Aquatakat.com

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Hello. My name is Ryan. This is my web page. It's not really about anything. I put here all the things that I think the world should see. If you want to know more, you can read the about page. You'll probably want to check out the design gallery. And if you're really adventurous I think my audio files are worth a listen.

Latest Weblog Entry

Fallout 3

Remember Oblivion? Bethesda did it again.

Well maybe not. But they obviously stole the engine and a voice actor and a bunch of background sound effects. The animations are junk. And the world is huge. Of course the world is huge.

That was the biggest fault with Oblivion I think. And Morrowind. The game isn't about the people in it or the story or about the gameplay. It's about the giant world the game takes place in. If you can create this huge immersive world then maybe the player will become lost in it enough to ignore the shortcomings.

That problem doesn't seem to dog Fallout 3 as much though. Sure, the world is still huge, but they put more genuine effort into making the characters into real, believable people. It may be a script putting words into their mouths but it seems more like they're saying the words themselves than ever before. At least with a Bethesda game. But there's always a tradeoff. In order to make the larger settlements seem bigger, in addition to the cast of characters, there are a bunch of generic nameless NPCs wandering around that spout one liners and walk away if you try to talk to them.

The plot in the game is also more interesting than Oblivion's, but it falls in all the same traps. At the beginning the set up is wonderful. You learn about the world gradually and uncover mysteries while doing interesting things. But once the story really gets underway it moves far too quickly. Instead of progressing naturally it starts to seem like you're sightseeing and plot events are just happening around you. Anyone who's played the last events in Oblivion knows exactly what I mean. It's fast and jolting and the ending comes far too quickly. I suppose it's at least better than them stretching it out artificially. I'm looking at you, Morrowind.

Since the game's introduced guns, and presumably because people who play RPGs are horrible at aiming, they have an assisted aiming system. Pick a body part and it shoots at it for you. Your gun will shoot more accurately at your target depending on how high your skill with your weapon is. You have a limit to the number of aimed shots you get at a time and once you use them to have to wait a while before you can shoot like that again. There's no limit to fighting FPS style, which is pretty much a necessity unless you play the entire game around beefing up your ability to use the aiming system.

You get all sorts of fancy things to shoot at. And when you use the aiming system the game does a bunch of epic cinematic camera angles complete with light bloom and motion blur of you shooting at things, regardless if it's a giant super mutant or a little radroach.

Throughout the game you get all sorts of fun exposives to blow things up with, including mini-nukes, missiles, mines, grenades and whatnot. But the most lethal exposive of all is all the ruined cars. If a stray bullet hits a car it blows up in a ridiculous fashion with a mushroom cloud and everything. A lesson learned for the first time the hard way for most I'm sure.

I enjoy the skill system. It's fairly simplified so I don't have to worry too much about what kind of gun I'm using and the benefits of putting your skill points when you level up into each of them is readily apparent. Levelling is fairly easy but doesn't come too quickly. You get experience for doing just about anything: exercising your speech skill, completing a quest, picking a lock, hacking a computer... Hell, even finding a location will get you a little bit. And when you level you get to choose from a bunch of little perks like extra skill or stat bonuses or special abilities. It's a well rounded system. The game appears to have some minor NPC level adjustment in place as well, so you see tougher enemies in the same place at different levels. But unlike Oblivion you can't wander around and destroy everything at level 1. At least not very easily.

The game looks great and has a good art style. You spend almost the entire game in some sort of ruins and the game does not disappoint. Some of the inner DC ruins are surprisingly like the riot sections of Half-Life 2. They really pulled off the post apocalyptic feel.

I was suprised it could pull off new and interesting vistas throughout the game when it's pretty much all ruined wasteland after ruined wasteland. But there's so much detail and the visceral impact of seeing things like the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument in ruins is spectacular. There's so much attention to detail and the engine lets you see forever. The draw distance is literally infinite.

It's a shame the audio isn't infinite. On the only good radio station, the one that plays the '50s disco diner jukebox music, there's only maybe five or six songs interspersed with some DJ banter. You'll hear it all just from the radios the NPCs have turned on in the settlements. You'll hear it all multiple times if you turn on your mobile radio. Of course you could listen to the propoganda channel but nothing on there is particularly interesting at all. Maybe at the beginning of the game when you're taking in the sights and the sounds. But it gets old fast.

There is some generic background music in the game but it's not the greatest. One of the melodies was, as far as I can tell, ripped straight from Oblivion and made to sound more bleak.

There's nothing wrong with the sound effects though. Everything sounds right. Everyone has voice acting, a feat in and of itself, and all the creatures have their own set of noises. You can easily tell what's around the next corner if you stop and listen a bit.

Overall the game is definitely worth the $50 I paid for it. It's not as large as Oblivion, but maybe it's more ambitious. I doubt you'll be able to get over 100 hours of playtime out of it without starting anew once or twice but there's enough in the game so you can give it a run for it's money.

Surely one of the best games of the year. You should give it a go.

Posted by Aquatakat on Thursday, November 13th with 7 comments.