Fallout 3 - Official Thread

[Wroth]

I think that would have ruined the unpredictability, made it too much like another job and less like your own personal exploration and discoveries.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

Vault 106 stuff :

You get some info on what happened to the different vaults in the BoS computer where you get the initial locations for the places. Basically, all of the other vaults were part of various experiments. In Vault 106, drugs were released through the air vents shortly after the door was sealed to test how this would affect the inhabitants... Pretty nasty of Vault-Tec, you might think.

Yes, I know that, I read all that stuff on the terminal. What I meant was rewards/quests/stuff to do there. Now I went in, explored it and went back out without anything substantial apart from regular looting. And the cool

purple flashback bits

of course.

[amnesiac_3]

More games should implement the Zelda Phantom Hourglass feature of letting you scrawl hand-written notes on your in-game map.

Adding your own voice notes using the headset could have been a great extra feature for Fallout 3.

[Quest]

I'm gonna go back to this tomorrow, but I'm not sure I can cope with listening to the same music over and over again, so I'm making a playlist.

This has to go on it.

[Ktw]

Yes, I know that, I read all that stuff on the terminal. What I meant was rewards/quests/stuff to do there. Now I went in, explored it and went back out without anything substantial apart from regular looting. And the cool

purple flashback bits

of course.

There aren't any quests to be had from any of the Vaults. 87 and 112 IIRC are related to the main quest, but the others are just there for you to explore. There's also a bobblehead to be found in most of them. And in 92, I think, you find the violin for Agatha.

Personally, I like the fact that there are so many places that aren't directly linked to quests. They still provide fun exploration and had Bethesda done quests related to all places in the game, we probably wouldn't have gotten even half as many.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

True, and it was fun. I just thought I might have missed something. It seems I didn't.

[2-hydroxybenzoic acid boy]

This game like Oblivion will mean nothing else will get played for some time. Is there a way to see how long I have been playing from the Pip Boy? I can't find it in there at all.

It should say how many hours you have been playing when you save/load a game I think

[Vulgar Monkey]

Right.

Finished up the GnR antenna quest, and headed back to the 'ton.

I was overloaded with 300kg worth of junk since entering the tech museum....slowed me to a crawl, but I like to move slow anyway. Perhaps this overdid it a bit, but at least the goods paid for fresh ammo and gear for the house. Oddly, though, I only had the Explorer theme available when I looked, tho it's the one I was after anyway.

Where did the others go? Are they karma-centric?

Did the mirelurk quest for moira....my recon armour probably needs a wash afterwards though.

Currently en route to robco, donned in my shady reward hat for the previous quest, and a tidy-looking plaid shirt+jeans combo.

My character looks very Indiana Jones.

The protection is light, but it affords me some good mobility.

Having just hit lvl10, I notice the next 'wave' of random enemies appearing.....I've been dodging quite a few robobrains. Easy to snipe from range, or I can just use rock cover to get around behind/above them, then buckshot their brains. Easy.

I have, however, finally met the yao-guia.

Fuuuck.

I say 'met'......the first time I turned around just in time to see one rear up and swipe my face off.

The second time I saw him before he saw me, but he caught my scent as I was lining upm a shot.

The fucker cleared a couple hundred yards in a second, pounced on me, and killed me instantly. Three shots to the face from my hunting rifle didn't slow his charge, just pissed him off.

Panic? I nearly shat.

The real kicker is that I passed a tooled-up Outcast patrol along the road literally moments before.

Ignorant tossers.

[Wroth]

Yes, I know that, I read all that stuff on the terminal. What I meant was rewards/quests/stuff to do there. Now I went in, explored it and went back out without anything substantial apart from regular looting. And the cool

purple flashback bits

of course.

It seems it's an homage to the Fallout Bible, as it's lifted directly from there, with its history kept intact.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_106

[Spacehost]

I have, however, finally met the yao-guia.

Fuuuck.

I say 'met'......the first time I turned around just in time to see one rear up and swipe my face off.

The second time I saw him before he saw me, but he caught my scent as I was lining upm a shot.

The fucker cleared a couple hundred yards in a second, pounced on me, and killed me instantly. Three shots to the face from my hunting rifle didn't slow his charge, just pissed him off.

