuff doesn't bother me unless it's significantly off kilter in my eyes.

Now let's finish off with the good stuff. Humor. Oh man did they get some of the good parts right. The signs out in front of Vault 101 after you exit were great, "Let us in motherers!!" The Deputy Weld bot got a few chuckles out of me, as did some of the other similar model robots in the subways. "This. Is. Now. A. Live. Fire. Zone. Please. Take. Cover. Thank. You. For. Riding. With. Metro. Railways." Gotta also admit to taking some pleasure in the chunky gibs that sometimes result when you kill people or critters. Lastly, I think this game is salvagable, just like Oblivion. Vanilla Oblivion is total garbage, the wow factor lasts for about 5 hours, give or take, and then one realizes how shallow the game really is. Mods completely and totally saved that game and gave it SOME depth and variety that was much lacking. I think the exact same can be said for FO3, mods can save it.

Final verdict. It's not Fallout, and it's not an RPG at all. What it IS, is an FPS that might actually be rather fun if one can get past the "what it's not" parts and the community fixes it. I'll revisit it probably after Xmas when I'm going to guess that the modding tools will have been out for awhile and folks have had some time to work on it, and we'll see what happens from there.

[TinCow]

Got it last Friday and my wife and I were playing a good deal over the weekend. It was interesting for us to play as we had both done an Alpha test of the game and there were obvious differences between the release version and the Alpha. For the purposes of this review, note that I am playing on Hard difficulty (will probably play on Very Hard for all other replays).

First off, like others have said, it is not Fallout. Do not go into this game expecting to play another Fallout game. You won't get it and you'll be very annoyed. It is far, far more like Oblivion than it is like Fallout. It is definitely Oblivion with Guns. However, it is also decent fun and I predict that it will be a multi-replay classic after the modders have some time to dig into it.

The Good:
Atmosphere. No, it's not Fallout, but it's still pretty cool. The post-apocalyptic atmosphere is excellent. I actually don't mind the random clutter strewn about the wasteland, as it adds greatly to the feeling of the place. It's all so... depressing... that it really is a monumental event when you finally find some small town, even if it's only got 3 people in it. Finding a trader or a caravan is often a welcome sight, and the bleak loneliness of the place is wonderfully accentuated by the Galaxy radio station, which is a simply superb background. I get actively unhappy when I move outside of its broadcast range.

The World: When I was told in Alpha that the game world was actually a good deal smaller than Oblivion's, I was VERY disappointed. I thought Oblivion was too small as it was, so I expected to be extremely unhappy with the size of the FO3 world. Not so. I don't know quite what it is about the game that achieves this, but the world seems very large. Getting from one side to the other is difficult without fast travel (which I hate and use exceedingly rarely) because you'll encounter all kinds of hazards on your way. For reasons I won't explain due to spoiler, the town of Megaton is no longer accessible to me. This has turned out to be a major inconvenience, as it was a very central location and losing it as a safe-harbor where I could rest, repair, and refill my supplies is a blow to my ability to travel the wastes freely.

The Quests: All in all, not bad. So far, most are far more creative than the usual FedEx style quests of so many games. What you have to do and where you have to go is not always clear, there are usually multiple ways to solve them, and the rewards can be interesting and unique. If there's one complaint, its simply that there aren't enough of them. For example, Tenpenny Tower is a major building with easily a dozen unique named NPCs and probably more than that. However, with the exception of one quest that is related to the Tower but is really a Megaton quest, there is really exactly one quest at Tenpenny. What gives? I expected to be working out of there for a long time, but I finish my single job and that appears to be it for the rest of the game. Such a waste.

