Please note that, because I have the Game of the Year edition, I can't write reviews for each of the DLC and the main game separately. Therefore, I will have to write a single, large review, broken into sections. As such, this will probably see a number of updates, I will have to give each section its own rating and there will be placeholder text. Thank you for understanding.
Or you could just call me dumb and give me a clown award. Whatever makes you happy.
–The Main Game–
Let’s skip the whole opening of this game, because it will save my sanity. So, you get out of the vault, you’re in the wasteland… and that’s the best thing you can say about it. The game is over two hundred years after the nukes, and the Capital Wasteland is dead.
This is the first, but not the last, time in which Bethesda shows that it doesn't understand how long two centuries actually is.
Now, I actually find there to be stark beauty in this dead world. The desolation, the decay, the isolation, the brutality in nearly all the things wanting you to be dead. But this is two hundred years after the fact, the world should have recovered, the isolated towns should have connected and formed trading partnerships. The wasteland should be alive and thriving, not looking and feeling like it’s ten years post bombs.
There’s (comparatively) little to be said for the isolated pockets of humanity in the wastes.
Megaton is beyond a joke in terms of, well, everything. The fact that they would not only build a city around a nuclear warhead that hasn't been disarmed is trumped in insanity only by the fact that they've built in and around a crater. You know, where everything flows downhill. And if it rains heavily enough (yes, yes, it never rains in Fallout 3, that would defeat the whole purpose of Project Purity), the entire thing would flood. And if anybody breached the walls and forced the morons of Megaton into a defense, they would have to go down, into a pit, where they lack the high ground.
Megaton is stupid. It's insane. Whoever came up with this should have been flogged.
Tenpenny Tower is a farce. It's full of the rich, who are rich because they're rich. I get that it's supposed to be a joke... I hope... but it still isn't funny, and it's so out of place that it's an insult to my intelligence and ability to have logical thoughts.
Andale is a punchline to a joke nobody told. It's the zany, wacky city with the deep, dark secret.
They eat people, okay? And incest. Lots of incest. But don't worry, it's all framed by them being the best town in America, and have been for years now. They're all happy and chipper and it's funny! Ha ha ha... funny as baby AIDS...
Arefu is the setting for a bad horror film. Spoiler alert: it's about vampires. Yes, really. In Fallout.
The Republic of Dave is… why? It's more zany, wacky nonsense, because FaLlOuT wAs NeVeR sErIoUs. I guess somebody at Bethesda thought that making a vague reference to the Branch Davidians would be perfect for their game.
Paradise Falls is Disney evil, because slavers. An entire town of slavers, who don't actually go out and enslave (they get you to do it instead), much less have any real means of selling slaves. There's no caravans, there's no people coming to check the merch. It's just there to be an ultra basic bad guy option. And even if you do get all the slaves for their quest, nobody shows you any kind of respect, they all just want to still throw you in the slave pen.
Underworld is a ghoul town, but we have no need for a water chip, so they're safe. They also don't really have anything else going for them, so uh, they can live in peace. But they will throw slurs at you and whine about how everybody shoots at them. Best to just let Cerberus, their robot guard, be free to dispose of them all.
Little Lamplight... zany, wacky city full of kids who cuss and have guns. They call you mungo, because oh so hilarious. The Force robs you of your ability to fight here, because how else could they get the game released in Europe?
Big Town is where all the mungos go when they hit sixteen. The idea is that Little Lamplight can't support too big of a population, so they have to have another town where all the older people go. But then, what, does Big Town send their children to Little Lamplight? How does this cycle continue if not? Do all the orphans of The Capital Wasteland magically find their way to Little Lamplight, then grow up and go to Big Town?
Big Town sucks. Super mutants can bully them. And if a super mutant can bully you, you frankly deserve it. They're dumb as rocks. Even kids from Little Lamplight can outsmart them, and Big Town is made up of former children from Little Lamplight. Maybe they lose all their brains at sixteen. Mungos indeed.
Girdershade is another joke town, this time only made up of two people. And also a brahmin, because somebody at Bethesda rubbed two brain cells together long enough to even consider the notion of "what do they eat?" This place exists specifically for a single, stupid quest line, in which Bethesda tried to retcon Nuka-Cola into having the kind of importance and relevance as Coca-Cola once did, and in some places, still does, in the real world.
I swear, if Fallout 6 has them make Tragic: the Garnering as the next big thing in the wasteland of Ohio, I'm going to scream.
