Fallout 3 - Yet Another Roundup

I'm not even going to attempt to catch up on Fallout 3 but here's a small collection of some of the better or more interesting articles over the last couple of days (some courtesy of NMA - thanks).

First, A blog at Wired caused a little controversy, declaring the look was right but the writing missed the mark:

The key problem with the game though is in the writing. It really feels like someone wrote a fanfic based on the Fallout universe and somehow got the funding to create a game based on it. Though the story and characters are suitably gritty and conflicted, none of them are terribly likeable and the entire thing simply feels like it's trying too hard to adhere to the tenets of its predecessors.

I predict a heavy backlash from long-time fans. At best Fallout 3 will be the blacksheep of the series: An oddity played only for completion's sake by those who absolutely adore the original games.

Luckily for Bethesda, the game will sell tons of copies to those gamers less in love with the series' past if only for its gorgeous graphics, entertaining gameplay and ridiculous levels of gore.

As a counterpoint, on the Qt3 forums, game writer Tom Chick questions if you can assess the writing after 30 minutes:

Man, that's really disappointing to read that stuff on Wired. I had my thirty minutes with the game today and it was over like *that*. I barely had time to meet a few characters, dig the combat against a couple of molerats and dogs, and do a little perking up, all the while tuned into a crackly broadcast playing some Billie Holiday. Based on these preliminary bits of awesomeness, I couldn't even begin to comment on the quality of the writing. Because pretty much all I've seen are a few dialog choices.

It's a mystery to me how Earnest Cav. can make pronouncements like he's made based on the thirty minutes of time we get at E3. That's a pretty sad smear job.

Back to actual previews...Rock, Paper, Shotgun are really excited about the VATS system:

That it feels like Oblivion is a pretty important thing to note, I think. Because as a result (and I have to note that I played this with an Xbox 360 pad, not a mouse and keyboard) I didn’t like the real time fighting any more than I did in Oblivion. In fact less, because there was a great and immediate satisfaction to using Oblivion’s bows that the guns of Fallout (or at least, the ones from the early game) don’t have.

But that’s where the V.A.T.S system comes in. It is incredible. I refuse to believe anyone is going to play the game using real time combat when V.A.T.S is available. You see, V.A.T.S. turns every battle into an amazing cinematic event, and not in a lame way like a Final Fantasy game or something. The minute you spot an enemy, you choose your position to attack from, enter V.A.T.S mode, select the body part et cetera (classic Fallout stuff, you know the drill) and watch what happens. The cinematics are generated on the fly and delightfully satisfying. While shooting an enemy stalker (damn, er, just enemy) who is miles away with a pistol is a boring exercise in shooting at a dot, in V.A.T.S you’re able to watch as your bullets batter him with a pounding velocity, crippling his body parts or exploding his head [“or her head, obviously.” – Equal Opportunities Ed.]

Worthplaying has a nicely detailed article:

After a brief exploration of the school, I ventured back to the comparatively brighter wasteland, and after a short trip, I encountered the game's first town. It was a small town, as these things go, but it absolutely packed to the brim with sub-plots, sadly few of which I got to explore. The most interesting of these was the Children of the Atom, a cult-slash-church that worshipped an unexploded nuclear bomb located in the center of the town. I had a few options for what I could do with these fellows, including tinkering with the bomb itself. My explosive skill wasn't high enough, though, so I didn't get to see if it was possible to set it off or simply disarm it. Beyond the many sub-plots, there were simply a ton of areas to explore in the town. I was able to venture in any house I could see, and I discovered a lot of areas that I'd want to explore if I had greater stats, such as a mysterious locked house that required a Lockpick skill substantially higher than even a 10th-level character could hope to achieve.

Gamernode says nothing revolutionary but it looks like there are some choices in the dialogue:

I had to hurry up and get to town if I wanted to see any of the game's dialog within my allotted time, so I hightailed it to Megaton and visited with some NPCs. The system looks similar to the Elder Scrolls and old Fallout games, with many options in the tree and the ability to use your character's skills to your advantage. There is nothing terribly revolutionary here, but it definitely looks like players will be able to cultivate the character personality of their choice using the appropriate dialog selections.

AtomicGamer saw some persuasion potential with Megaton:

My next playthrough was more RPG-like, as I visited the little shanty-town of Megaton to meet its mayor/sheriff and a few of its denizens. I picked up quests to figure out how to disarm a bomb that had been sitting in town for a while, and was told to check out the saloon to see about starting on the game's main storyline. I decided to head off the beaten path here and just explore Megaton a bit, and found that it's a very interesting little place where people are barely holding on in this nuked-out world. The water's irradiated, the people are generally standoffish and you'll have to use your persuasive abilities - assuming you have them - pretty often to open up new experiences or improve the ones you'd get if you were just a pure gunslinger.

That will do, I think. Check out NMA or Briosafreak's Fallout 3 Blog for an exhaustive list.