Panic? I nearly shat.

I met my first sat patiently outside a subway tunnel, luckily it had been domesticated. The SECOND however came bounding out towards me like a black nightmare from the darkness as I trudged back to 'Ton and it took a good dozen magnum rounds to nail it. Shat m'self? I nearly prolapsed.

They need to make a Fallout MMO. I need it. I want to sit in a canteen in a little settlement with you guys discussing our wanderings and bartering over gear while we play cards.

[Vaya.]

The deathclaws are so, so much worse. I still hate them at lvl 17.

[2-hydroxybenzoic acid boy]

Whenever I see a Death Claw I run as fast as I can behind

Fawkes

and let them deal with it.

I first got attacked by a domesticated yao-guia thingy.

I was being chased by some raiders when a guy and his bear run out of nowhere and fuck them all up. I turn around and acting too quickly not thinking too clearly out of shock at seeing a massive bear like thing attempted to go into VATs on it to see if it was good.

Unfortunately I pressed the wrong button, shot at it, and got ripped to shreds within seconds!

I decided to get Animal Friend after that the next time I levelled-up

[Spacehost]

Yeah, I Animal Friended myself too. I'm going to level it up as well, for the lulz. I'd like to see a Talon Company merc take me on when a gwai is with me.

[CS2x]

If you try leaving this game alone for a while, and then go back to you, you notice just how beautifully realized its world is. I've been doing final year essays and playing lots of DS for "short" breaks in between. I came back to Fallout3, expecting it to just be very good (some of the niggles - animation, pathfinding, occasionally dodgy script - were bothering me while I was on it obsessively)... but it was more than very good; it was amazing. It is wonderful to fall in love with it afresh.

[Gorf King]

The ending really is rubbish, isn't it? (Or at least, the two variants I just tried were.)

It's a good job everything leading up to it is so great, but given the evident amount of attention paid to the rest of the game it's a bit of an anticlimax. Perhaps it's an inevitable one, though, as this has to be the game of the year, and the game of this gen for me bar SMG.

I'm looking forward to reloading that last game save for the seven (!) bobbleheads I missed and the remaining behemoths. Oh, and the DLC is a must, all of it, like the last scrapings of a crack pipe, whatever the cost and however short-lived the experience. If only they could have concluded the epic quest with an epic ending, in the vein of Ocarina - obviously, not with Ganon popping up and a big swordfight at the bottom of a crumbled tower, but with something ... you know, equally satisfying. Because this deserves something as epic, draining, and celebratory. Not just a

piss poor cut scene made out of some hokey stills after a Khan ripoff ending (which didn't even make sense to me, I fear, in terms of what was happening in the game itself). It almost felt tacked on, either because something better is to come that'll make it a cliffhanger in retrospect, or because they simply ran out of time (my money's on a bit of both)

.

So, whinge, whinge, whinge. Yet it's the most memorable game I've played in years, bar the cold water poured on my enthusiasm right at the close instead of the congratulatory champagne / commiseratory hemlock I was hoping for. Perhaps DLC #3 will make it all come right, though.

(And if it does, I extend my condolences to those playing on PS3.)

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

Amen

What did Edge give it again? Tossers.

[Joyrex-J9]

Well said Astilius, you've summed it up perfectly.

The other day I found myself moving a couple of skeletons off a bed so I could sleep in it, I COULD have slept in it without moving them - I mean the game mechanics didn't care, but it just felt wrong. I even found myself respectfully propping them up in another room.

I found the whole experience strangely unsettling.

This game really gets to you.

[Joyrex-J9]

I'm gonna go back to this tomorrow, but I'm not sure I can cope with listening to the same music over and over again, so I'm making a playlist.

This has to go on it.

Ahh that reminds me I need to do the same.

I was listening to F#A#∞ by Godspeed You Black Emperor! this week and thinking it'd be perfect for Fallout

[Kelthink]

I've just read about 'the point of no return' (

basically after you've done the Project Purity mission with your dad

) - what does this entail? No more sidequests or something?

[des]

The deathclaws are so, so much worse. I still hate them at lvl 17.

