A flawed gem, unrealized potential.
Graphics and visuals
First impressions last, and my first impressions were "Wow!" Great overall visual appearance and art direction and design left me staring, open-mouthed or grinning. Clever use of 1950's American iconography and the detailed, blasted landscapes and cityscapes and an immersive sound track creates a unique, brooding atmosphere capturing the post-nuclear apocalypse feel like never before. Unfortunately the environment develops a sense of sameness after a short while, especially in the interiors of buildings as set pieces are re-used to create the world of Fallout 3…the human mind is very good at recognizing patterns and this is something game designers need to keep in mind and work hard at overcoming. Simply creating detailed, realistic set pieces is not enough if those set pieces are not used imaginatively or are used too often. Textures are great but lose detail close-up, something that bothered me as it interfered with my suspension of disbelief. Weapon effects were satisfying if not special in any way, although the explosions, while impressive, seemed a bit out-of context as if it had been imported from a 90's game. Design of the weapons, gear and apparel is great, again a mix of Mad Max meets Buck Rogers with a twist of the contemporary.
Storyline
The main storyline was really much too short, strangely ironic in a game this size. Without delving into the many side-quests it can be finished in less than 20 hours, more like less than 15. For those who like to "beat the game" (a ridiculous attitude to have when playing an RPG) it's a wake-up call, for the rest of us…it's disappointing. The game ends at this point and if you want to continue playing it means having to find a savegame from earlier in the story and go from there. Really, it's better to actually avoid the main storyline for as long as possible so as to enjoy exploring the world because as soon as you allow the main storyline to suck you in, it's over before you expect it. Quality of story is good, nothing special, nothing we haven't all seen somewhere else before…except for the end, which is dismally disappointing. Again, as in so many other RPG's, we are faced with consequences to our actions that don't match our character's beliefs or previous behaviour because the story writers assume too much or are simply not capable of tying things up to create a decent ending. The ending to a story is perhaps its most important part and time and again writers screw it up, and Fallout 3 is no exception.
Although most roleplaying options are cleverly balanced to allow for your actions, be they good, evil or neutral, the writing often seems clunky or unrealistic, even sterile, with NPC's greeting you with withering contempt one moment and neutrality or even friendliness the next. Nothing seems to give these NPC's pause for thought when it comes to dealing with your character apart from the pre-programmed hogwash that often spills from their mouths…even if your character is kitted out in full Brotherhood or Enclave power armour and hi-tech energy weapons and looks like he or she could take on an army and win! Nothing disrupts a player's suspension of disbelief as much as this, except perhaps for an NPC commenting on your character's appearance or recognizing the character when, again, the character is encased in full power armour and is unrecognizable! Doing quests for NPC's can improve your allegiances with them and result in better treatment and privileges, but even then it's not uncommon to find the people you did great deeds for spitting and snarling insults at you, NPC personality aside. This is very annoying and, as I've said before, it disrupts immersion in the game. If Bethesda thinks it's funny they should check their humour in at the counter and learn more about basic human interactions and what players want. I, for one, do not enjoy being needlessly insulted in a game by uncaring NPC's with superiority complexes…if I did I'd go play WoW.
Worse are the ridiculous choices a player is often faced with whilst conversing with an NPC, seemingly unrelated to the topic and/or childish and immature in nature, at odds with the dark feel of the game and expletives often used by NPC's. This breakdown in conversation and subsequent loss of immersion in the game had me shaking my head or banging it against the Fallout 3 retail box on many occasions.
Side-quests run the gamut from boring to clever to interesting and are decent overall. The main problem I had was finding reason enough to do them, and stopped caring or being able to want to do them as they mostly followed the usual "Go kill that, now fetch this, now bring it to me etc" format and I didn't feel I was accomplishing anything worthwhile other than improving my character. NPC's are mostly shallow or annoying so it's hard to feel enough for someone who's insulted you several times during a conversation that you'd put your character's life on the line and do a quest for them.
Gameplay
The inventive character creation system immerses one in the game from the beginning, which is just as well because the game designers have a habit of creating all sorts of situations that pull you out that immersion. That said, almost none of this comes into play during the game: your character is never referred to by name, and because it's a First Person/Third Person Shooter hybrid, you never get to see the face you spent so much time on during character creation unless you deliberately go out of those modes and swing the camera around, something you'd not want to do as you can't control the character from that perspective. Animations sometimes leave a lot to be desired, with creatures galumphing inelegantly across the landscape or simply skating without moving their legs at all, again disrupting one's immersion in the game. Collision scripts are too sensitive, resulting in small nudges to inanimate objects or corpses often flinging them a dozen meters away or otherwise resulting in obviously strange behaviour. Walk and run speed is way too slow and jump height is a joke…your character feels like it's struggling through syrup and lacking in basic movement ability. Luckily, there are codes available which allow you to modify movement and jump height to something that approaches what a tough warrior of the Wasteland should be capable of, should you so wish! I strongly recommend this.
The VATS combat system, which allows you to freeze time and pick various body parts to shoot at with varying degrees of difficulty, followed by a dramatic cinematic sequence showing you the result of your choices truly is fun to use. However, outside of VATS, it seems foes routinely see you long before you (the player) sees them and from long distances too. Even using the Sneak ability doesn't help much unless using the PAINFULLY slow non-"run" method of stalking them, and then you'd better be ready for some hand-to-hand combat as sneak attacks don't always incapacitate quickly enough except at higher levels.
Weapons and gear degrade over time and need to be repaired but this process is exaggerated and thus happens too quickly for them to really be useful, meaning the full capability of a weapon or piece of armour is almost never fully realized, a pity indeed. Weapons are also simple in nature with none of the ability to choose firing modes available in standard FPS, something missing in Fallout 3, I believe, where ammunition is permanently scarce. Diagrams to make one's own weapons are available but again, the desire to do so is not as the game supplies plenty of decent standard weapons.
The game is buggy and resulted in BSOD often, usually when about to enter VATS. This seems to have been a common enough problem with other players, something not fixed by patches with any degree of satisfaction.
Sounds and music are good, no criticism here except to say nothing truly original.
In conclusion, Fallout 3 is a very worthwhile and enjoyable game that is tainted by oversights on the part of Bethesda, oversights that we've seen in other game companies over the decades and which are no longer acceptable.