Fallout 3 review

 Fallout 3 did not deserve all this controversy. Looking at the problem from the perspective of the average player, one could get the impression that there are only two predictions about the shape of this game: RPG messiah or profanation. And here it turns out that Bethesda just did a good craft job and there is basically nothing to hang dogs on. With only one assumption - let's forever abandon comparisons to the previous parts of the series. Not this scale and not this level of complexity, but not this target group either. The creators of Oblivion simply took what is most universal from Fallout and presented it in an attractive and accessible form.

The storyline is generally known. The Earth is destroyed in a nuclear war, and a select part of humanity manages to avoid the lethal effects of radiation by hiding in underground shelters, popularly known as Vaults. Those who remain afloat deal with shifting happiness. Some are bravely trying to create new communities, others are going back to the Stone Age, others are mutating. The world is generally an uninteresting place, and the main character - an inhabitant of Vault 101 - under certain circumstances is forced to leave his home environment and discover the secrets of the Wastes alone. This means at least 15 hours of good entertainment with the main plot, quite neatly and dynamically. There is no way to continue playing in the game world after its completion, so it's best to leave it for a strong finish.

The hero creation and development system are much closer to Fallout than Bethesda's previous achievements. The first phase of the game smoothly introduces us to the secrets of control, communication, and combat, and step by step allows us to create a full profile of the character. We start by choosing her gender and appearance (a slightly modified system from Oblivion, giving slightly nicer results), then we allocate points to the S.P.E.C.J.A.Ł. and we choose key skills. Later, when we start to gain new levels of experience, the famous Perks also appear, i.e. special skills that often open up options that are not available in any other way. We will find here, of course, the iconic Bloody Mess (it causes all defeated opponents to die in an extremely brutal way - although guts fly here so often that it does not bring any special changes), but there are many more interesting facts. We can, for example, take a perk that will give additional dialogue options in conversations with women or children, assign the ability to feed on the bodies of fallen enemies (at the expense of Karma) or, for example, win the sympathy of a mysterious stranger who from time to time will help us in the fight. There are many possibilities, and the maximum level of experience set at 20 means that it is impossible to discover all the flavors in one playthrough.
We must have a concept for developing our character. Hastily allocating skill points likes to take revenge. What can be roughly said about the available skills? The direct offensive ones are easy to handle - small, large, and energetic guns, explosives, melee weapons, fistfighting. All clear. More interesting things happen in extraordinary skills. First of all: a huge share of Repair in the game. With Bethesda's original treatment, each weapon we use is subject to systematic wear, and in order to protect it from damage, we must either go to a specialist or repair it ourselves, using a different copy. This makes almost every weapon worthless if we only have one of them and no views of the next (because repairing a broken Minigun or something equally serious can hit your pocket pretty well). Lockpicking and Science are well contrasted with each other, usually, the available solutions go hand in hand: we can pick the door with a pick or break into the system and open it electronically. Using both of these skills is based on simple mini-games - more fun than in Oblivion. The last curiosity is the Trade (Barter) + Speechcraft set. Especially the latter talent is crucial for the game, thanks to well-designed and conducted quests.

The size of the game world evokes mixed feelings on two opposing levels. The area at our disposal is quite small, and at the same time condensed. There are a lot of places on the map and of course, there would be nothing wrong with that, if not for the fact that all distances are kept to a minimum. Does someone ask for a parcel to be delivered to their home village? Cool, it's five minutes away. It also leads to funny situations in which human settlements are mixed with mutant activity areas to the point where the whole system loses its credibility. There is a bit of stickiness in it, but you can't help but get the feeling that it would be more logical to move with the tents a little further from the eye of the storm and life would be easier. And there is also the other side of the coin, which is slightly in contradiction to the above. When we have to reach an undiscovered location on foot (without the possibility of fast travel from the map), time can be mercilessly long. So the world is small in the sense of realism but large in the purely practical sense. It is a pity that there are no vehicles.
Fighting - this issue raises a lot of emotions in connection with this game. We have two systems that we can switch between at will: standard FPS and something mysteriously called V.A.T.S. This is an active pause, thanks to which we can attack specific parts of the opponents' body at the expense of action points. In practice, this is a great saving of ammunition and great convenience, but on the other hand - not always. Let's say we want to defeat a mutant by using a hammer. The AI ​​won't figure out how to react to the target spinning around it, dealing regular damage at the same time. Oh, a little exploit. If we try the same with V.A.T.S., our chances will decrease. The most important thing, however, is that both systems interpenetrate well and, depending on the needs, we can choose the one that suits us better at a given moment. And it doesn't make the game a shooter, even when we're fighting in real-time. The pace of the game is too slow for that, and you can still feel the characters' attributes in the back, messing with everything we do. Active pause basically has only one drawback - pesky repetitions of all death scenes, including mandatory bullet-time. They tire when I don't know what, although there is some absurd charm in them. If I had believed they were deliberately made to be jokes, I would have thought of the warmer. The vast majority of available items and weapons are adaptations of equipment known from previous Fallouts. This is best seen in the example of drugs, all of which will seem familiar to veterans (interestingly, addiction is really easy here - only in the case of stimpacks we go unpunished). Some types of weapons have undergone a thorough reconstruction (eg Plasma Rifle), others storm the fans of the worldview series (Fatman pocket nuclear warhead launcher), but rather we feel at home all the time. And everything just keeps coming together. Even the companions' system is quite similar to the one in Fallout 2 - when we persuade a mercenary to join us (usually Karma is the decisive one), we can exchange equipment with him, etc. But it's nice that the whole game can be played without taking up some aspects of it.

The visual side of Fallout 3 is the juxtaposition of heaven and hell. Heaven is the Wasteland itself (ironically), incredibly diverse, filled to the brim with details and irregularities, as well as graphic designs of many elements of the presented world - robots, buildings, furniture. Hell is about the appearance and animation of the characters. Above all, animation. Everything - from the nightmarish movements of the hero in TPP mode, through the movement of NPCs in the game world, to facial expressions during conversations - is simply hopeless. The characters are plastic and artificial: they "speak" only with their mouths, not with facial expressions and body language. Scenes and dialogues that are crucial for the development of the plot are particularly affected. It is a pity that we have dozens of pages of a well-written and played script here. Almost every character met in the game world has their own identity - they cannot just realize it, being limited by their own puppets. In terms of music, Fallout 3 departs from the ambient atmosphere of Mark Morgan. In fact, we don't have too much music created specifically for the game - it seems that there are two tracks that were published on the Bethesda website as teasers over and over again. Another thing is that the wasteland itself has been impressively voiced with its own noise, screams, and explosions. The climate changes when we turn on the radio and let a dozen or so cute American songs from the 40s and 50s sound. Of course, speaking of the sound, one should mention the full Polish language version prepared by Cenega. It is a great project, going beyond even audio issues (some textures were also translated), and ended with a general success-as-for-Polish-conditions. We did not manage to get around the problems that plague all dubbing in our country (films, cartoons), but this is a problem deeper than the choice of a voice for a mutant. It is worth "risking" the choice of the Polish version during installation and seeing for yourself. If you don't like it, you can always switch to the original.