Farren
12-05-2008, 04:32 PM
OK I've been playing Fallout 3 obsessively for two weeks now and I'm just blown away.
A Little History (skip this if you just want to know about Fallout 3 itself)
A few years back I picked up a game called Morrowind by Bethesda Softworks and was enchanted by the sheer freedom it offered. The game opened in the hold of a ship and pretty soon you found yourself dumped in a coastal town with a simple set of instructions and a whole, continuous world to roam in.
You could set off to find the person who would begin your main adventure or just wander off in any random direction, talking to whoever you liked and getting involved in whatever trouble you wanted to. Rather than the typical level-loading format, the world of Morrowind was a single, continuously loading land-mass with swamps, mountains, towns and castles.
And there was so much to do! Harvesting ingredients from plants, "borrowing" the contents of unguarded containers, pickpocketing people, making your own potions - it was a giant sandbox with hundreds of quests, large and small, many of which could be completed in no particular order.
On top of this the game provided modding tools and an enormous amount of user-created content became available soon after its release, from retextures of the entire world to better 3d models to complex, intelligent companions to huge quests.
But it was also a deeply flawed game. The mechanics of combat, trade and levelling were all poorly thought through and many challenges gave no real sense of accomplishment. For instance, you could continuously increase your character's athletic ability by placing a weight on the "jump" key and leaving the computer alone for a few hours.
Ranged combat consisted of continuously running backwards away from the enemy and cursing as your arrows visibly went through their hearts without any hits being recorded. Companion AI was so shoddy that having a powerful companion was like taking care of a newborn child while adventuring.
For many of its players, Morrowind delivered everything they'd dreamed of in one dimension, only to bitterly disappoint them in others. The modding community even went so far as to create extra memory-resident hacks that ran at the same time as the game to enable play mechanics denied by the game engine and the hopelessly buggy and idiosyncratic scripting language.
When Bethesda's next game (set in the same world) was released, it was clear that they'd paid some attention to the hundreds of thousands of posts discussing the games shortcoming's and player's desires on the official forum. Oblivion introduced minigames for lockpicking and charming people. The scripting engine was vastly improved and you could acquire your own home, a feature found in Fable and many Morrowind mods.
But the minigames were so laughably easy as to be simply annoying and Oblivion introduced a host of its own irritating quirks. Combat, central to the main quest, was still a completely unsatisfying affair. There was obviously an enormous amount of love and effort put into the game, but not enough elegant design.
Worse still, while the world of Morrowind departed sufficiently from stock fantasy themes to feel unique. Oblivion tacked to the center, serving up a bog-standard fantasy world indifferentiable from a thousand other games where the designers consider lore something you make up one night over a beer while thousands of hours are spent on content.
A side note: Being an ubernerd, I actually spent a year of my own free time writing a powerful, widely-used modding tool for Morrowind (The Enchanted Editor (http://www.mwmythicmods.com/ronin.htm#17)) to supplement the main modding tool.
Fallout 3 - Bethesda finally "gets it"
In light of the above, this extremely difficult-to-please customer installed Fallout 3 with mixed expectations. I've never played any of the Fallout series but I prefer sci-fi to fantasy so I was looking forward to the post-apocalyptic world of the Capital Wastelands. But I had mentally prepared myself for a game with frustrating combat, pointless minigames and massive imbalances in gameplay that were easily exploited, like Bethesda's previous games.
Boy was I wrong.
I don't know if Bethesda brought on any new brains for this project, but it appears they've fixed every single problem anyone ever complained about in their past games, without introducing new ones. They've also added a thousand loving touches which enhance the format. The minigames (picking locks, hacking) are fun, combat is really, really fun, companions are intelligent and useful... everything just works. Perfectly.
Reading the reviews I was cynical. Morrowind, a deeply, deeply flawed game, got a Game of the Year Award at the worlds biggest gaming conference. So after reading about 10 reviews all giving Fallout 3 a 10 out of 10, I was still cynical. But having played it I have to concur. This game won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it does everything its trying to do perfectly for its target audience.
The game is set in the ruins of Washington DC 200 years after a nuclear war. The player begins as a resident of Vault 101, a fallout shelter which no-one has entered or been allowed to leave since the war. Generations have been born and died in Vault 101 and your first objective is getting out, so you can find your father after he leaves the vault.
Well, not quite the first. The game takes you through a series of playable scenes starting with seeing your doctor father's face for the first time when you're born and proceeding to hop through your 5th, 10th and 18th years respectively. These scenes allow you to get to know characters from your past who might enter the game again later, as well as determining what type of character you will play, through choices you make. But the game proper really begins with the escape from vault 101.
Despite the go-anywhere, do-anything nature of the game there are ways in which the game keeps you on track when you're feeling mission focused. Quests are noted in your Pip-boy (a device worn on the arm which is basically your interface for everything) and selecting a quest will cause your next destination for that quest to be marked on your map and indicated on your compass. Once you've discovered a location, you can fast-travel there on subsequent occasions rather than spending hours trekking across the wastelands again. So back and forth quests aren't made a chore by the size of the world.
You can simply make a beeline for the next objective all the time, but if you don't go off the beaten track you'll miss the thousands of easter eggs and side quests available, and potentially tens of hours of gameplay. The world of Fallout 3 is huge and detailed. There are no unfilled spaces. Stay on the tracks and you'll never find a furry companion to walk beside you, sensing danger and finding all manner of things you might miss, for instance. You have to wander the wasteland to chance upon the scrapyard where he struggles to survive in order to acquire him.
Visuals
In light of the advances evident in games like Far Cry and Assassins Creed, Fallout's external visuals aren't that impressive. But they're impressive, nonetheless. The viewing distance is simply enormous, reinforcing the sense of being in a world, not just a level in a computer game. Unfortunately, my graphics card doesn't fully do the game justice, as greater viewing distances are possible:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot1.jpg
There is a day/night cycle with a continuous change in lighting effects outdoors:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot4.jpg
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot5.jpg
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot3.jpg
Interiors are very busy:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot6.jpg
The sheer scale of the crumbling architecture of Washington DC lends grandeur to many scenes:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot7.jpg
My only criticism is that the theme of the game demands an unremittingly brown and grey colour scheme, with little vegetation. The Gamebryo engine combined with SpeedTree technology is quite capable of lush fields and forests, as seen in Bethesda's Oblivion, but in Fallout its more confined to sparse patches of brown grass.
Quests
Before getting into mechanics and such I have to say the quests in Fallout 3 are a delight. Some previous Fallout fans have pointed out a lot of the humour from the original series is missing but not having played those I don't notice its absence.
