Please explain to me the appeal of Fallout 3

[xXGeckoXx]

Yeah, I'm sure that this topic has already been done, but bugger me.

So what IS the appeal of Fallout 3? (Note that this is not a "Is it just me or does Fallout 3 overrated" thread. I'm genuinely interested)

I've played through the whole game and overall... I found it really subpar. Why? Well a few reasons.

1. The game does not equally balance out good actions and bad actions. Good actions are harder to perform and you get less rewards, but the overall perks or benefits are usually the exact same as the evil option.

2. The combat feels pretty much just like "Choose this style. Now good luck." At no point in the game did I feel that the shooting/fighting ever required strategy. If you boosted up small guns, you shot with small guns. If you boosted up energy weapons, you shot with energy weapons. There's little to no ducking, running, aiming or strategy aspect.

3. The graphics bugged me. I'm not a graphics whore but everything felt brown and green and grungy. This would be fine if there was some occasional contrast but most areas feel the same, even the buildings. I guess this is what the new Vegas will be for? But I dunno...

4. The narrative as a whole felt very weak so my motivations for going from point A to point B and shooting x subject were very slim making the game feel painfully tedious.

Now I will give credits to the VATS system, the open world, the gameplay concepts and the customisable parts of the game, but it just didn't really hold up for me. So members of escapist, what were the defining points for the game that made you love it?

I played over 100 hours (per character) and for sure good pays better. the perks you get from being good are without exception better. I know because I used the vault wiki to confirm it.

The game has the history of the other two games built into it. Such a deep world to explore is hard to find.

The world is epic in size and each area has it's epic monolithich structures and recognisable locations from the real world all blown up. It's just cool.

The weapons are awesome. The experimental mirve fires 8 mini nukes with one shot. The narrative is not the core. The main plotline is just a guide to do. Going from a to b is COMPLETELY missing the point. Each building has a history. Terminals to read safes to lockpick and tapes to listen to (items to loot as well) The narrative comes from the immersion of the world. The small people you see in the towns and the many tiny outposts of civilisation you come across in the harsh open wasteland.

 

[Audio]

Replay value i guess; if you dont mind repeating the same story but doing it slightly different. :|
Only finished it once and a half lol

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Standing on a ruined overpass, watching the sunset send its subtle bloom over the haunting, aching beauty of a world in ruin.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

"Wow, that NPC over there looks like an asshole."

*VATS*

*BANG*

*SLOW MOTION HEAD EXPLOSION*

"HOLY SHIT!

And then it's GOTY.

More seriously, people like the feeling of surviving in a wasteland, and slow motion head explosion.

 

[Baldry]

Before I talk about the appeal, I feel like addressing your points.

1. I don't really think you are meant to be rewarded for how you play, good or evil. It's more about how people react to you than your perks. I could be wrong on that, but that was my take.

2. The combat sucks. Not part of the appeal imo. Moving on.

3. It's a wasteland. If you blew up an entire country, everything would look the same. Look at images from war destroyed cities. It's pretty much all brown and muck. I think this game, and the book/movie The Road actually did post apocalyptic scenery right. This is pretty much how it would look.

4. The narrative story was weak and only a small part of the "Story" overall. See below.


Now, the appeal for me, is the setting. Immersive post apocalyptic games are few and far between. This is one of the best ones on the market. The story is the world, not just the narrative. It's the blown out buildings, the skeletons clinging to each other in bed, the corpses in a bathtub full of whiskey bottles, the crazed mutated animals, the twisted cities... all of it is part of the story. If you don't really care for the setting, then I wouldn't recommend this game to you.

But I really like this type of setting and story, so despite all its flaws, Fallout 3 works for me.

Couldn't of put it better myself...Or could I.

 

[Ralen-Sharr]

There actually is a place in fallout 3 that is quite the contrast to the rest of the game. Really quite nice IMO. I don't know how to do spoiler tags properly so I'm not gonna ruin it.

 

[Taddy]

To be honest I'm not sure, but i spent 200+ hours playing it. By the 10 hour mark i was killing every prick i could find and praying to any form of a deity hoping they could hear me for ammo. So yeah it immersed me into the survival feeling of the game, till i used VATS then it went from Survival to absolute gore. Fun game though.

 

[imnot]

There actually is a place in fallout 3 that is quite the contrast to the rest of the game. Really quite nice IMO. I don't know how to do spoiler tags properly so I'm not gonna ruin it.

you mean the

Spoiler

oasis

quote me to see how to make the tags.

 

[Wolfram23]

I really liked the exploration and Galaxy News Radio. Exploring the Nuka Cola factory/everywhere with Three Dog YAAAOOOOOO! playing some sweet tunes was a lot of fun. There's a ton of little side things to find/do. I agree it was pretty drab, but that was the point afterall. The main quest, too, was a bit weak. I did a lot of side quests along the way that were rather more fun to me. VATS was kind of shitty IMO. It just took so much out of the action for me. I used it for most of my 1st (good) playthrough, but on my 2nd (evil) playthrough I totally ignored it. It was waaay more fun being all stealthy and cutting off heads with a flaming sword lol.

Anyway, yeah, mostly it's exploring the wastes.

