Game review: Fallout 3

Great game, shame about the plot. 8/10

The good part is that Fallout 3 is a tremendously enjoyable and somewhat addictive game. Most of the game mechanics work just fine, as does the user interface. As a level design issue, I'd just like to say that I got really tired of the practically identical dark, ruined buildings after the third one, and there were still, what, 500 more left? Okay, you don't have to explore them, but still, there's been a tremendous amount of level design done, with nothing to show for it except dozens of identical levels. That's a bit lame, really.

The bad part is basically almost all of the writing. In parts it's good and even engaging; in parts it's so embarassingly bad you need to steel yourself to keep playing. I'll keep this spoiler-free, so I'll not treat the main plot other than to say that at times it's so mind-blowingly stupid it makes you want to bash your head into a wall.

There are two glaring flags of disbelief that the game can't help but make you hoist. The first, and most serious, is the claim made in the game that the events take place 200 years after nuclear war. When you play the game, it very quickly becomes obvious that that doesn't make any sense at all. In places they're trying to give the impression that it really has been ages since our civilization stood; in other places they give the impression that the bombs fell just last year. It feels like they can't make up their minds, and at times the discrepancy is really bothersome.

Another serious problem I have with the game, which might not be so bad if you don't know about these things, is that none of the damage you see in the game is in any way consistent with nuclear weapons. If I played the game without knowing it was called Fallout, I'd never guess they were trying to present a picture of a world after nuclear war.

There is radiation present, for example in bomb craters. This is totally ridiculous as no nuclear warhed would create radiation effects that persist for 200 years. Most of the radiation one encounters in the game, however, comes from barrels of nuclear waste or some other radioactive goo that seem to be basically lying around at random. There doesn't seem to be any reason or explanation for this, but apparently in the dystopian future of Fallout, people used to, um, store nuclear waste in subway tunnels before the war...

The game is set in the "Capital Wasteland", supposedly the ruins of Washington, D.C. Apparently nuclear war has dried up the Potomac river and turned DC into an arid wasteland where it never rains. Only it must rain, because there are pools of stagnant water everywhere, and that water has to come from somewhere. An easy guess would be those numerous clouds in the sky, but during the entire game, never once do you see it rain.

I can't for the life of me figure out how a nuclear war would turn the DC area into a desert or dry up the Potomac river. It should be pretty much exactly the opposite. But as we know, the earlier Fallout games were set in a desert, so maybe they felt this one needs to be in a desert too. And as we know, it's a generally accepted rule of fiction that postapocalyptic stories are set in the desert (Mad Max), where it doesn't rain. Therefore it can't rain in Fallout 3.

Overall both the plot and the overall writing of the game is designed to give you certain impressions and rather ham-handedly prod you into feeling emotions for your character or other characters. All of the writing places giving impressions far above realism, consistency or even sense. This is even more blatant because mostly the game is very atmospheric and great fun to play. You just have to grit your teeth and think of England when the cutscenes start.

I really wish this had been a better game. As it is, I really like it. It just saddens me to see such hideously bad writing in an otherwise well-executed game.