What is noticably absent is the enormous number of dumb "fetch-me" quests seen in games like Morrowind. Hardly anything is simple. A simple search for a boy's father rapidly turns into a complicate and unexpected series of adventures and so on. Many quests have optional extras that emerge: "OK you got me home, but can you stay and protect us from the coming raid? Please?".
I get none of the "Jesus, this is just a boring, brainless levelling grind" feeling I often got in the early stages of Morrowind.
World Size
The world of Fallout 3 is only about 15km squared, but for a variety of reasons that's sufficient to feel like a huge "world". For one thing, actually walking 15km takes a very, very long time, especially when you're avoiding or engaging in combat over every rise (its a dangerous wasteland) as well as navigating around large environmental obstacles. Also this doesn't include the vast amount of interior space (interiors are loaded seperately when you enter them).
The Pip-Boy
The Pip-Boy is your interface for everything - inventory, abilities, condition, map, quests and so on. It is strapped to your left arm and you visibly bring your arm up to your face when accessing it, with the background still visible around the edges.
In addition, any and all environmental effects are reflected on the actual skin of the Pip-Boy. So if you've just been flamed by a fire-ant, the metal of your Pip-Boy is glowing when you bring it up. If you're using a Stealth-Boy, which makes your character transparent, the actual Pip-boy is transparent when you bring it up, with only the writing on the screen and light of the buttons visible. This is one of the many small touches that makes Fallout 3 feel so... complete:
http://fallout3.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/pipboy3000b.jpg?w=420&h=248
Character Abilities and Levelling
Fallout 3 follows fairly standard RPG conventions when it comes to base attributes and skills.
Your base attributes are Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. These each influence a range of things in the manner you'd expect. In addition to these there are a host of skills to develop, each of them scalar in nature, so you can continuously improve them. Skills include:
* Small Guns
* Big Guns
* Energy Weapons
* Unarmed
* Melee Weapons
* Explosives
* Medicine
* Sneak
* Lockpick
* Science
* Repair
* Barter
* Speech
Over and above this, Fallout lets you choose a "perk" every time you level. Some perks can increase, like skills, but they are distinct in the sense that perks are unique abilities which you either have or don't have, unlike skills, where an unskilled person can still try using a big gun, for instance. Their chance of hitting is just substantially lower.
Perks add unique and interesting game mechanics to your character. For instance, the "mysterious stranger" perk gives a random chance of a mysterious stranger assisting you in a fight in the wilds, then leaving when the combat is over, the "Fast Learner" perk makes you earn more XP every time you earn XP and the "Lawbringer", only available for good characters, adds a finger to the inventory of every bad guy you kill, which can be traded for a bounty to the head of the newly formed organisation of lawbringers in the wasteland.
Your character's morality also swings to the light or dark side, based on quest actions and just general behaviour, like stealing from non-hostiles and so on. This influences conversation options, which companions you can acquire, perks you can acquire and so on.
Radiation
There's a lot of radiation in the Fallout world, with most bodies of water being radioactive, as well as most food found in the wastes. This in turn, mean that you will inevitably pick up more and more radiation. Too much and you get radiation sickness, which is expensive to heal.
Minigames
The minigames in Fallout 3 are not spectacular, but they're logical and don't feel tacked-on the way they did in Oblivion.
In the lock-picking minigame, you use a screwdriver and (destructable) bobby pins to move the tumblers, in a close simulation of real lockpicking. Failure results in the bobby pin being broken, although you can stop before that happens and try again. You use the screwdriver to attempt to turn the lock to an open position, always turning in a clockwise direction. You try to position the bobby pin so that it pushes the tumbler, moving it clockwise or anticlockwise. If its in the wrong position the bobby pin vibrates more and more until it breaks. Apparently with a force-feedback control you actually feel the bobby-pin vibrating. Your character's lock-picking skill determinely how much fine tuning of the bobby-pin position is required before you get the lock into unlocked position:
http://ui30.gamespot.com/349/fallout3lockpicking_2.jpg
The hacking minigame is a variant of the old Mastermind game. Your character starts by viewing a raw file content dump, recognisable to programmers as a hex editor view. In the file are randomly chosen words all with the same number of letters in them. On each iteration, you select a word and are told how many letters match letters in the actual password, so if I choose "obviously" and it tells me "Obviously: 0/9 correct", I know that none of the letters in. the word "obviously" are in the password. Obviously, the number of words you can choose before you either pick the right one or are locked out is determined by a particular skill (science).
Computer Terminals
Computer terminals may be locked or require hacking. You can also get passwords from quest actions. Some stuff (journal entries etc) can add information and quests to your Pip-Boy. Its also possible to open doors and safes as well as disabling turret systems through computer terminals.
Dialog
Dialog is standard RPG fare, with many dialog options being based on character attributes/abilities (Speech/Barter/Science) as well as quest flags (whether you've done certain things or not).
Stealth
The game's control scheme has a key for toggling crouching, rather than having to hold down a key. This is because crouching automatically puts you in stealth mode and some characters (like mine) might want to move that way for long stretches.
The success of stealth is affected by lighting conditions, encumbrance, equipment and so on. Running in stealth mode is less effective than walking, but the "run silently" character perk eliminates this distinction.
When in stealth mode, your hidden status is displayed at the top of the screen in large coloured letters. If you're completely undetected its "[Hidden]" in green. If you're detected by a non-hostile its "[Detected]". If you've been, say, aurally detected but the hostile has no line of sight, its "[Caution]" in red, and intelligent hostiles start saying things like "You can't hide from me! I can smell your fear!". When they have line of sight it becomes "[Danger]" in red lettering.
In addition, your various perception modifiers influence stealth. This is because hostiles you can hear or see are displayed as red direction markers on your compass, even if you don't have line of sight. High perception means hostiles over the next ridge are more likely to be identified on your compass before you get line of sight.
Pickpocketing someone requires you to creep up to them, undetected, then hit the "use" key (when not in stealth mode, "using" them results in dialog).
Stealth plays a big role in combat, if you use it - see below.
Combat
This is a huge area of improvement over Bethesda's past games, IMHO. I've seen some complain about VATS online but they're a distinct minority. Combat combines real-time and frozen-time gameplay in an intuitive way.
Combat allows three ways of doing damage: Melee, ranged and traps. Various skills affect each type. You can punch someone, hit them with a nail-board, shoot them or just put down mines everywhere then try get them to run over the mines.
Stealth has a big effect on combat. A shot through the head of someone who doesn't know you're there is vastly more likely to be a critical hit, for instance.
