The breakthrough in RPG games. Game that changed the way people look at game industry. A must play!
You may have heard that only the roaches (and maybe Cher and Chuck Norris) will survive the nuclear (or as some call it "nucular") war. Well people, scorpions, rats, cows, dogs and some other creatures also made it, but only people and dogs are still being seen in mint not mutated condition. Roaches haven't been seen though (weird).
All over the world there were vaults built to help survive some amount of people and repopulate world once again. Well, you are one of those lucky survivors of the great war. It's 2161 and water-chip broke down. The overseer of your Vault sends you on a mission of finding new one or else the Vault will die. This is where all the fun begins. From now on you will be traveling through wastelands trying to find and bring back new water-chip.
At the beginning you can choose one of the three pre-made characters, modify them or create a new one. This is really important part, not like in other games, it's really crucial what choices you will make and they will influence the whole game. You can create a diplomat skilled in speech, steal and lockpicks or gamble with high intelligence, charisma and luck and still finish the game avoiding killing anyone yourself. If you decide to build a brute skilled in an unarmed and melee combat and teach everyone a lesson the hard way, then be my guest. Whether evil, good ,strong, weak, man or woman, the game is going to end different for you each time. The game is filled with many quests and there is usually more then one way of finishing each one. There is one major quest line, that is needed to finish the game and a lot of side quests, that give this game real flavor. Behind each place there is interesting story. When you wander around you get to collect pieces of information written on holodiscs or talking to people that give you very in-depth information about the great war and life of people on the wastelands afterwards. When you encounter people for the second time with different hero, more intelligent with high speech, you notice the different how people react, their dialogs change, some dialog options and missions become active depending on initial choices during character's creation and game's choices you made until now.
Graphics is impressive. Although game is mostly sand from the visual point of view, we get to talk with animated heads and visit some nice places. For instance fancy Cathedral or the hole in the ground called The Glow. We visit many places, mostly settlements, towns and other vaults. We get whole variety of guns, weapons, armors, drinks, drugs, food, ammunition and stuff (did I forget something?) to play with during the game and make evil doers die in very impressive ways. Hmm, we get knives, pistols, rifles (one you can upgrade), granades, armors (also upgradeable), fruits, meat, alcohol, drugs that make you smart, strong, almost invincible (yes! psycho!) or just high. All looks really great and you can get addicted too. The in-game view is isometric and somehow you feel it should always have been like this. We get to fight in turn based combat, frankly it's even more satisfying than in UFO.
The sound is also on a high level. I mentioned the intro theme, which keeps me wake at night. The ingame sounds are so natural, that makes them pleasantly unnoticeable. You can hear the wind gently teasing the sand and spreading radiation. The sound of gun shots and explosions is fantastic. When you shoot the Desert Eagle you feel as if you had one in your hands and blowing mutant's head of! We get also to hear speech of some of the more important NPC's of the game. Voices are convincing and well chosen.
Great story, many options, fine graphics, good sound and non-linear fun is not everything this game has to offer. The small things. You can finish game not even noticing them (but that makes you a bad person) and still enjoy game. The thing is that it takes some effort to realize the genius of the creators. You get to find many similarities to many films. Some stories like one behind dogmeat refer to Mad Max for example, not mentioning some special encounters. In conclusion game is really well made and worth your time. It made me love rpg games, so in the worst case you should at least find this game interesting, and if you find solving quests entertaining and good story matters for you the most, you will love this game.