{"id":269,"date":"2009-04-20T14:26:07","date_gmt":"2009-04-20T04:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/?p=269"},"modified":"2009-04-20T14:26:07","modified_gmt":"2009-04-20T04:26:07","slug":"falling-out-not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/2009\/04\/falling-out-not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper\/","title":{"rendered":"Falling out not with a bang, but a whimper"},"content":{"rendered":"

A long time ago, I declared Fallout 3<\/em> to be little more than “Oblivion<\/em> with guns<\/a>” and set off to play said fantasy game and its expansion. Naturally, my short attention span got the better of me. I created a new character for Oblivion<\/em>, spent a few days levelling him and finishing the Mages Guild quest path, and went to explore the Shivering Isles<\/em> expansion. Too bad that this was exactly the moment when I got bored with the game.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I had been watching Flip<\/a> play Fallout 3<\/em> and decided that it looked like fun. We had also been talking with nobody<\/a>, who had already finished it once and had some good things to say about the versatility of the character build system. So, I resolved to dig in and give it a try. Flip generally plays a good character, so I went for agent of chaos (which in too many CRPGs is equivalent to destruction) and found a build online which would allow me access to pretty much all the skills fairly quickly.<\/p>\n

In the fast moving world of game critique, a lot has already been said about Fallout 3<\/em>. I know I’m several months behind the ball, but I’m happy to not be bleeding edge, and pitch you my own observations.<\/p>\n

One principle complaint about the game is that the main quest is too short. I agree that it’s over pretty quickly, but that’s okay because there’s plenty to do. It follows in the Elder Scrolls<\/em> template of activity all over the map. My complaint about the main quest is that it’s boring. I had the same problem with Oblivion<\/em> (though to a lesser degree). For an earth shattering chain of events, I never felt invested in it, and the characters associated with the main quest demanded much without showing any concern for my own needs.<\/p>\n

Quite early on in my experience, I said “fuck that for a laugh”, picked a random spot on my map and walked there. I would deviate from the path if I saw an interesting geographical or artificial feature. Usually, I was rewarded with an encounter that was far more engaging than the main quest. Oblivion<\/em> took this another step further, however, by connecting more people to each other. There’s never a dull moment in Cyrodil, since a quest from one character will often require you to interact with another character who will point you at another unrelated quest. Still, whenever nothing suited me in the Capital Wasteland, I could always go exploring, and eventually find something new to do.<\/p>\n

The gameplay is pretty standard for a Bethesda effort, but that’s not a bad thing. While first-person never made a lot of sense to me in the Elder Scrolls<\/em> games (it’s my tabletop roleplaying background — that’s all turn-based), it works really well when you put a gun in the character’s hands. In fact, I used my FPS skills to great effect in my early days with the game. Eventually, though, the VATS method shines through as a pretty good way to automatically take out most enemies.<\/p>\n

VATS is a good nod to the game’s predecessors. I found it to be invaluable at later stages, particularly with a number of enemies requiring tactics that mandated critical hits to one body part or another. While I never got into the previous Fallout<\/em> games, I understand the appeal of turn-based gaming, and found VATS to be a good compromise between that and Bethesda’s first-person pedigree.<\/p>\n

I also liked the visual theming of the game. It’s hard to pick just one thing about it, but I found the game to be quite immersive and overall very consistent. While sifting through ruined buildings for bits of junk was often tedious, I didn’t really resent it as I felt very much a part of the world.<\/p>\n

All in all, a pretty good game that I would recommend playing, though I suggest you leave off the main quest as long as possible. There’s plenty of other cool stuff to do that is far more challenging than the final boss and cutscene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A long time ago, I declared Fallout 3 to be little more than “Oblivion with guns” and set off to play said fantasy game and its expansion. Naturally, my short attention span got the better of me. I created a new character for Oblivion, spent a few days levelling him and finishing the Mages Guild […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[178,101,180,13],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p149Qe-4l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}