 

[Your once and future Fanboy]

i dont love the game (i prefer oblivion any day), but i like many things it have to offer;
-a wast world(its not cyrodil but its ok)
-the leveling is fun (by this i mean that it feels rewarding, even though i thought it was far from perfect)
-the awesome vats system was fun, and the best way to spot some enemies (but it could be really annoying at times when you couldt see that you where behind a centimeter or two of wall that blocked your shot without the vats system giving any indication of this)

but it had serious flaws;
-there are no real balance between the different playing styles, you always need lock-pick and science, the unarmed/ melee choices was crap, and there where no bonuses to choosing that over guns (unlike Oblivion, where unarmed strikes delivered both health and fatigue damage, making enemies fall down), so just max out intelligence and pour points on small guns, science, lock pick and speech, that's all you need really, maybe some on medicine to gain more health from stimpacks.
-the wast world didn't have so many interesting parts, 60%++ where just empty, which helps atmosphere, but through a second play through it just get annoying, that's even apparent after you have spent a few hours in the wasteland (another part where Oblivion where better, it didn't have a lot of things happening all of the time, but you would find many caves and dungeons that gave some enemies and loot).
-speaking of loot, Fallout wasn't good with loot, you would just get the hunting rifle and use that most of the time, have the 10mm gun as a backup because of the absurd amount of bullets you found for it, than maybe a heavy gun/some grenades and or a sniper rifle to deliver some high damage. all these things you would find really quickly, and after that the only interesting thing where components for the special weapons, otherwise all other things where vendor-meat (oblivion was also guilty of this, but to a lesser degree because of the different levels of materials and possible magic enchantments)

to sum up, fallout have a lot of issues, but the positive outlast the bad, but still i dont see me completing the game more than once or twice, than lose all interest and forget about it for a few years.
I still like the game and i'm looking forward to New vegas, i hope they improve a lot of the problems.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Honestly, I played it once on the 360 when the game of the year edition came out, played it for like 20 hours, and gave it up.
Recently the GOTY year edition was on sale on Steam for like 25$ and I bought it. I enjoyed it alot more this time, I played the game till I hit the level cap, then I started a new game with a few major mods to explore the rest of the places.

If it wasn't for the exploration and the interesting areas, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it all.

 

[Unesh52]

I really liked it. Yes, the subways in particular just felt samey and tedious, but I could really get on board with the comedic effect stemming from the juxtaposition of campy, alternate/old-perception future elements such as the pip boy with the stark, unforgiving post apocalyptic aesthetic. The wasteland is a brutal, desolate, and depressing place, but then you stumble on an idyllic suburban community in the middle of nowhere populated by

Spoiler

psycho cannibals

and the you're too busy going, "lolwut?" to feel the way you'd normally feel in this type of situation.

In other words, the humor and variety kept me going. Not aesthetic variety, mind you, but there were loads of people to talk to who generally all had interesting things to say, and crazy shit like the flame sword and the teddy bear launcher to pick up and play with that kept the room lively. There's just little else like it.

 

[WINDOWCLEAN2]

I killed a Super Mutant Behemoth with a Teddy Bear and a lump of my own brain.
This alone validates my purchase of Fallout 3.

Its also a Great game (In my opinion).

 

[Hiphophippo]

The music and that one part where it's in black and white in that 50's village were about the only two things that were good about the game, in my personal opinion.

It doesn't matter how much there is to do when it's all so robotic and bland. That game had no soul. Much like everything else Bethesda has made the last few years.

 

[Sir Strange Of The House Lycan]

It's oblivion with guns,a fixed levelling system,in a post apocalyptic world with loads of ways for me to play.How could I not love it?

 

[Feylynn]

I enjoyed it but I must concede to you some of your points.

1- I agree and feel that the good evil game is an experimental spectrum in ANY game at best, Dragon Age being the most impressive thus far.

2- I never considered it a strategy game really. So not as much strategy as something designed for the purpose. This was inherently an RPG that took place in an FPS setting not the other way around like a typical shooter.

3- On the consoles where I played it the graphics were merely par, but good for a world of that size and work needed, better then Oblivion by far. PC I imagine looked much better.

4- Because of point 1, and the nature of Role playing meaning molding yourself to the role, not always building it yourself. I decided good, and extremely motivated by the whole Father bit was the best thing to do.

That last point there is why I liked it, I as my character was genuinely astounded by the world (not having played the first 2) outside the vault. I always found myself wondering where my dad had gone out here and why, I found the few evil choices made me guilty not just for myself, but because I wondered if they'd disappoint him. I knew it was stupid, he'd never know unless I told him (or the game designers wanted a contrived unexplained excuse for cheap consequences on your actions) but that's how it is.

You can imagine how much impact the narrative has under this mindset.
If you chose to do whatever or just didn't care that much about your father I can see this narrative arc meaning pretty much nothing but I guess you have to take the game they build.

Spoiler

So when I approached the later portion of the game on my search to find that man, the one who raised me, the one who left me, the one I so desperately wanted to see again, and I recognized what was going to happen...
I saw how they split us up, the danger that was to come upon us, the remainder of the plot I couldn't get to on my own and was angry (at the developer). I couldn't believe they'd do that just after I found him, truly I was very unhappy, as I know my character was, for different reasons ultimately, but I understood how she felt.

After that I never finished the game, properly role played my character would likely carry out what her father died for, but that was the end for me.
Again, without that motivation to find him, the game felt less enthralling. You could interpret that as my characters despair or my boredom with a narrative arc turned uninteresting but

It's far more fun to see the game mechanics and real emotions result as character developments.
What you feel is what your character feels.

 

[Archindar]

Because of how much there is to do.

I played over 200 hours and still didn't experience everything.

Everywhere you walk something interesting happens and you can go on for hours just exploring.

That was the beauty of this game and what will also make New Vegas amazing.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Standing on a ruined overpass, watching the sunset send its subtle bloom over the haunting, aching beauty of a world in ruin.

Couldn't of put it better myself.

I never get why people think its ugly... I think it's a gorgeous looking game. The architecture and landscape are so unique and stylistic... love it.