A call to arms

When fans of the venerable Fallout franchise heard that the long awaited, highly anticipated next chapter of the series was being handled by Bethesda Softworks, the developers of the Elder Scrolls RPG series, a lot of them balked.

Taking Fallout away from its creators at Black Isle Studios seemed blasphemous–fans screamed death threats and threatened combinations of street rioting and the raping and pillaging of Bethesda’s offices.

To top it off, Fallout 3 was to be a straight-up action RPG, with combat that played out differently than the turn-based, tactical affairs of its PC-based predecessors.

Well, let me allay any fears you may still have: not only has Bethesda done well with the franchise, they have unleashed one of the best RPGs, if not one of the best games period, I’ve played in a very long time.To put it in decidedly more succinct terms, Fallout 3 fucking rocks.

The game’s setting is the burned-out remains of Washington, D.C. in the year 2277. Fallout‘s alternate-history America veers off in its own direction after a nuclear war during in the 2070s left the good old U.S. of A. in the grip of a nuclear winter, the scorched-earth countryside an irradiated wasteland, and most people dead, mutated from radiation or gone into hiding in underground bunkers called vaults.

There are many reasons for making such a bold claim to Fallout 3‘s quality (although I’m certainly not the only one to do so), but aside from the game’s painstaking craft and attention to detail, the game is about one thing above everything else–choice.

There is little in Fallout 3 that isn’t defined by your own parameters. Starting off from scratch in vault 101, the only remaining vault still standing post-nuclear war, the game allows for damn-near complete customization of your character (minus body types–natch). Sex, hair style, eye color, cheekbone placement and about 50 other face-related options really let you go to town on your creation–yourself–before you even leave the vault for the Capital Wasteland.

In a genre that’s overrun with seemingly unrelenting linearity, Fallout 3 manages not only to have a compelling story (with Liam Neeson, to boot) but also does so while being pretty damn open-ended. And I’m not just talking side quests, although there are myriad of those to embark on as well.

No, this is one of those games that comes along once in a blue moon that when the developers say you can progress through the game differently, they’re really not lying. Don’t like that pesky town sheriff? Off him. Would you rather explore the wastes, collecting resalable junk and dabbling in side quests than playing the main missions? No problem. Want to intimidate, bully and steal from everyone you meet? Go right ahead.

Although sudden murderous impulses on groups of civilians will often result in your corpse being riddled with bullets faster than you can say Jack Robinson, it’s still entirely possible to kill, or help, everyone you meet, depending on your penchant for weaponry.

Aside from the ability to equip all manner of small arms, laser rifles, bludgeons, miniguns, flame-throwers and, yes, even a personal atomic bomb launcher, (dubbed the “Fatman”) Fallout 3 also allows you the choice of how to approach combat.

You can play the game as first-person shooter, or in third-person as a stealth or action-based game (although admittedly this mode still feels a bit like an FPS). You can also use the game’s special targeting system, V.A.T.S., to pause the action and target specific, percentage-based hits on enemy limbs a la Square-Enix’s criminally underrated PS One classic Vagrant Story.

Like any good shooter, choosing any of the former combat styles makes Fallout 3‘s action unfold in real-time. V.A.T.S., however, works like a more traditional turn-based battle system, by employing an attack meter that limits the amount of shots that can be used before the meter must be recharged.

The tradeoff between systems is that using V.A.T.S. will net you hits or deaths without the hassle of aiming, but you can only get off a couple of good shots before you have to run away and wait for the attack meter to recharge.

Choice even finds its way into the game’s RPG elements, which takes the character customization elements prominent in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series and other PC RPGs and incorporates them into Fallout 3’s hybrid design.

You can pick and choose point values for everything from lockpicking and sneaking skills, to explosives expertise and science, hacking computers and mechanical repair skills for your weapons.

Special perks help you out too, adding stats to certain abilities and techniques, or otherwise enhancing the game experience with features such as “Bloody mess,” which dials up the game’s gore-factor to eyeball-and-entrail-exploding levels faithfully rendered with a heavily modified Elder Scrolls: Oblivion engine.

Although I was never thought Oblivion was that eye-catching, I have to say that Bethesda really made Fallout 3 a knockout. The game features fantastic, albeit often overly subdued lighting, and textures on terrain and character models look superb.

Every bit of war-torn Washington and its surrounding areas looks stunningly barren, whether it’s the dry, arid landscape of the wastes or the ripped-up cement, asphalt and twisted metal that make up the game’s towns, outposts and hamlets.

The game doesn’t have much in the way of variation, as most areas look like landfills scrounged together with heaps of rusty scrap metal and refuse, but man, are these pretty landfills. And the first time you see the ghostly silhouette of the bombed-out monolith that was once the Washington monument winking through bleak, pale light above the ravaged streets of D.C. is truly haunting.

Fallout 3 is an undeniably engrossing and masterful game. Bethesda’s extreme care herein isn’t just astounding–it’s a call to arms for any and all next-gen titles looking for inspiration.

Innovation, open-world freedom, combat–even the game’s 1950s “duck-and-cover” style aesthetic is charming and fits perfectly with the rest of the package. Whether you like RPGs or not, this is a game that crackles with life and personality, and demands you give it a shot. You won’t be disappointed.

Fallout 35 starsPS3, Xbox 360Bethesda Softworks$59.99