Also, in another one of the many, many loving touches that make this such an enjoyable and deep gaming experience, if you successfully sneak up to someone unaware and are close enough to pickpocket, you can use the inventory transfer screen that comes up to drop a frag grenade in someone's pocket, then flee. They will then blow up.
Science and repair skills help further with robots. A sufficiently skilled person can creep up to a hostile robot and power it down.
Similarly, hacking skills (or simply passwords you acquire through questing) can help with turrets, which are usually all controlled in a given area through one computer network. Shades of Deus Ex.
Your Explosives skill helps with mines, allowing you to creep up to them, disarm them and take them before they are able to explode. The "light footed" character perk allows you to walk over traps and mines without ever activating them.
The real-time portion of combat is basically aim and click.
Unlike Bethesda's previous games, the visuals match the reported effects. In Morrowind/Oblivion, you could see an arrow pierce someone only to be told you missed altogether (if your character has low ranged attack ability). In Fallout 3, a miss looks like a miss and a hit like a hit. This is because, while you are in complete control of the crosshair, your firearm hand is another story. Low skill, unsteady hand.
This simple improvement massively improved the game for me. Whereas in their previous games the disconnect between visual and actual effect made it feel like I was rolling dice, combat is far more concrete and real in Fallout 3.
Crouching (stealth mode) also dramatically improves your accuracy and being half hidden behind things decreases your chance of being hit, both facts which many intelligent hostiles take advantage of.
Hits are body-part specific and you can cripple hostiles, often resulting in them falling to the ground, then moving slower when they rise. You can also disable someone's gun-arm, or even shoot their weapon and knock it out of their hands (although intelligent hostiles will run and fetch a gun if they can). This is especially easy to do with the VATS system, a particularly satisfying addition which I will now describe.
VATS is a non-real-time combat system that allows you to plan, then execute a series of precision moves that are then executed in real time, but in rapid succession and with great accuracy. At any point in combat you can freeze time and bring up the VATS targeting system with the VATS key:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot8.jpg
The VATS system will then focus on the closest enemy (you can also select other visible enemies) and give you "to hit" chances on each body and equipment part. You then click a body part to instruct the game to shoot at/throw something at that part, when you leave VATS.
These choices can be queued, allowing you to plan a single shot to one hostile's head, then two to another's, before executing the chain of moves (this combination is especially common for stealth characters, since a first strike from undetected is always critical, but the second character will always be alerted by the first character being hit).
When you exit VATS, the game then executes the sequence of attacks you planned. And this is where VATS is truly satisfying. The game executes the moves (in slow motion) using cinematic camera angles you don't see in ordinary real-time combat. So for a critical strike from stealth, it might focus first on your character from the front, squeezing out the bullet, then follow the bullet, then switch to the enemies head exploding, from behind the enemy. With VATS, combat often feels like you're in an action movie:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot9.jpg
VATS isn't free however. Instead, the number of moves you can plan in VATS mode is based on your current Action Points, which are determined by a host of variables, including basic attributes, perks, skills and stimulants consumed. Action points, like mana in many games, slowly regenerate in real time. Regeneration too is influenced by many variables.
This means that combat is often a combination real-time panic stricken shooting punctuated by executing classy VATS strikes when your action points regenerate. If you're really, really sneaky and the situation permits it, you can hit a perfect balance in some grinds where there's hardly any real-time combat and most kills are one- or two-bullet critical strikes, accompanied by satisfying and spectacular gibs.
The VATS system also allows you to really maximise the benefits of knowing your enemy. Some enemies have heavily armoured heads and its better to try cripple them first than get a headshot. with others, its better to first destroy their low HP weapon, be it gun or natural appendage. This, in turn, means that speaking to friendly characters about hostiles sometimes yields useful knowledge that can be used in combat.
I must be noted that you, too, can become crippled, which is distinct from simply losing XP. Some attacks, like a super-mutant smacking you with a massive hammer (scary) and land-mines are more likely to cause crippling and knock you down. Crippling cannot be healed simply by upping HP (which say, food does). You must use a stim-pack or sleep somewhere.
You're not the only one in the world fighting. Raiders do battle with super-mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel fight pitched battles with the Enclave, super-mutants and raiders and you will often find ordinary citizens defending their settlements against deranged two-headed Brahmin cattle. Often its wise to sit back and let two hostile groups beat the crap out of each other, then move in and pick off the survivors, scavenging mucho supplies with minimal loss of ammo afterwards.
The substantial improvements in enemy AI make a huge impact, too. In Oblivion, you could draw the attention of melee-weapon hostiles, then climb on a difficult piece of terrain that the hostiles can't navigate and just pick them off while they mill stupidly around the base of the rock you're sitting on or the open door obstructing the passage. Even worse, since interior spaces and the outside world load seperately when you go through doors, you could have a troll bashing you right in the entrance to a cave system, then turn around, activate the door and be standing on the other side with no sign of the troll.
Such inadequate-engine dynamics are largely absent in Fallout 3. Hostiles that are stuck on terrain with only remain so for a few seconds before the engine "pops" them into a more mobile position a meter to the left or right. They will figure out complex routes and execute them to get to you if, say, you're at the top of a cliff and they're at the bottom, even if that means moving away from you to find a way up. And they will follow you through doors if you exit an interior, as long as they were aware of you and following you when you executed. Which brings me too
AI
I've described many of the improvements in AI above. There is a qualitative difference between animal-intelligence hostiles and human-intelligence hostiles now. So much so that one can often get more XP for a weakly armoured, low HP raider than a heavily armoured, high HP dumb beast. This is because a group of raiders will fight intelligently, taking cover, trying to flank you, running away when their HP is low or weapon disabled, only to return and pot-shot when their friends have drawn your attention.
There are a lot of little non-hostile AI touches, like the fact that even looking at a shop-keepers cash register in sneak mode might cause them to say "Its locked for a reason!" and bumping them too much results in loud complaints "Watch where you're going!". It feels like people are watching you and responding appropriately.
Furthermore, NPC's have time-based schedules. These were introduced in Oblivion but appear to be tweaked and improved in Fallout 3. Schedules are not hard and fast and sometimes you'll a shopkeeper might arrive to open up shop an hour earlier or later than normal. Also some behaviour appears to be based on random scheduling. A shop keeper may go straight home after work, or stop for a beer at a bar. I occasionaly ran into situation where I had to hunt for someone that I found easily before, in order to close a quest-loop.
If you play a heroic, good character, people in certain regions may grow very fond of you. If you've done a lot of good deeds for people in a particular town, they start randomly accosting you in town and saying things like "All of us here really appreciate everything you've done for us, so we pooled our resources to get you this", then handing you a stimpack, some money or some food. A nice touch which makes some places feel distinctly more welcoming and familiar than others.
