With the new Fallout 4 coming, I figured I might add my thoughts of fallout 3
Story: To start the story itself does try very hard to bring you into both the world and the atmosphere. While it involved a lot of the personal aspects of the player, and puts you through much to attach you to that character, it doesn't truly make a coherent or very interesting layout. The diverging threads of the story are very thin, and often artificial, taking away much of your agency. You can often either be good, or evil, though for most of the story you have to align with good to even have the choice of being evil. Most other choices are minimal at best, the greatest still being a black and white decision to destroy a town or not.
Setting: The setting itself is very beautiful, and the game excels in just terms of sheer atmosphere and ambiance. The colors may be muted, but there is enough flare at times to keep it interesting. However the characters that fill this setting are often bland, or cliched. While most would say they fit the setting, other fallout games have shown that filling your world with both the comical and realistic is important. No one character feels invested both into the setting, or into by the creators, they lack any sense of being organic. Ironically, one of my favorite characters was Moira Brown. In a world of exaggerated characters she was the only one I felt that was always meant to be that way. Additionally as I said earlier, the main factions often are exasperated by Black and White moralities. The Enclave want to kill everyone, and the Bo S are the shining knights. Neither side truly shows any shade of grey, or any are rather glossed over.
Mechanics: Mechanically the game is rather sound. Most skills are useful in some way. However the fault comes when it comes to equipment and perks. Equipment is rather limited, and what there is there aren't many high end choices still. There are few end game weapons to choose from and few styles of playing. VATS is as well heavily overpowered, reducing damage by 85% and potentially lasting infinitely. As well most perks are simple skill increasing and effect very little of the game.
In all, it has a lot of faults that many should look over when looking into Fallout 4 and seeing what they changed. Many aspects have been removed, but what they've kept they haven't proven themselves with before.
Fallout 3: Interesting Ideas that tend to Fallout
With the new Fallout 4 coming, I figured I might add my thoughts of fallout 3
Story: To start the story itself does try very hard to bring you into both the world and the atmosphere. While it involved a lot of the personal aspects of the player, and puts you through much to attach you to that character, it doesn't truly make a coherent or very interesting layout. The diverging threads of the story are very thin, and often artificial, taking away much of your agency. You can often either be good, or evil, though for most of the story you have to align with good to even have the choice of being evil. Most other choices are minimal at best, the greatest still being a black and white decision to destroy a town or not.
Setting: The setting itself is very beautiful, and the game excels in just terms of sheer atmosphere and ambiance. The colors may be muted, but there is enough flare at times to keep it interesting. However the characters that fill this setting are often bland, or cliched. While most would say they fit the setting, other fallout games have shown that filling your world with both the comical and realistic is important. No one character feels invested both into the setting, or into by the creators, they lack any sense of being organic. Ironically, one of my favorite characters was Moira Brown. In a world of exaggerated characters she was the only one I felt that was always meant to be that way. Additionally as I said earlier, the main factions often are exasperated by Black and White moralities. The Enclave want to kill everyone, and the Bo S are the shining knights. Neither side truly shows any shade of grey, or any are rather glossed over.
Mechanics: Mechanically the game is rather sound. Most skills are useful in some way. However the fault comes when it comes to equipment and perks. Equipment is rather limited, and what there is there aren't many high end choices still. There are few end game weapons to choose from and few styles of playing. VATS is as well heavily overpowered, reducing damage by 85% and potentially lasting infinitely. As well most perks are simple skill increasing and effect very little of the game.
In all, it has a lot of faults that many should look over when looking into Fallout 4 and seeing what they changed. Many aspects have been removed, but what they've kept they haven't proven themselves with before.