The Difficulty: Pretty decent. Surviving can be really hard, especially at low levels. Ammunition is very hard to obtain at low levels, and I have found myself in serious problems due to being stranded in the middle of nowhere with next to nothing left to throw at the enemy. DC itself is absolutely terrifying and my first attempt to penetrate it had to be aborted due to my inability to cut my way through all of the baddies along the way. I am now about level 10 and have just finally started getting enough ammo to serve my needs by buying and stealing every last bullet I see in the game and by carrying multiple weapons at all times so that I can use all the ammo types. The 0 weight on all ammo types may be absurdly unrealistic, but it's necessary for gameplay, so I'm grateful they implemented it. For the record, I LOVE hard games and for that reason will be bumping the difficulty up to the top level on my second play through. Interestingly, the difficulty seems greatly reduced from what it was in the version I tested, at least in the intro areas.

Load Times: Unbelievable. Seriously. Oblivion took forever to load up. FO3 not only loads the game in blazing fast speed, it also loads saved games unbelievably fast. I don't know what they did to optimize the engine, but it's amazing. Whichever programmers achieved this deserve a promotion and should be coveted by any Dev in the industry.

The Average:
Dialog: No where near as good as Fallout, but far better than Oblivion. The conversations are still relatively short, but at least they make sense and the response options have enough variety to allow you to roleplay in a basic manner. From what I read, I expected little humor in the game, but I actually find a great deal. The game is consistently amusing to me, and in an actual comic manner, not in the cheap FO2 pop culture style. The Mechanist/AntAgonizer amused me about as much as I've ever been amused by a game.

Stats/Skills: BethSoft shoe-horned the FO system into Oblivion. It works fine on its own, but it's nothing like FO except in appearance. Still, the system is pretty decently balanced so far and I cannot be a jack of all trades. I always find myself wishing I had higher stats/skills in various areas and deciding where to put my skill points every level is agonizing. I have ended up pumping my Intelligence up just to get more skill points. I may end up re-evaluating this towards the end of the game though since I can't tell how high a level I'll be by then. It's possible I will end up a master at everything, though while that's bad from a game perspective, it's actually on-par with the FO series, since you could become a master of everything in that eventually anyway. Most of the Perks are useless, though that's also very much in the FO style.

Combat: It works. It's not remotely like the AP system in FO and I still don't understand why they tried to market it like that. It's not great, and it's not horrible. VATS works, but it's a gimmick. All advertising that attempts to make it sound like turn-based combat in any manner is a bald-faced lie. It's nothing of the sort and shame on whoever decided to try and portray it as such.

The Bad:
The Interface: I complained about this to my BethSoft friends before and they were convinced it would be fine this time around. Apparently I need to rant at them some more. The interface is abominable. First, you can't bind all keys. The exit Pipboy key cannot be changed (even though the enter Pipboy key can, someone please explain this to me) and the VATS keys cannot be changed. Not only is this horribly inconvenient, it's also apparently an intentional design for reasons I cannot fathom. There is also no button to switch weapons, such as the scroll wheel. Even Oblivion had that! You also have to do EVERYTHING through the Pipboy, which is horrible because the font is too large, the screen size (of the Pipboy) is too small, and the whole interface is just difficult to navigate. Major, major issues on this whole area. A FO3 version of BTMod cannot come soon enough.

Repairing: Simply a pain in the butt. I don't mind repairing in concept, but it's horribly tedious to do in the game and items deteriorate way, way too quickly. Whoever thought the current repair system was a good idea needs to be shot. This will be one of the first mods I download.

No Custom Radio Stations: I specifically asked for this when I tested the game and while I never expected BethSoft to pay any attention to my request, I'm annoyed they haven't allowed this. The music is one of the best parts of the game, but it gets repetitive quickly. I want to be able to drop new songs into the existing radio station rotations and I want to be able to drop MP3s into a folder for my own custom radio station playlist. This should be absurdly easy, since it's already possible for the background music. I bet they'll release this as a Downloadable Content and make me pay for it.