Companions
Lastly, you may have companions, and these benefit a great deal from the improved combat AI. Companions can be acquired through quests, bought from slave-owners or hired, under the right circumstances and depending on your morality.
In Bethesda's previous games the AI just wasn't good enough to diminish the feeling of taking care of a big baby in dangerous situations. Your companions were always doing stupid shit and getting you or more often themselves killed, getting stuck in doorways, on landscape and so on. In Fallout, they're usually a massive help. The game imbalances they may introduce are offset by the fact that, should your companions kill hostiles, you don't get the XP.
Inherited from past games is the ability to share inventories with your companions. Give them better armour and they automatically wear it. Give them a better weapon and ammo and they'll use it (if they have enough of the appropriate skill to make its use worthwhile). Prep them with stim-packs and they'll heal themselves when wounded, which is especially useful for ensuring their survival.
They usually copy your sneaking behaviour too. Sneak, and your companion sneaks.
You even have limited control of their AI through dialog options, which appear to be partially distinct for different companions. By way of example I presently have two, a mutant shotgun-wielder and a dog. I can instruct the mutant to stay close or hang back and try to flank enemies, to use a ranged weapon in combat or a melee weapon. The dog, on the other hand, can be asked to find ammo or food/medicine, at which point, if there's any hidden nearby, he will trot off and point to it like a hunting dog.
All companions can be asked to wait in a certain place or come with you. Telling one companion to come with you makes your current companion wait, meaning you can only have one companion accompanying you at a time. There are various tricks to break this however, allowing you two or three companions with you at a time. Furthermore, you get temporary companions (help me get home-style quests) where you can retain companions not intended to be companions simply by never returning to the desired destination, or telling them to wait somewhere else whenever you go there.
Two or three companions can make combat ridiculously easy, but because they get many of the kills you earn XP and level up much, much slower. Also, it takes a lot of playing before you can build up this number.
Companions are also useful for getting around encumbrance problems that would otherwise force you to leave loot behind.
Radio stations
There are two reliable radio stations in the wasteland, which you can activate on your pip boy and will provide a soundtrack during long treks (although they seem to, for obvious reasons, diminish your stealth ability), Enclave Radio and Crazy 3-Dog's show. The enclave are assholes, but 3-dog is the "voice of the people" and when you complete certain late game quests, will even speak of your misdeeds or heroic achievements on his show.
Other temporary or limited radio transmissions can be picked up in specific areas only or under specific conditions only. At one point, for instance, you discover a distress signal transmitted via radio that begins a side quest.
Food, drink and medicine
Food and medicine can both be used to heal you and various medicines can be used to temporarily boost just about anything, from action points to intelligence. They each come with their own drawbacks, however, which add nice game balance effects.
Firstly, about 80% of the food you pick up in the wastelands, and all water, is irradiated, with the number of rads shown in your inventory. As mentioned earlier exposure to radiation means your radioactivity levels increase. Too much and you have to pay long dollars or get some relatively rare medicine to fix it. This creates a nice trade off. In many instances, your health is perilously low and so is your radiation, but low radiation levels are a good thing. So its better to eat now and restore your immediate health, then deal with the effects if radiation sickness later.
Medicine, too, has a downside. There are all manner of stimulants but every one of them is potentially addictive (the exception being stim-packs, which heal wounds and restore HP). Use a particular stimulant too often and you will get addicted, a fact which is immediately announced. Withdrawal effects include episodes of blurry vision and swaying, which happen with increasing frequency as time progresses and can only be prevented with further use of the stimulant or medical help (expensive). The blurry vision and swaying can make combat quite difficult.
Trade
Trade is bog standard RPG fare, with various vendors around the world who will trade with you on better or worse terms based on alignment, friendship (if you've done quests for them) and barter skill. Bethesda have copied popular mods produced for their previous games and also thrown in some travelling traders who move around certain areas of the wastelands. Different traders restock ammo, medicine and money at different rates and have differing amounts of maximum cash.
An interesting twist is that specific people, not necessarily full traders, are looking for specific things that everyone else considers low value. A BoS scribe based in the Arlington library, for instance, will give you a lot of cash for every "pre-war book" you find, while another trader will not only pay extra for "sugar bombs", but uses them to produce a super-stimulant he will sell you, for every x sugerbombs you sell him. So unlocking these people and their specific hobbies is very profitable.
Skill Books
You pick these up as loot and can either sell them (they're worth a lot) or "consume" them by reading them, giving you one extra skill point in the relevant area. A "Comprehension" character perk gives you not one, but two skill points for every skill book consumed.
Nothing is Junk
Bethesda's previous efforts and, indeed, many RPGs, have an enormous amount of junk scattered around the world that only has value as loot you can sell. Spoons, scrap metal and so on.
In Fallout, they've added an interesting twist. Many such items have no intrinsic functionality on their own, but with the right blueprints you can turn them into useful equipment instead of just selling them.
So, for instance, turpentine, abroxo cleaner, a bottle of Nuka-Cola, a bottle of quantum and a tin can gives you a Nuka Grenade.
Constructing stuff requires a workbench, much like the KOTOR games.
Finally...
My Own House!
This was a huge area of modding activity in Bethesda's previous games and Bethesda actually introduced the ability to acquire property in the unmodded game in Oblivion. They seem to have polished it considerably.
I managed to get my own house in the town of Megaton and was surprised to discover it came with a robot butler, who, among other things, will tell you a random joke and give you a hair-cut, allowing you to change hairstyles.
Furthermore, it comes with a special display stand for all the Bobbleheads you may scavenge out in the waste, which are each unique and make for a fun collecting game on the side.
But wait! There's more! By speaking to the trader down the way, you can purchase for your house
- Any one of four house "themes" which will completely redecorate your house (Vault, Pre-War, Love Shack and Science)
- A Nuka-Cola machine, which you unfortunately have to restock yourself. It does, however make them ice-cold and twice as effective.
- A workbench, for assembling stuff
- A chemistry set, for detoxing yourself and brewing new stuff (which takes a day of elapsed time)
- A "juke-box", really a large radio that plays Three Dog's radio show when you switch it on.
Over and above this, owning a home actually creates a play mechanic. If you sleep in your own home you get a "Well rested" stat bonus which lasts for a considerable period of time before wearing off.
Conclusions
There's so much more I could write about, so many little touches which make this game deserving of a perfect 10/10, but this review has taken me 4 hours so far. Suffice to say, its the most well-crafted single-player RPG I have ever played in my life and has remarkable depth. Highly recommended.