They're fine once you've got the dart gun. Having said that, I was squandering mini nukes to protect myself the first time I came across that small town full of them.

[Ste Pickford]

I got a schematic last night that needs a deathclaw hand (or claw or something), but I don't think I've run across one in the game yet.

[Wroth]

Right.

Finished up the GnR antenna quest, and headed back to the 'ton.

I was overloaded with 300kg worth of junk since entering the tech museum....slowed me to a crawl, but I like to move slow anyway. Perhaps this overdid it a bit, but at least the goods paid for fresh ammo and gear for the house. Oddly, though, I only had the Explorer theme available when I looked, tho it's the one I was after anyway.

Where did the others go? Are they karma-centric?

There's only one theme in the shop at a time, to stop you from buying two at once. To change the theme, talk to Moira about them, choose one, then trade with her and you'll see it. Personally I prefer the science theme, but that's just because my character is a massive speccy nerd.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

I got a schematic last night that needs a deathclaw hand (or claw or something), but I don't think I've run across one in the game yet.

I found one on the Behemoth corpse outside GNR, but I'm not sure if that's random loot.

[ZOK]

I'm considering getting into Fallout 3, now that Far Cry 2 has left a massive hole in my gaming life. The thing is, after sinking so much time into FC2, I'm a bit frightened of taking on another behemoth, which this seems to be.

EDIT: How odd! Nap hadn't posted when I was writing that, maybe I'm being subconsciously influenced by the game already...

[Joyrex-J9]

I've finished the Blood Ties quest.

Thanks guys for the encouragement earlier in the thread, it was a much bigger quest than I was expecting - with quite a few unexpected parts.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

It's fucking huge, especially if you decide to not just blindly follow the main story but go out exploring, doing sidequests and the like.

It never feels like a chore though, one of the things I like is that most quests are divided in relatively short chapters so it's perfectly possible to play them in bitesized chunks without getting overwhelmed with tasks. You can easily pick this game up for just an hour and do something. Usually this one hour will turn into 4 hours anyway, but that can only be a good thing.

[Ste Pickford]

One of the things I'm really enjoying about this game (which echos astillius' excellent post above), is the freedom choose what to do. I didn't try to push on with the main quest at the very beginning, and as a consequence I've always had about 4 or 5 active quests on the go.

Every time I start the game I look at the quest list to see if I fancy doing the next stage in any of them, or maybe decide to do a bit of exploring. There always seems to be a choice of four or five different things I can do next. Exploring itself brings it's own adventures, and I've got a list of places I want to return to on the map.

Even some of my favourite adventure type games, like the best of the Zelda series, have always had moments where there was nothing left to do but push on with the main quest, or get past that difficult dungeon. So far with this game I've always felt like I had a choice of what to do next, all of which would advance the story, or my character, or bring progress in one way or another.

[Steven]

One of the things I'm really enjoying about this game (which echos astillius' excellent post above), is the freedom choose what to do. I didn't try to push on with the main quest at the very beginning, and as a consequence I've always had about 4 or 5 active quests on the go.

Every time I start the game I look at the quest list to see if I fancy doing the next stage in any of them, or maybe decide to do a bit of exploring. There always seems to be a choice of four or five different things I can do next. Exploring itself brings it's own adventures, and I've got a list of places I want to return to on the map.

Even some of my favourite adventure type games, like the best of the Zelda series, have always had moments where there was nothing left to do but push on with the main quest, or get past that difficult dungeon. So far with this game I've always felt like I had a choice of what to do next, all of which would advance the story, or my character, or bring progress in one way or another.

I think if one word sums this game up, it's adventure. The most adventurey game ever - it's yours to discover and make your own. It even has its own fully-playable text adventure in it!

[Ste Pickford]

It even has its own fully-playable text adventure in it!

What?!? Where's that?

One of the first things that struck me about the game, when I got to Megaton, was that it felt more like an old school text adventure than an RPG.

[des]

I got a schematic last night that needs a deathclaw hand (or claw or something), but I don't think I've run across one in the game yet.

At the top of the map there's a town called Old Olney. It's visible as a big rectangle. I'd highly recommend going there and getting the shit scared out of you. I've rarely felt so tense and nervous in a game.