Summary:
A flawed game with huge potential. Take a look at the list of things under The Good and you'll see why. They've essentially built a game that got all of the critical aspects right. They've built a world that is fun to play in and it's packed full of places to go and people to kill. Modders will have a field day with this game and I expect it will probably end up ranking well above Oblivion on most peoples favorites list. The problems with the game are annoying, but not crippling, though I am now convinced that the day BethSoft understands how to build a game interface will be the same day Molerats land on the moon.

[Oleander Ardens]

I just wanted to thank my fellow Orgahs for their various enlightening reviews. Seems that I will postpone the aquisition and hope that patches and modders transform and improve this game as or more than they did with Oblivion.

[Bob the Insane]

I have to disagree a little, it is not simply an FPS. It is not simply an RPG either but rather an FPS/RPG hybrid in the style of System Shock's mechanics.

I also have to disagree with the description of VATS as well. Bullet time traditionally has you still in control of the shooting while time slows done. In VATS you completely had over the shooting to the RPG elements of the game. You nominate targets and the dice are rolled in the background and you see the results. I got my character to lvl 20 well before finishing the game and thanks to this, some bobble heads and books I maxed out small arms and energy weapons. Now I am a decent enough FPS player myself, but my guy totally rocks in VATS. Long range headshots, two shotting Deathclaws (which are still scary and dangerous to a lvl 20 character in power armor if allowed to get close) and such. Things that very difficult to do in normal FPS mode.

I am a long time Fallout fan (always have them somewhere on my PC) I do see as above the potential there. The artwork in the game is very true to the style seen in the orginial games. Cars, chairs, tables, computers, buildings, power generators and so on are all very much in the correct style.

The story telling is a little off though, good enough but not the same level of quality as in the originals. They have fallen into the oldschool traps for the GM in a PnP RPG. You have the big open world but have to artifically limit your players interactions to stop them breaking the story. It even drops into direct railroading of events at at least one point. The end of the story feels far to rushed as compared to the begining. It is a shame because by the time the story has unlocked some cool stuff it is starting to shove to in the back to complete the central quest. I really can see how this game can be completed very quickly if you chose too.

It is true that the bear bones of something that could be amazing exist in the game.

[frogbeastegg]

LCK governs only your chances of a critical hit, but there's a perk later on which gives better results. .

That's not quite right. For every odd point in luck you gain +1 to all of your skills. The perk adds on to what you already have, so if you have 9 luck and the perk you get a 14% chance to crit - awesome!

My character has 9 luck. I'm critical hitting people's heads with my crappy pistol so much that I feel overpowered. I don't have the perk yet; I'm only level 4.



After the unanticipated high of Dead Space, Fallout 3 is proving to be something of a low. That’s a disappointment; I have purposely kept away from all the hype and panning of this game, and overall done my best to ensure I come to it with nothing except the willingness to see it as a game in its own right. That should have made it easier for it to astonish me.

I've played for around 3 hours, reached level 4, done a few quests and a risky raid, and got my own house.

Character building. SPECIAL is still a good system. I like it. The perks are unbalanced, and some are clearly far better than others. A perk which gives me a total of +10 skill points to pre-set skills, or one which gives an extra point of intelligence which will add up to an extra 18 skill points if I take it ASAP? Tough choice, I do not think. I'm getting 19 skill points per level plus 3 more from the perk I picked on reaching level 4; I doubt I will have problems boosting up the skills I want, especially now I have cut science from the list (see below). I feel a wee bit uber, and mostly like that.

Difficulty. I'm playing on normal. I didn't min-max my character, didn't create a combat heavy build, didn't even do much reading about to see what builds are particularly good. I'm pwning the world. Scarily so. Doubly scary since I have seen quite a few people grumbling about how hard the game is at that level. I have 4 END and crappy starter level equipment and I still manage to survive an encounter with 6 gun-totting nutters without using a healing item or any sort of booster drugs. Not only that, I can then survive fighting them again when the game regenerates them in while I'm scavenging.