A Little History (skip this if you just want to know about Fallout 3 itself)
A few years back I picked up a game called Morrowind by Bethesda Softworks and was enchanted by the sheer freedom it offered. The game opened in the hold of a ship and pretty soon you found yourself dumped in a coastal town with a simple set of instructions and a whole, continuous world to roam in.
You could set off to find the person who would begin your main adventure or just wander off in any random direction, talking to whoever you liked and getting involved in whatever trouble you wanted to. Rather than the typical level-loading format, the world of Morrowind was a single, continuously loading land-mass with swamps, mountains, towns and castles.
And there was so much to do! Harvesting ingredients from plants, "borrowing" the contents of unguarded containers, pickpocketing people, making your own potions - it was a giant sandbox with hundreds of quests, large and small, many of which could be completed in no particular order.
On top of this the game provided modding tools and an enormous amount of user-created content became available soon after its release, from retextures of the entire world to better 3d models to complex, intelligent companions to huge quests.
But it was also a deeply flawed game. The mechanics of combat, trade and levelling were all poorly thought through and many challenges gave no real sense of accomplishment. For instance, you could continuously increase your character's athletic ability by placing a weight on the "jump" key and leaving the computer alone for a few hours.
Ranged combat consisted of continuously running backwards away from the enemy and cursing as your arrows visibly went through their hearts without any hits being recorded. Companion AI was so shoddy that having a powerful companion was like taking care of a newborn child while adventuring.
For many of its players, Morrowind delivered everything they'd dreamed of in one dimension, only to bitterly disappoint them in others. The modding community even went so far as to create extra memory-resident hacks that ran at the same time as the game to enable play mechanics denied by the game engine and the hopelessly buggy and idiosyncratic scripting language.
When Bethesda's next game (set in the same world) was released, it was clear that they'd paid some attention to the hundreds of thousands of posts discussing the games shortcoming's and player's desires on the official forum. Oblivion introduced minigames for lockpicking and charming people. The scripting engine was vastly improved and you could acquire your own home, a feature found in Fable and many Morrowind mods.
But the minigames were so laughably easy as to be simply annoying and Oblivion introduced a host of its own irritating quirks. Combat, central to the main quest, was still a completely unsatisfying affair. There was obviously an enormous amount of love and effort put into the game, but not enough elegant design.
Worse still, while the world of Morrowind departed sufficiently from stock fantasy themes to feel unique. Oblivion tacked to the center, serving up a bog-standard fantasy world indifferentiable from a thousand other games where the designers consider lore something you make up one night over a beer while thousands of hours are spent on content.
A side note: Being an ubernerd, I actually spent a year of my own free time writing a powerful, widely-used modding tool for Morrowind (The Enchanted Editor (http://www.mwmythicmods.com/ronin.htm#17)) to supplement the main modding tool.
Fallout 3 - Bethesda finally "gets it"
In light of the above, this extremely difficult-to-please customer installed Fallout 3 with mixed expectations. I've never played any of the Fallout series but I prefer sci-fi to fantasy so I was looking forward to the post-apocalyptic world of the Capital Wastelands. But I had mentally prepared myself for a game with frustrating combat, pointless minigames and massive imbalances in gameplay that were easily exploited, like Bethesda's previous games.
Boy was I wrong.
I don't know if Bethesda brought on any new brains for this project, but it appears they've fixed every single problem anyone ever complained about in their past games, without introducing new ones. They've also added a thousand loving touches which enhance the format. The minigames (picking locks, hacking) are fun, combat is really, really fun, companions are intelligent and useful... everything just works. Perfectly.
Reading the reviews I was cynical. Morrowind, a deeply, deeply flawed game, got a Game of the Year Award at the worlds biggest gaming conference. So after reading about 10 reviews all giving Fallout 3 a 10 out of 10, I was still cynical. But having played it I have to concur. This game won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it does everything its trying to do perfectly for its target audience.
The game is set in the ruins of Washington DC 200 years after a nuclear war. The player begins as a resident of Vault 101, a fallout shelter which no-one has entered or been allowed to leave since the war. Generations have been born and died in Vault 101 and your first objective is getting out, so you can find your father after he leaves the vault.
Well, not quite the first. The game takes you through a series of playable scenes starting with seeing your doctor father's face for the first time when you're born and proceeding to hop through your 5th, 10th and 18th years respectively. These scenes allow you to get to know characters from your past who might enter the game again later, as well as determining what type of character you will play, through choices you make. But the game proper really begins with the escape from vault 101.
Despite the go-anywhere, do-anything nature of the game there are ways in which the game keeps you on track when you're feeling mission focused. Quests are noted in your Pip-boy (a device worn on the arm which is basically your interface for everything) and selecting a quest will cause your next destination for that quest to be marked on your map and indicated on your compass. Once you've discovered a location, you can fast-travel there on subsequent occasions rather than spending hours trekking across the wastelands again. So back and forth quests aren't made a chore by the size of the world.
You can simply make a beeline for the next objective all the time, but if you don't go off the beaten track you'll miss the thousands of easter eggs and side quests available, and potentially tens of hours of gameplay. The world of Fallout 3 is huge and detailed. There are no unfilled spaces. Stay on the tracks and you'll never find a furry companion to walk beside you, sensing danger and finding all manner of things you might miss, for instance. You have to wander the wasteland to chance upon the scrapyard where he struggles to survive in order to acquire him.
Visuals
In light of the advances evident in games like Far Cry and Assassins Creed, Fallout's external visuals aren't that impressive. But they're impressive, nonetheless. The viewing distance is simply enormous, reinforcing the sense of being in a world, not just a level in a computer game. Unfortunately, my graphics card doesn't fully do the game justice, as greater viewing distances are possible:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot1.jpg
There is a day/night cycle with a continuous change in lighting effects outdoors:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot4.jpg
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot5.jpg
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot3.jpg
Interiors are very busy:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot6.jpg
The sheer scale of the crumbling architecture of Washington DC lends grandeur to many scenes:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot7.jpg
My only criticism is that the theme of the game demands an unremittingly brown and grey colour scheme, with little vegetation. The Gamebryo engine combined with SpeedTree technology is quite capable of lush fields and forests, as seen in Bethesda's Oblivion, but in Fallout its more confined to sparse patches of brown grass.
Quests
Before getting into mechanics and such I have to say the quests in Fallout 3 are a delight. Some previous Fallout fans have pointed out a lot of the humour from the original series is missing but not having played those I don't notice its absence.
