How much choice does Fallout 3 REALLY allow for?

[Azaraxzealot]

im about to buy it, and i want to know if i can basically craft my own story with this game, as follows:
i want to be a sadistic vigilante who takes pleasure in shooting individuals and asking questions later, and i want to do this all without haveing to worry about being caught by the law.
because one thing i HATED HATED HATED about Oblivion was the fact that for a game touted with "choice" i couldnt so much as brush up against someone without a guard going "HEY! YOU BROKE THE LAW! YOU'RE GOING TO JAIL!:and then the guards were do powerful that i really had no choice in the matter as to whether or not i wanted to commit crimes.
i hated that game so much because of its overpowered and unjust law enforcement that i couldnt take on evenly (really, GTA and Saints Row have an easier time at making me feel like i want to feel in a virtual world)
anyways, CAN i do this? will i be allowed to be a dispenser of brutal justice with nary any consequences besides bad karma?

EDIT: I'm not trying to be Jack the Ripper, I'm trying to be the Punisher
EDIT2: I have only an xbox 360 and a laptop, so i cant do PC gaming. yeah. i've heard of STALKER, but no, i dont have a PC

 

[Jack and Calumon]

-Snip-

Massively opinionated much? You're trying to sell this to me as a fact, but I know my lobsters and you're selling a crab. This is not fact, but opinion. Could you change it so you're saying this is your opinion? Alot of people like it.

OT: You can do what you want from as soon as you learn the skills to do so. Learnt combat? Beat up everyone. Of course, make sure you got the fire-power to make these kind of decisions first. Some guy in Rivet City has a tendency to pick up a Nuke Launching Big Ass Gun called a Fatman, so getting decent weapons is kinda a must before you go out on a killing spree. Shouldn't take too long though. Just get some Good Armour by Scouring the wastes and steal from every enemy you see.

Calumon: Is being nice so hard? : (

 

[rockyoumonkeys]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

I will counter/cancel out this post by saying that Fallout 3 is my favorite game of all time. Ever.

As for choice...how much do you really need? There's a main plotline, and you're given a few ways to proceed along that line, but in the end you still need to go from point A to point B, as is the case with every game ever made. There's a ton of optional quests you do or not. There's a ton of open space to explore, and it's a very long game.

 

[benderinTime]

The game has a few endings, but, no, there isn't a TON of free choice.
There are optional quests, and a large area to explore, but the exploration, in my opinion, gets boring after a while, and, in terms of pure game quality, I disliked it immensely. There was no immersion because I had to save every 5 minutes just to make sure I didn't encounter a bug that forced me back a few hours.
You can kill anyone you want and such, but it only goes so far, especially since killing everyone can take away a lot of optional quests leaving the main storyline as the only thing left.

 

[Woodsey]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

Two things (that I managed to read before my exploded from the ridiculousness of that picture, and I only thought FO3 was a standard 'good'):

- How can you complain about the quality of voice acting in a game and then cite Deus Ex (where all they've done is say Deus Ex has more voice actors) of all things?

- It's not a first person shooter, so there's no point having a section saying it's a terrible one.

 

[Me55enger]

kill the wrong folk and you'll be unable to finish the game in respects to one of the prescripted endings.

but... you can blow up a town of innocent folk, complete with adorable children and a surprisingly uncharismatic Irishman inside the first hour of play.

and who doesn't want to see that?

 

[Azaraxzealot]

Calumon: Is being nice so hard? : (

i'm basically going to live the golden rule, calumon, im going to do unto others as they have done unto others (or me)
if they're rude and trying to blow up a city full of innocent people, ill stop them
if they're insane and trying to hurt people, ill stop them
if they're wishing me good morning and giving me helpful advice, ill be friendly back to them and wish them a good day

tahts the kind of person i want to be, but i dont want to ask for permission before taking out the bad guys, i just want to shoot them on sight

 

[Ninja-Jordan]

Being a huge fan of Fallout myself (although admittedly I started the series at 3) there actually is a surprising amount of choice in New Vegas. Unlike 3 where in the post apocalyptic world there is no jail so if you shoot one person the whole town rallies to kill you,and Fallout 3 has a sort of Mass Effect-y, martyr or villain system, New Vegas introduces factions, so choosing to help one faction has the potential to anger other factions or rally other factions towards you. Its perfect because you feel like your actions have real consequence in the world, not to the extent that Mass Effect would have, but its pretty solid. Also, don't be fooled by "benderin time" there are only 3 endings. A good, a bad, and a neutral. Fallout 3's ending is EXTREMELY anticlimactic and EXTREMELY disappointing. If your looking for the kind of choice where you feel like your in control of your own destiny, i'd say skip Fallout 3 and go straight for New Vegas. Also the two aren't connected so you're not missing much.