Combat. I like VATS, not a lot but like all the same. It works; it's different; it lends some feeling of individuality to the game (see later point). Remove VATS and it's all terribly fast and terribly twitchy. Add in the way stats control whether you hit or not, and I'm missing headshots over and over when I feel I should hit. On the flip side, if you remove that connection the combats stats wouldn't be that important. Hmm.

Economy. Without much effort I have more caps than I feel I need. I have oodles of loot to sell. I have lots of health and rad restoring items. I have something like 60 rounds for my pistol plus other misc ammo and grenades, and multiple items to use for repairing my gear. I have a house. What I don't have is something I want to buy; I haven't spent a single cap. I thought it was supposed to be a hand to mouth scrape for survival? I am most definitely *not* happy to see the Oblivion/Morrowind style shops back again. Trawling around multiple shops and waiting for days for shop keeper's cash to regenerate so I can sell off the next fraction of my loot is not fun. It takes me longer than the expedition.

Radio. Please. Have. More. Tracks! I have access to two stations and they endlessly loop over and over until I could swear they only have 2 songs and 1 ad each. I killed the radio on my pip boy, and now it's too quiet. Oh, BTW, Bioshock called. It wants its soundtrack back. Yes, I appreciate other games have used this style of music, and yes I know it's not something Bioshock invented. It is something Bioshock made its own to my mind. Each time I hear that one about not wanting to set the world on fire I expect a Big Daddy to turn up, complete with Little Sister and dancing splicers.

Voice acting. It's average at best.

Controls. The default xbox controls are not what I'd consider to be the intuitive setup. I keep doing things I don't want to when attempting to do something else. Having the pip boy on B in particular does not feel logical. There looks like there might be an option for rebinding the buttons; I shall investigate.

Mini games. Lock picking is ok. It's easy, straightforward, and I can live with it. Hacking. I love it so much that I have cut the plan to add points to science, and will now ignore every last terminal in the game. It's times like this which remind me that, while my literacy based skills are mostly unscathed by my dyslexia, I'm by no means unaffected. Picking words out of a screen full of gibberish? Only if I laboriously shift the cursor about until it highlights the words buried in the mass. Trying to remember all of those words while trying to work out which one is the right one based on remembering letters and their positions? Sorry, but it's so difficult for me it took half an hour it took to hack that terminal in the vault, and in the end I only passed it through luck.

Colour. Thanks for offering me a choice of several colours, that's excellent. However, when I set the interface to blue I wanted it all to be blue. No green. It's another dyslexic thing; certain colours make our lives harder, and green is right up there next to bright yellow for me. Blue. I want blue. So why is half the world still in green? It robs me of my usual ultra high-speed reading fluency and demands I concentrate, and that makes me feel like a semi-illiterate idiot. Oh and that hacking mini game I have so much difficulty with? It's green.

Regenerating enemies. Ok, I understand why. Yes, I don't have a problem with it in theory. Overall I consider it to be a sound idea and necessary part of the game. When the gang of thugs I recently slaughtered regenerates with no warning in the same area I'm wandering about in then the agreement wavers. It could be argued that this is another gang sneaking into the building while I'm scooting around looting. Another gang, made up of exactly the same character models and numbers, taking up exactly the same patrol routes, as if I had never gone through and killed them all. Hmm.

Feel. No, I wouldn't call it Oblivion with guns. I'd call it a Bethesda game. It feels like Morrowind and like Oblivion, from the static talking head conversations to the peasant types with rakes. Heh, it is nice to see them making a game without the fabulously broken character creation system from the Elder Scrolls games.

Robots. I like them.

The vault. Once you hit 19 there's a single word for it: boring. I also felt I was railroaded down a particular path, one I didn't want my generally heroic character to take. The childhood sections were cute, if a little lengthy for the content.

Technical. It crashed my xbox within the first hour of play. I now live in fear of walking around corners in case it happens again.



