Few games have been awaited with as much mixed anticipation and trepidation as Fallout 3. The first two PC titles were hallowed classics that offered a delicate blend of humor, action, suspense and interesting quests. Unfortunately Interplay closed Black Isle studios, the team behind the original two classics before the third game could be completed. Many gamers were excited when Bethesda picked up the license because their Elder Scrolls series has always delivered a solidly open-ended RPG experience.

Unfortunately everyone knew that there were going to be big differences, even before Bethesda came out in interviews and outlined some of the details of how the game would be different from the original experience. Many gamers were worried that the game would simply be “Oblivion with guns” and when you first begin the game it seems that way, but deeper examination shows that the two are quite different.

I want you to know that I have always been a fervent fan of the Fallout series and it’s difficult to review this title without comparing it somewhat to the original games, but I will do my best to weigh its merits and flaws on their own as well as measuring it against what has come before.

The game begins with the very beginnings of your character’s life. All of the character creation tools are fairly well integrated into the experience. You are greeted by a blurry vision of your father, his face obscured by the bright lights and a surgical mask. They take a sample of your DNA and hook it up to a Vault-tec creation that allows them to see what you’ll look like in adulthood. You can choose your race and either go with a pre-existing facial structure or customize it to your liking. The other tools are integrated into the tutorial that takes you through several stages of your life. Eventually you get to the main quest, which of course involves you leaving the vault. From there you’re given a direction to go, which helps as you get pointed in the direction of Megaton, a nearby settlement where you can either pursue the main quest or simply begin your adventures in the wastes.

In Megaton you have what is the epitome of the true RPG before you: a choice that truly affects the world around you. In the center of town lies an undetonated nuclear warhead. Some worship it, others simply ignore it, unaware of its deadly potential. The town sherriff tells you it’s still armed and informs you that there’s a heft reward waiting for anyone who disarms it. A man you can meet in a local saloon will offer you another option: detonate the bomb with a device he’ll give you. He represents some rather well-to-do individuals who are tired of the city mucking up their view. Obviously the choices are easy to figure out: disarming the bomb gets you good karma, blowing it up gets you bad karma. No matter which way you go, you get a home where you can rest, store unneeded goods and decorate with a few themes purchased from merchants. The truly successful idea of this is that choosing the evil path wipes the city off the map. In most games a choice rarely changes the actual game landscape, giving this decision a feeling of real weight.

There aren’t many other big decisions to be made, at least not until the end of the game, but the game still has many quests that can be solved in a variety of ways. Agree to help a wasteland researcher with her studies and you can either perform her tasks or simply lie about it. Offer to investigate the whereabouts of a missing person and you can either negotiate and bluff your way into letting the people he’s taken up with give you access or just slaughter them all.

While there is definitely some interesting variety to the reasoning behind carrying out certain quests (one old woman who makes a living playing her violin for traveling merchants wants you to find a new instrument, a historian wants you to retrieve the Declaration of Independence) most of them fall into the usual categories: find an item and retrieve it or kill a certain person/creature. What keeps the game truly interesting is what you can do in between completing quests: exploring.

After the original Fallout developers learned that if you’ve got an elaborate world filled with interesting places and quests it’s not a good idea to give them a timer. Any quest you get will stick around until you get to it, so if you’re heading towards and objective and see an interesting building over yonder, it’s wonderful to have the ability to simply veer off the path and check it out. The radar also indicates when there are undiscovered locations nearby, so curious players will often find themselves simply traveling from location to location in the pursuit of knowledge.

While it’s possible to talk, negotiate, threaten and sneak your way through most quests, you’ll inevitably have to defend yourself against the hostile elements of the wasteland eventually, and that’s of course where combat comes in. The skills are broken down the same way they are in the previous games, with the exception of the ‘throwing’ skill being removed, the only weapons that are hurled being mines and grenades. For the FPS fan it is possible to conduct all your combat in real-time. Holding down the trigger button can unleash a stream of lead, a coruscating bolt of plasma or a deadly rocket.

For those who want a more strategic experience, pushing the right bumper brings up the VATS which allows you to target specific body parts on your targets, much as in the original games. You have a certain number of action points and each action consumes some. You can choose to take several shots at a single opponent or target multiple hostiles. The VATs system is worth using once in a while though even if you’re the most skilled twitch gamer who’s ever lived, because after you select your actions the camera switches to a third person perspective and a skilled warrior is often treated to some slow-motion sequences demonstrating your combat effectiveness. Headshots often result in decapitations or cranial explosions while some of the energy weapons vaporize your opponents.

The array of weapons is fairly broad, although as with most RPGs it’s better to pick one particular category and stick with it (at least at first, later on with more levels and skill points it’s possible to branch out). All the weapons have a ‘unique’ counterpart which is superior to its normal counterparts. By far the most interesting weapons are the Fat Man Mini Nuke Launcher and the Rock-it Launcher. The mini-nuke launcher is exactly what it sounds like; it allows you to hurl small nuclear warheads that will devastate pretty much everything around them. The Rock-It launcher is a custom weapon, one of several. In your travels you’ll occasionally come across merchants or quest rewards that are schematics. Get together the right components and you can make some unusual weapons at workbenches scattered around the wasteland. The Rock-It launcher falls under the ‘big guns’ skill and is the weapon least likely to ever run out of ammunition, for you can load it with junk you find anywhere. Teddy bears, severed limbs, empty milk bottles, scrap metal- all can be loaded into its ammo hopper and fired at opponents.

The biggest complaint I can voice when it comes to combat is weapon degrading. Most of the weapons and armor you’ll find in your travels are old and well-used and thus in poor condition, doing less damage. Eventually if a weapon is fired too often without maintenance it will break, being unusable until it’s repaired. Fortunately you can repair broken or degraded weapons with others of their kind, but the speed at which weapons and armor degrade forces you to scavenge from your fallen foes quite often. You can pay some merchants and NPCs to repair your equipment, but their repair skill is often so low as to be almost useless, so an effective character is almost forced to invest points in the skill.

In interviews and previews the developers touted the care with which your character would have to take managing their levels of radiation. At first when your character is low on funds it can be a bit difficult getting enough meds to keep your rad count down, but after a while you’ll have enough stimpaks, rad-x and radaway to ensure that radiation isn’t a problem.

One area where I truly feel that Fallout 3 surpasses the first two is in the overall feel of the landscape. Largely this is because the world is persistent and deliberately created; the random encounters that always took place in one of a few environments always felt a bit artificial. Walking through wrecked shells of buildings, abandoned cars and remnants of highway overpasses make the wasteland come alive. Placing the game in the ruins of the Washington DC area gives things an ominous feeling when you recognize the somewhat tattered remains of famous monuments and government buildings.

The storyline itself feels somewhat lackluster. It might be that it’s quite easy to figure out what scheme your father is pursuing by leaving the vault, or that the main quest is actually fairly short compared to the potential time you can spend wandering the wasteland. Most disappointing of all was the ending. In the original Fallout games the player was treated to a lengthy narration by Ron Perlman that listed all the consequences of your actions across the world in all the various locations. In Fallout 3 it’s much shorter and there are only several things that are commented on. This is somewhat understandable given that the locations are more modest in terms of population when compared to Fallout and Fallout 2, but noble errands or evil deeds are less satisfying when they’re mostly glossed over.