 

[Iron Mal]

The moral choices in Fallout 3 are....limited at best.

You're tied between being either Lawful Stupid (Good), schizophrenic (neutral) or a frothing at the mouth psychopath (Evil).

To elaborate, being good essentially requires you to help everyone out and basically be more whipped than a full-time gimp.

Being neutral requires you to basically switch randomly between being good and evil in small doses (so give Christmas presents to the orphans and then burn the orphanage down while they sleep inside).

And being evil essentially requires you to be omnicidal and kill everyone.

I tried playing through the game with a Judge Dredd mentality (that the law must be upheld regardless of good or evil, so I was aiming for a sort of lawful neutral character) but I still found my ruthless and unforgiving lawman being regarded as a living saint and the messiah of the wastes (I even went overboard and went Judge Death a bit by sentencing homeless people to death for public disturbance and loitering) mostly because I did the main quest missions (most of which give you very good karma meaning that unless you murder and cannabalise people almost constantly you're going to be a good guy whether you like it or not).

 

[rockyoumonkeys]

-Snip-

Massively opinionated much? You're trying to sell this to me as a fact, but I know my lobsters and you're selling a crab. This is not fact, but opinion. Could you change it so you're saying this is your opinion? Alot of people like it.

Well I dunno, but I'd say that plotholes are pretty much fact. And the quotes are real too. Most of the stuff in it is fact, the only opinionated stuff is that the hundreds of flaws make it a bad game. But yeah, for some reason, people seem to have enjoyed the game, I did not however. I didn't make the picture, just got it from /v/ some time ago.

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

I will counter/cancel out this post by saying that Fallout 3 is my favorite game of all time. Ever.

Then I will counter/cancel your post by saying that you've got a terrible taste in videogames.

That's not how it works. We've already canceled each other out, you can't cancel me out again.

 

[Woodsey]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

Two things (that I managed to read before my exploded from the ridiculousness of that picture, and I only thought FO3 was a standard 'good'):

- How can you complain about the quality of voice acting in a game and then cite Deus Ex (where all they've done is say Deus Ex has more voice actors) of all things?

- It's not a first person shooter, so there's no point having a section saying it's a terrible one.

Slow down, I didn't make the picture, I'm merely reusing it. So it isn't exactly me saying everything in there, but most of it is true.

Yeah, Deus Ex doesn't have the best of voice acting, I know. But it still had more voice actors, and better voice acting, than Fallout 3. When Fallout 3 has the same 10 or so voice actors it kinda ruins the game when you hear the Imperial City Guard for the 100th time, or something along those lines.

It's a first person RPG. Why does the fact that it's also an RPG excuse the horrible shooting mechanics of the game? Look at BioShock, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 or STALKER. They've all got the RPG label too, but they don't have shooting that's even half as bad as the one in Fallout 3.

BioShock isn't an RPG, Deus Ex's is worse since it's defined even more by being an RPG (and isn't an FPS either), haven't played System Shock 2 or STALKER.

And Deus Ex's voice acting is also absolutely dire - Fallout 3 doesn't have enough "ambient writing" (like when NPCs talk to each other), and there aren't enough voice actors by a mile, but the acting itself isn't half bad by most. There are some inconsistencies in the editing though.

 

[Hosker]

Um...State of Emergency?

You can kill people in Fallout 3 as well, actually. Law enforcement is usually only in the big cities; you can kill people in the smaller settlements as much as you like, or anyone you meet on the road... Just be prepared to miss a few quests.

 

[Jedamethis]

I guess you could do that. Good luck not worrying about being caught though, you'll have to make sure nobody sees by either being sneaky or killing all the witnesses and hiding for a while.

Also, I've never noticed that the combat is terrible. Seems alright to me...

 

[tikalal]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

I agreed with it at a couple of points up the top and then what I thought was a humorous look at Fallout 3's drawbacks became an arrogant, opinionated angry rant that isn't of use to anyone.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

The Bethesda games are not so much about story choice as they are character choice. It will always play the same, the story really doesn't change to much even if you play through it multiple times. The point is to have alot of different archtypes, as apose to a wide story. They did the same thing with Oblivion. so if you're into alot of character choices, the Elder scrolls games and Fallout 3 and New Vegas are kick ass. As for story I would try something like Mass effect or Dragon age.