LogFAQs > #880008726

thompsontalker7 posted...

You're immediately thrown from a relatively comfortable life in the Vault to a strange, brave new world. You learn everything when your character does. All you have to go off of is your connections to your dad and the vault. People say they know you. You're not entirely sure if they're telling the truth. You take refuge in a nearby town, hopefully you can carve out a place of your own in it. Fallout 3's presentation of a post-apocalyptic DC is fantastic.

Sure, Fallout 3 makes a good first impression, I won't deny that. It's actually my original point - people can't look past their first impressions of the game far enough to see just how fundamentally flawed everything is beneath the surface. So let's look past the opening act's seemingly trivial missteps, such as being forced to kill vault guards that you've known your whole life just because the game puts their names in red instead of green...wasn't the ability to 'talk down' the villains one of your earlier selling points? Or is it only the head honchos who deserve the privilege of living or dying based on your random-potency words? And let's not touch on how your dear old Dad's motivations ultimately make him a selfish, thoughtless asshole, despite what the game wants you to believe about him, as well as the saintly presence that OMG Liam fucking Neeson! brings to the role.

Anyway, you step out into the turd-brown wasteland for the first time, and are immediately hit with that go-anywhere, do-anything feel. This is the one gaming feature that Bethesda is inarguably good at. They can dumb down and strip out their games until their ocean-wide worldspaces aren't even deep as a puddle, and people like me will continue to gobble them up for this exact reason. Because next to no one can match a Bethesda open-world experience. Unfortunately, that atmosphere not only clouds the mind to all the flaws existing beneath, but will give FO3 defendants one single potent bullet with which to defend the game from now until the end of time. Atmosphere! Atmosphere! The amazing unbelievable atmosphere! Yes, that's great, it truly is. But a game cannot live on atmosphere alone, much like a human can't live on oxygen alone.

So despite this amazing open-world sensation and the complete freedom to go anywhere you want, odds are you're making a beeline for Megaton. You're instantly forced to ask asinine questions like 'I'm looking for my father, middle-aged guy. You seen him?' Even worse is that the sheriff instantly knows who you're talking about and points you in the right direction *facepalm* You talk to the bar owner, whose family has inexplicably managed to maintain their Irish accent despite being cut off from the island for over 200 years. He sets you up for the big, stupid revelation that neither you nor your father were actually born in the vault, which pretty well destroys your identity of being a true vault dweller. You yourself claim that, given the presentation of the game, you're 'not entirely sure they're telling you the truth.' How does that hold any water when everything everyone tells you - no matter how far-fetched and / or inspired by comically-vague information given by the player - is true?
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Simple questions deserve long-winded answers that no one will bother to read.