I had planned three playthroughs for this game, one as the smart average type I am now, one as a stealthy type, and one as a combat crazed gun nut. Now I revise that to reaching level 20, completing most of the quests, and finishing the main quest. It may grow on me enough that I play again. It may not. I do intend to give it chance. Once the moral ambiguity and less straightforward quests turn up I will probably like it a lot more. Right now I am finding nothing but clear cut quests which could be in any game. Do this thing which is good, or do the other thing which is evil.

[Kekvit Irae]

Some of my collected thoughts:

It is apparent that the makers of the game were Fallout fans and read the Fallout Bible. Playing through the game normally just makes it seem like Oblivion With Guns, but the real treat are the very minor things that pop up like the computer logs, holotapes, and conversations about the backstory of the Wasteland. eg: Greta in the Underworld talks about being over 200 years old, living before the bombs fell. Her backstory confirms what happened to the Necropolis in Fallout 1, where Vault 12 was never meant to be sealed and thus the radiation changed the inhabitants into ghouls.
However, there are some contradictions... Why are there Chinese soldiers in the Capital Wasteland? You find corpses of them (in surprisingly good condition) just outside the Super-Duper Mart, along with a Chinese Radio signal. The corpses are in surprisingly good condition, which leads me to believe that they invaded DC after the bombs fell 200 years ago. But weren't the Chinese repelled by American/Canadian forces in Alaska? How did they get all this way into the heartland?
Another contradiction is when you talk to the old adventurer in Tenpenny Tower (the only one who doesn't hate ghouls). He's a human (couldn't be a day over 80, I assume), and he mentions that he was adventuring with his ghoul manservant before the war. Wait, there was another war? Considering the current year is 2277, the only war I remember was the Chinese war 200 years ago which wiped out most of the world. There are big pieces of the story missing, and this makes me sad, seeing as I'm a BIG Fallout fan.

[TinCow]

Radio. Please. Have. More. Tracks! I have access to two stations and they endlessly loop over and over until I could swear they only have 2 songs and 1 ad each. I killed the radio on my pip boy, and now it's too quiet. Oh, BTW, Bioshock called. It wants its soundtrack back. Yes, I appreciate other games have used this style of music, and yes I know it's not something Bioshock invented. It is something Bioshock made its own to my mind. Each time I hear that one about not wanting to set the world on fire I expect a Big Daddy to turn up, complete with Little Sister and dancing splicers.

I specifically asked my friends at Bethsoft about this. They indicate that once the modding tools are released, it should be pretty easy to both add new songs to the existing radio stations and to add in completely new radio stations.

[Sarmatian]

That's not quite right. For every odd point in luck you gain +1 to all of your skills. The perk adds on to what you already have, so if you have 9 luck and the perk you get a 14% chance to crit - awesome!

My character has 9 luck. I'm critical hitting people's heads with my crappy pistol so much that I feel overpowered. I don't have the perk yet; I'm only level 4.

Yeah, I admit I spoke before quite understanding the game mechanics, actually not reading about attributes. I just thought SPECIAL attributes work in the same way as in FO1/2. Perception doesn't cover all ranged weapons in FO3. END - big guns, PER - energy, AGI - small guns. So if you want a character to go around with rocket launchers and so on, END is for you, although I found considerably less ammo for big guns and that might be a problem if you go that way. On the other hand, it may be that the game balances what you find depending on your specialty (like NWN) but I doubt it...

That
Economy. Without much effort I have more caps than I feel I need. I have oodles of loot to sell. I have lots of health and rad restoring items. I have something like 60 rounds for my pistol plus other misc ammo and grenades, and multiple items to use for repairing my gear. I have a house. What I don't have is something I want to buy; I haven't spent a single cap. I thought it was supposed to be a hand to mouth scrape for survival? I am most definitely *not* happy to see the Oblivion/Morrowind style shops back again. Trawling around multiple shops and waiting for days for shop keeper's cash to regenerate so I can sell off the next fraction of my loot is not fun. It takes me longer than the expedition.