What is noticably absent is the enormous number of dumb "fetch-me" quests seen in games like Morrowind. Hardly anything is simple. A simple search for a boy's father rapidly turns into a complicate and unexpected series of adventures and so on. Many quests have optional extras that emerge: "OK you got me home, but can you stay and protect us from the coming raid? Please?".
I get none of the "Jesus, this is just a boring, brainless levelling grind" feeling I often got in the early stages of Morrowind.
World Size
The world of Fallout 3 is only about 15km squared, but for a variety of reasons that's sufficient to feel like a huge "world". For one thing, actually walking 15km takes a very, very long time, especially when you're avoiding or engaging in combat over every rise (its a dangerous wasteland) as well as navigating around large environmental obstacles. Also this doesn't include the vast amount of interior space (interiors are loaded seperately when you enter them).
The Pip-Boy
The Pip-Boy is your interface for everything - inventory, abilities, condition, map, quests and so on. It is strapped to your left arm and you visibly bring your arm up to your face when accessing it, with the background still visible around the edges.
In addition, any and all environmental effects are reflected on the actual skin of the Pip-Boy. So if you've just been flamed by a fire-ant, the metal of your Pip-Boy is glowing when you bring it up. If you're using a Stealth-Boy, which makes your character transparent, the actual Pip-boy is transparent when you bring it up, with only the writing on the screen and light of the buttons visible. This is one of the many small touches that makes Fallout 3 feel so... complete:
http://fallout3.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/pipboy3000b.jpg?w=420&h=248
Character Abilities and Levelling
Fallout 3 follows fairly standard RPG conventions when it comes to base attributes and skills.
Your base attributes are Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. These each influence a range of things in the manner you'd expect. In addition to these there are a host of skills to develop, each of them scalar in nature, so you can continuously improve them. Skills include:
* Small Guns
* Big Guns
* Energy Weapons
* Unarmed
* Melee Weapons
* Explosives
* Medicine
* Sneak
* Lockpick
* Science
* Repair
* Barter
* Speech
Over and above this, Fallout lets you choose a "perk" every time you level. Some perks can increase, like skills, but they are distinct in the sense that perks are unique abilities which you either have or don't have, unlike skills, where an unskilled person can still try using a big gun, for instance. Their chance of hitting is just substantially lower.
Perks add unique and interesting game mechanics to your character. For instance, the "mysterious stranger" perk gives a random chance of a mysterious stranger assisting you in a fight in the wilds, then leaving when the combat is over, the "Fast Learner" perk makes you earn more XP every time you earn XP and the "Lawbringer", only available for good characters, adds a finger to the inventory of every bad guy you kill, which can be traded for a bounty to the head of the newly formed organisation of lawbringers in the wasteland.
Your character's morality also swings to the light or dark side, based on quest actions and just general behaviour, like stealing from non-hostiles and so on. This influences conversation options, which companions you can acquire, perks you can acquire and so on.
Radiation
There's a lot of radiation in the Fallout world, with most bodies of water being radioactive, as well as most food found in the wastes. This in turn, mean that you will inevitably pick up more and more radiation. Too much and you get radiation sickness, which is expensive to heal.
Minigames
The minigames in Fallout 3 are not spectacular, but they're logical and don't feel tacked-on the way they did in Oblivion.
In the lock-picking minigame, you use a screwdriver and (destructable) bobby pins to move the tumblers, in a close simulation of real lockpicking. Failure results in the bobby pin being broken, although you can stop before that happens and try again. You use the screwdriver to attempt to turn the lock to an open position, always turning in a clockwise direction. You try to position the bobby pin so that it pushes the tumbler, moving it clockwise or anticlockwise. If its in the wrong position the bobby pin vibrates more and more until it breaks. Apparently with a force-feedback control you actually feel the bobby-pin vibrating. Your character's lock-picking skill determinely how much fine tuning of the bobby-pin position is required before you get the lock into unlocked position:
http://ui30.gamespot.com/349/fallout3lockpicking_2.jpg
The hacking minigame is a variant of the old Mastermind game. Your character starts by viewing a raw file content dump, recognisable to programmers as a hex editor view. In the file are randomly chosen words all with the same number of letters in them. On each iteration, you select a word and are told how many letters match letters in the actual password, so if I choose "obviously" and it tells me "Obviously: 0/9 correct", I know that none of the letters in. the word "obviously" are in the password. Obviously, the number of words you can choose before you either pick the right one or are locked out is determined by a particular skill (science).
Computer Terminals
Computer terminals may be locked or require hacking. You can also get passwords from quest actions. Some stuff (journal entries etc) can add information and quests to your Pip-Boy. Its also possible to open doors and safes as well as disabling turret systems through computer terminals.
Dialog
Dialog is standard RPG fare, with many dialog options being based on character attributes/abilities (Speech/Barter/Science) as well as quest flags (whether you've done certain things or not).
Stealth
The game's control scheme has a key for toggling crouching, rather than having to hold down a key. This is because crouching automatically puts you in stealth mode and some characters (like mine) might want to move that way for long stretches.
The success of stealth is affected by lighting conditions, encumbrance, equipment and so on. Running in stealth mode is less effective than walking, but the "run silently" character perk eliminates this distinction.
When in stealth mode, your hidden status is displayed at the top of the screen in large coloured letters. If you're completely undetected its "[Hidden]" in green. If you're detected by a non-hostile its "[Detected]". If you've been, say, aurally detected but the hostile has no line of sight, its "[Caution]" in red, and intelligent hostiles start saying things like "You can't hide from me! I can smell your fear!". When they have line of sight it becomes "[Danger]" in red lettering.
In addition, your various perception modifiers influence stealth. This is because hostiles you can hear or see are displayed as red direction markers on your compass, even if you don't have line of sight. High perception means hostiles over the next ridge are more likely to be identified on your compass before you get line of sight.
Pickpocketing someone requires you to creep up to them, undetected, then hit the "use" key (when not in stealth mode, "using" them results in dialog).
Stealth plays a big role in combat, if you use it - see below.
Combat
This is a huge area of improvement over Bethesda's past games, IMHO. I've seen some complain about VATS online but they're a distinct minority. Combat combines real-time and frozen-time gameplay in an intuitive way.
Combat allows three ways of doing damage: Melee, ranged and traps. Various skills affect each type. You can punch someone, hit them with a nail-board, shoot them or just put down mines everywhere then try get them to run over the mines.
Stealth has a big effect on combat. A shot through the head of someone who doesn't know you're there is vastly more likely to be a critical hit, for instance.
