A great sandbox,post apocalyptic world RPG.
The story for Fallout 3 is set in the year 2277,which is 200 years after a nuclear war between the United States and China.Since right before the war between the United States and China happened,generations of people have lived in deep underground vaults beneath the Earth's surface because they're afraid of the radiation above and they don't know if the war's still going on or what's happening on the the surface so understandibly,generation after generation of people have spent their whole lives living in these underground vaults.
The story does a good job to show you a quick glimpse of what life is like for people who live in the vault because it shows glimpses of your character's childhood and the types of experiences they had(which I don't want to spoil)and it helped me empathize with my character because I saw how my character was restricted to living in a very confined space and how they had to deal with people who were mean to my character and my character didn't have the option of getting far away from those people.It also shows how the vault has it's own social groups,doctors,scientists etc.
When your character becomes an adult,his/her father leaves the vault(which is not allowed)and your character has to find a way to escape the vault and search for their father and keep in mind they have no idea what the surface of the world would be like.
When your character makes it to the surface of the world,they will be in a world full of radioactive land,bandits,violence,poverty etc.And your character has to search for clues to where their father is and as to why their father left the vault.
The story starts off promising but after a while you'll see the story really isn't that great because after discovering why your father left the vault,you'll see the story copies many ideas from previous Fallout games which might have been good ideas for their time but now they're recycled and the story is too similar to Fallout 1 and 2 for my liking except replace Russia with China as the country who the United States fought the nuclear war against.If you're new to the Fallout series,this probably won't bother you though.
You'll create the character who you'll play as and you can choose their gender.
The battle system uses what's called the VATSystem.It's somewhat like a turn-based system where your character can freeze time and target a specific part of an enemy's body.The catch is they'll require AP to use the VATS which they acquire from simply walking around during battle.You can do combat purely as a FPS/TPS if you want but it's not recommended.Also,when you use the VATS,they're still no guarantee you'll hit the body part of the enemy you're shooting at because you'll see the probability % of your gunshots shot hitting the enemy.Logically,you'll want to aim for the head of an enemy when you use the VATS but sometimes the probability % of your gunshot hitting their head will be low because you might be a distance away from your enemy or they will be on higher ground and you don't always want to get close to your enemies before you try to shoot them because they'll be shooting at you too.So sometimes it might be better to aim for your enemy's leg when using the VATS and you can blow their leg off.You can also blow their arm off or head off.
However,I hate how guns and armor wear out so quickly.Also,because powerful weapons such as shotgun,rocket launcher,plasma gun,lazer gun etc. are rare and ammo for them is hard to find and because they wear out quickly you'll often need to use pistols or a hunting rifle to kill enemies and it doesn't feel right to constantly use a pistol or hunting rifle a majority of the time in such a dangerous world.
The enemies will randomly attack you when you're travelling between towns and they can be bandits,mutant people or mutant animals.Sometimes townsfolk will try to kill you if you make them mad and as you would expect some of the enemies are bad guys you'll face during quests.
The different ways you can interact with NPCs include being able to talk to them and ask them questions and listen to various stories they have to tell you or they might have clues as to where your father is.You can also kill NPCs and each NPC is like a citizen of a town and it's possible to kill every NPC in a town.The NPCs walk around just like normal people.You can steal the housekey of an NPC you kill and you can use it to enter their home and you can steal their possesions or you can enter their house while they're home.You can hire the servives of a prostitute if you wish.Some NPCs are for some reason have been exiled from the town they used to live in and you'll see how they're starving or are desperate for uncontaminated drinking water.
Like in most RPGs,you can level up and when you level up you can assign points to certain skills that will make you better in combat or that will make you more skillful at picking locks on doors etc.
You can choose to be a good or evil character.For example,you can do sidequests that involve helping people or you can nuke a town if you wish and like I said before you can kill anyone you want for fun and steal.
However,it's hard to find where you need to go next before the world is so big.Also,the layouts of the environments are annoying or convoluted.For example,I will spend a lot of time walking to a place and realize the route I'm trying to take is blocked off and I'll have to try a different route.The subway's layout has so many different sections you can travel too and it's confusing and unrealistic.
However,the game is very addictive because the world is so big and has so much to explore.I like how I can travel through the world for long periods of time and not see any other people but I can look at the city ruins or at the ruins of overpass road bridges(you can even walk across them)and you can walk through sections of dead forest(which might be dead due to radiation or some other cause)and you'll see water ponds that are contaminated from radiation and that will have green radioative sludge in them and I like how you'll see how vegetation has overgrown some of the city environments and you can walk across hills and see breath taking views of other hills,grassy areas or city ruins in the background.
I like how the game uses music because it uses classical style music and you'll hear it on your radio and you'll hear radio station announcers talking and it stops you feeling alone.
Overall,I think the game is a great sandbox game and it has some good RPG features but the gameplay can be frustrating too and it's story recycles too many ideas from previous Fallout games.