Could be that I just didn't bother with looking under every stone, but I didn't find too much caps. Ammo neither. It may seem much now, but believe 60 rounds for 10mm pistol is not much. It's practically nothing. When you had out to the wastes, you'll find that your ammo disappears rapidly. In fact, I've had several situation where I used up all ammo and ended up in a bind. Now I carry sniper rifle, chinese assault rifle, shotgun, pistol, laser pistol, hunting rifle (and lot's of ammo for each) and I still don't waste ammo needlessly

[CrossLOPER]

***Minor spoilers, but don't open if you are less than half-way through.***

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My friend finished the game last night. Yeah, prepare for an 85% probability of being mad.

[Mikeus Caesar]

I'm still undecided on whether or not i'm getting, but 4chan /v/ had a rather disturbing topic in which they figured out how to kill children. Unfortunately, their characters already looked rather creepy (skinny, face stubble). This was made even worse when they're walking around wearing childrens clothes such as pyjamas and scout uniforms. This is even more disturbing when the clothes don't actually fit.

And oddly enough, it just made me want the game more...

[Kekvit Irae]

***Minor spoilers, but don't open if you are less than half-way through.***

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My friend finished the game last night. Yeah, prepare for an 85% probability of being mad.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I just won the game, and instead of getting mad, I got a warm fuzzy feeling by doing The Right Thing®.

[Bob the Insane]

**** Please read only if you have finished ****

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Not much of a choice really... After a lot of moral ambiguity in some of the quests (especially the side ones), the end is clear hero or selfish git choice... Oh and I had a side kick along at the end who wouldn't be bothered by a bit of heavy radiation if you get my point...

You have to wonder, if the mod tools come out, if they will be flexible enough for someone to redo Fallout and Fallout 2 in the Fallout 3 engine. That would be sweet...

[Veho Nex]

I just got to level 21 and when i hit enter to select my perk game crashed any one else getting this issue?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You never have to worry about finding nice people in any of the other vaults as far as I can tell

[Kekvit Irae]

I just got to level 21 and when i hit enter to select my perk game crashed any one else getting this issue?

That's because the game is designed to stop giving you exp once you hit level 20. How you got to 21, I'll never know.

[Veho Nex]

Cheats :D

At level 20 i get bored so i wanna cheat it up a notch, didnt work:/

[Zenicetus]

Okay, you Orgah folk did it... convinced me to order Fallout 3. Fedex delivers tomorrow.

I want to compliment everyone on this thread for great reviews, pro and con! Especially the gripes about the game.

Somehow I never managed to play the original Fallout games (probably too busy with combat fllight sims), and I didn't play Oblivion either. So I'm not carrying any baggage or expectations into this. I don't like pure shooters, but if there's some RPG elements and good atmosphere, that's enough for me. I've been in deep Witcher EE immersion lately, and I'm ready to bail out of swords and sorcery and into some sci-fi and guns. It was this or Dead Space (which I'll play eventually), and I think the semi stop-time combat here will be more friendly to my current PC hardware, and my geezer lack of twitch reflexes for realtime shooting.

Anyway, thanks again for the great comments, and also a big thumbs-up for hiding spoilers, while still letting us all know what the overall flavor of the game is like.

[Kekvit Irae]

I have decided to do a second playthrough with Energy Weapons. On my first playthrough, I managed to get the Wazer Wifle in Little Lamplight, and never bothered with it until the final epic battle when I was low on .32 ammo (Ol' Painless is the superior weapon for Small Guns for the sole reason that it costs far less AP to shoot than the sniper rifle). When I first used it, I was drooling at how useful it was, even with only a crappy 35 points in Energy Weapons (that's WITH the bobblehead). Five shots with full AP? YES PLEASE.

[Veho Nex]

Has anyone ever been walking along and seen a streak appear in the sky then suddenly explode? When you goto to the "area" of the exlosion you'll find alien battery cells. But what is the alien gun?