Also, in another one of the many, many loving touches that make this such an enjoyable and deep gaming experience, if you successfully sneak up to someone unaware and are close enough to pickpocket, you can use the inventory transfer screen that comes up to drop a frag grenade in someone's pocket, then flee. They will then blow up.
Science and repair skills help further with robots. A sufficiently skilled person can creep up to a hostile robot and power it down.
Similarly, hacking skills (or simply passwords you acquire through questing) can help with turrets, which are usually all controlled in a given area through one computer network. Shades of Deus Ex.
Your Explosives skill helps with mines, allowing you to creep up to them, disarm them and take them before they are able to explode. The "light footed" character perk allows you to walk over traps and mines without ever activating them.
The real-time portion of combat is basically aim and click.
Unlike Bethesda's previous games, the visuals match the reported effects. In Morrowind/Oblivion, you could see an arrow pierce someone only to be told you missed altogether (if your character has low ranged attack ability). In Fallout 3, a miss looks like a miss and a hit like a hit. This is because, while you are in complete control of the crosshair, your firearm hand is another story. Low skill, unsteady hand.
This simple improvement massively improved the game for me. Whereas in their previous games the disconnect between visual and actual effect made it feel like I was rolling dice, combat is far more concrete and real in Fallout 3.
Crouching (stealth mode) also dramatically improves your accuracy and being half hidden behind things decreases your chance of being hit, both facts which many intelligent hostiles take advantage of.
Hits are body-part specific and you can cripple hostiles, often resulting in them falling to the ground, then moving slower when they rise. You can also disable someone's gun-arm, or even shoot their weapon and knock it out of their hands (although intelligent hostiles will run and fetch a gun if they can). This is especially easy to do with the VATS system, a particularly satisfying addition which I will now describe.
VATS is a non-real-time combat system that allows you to plan, then execute a series of precision moves that are then executed in real time, but in rapid succession and with great accuracy. At any point in combat you can freeze time and bring up the VATS targeting system with the VATS key:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot8.jpg
The VATS system will then focus on the closest enemy (you can also select other visible enemies) and give you "to hit" chances on each body and equipment part. You then click a body part to instruct the game to shoot at/throw something at that part, when you leave VATS.
These choices can be queued, allowing you to plan a single shot to one hostile's head, then two to another's, before executing the chain of moves (this combination is especially common for stealth characters, since a first strike from undetected is always critical, but the second character will always be alerted by the first character being hit).
When you exit VATS, the game then executes the sequence of attacks you planned. And this is where VATS is truly satisfying. The game executes the moves (in slow motion) using cinematic camera angles you don't see in ordinary real-time combat. So for a critical strike from stealth, it might focus first on your character from the front, squeezing out the bullet, then follow the bullet, then switch to the enemies head exploding, from behind the enemy. With VATS, combat often feels like you're in an action movie:
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/3/5/screenshot9.jpg
VATS isn't free however. Instead, the number of moves you can plan in VATS mode is based on your current Action Points, which are determined by a host of variables, including basic attributes, perks, skills and stimulants consumed. Action points, like mana in many games, slowly regenerate in real time. Regeneration too is influenced by many variables.
This means that combat is often a combination real-time panic stricken shooting punctuated by executing classy VATS strikes when your action points regenerate. If you're really, really sneaky and the situation permits it, you can hit a perfect balance in some grinds where there's hardly any real-time combat and most kills are one- or two-bullet critical strikes, accompanied by satisfying and spectacular gibs.
The VATS system also allows you to really maximise the benefits of knowing your enemy. Some enemies have heavily armoured heads and its better to try cripple them first than get a headshot. with others, its better to first destroy their low HP weapon, be it gun or natural appendage. This, in turn, means that speaking to friendly characters about hostiles sometimes yields useful knowledge that can be used in combat.
I must be noted that you, too, can become crippled, which is distinct from simply losing XP. Some attacks, like a super-mutant smacking you with a massive hammer (scary) and land-mines are more likely to cause crippling and knock you down. Crippling cannot be healed simply by upping HP (which say, food does). You must use a stim-pack or sleep somewhere.
You're not the only one in the world fighting. Raiders do battle with super-mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel fight pitched battles with the Enclave, super-mutants and raiders and you will often find ordinary citizens defending their settlements against deranged two-headed Brahmin cattle. Often its wise to sit back and let two hostile groups beat the crap out of each other, then move in and pick off the survivors, scavenging mucho supplies with minimal loss of ammo afterwards.
The substantial improvements in enemy AI make a huge impact, too. In Oblivion, you could draw the attention of melee-weapon hostiles, then climb on a difficult piece of terrain that the hostiles can't navigate and just pick them off while they mill stupidly around the base of the rock you're sitting on or the open door obstructing the passage. Even worse, since interior spaces and the outside world load seperately when you go through doors, you could have a troll bashing you right in the entrance to a cave system, then turn around, activate the door and be standing on the other side with no sign of the troll.
Such inadequate-engine dynamics are largely absent in Fallout 3. Hostiles that are stuck on terrain with only remain so for a few seconds before the engine "pops" them into a more mobile position a meter to the left or right. They will figure out complex routes and execute them to get to you if, say, you're at the top of a cliff and they're at the bottom, even if that means moving away from you to find a way up. And they will follow you through doors if you exit an interior, as long as they were aware of you and following you when you executed. Which brings me too
AI
I've described many of the improvements in AI above. There is a qualitative difference between animal-intelligence hostiles and human-intelligence hostiles now. So much so that one can often get more XP for a weakly armoured, low HP raider than a heavily armoured, high HP dumb beast. This is because a group of raiders will fight intelligently, taking cover, trying to flank you, running away when their HP is low or weapon disabled, only to return and pot-shot when their friends have drawn your attention.
There are a lot of little non-hostile AI touches, like the fact that even looking at a shop-keepers cash register in sneak mode might cause them to say "Its locked for a reason!" and bumping them too much results in loud complaints "Watch where you're going!". It feels like people are watching you and responding appropriately.
Furthermore, NPC's have time-based schedules. These were introduced in Oblivion but appear to be tweaked and improved in Fallout 3. Schedules are not hard and fast and sometimes you'll a shopkeeper might arrive to open up shop an hour earlier or later than normal. Also some behaviour appears to be based on random scheduling. A shop keeper may go straight home after work, or stop for a beer at a bar. I occasionaly ran into situation where I had to hunt for someone that I found easily before, in order to close a quest-loop.
If you play a heroic, good character, people in certain regions may grow very fond of you. If you've done a lot of good deeds for people in a particular town, they start randomly accosting you in town and saying things like "All of us here really appreciate everything you've done for us, so we pooled our resources to get you this", then handing you a stimpack, some money or some food. A nice touch which makes some places feel distinctly more welcoming and familiar than others.
