A Long Day’s Journey into Armageddon: Fallout 3 

This isn't Oblivion with guns. I wish it was. I really do, because then I wouldn't feel a palpable sense of worry as I scourge for survival in the Wasteland. Oblivion had trees and flowers and mountains, castles and friendly hamlets. Here, I just beat a dog to death, and I can't hear anything but the wind. Just a couple hours with Fallout 3 and I’m absolutely blown away by Bethesda’s new game.

It's been a while since I played Fallout 2, but my experiences in playing in that world weren't anything like this. Fallout 2, like the first Fallout, was an isometric view of the post-atomic world. You had a God's-eye view of things, watching your character make his way in the ruined world. Both games introduced us to a blasted world that parodied our own as it struggled to remain breathing.

I knew the differences Bethesda (who bought the license from Interplay) had made with Fallout 3 long before I got my hands on the game. I had seen Fallout 3 footage online and at PAX. I wasn’t sure about the location change, the new first-person POV, and even the new V.A.T.S combat system.  Yeah, I was in that crowd that worried that the new Fallout was going to be an Elder Scrolls mod.

Playing it, all complaints were wiped away. For all the charm of the isometric predecessors, Fallout 3 gives you a sense of realism unmatched in the earlier games. Now, the ruins of blasted freeways overshadow you as see the apocalypse through your own eyes.

You start out in the cold safety of an underground bunker, raised by your father to grow into a stronger character. The choices become dizzying, from how you look to what you are good at. You get your first taste of making choices that have far-reaching, sometimes unexpected, consequences. As time passes, you gather all is not well in the bunker, where obedience is demanded by a dictatorial Overseer. Soon, it all goes to hell, and you are ushered out of the massive bunker door and into a broken world.

What’s most striking about Fallout 3 is the stark immediacy of the desolation. Stepping out into the sunlight for the first time, the destruction rolls out like a hellish carpet. In every direction there was a twisted, mutated, burned, and angry world. Seeing post-bomb Washington D.C. for the first time was one of the rare video game moments when I felt authentic dread. Being overshadowed by the blasted skeleton of a turnpike, I felt as nervous as when I got spooked playing Silent Hill 2.

The wind whistles mercilessly, even in the pause menu. If you don’t listen to the patriotic yammering on Enclave radio or the Galaxy News pirate radio signal of music, the wind hisses at you. It’s the natural soundtrack to a world where everything wants to kill you. You drink untreated water; you get radiation poisoning. And if you step in the wrong direction, make the wrong choice, enter into a fight unprepared or neglect your health, you'll die alone and unmourned in the desolation.

What I wasn’t expecting is the law of unintended consequences when it came to my actions. While the Fallout series likes to put you in uncomfortable situations, looking someone in the eye and watching a bad choice unfold in Fallout 3 is something else.  I’ve been coddled, I suppose, by games like Fable and Knights of the Old Republic, where you could easily infer the good or evil course of action. Here, in Fallout 3, Bethesda has turned morality on its ear.

Example (altered to prevent spoilers): I was asked to do an unspeakably horrible thing by a shady character. I reported him to a powerful heroic character in the area. Hero goes to take the shady guy away, and the shady guy kills the local hero.  Bad guy walks away, hero is a corpse. Now I’m alone again, faced with the real possibility I just crossed someone I shouldn’t. And when no one is looking, I strip the hero’s corpse and take his Chinese assault rifle. Opportunity is where you find it.

The new combat system, V.A.T.S., takes that to heart. At the push of a button, you stop the world and take very specific aim at your target. I kept going for the riskier head shots, thinking one bullet to the head would drop anyone. V.A.T.S. won’t win fights, but will give you the chance to turn the tide. It takes time to get V.A.T.S. right, but it’ll be your true friend in the Fallout 3 wilds.

And yet, amid the carnage and misery, you are looking for your father, who left your bunker home for reasons unknown. Family may not be the deliberate theme of Fallout 3, but it comes out amid all the desolation. Vault 101 has its proxy father figure in the Overseer. You get a side mission to deliver a message to someone wondering about her family. Settlements become their own families, and what are tribal factions but their own family units? And into this world you make your way, joining and leaving families on your way to solving the mystery of your missing father.

Eventually, you forget you were once this sheltered child living in an underground bunker. After your first few kills, after your first couple of trades, you find that you fit in with the brutality of your surroundings nicely. The world is still frightening and dangerous but all the familiar trappings found in the earlier Fallout games are here. It’s like coming home, if home was a wrecked, fragile, burned, and savage landscape.

And this was just the beginning of a game reportedly over 100 hours long. Add in the coming exclusive downloadable content for Xbox 360 and Games for Windows players, and I can see myself in the Wasteland for a long time to come. Fallout 3 features everything that is great about the Fallout series, but it ups the ante by grabbing you by the scruff and throwing you into the twisted irradiated aftermath face first. Bethesda has succeeded at putting its own spin on it, remaining faithful to the source while taking it to a new, awesome place.  The spirit of Fallout has just changed bodies, and the result is a terrifying, brilliant, alluring, emotionally involving game.