Companions
Lastly, you may have companions, and these benefit a great deal from the improved combat AI. Companions can be acquired through quests, bought from slave-owners or hired, under the right circumstances and depending on your morality.
In Bethesda's previous games the AI just wasn't good enough to diminish the feeling of taking care of a big baby in dangerous situations. Your companions were always doing stupid shit and getting you or more often themselves killed, getting stuck in doorways, on landscape and so on. In Fallout, they're usually a massive help. The game imbalances they may introduce are offset by the fact that, should your companions kill hostiles, you don't get the XP.
Inherited from past games is the ability to share inventories with your companions. Give them better armour and they automatically wear it. Give them a better weapon and ammo and they'll use it (if they have enough of the appropriate skill to make its use worthwhile). Prep them with stim-packs and they'll heal themselves when wounded, which is especially useful for ensuring their survival.
They usually copy your sneaking behaviour too. Sneak, and your companion sneaks.
You even have limited control of their AI through dialog options, which appear to be partially distinct for different companions. By way of example I presently have two, a mutant shotgun-wielder and a dog. I can instruct the mutant to stay close or hang back and try to flank enemies, to use a ranged weapon in combat or a melee weapon. The dog, on the other hand, can be asked to find ammo or food/medicine, at which point, if there's any hidden nearby, he will trot off and point to it like a hunting dog.
All companions can be asked to wait in a certain place or come with you. Telling one companion to come with you makes your current companion wait, meaning you can only have one companion accompanying you at a time. There are various tricks to break this however, allowing you two or three companions with you at a time. Furthermore, you get temporary companions (help me get home-style quests) where you can retain companions not intended to be companions simply by never returning to the desired destination, or telling them to wait somewhere else whenever you go there.
Two or three companions can make combat ridiculously easy, but because they get many of the kills you earn XP and level up much, much slower. Also, it takes a lot of playing before you can build up this number.
Companions are also useful for getting around encumbrance problems that would otherwise force you to leave loot behind.
Radio stations
There are two reliable radio stations in the wasteland, which you can activate on your pip boy and will provide a soundtrack during long treks (although they seem to, for obvious reasons, diminish your stealth ability), Enclave Radio and Crazy 3-Dog's show. The enclave are assholes, but 3-dog is the "voice of the people" and when you complete certain late game quests, will even speak of your misdeeds or heroic achievements on his show.
Other temporary or limited radio transmissions can be picked up in specific areas only or under specific conditions only. At one point, for instance, you discover a distress signal transmitted via radio that begins a side quest.
Food, drink and medicine
Food and medicine can both be used to heal you and various medicines can be used to temporarily boost just about anything, from action points to intelligence. They each come with their own drawbacks, however, which add nice game balance effects.
Firstly, about 80% of the food you pick up in the wastelands, and all water, is irradiated, with the number of rads shown in your inventory. As mentioned earlier exposure to radiation means your radioactivity levels increase. Too much and you have to pay long dollars or get some relatively rare medicine to fix it. This creates a nice trade off. In many instances, your health is perilously low and so is your radiation, but low radiation levels are a good thing. So its better to eat now and restore your immediate health, then deal with the effects if radiation sickness later.
Medicine, too, has a downside. There are all manner of stimulants but every one of them is potentially addictive (the exception being stim-packs, which heal wounds and restore HP). Use a particular stimulant too often and you will get addicted, a fact which is immediately announced. Withdrawal effects include episodes of blurry vision and swaying, which happen with increasing frequency as time progresses and can only be prevented with further use of the stimulant or medical help (expensive). The blurry vision and swaying can make combat quite difficult.
Trade
Trade is bog standard RPG fare, with various vendors around the world who will trade with you on better or worse terms based on alignment, friendship (if you've done quests for them) and barter skill. Bethesda have copied popular mods produced for their previous games and also thrown in some travelling traders who move around certain areas of the wastelands. Different traders restock ammo, medicine and money at different rates and have differing amounts of maximum cash.
An interesting twist is that specific people, not necessarily full traders, are looking for specific things that everyone else considers low value. A BoS scribe based in the Arlington library, for instance, will give you a lot of cash for every "pre-war book" you find, while another trader will not only pay extra for "sugar bombs", but uses them to produce a super-stimulant he will sell you, for every x sugerbombs you sell him. So unlocking these people and their specific hobbies is very profitable.
Skill Books
You pick these up as loot and can either sell them (they're worth a lot) or "consume" them by reading them, giving you one extra skill point in the relevant area. A "Comprehension" character perk gives you not one, but two skill points for every skill book consumed.
Nothing is Junk
Bethesda's previous efforts and, indeed, many RPGs, have an enormous amount of junk scattered around the world that only has value as loot you can sell. Spoons, scrap metal and so on.
In Fallout, they've added an interesting twist. Many such items have no intrinsic functionality on their own, but with the right blueprints you can turn them into useful equipment instead of just selling them.
So, for instance, turpentine, abroxo cleaner, a bottle of Nuka-Cola, a bottle of quantum and a tin can gives you a Nuka Grenade.
Constructing stuff requires a workbench, much like the KOTOR games.
Finally...
My Own House!
This was a huge area of modding activity in Bethesda's previous games and Bethesda actually introduced the ability to acquire property in the unmodded game in Oblivion. They seem to have polished it considerably.
I managed to get my own house in the town of Megaton and was surprised to discover it came with a robot butler, who, among other things, will tell you a random joke and give you a hair-cut, allowing you to change hairstyles.
Furthermore, it comes with a special display stand for all the Bobbleheads you may scavenge out in the waste, which are each unique and make for a fun collecting game on the side.
But wait! There's more! By speaking to the trader down the way, you can purchase for your house
- Any one of four house "themes" which will completely redecorate your house (Vault, Pre-War, Love Shack and Science)
- A Nuka-Cola machine, which you unfortunately have to restock yourself. It does, however make them ice-cold and twice as effective.
- A workbench, for assembling stuff
- A chemistry set, for detoxing yourself and brewing new stuff (which takes a day of elapsed time)
- A "juke-box", really a large radio that plays Three Dog's radio show when you switch it on.
Over and above this, owning a home actually creates a play mechanic. If you sleep in your own home you get a "Well rested" stat bonus which lasts for a considerable period of time before wearing off.
Conclusions
There's so much more I could write about, so many little touches which make this game deserving of a perfect 10/10, but this review has taken me 4 hours so far. Suffice to say, its the most well-crafted single-player RPG I have ever played in my life and has remarkable depth. Highly recommended.