Grayditch... well, it's all dead. Because fire ants. As in ants that spew fire, because ha ha funny. They were made by a scientist who does the worst professor Frink impersonation known to man. It also exists to have a kid make a reference to Die Hard. Oh, it also has a terminal of an Enclave survivor from Fallout 2 who managed to make it all the way across the country. This is important for...
OH BOY OASIS. Hey guys, do you 'member Harold? You know, that special mutant? Or maybe ghoul? Or whatever he's meant to be? From Fallout 1 and 2? You remember? Do you? Do you remember him? Do you? Well he's back, in Pog form tree form. Because the tree, Bob, finally managed to take over and root Harold to the ground, but only after going all the way across the country to The Capital Wasteland. And he has a cult of naturephiles who want to make Bob grow more, because it's created an entire forest.
Yeah, I don't get it either. It's just there for the 'member berries and to let you possibly kill Harold. Because I guess that's meant to be a tragic and bittersweet send off to a recurring character. Or something.
The Temple of the Union is the final form of Abraham Lincoln worship. We already have him sitting in a throne in the real world, and in Fallout, that's the same, but the people are even more deluded and see Lincoln as a messiah figure.
So nothing much has changed. You can find Lincoln stuff and sell it to them, and the end game is to retake the Lincoln Memorial from some squatting slavers so they can reattach the head of Jebediah Springfield ol' dictator Abe and make it a beacon for all freed slaves.
Just don't tell them about the actual history of Abe, it'll make them sad. You can sell them out to the slavers, if you're feeling like a bad person. Because negative karma is actually hard to come across, unless you're just stealing everything or took Contract Killer. So it's a nice way to try and get back to neutral karma.
It’s almost offensive that Rivet City is the most believable city in the entire game. It’s a bunch of people living on a broken carrier. That's it. In no other world would this win by default, but this is Bethesda, where logic and reasoning goes to die. Especially since they have Canterbury Commons, a place that should already be a trading hub for all the other towns/cities, but isn't, because they've been waiting all this time for you, the player character, to come along and organize it with caps.
Again, two centuries after the bombs. And basic trading hasn't even been established, even though there's a town whose entire point is to be a place where four roaming traders stop at. The place should be The Hub of the East Coast. It should be the driving force behind a unified currency. It should be the place where goods flow into and out of, to the rest of the towns.
Rivet City has the biggest, and really only, trading market. You can find guns (in the worst condition this side of broken), chems (the greatest achievement in the post war world, being a drug dealer), clothes (we don't have clean water, but damnit, we'll be well dressed as fuck), junk (oh boy, damaged lawn gnomes!) and food (delicious cakes made from bottom feeding horseshoe crabs). There's also a bar. At the very bottom of the ship. Truly, no other game has told you that booze will make you hit rock bottom quite like this.
But that's not all! They have a hotel! With a robot! Fancy! There's also the Capitol Preservation Society, run by Abraham Washington, who's grasp of history sounds like they still have ask.com centuries later. There's also a doctor who... does doctor things. And a church, which is based around a Saint Monica, who was born to ghouls but wasn't a ghoul. Compelling stuff, I know.
The real attraction is, of course, doctor Li and her resting bitch voice. Oh, if only I could shoot her in the face and spare us all the rest of the game... and her showing up in Fallout 4...
Let's talk about something to get my blood pressure down. Something I like about the game.
Now, people seem to look at me funny when I say that my favorite part of the game is the D.C. ruins. While the stark beauty of the waste is inviting, especially if you play with no companions, no radio and any music volume set to off to just take in the sheer isolation,I absolutely love the urban decay.
I don't hate the metros, like so many others. While sure, I'd of liked them to have made the city actually larger and interconnected, I get the limitations of the system, disc space and time. The metros are a great compromise, albeit one that can get a little repetitive at times. Perhaps if the game had some more variety in enemies that you could find there, instead of just ghouls 90% of the time, it would be better.
But D.C. itself is a thing of glory. I love the notion that you can go from fighting city block to bloc, to sometimes you just having to fight building to building against…
… Bloody buggering Hell, let's talk super mutants. One of the greatest discoveries of man, the Forced Evolutionary Virus, a means of creating super soldiers, those immune to any form of genetic damage or mutation, becoming the apex of the human form and potential, a weapon to surpass even the power armor that could turn a normal soldier into a walking tank, something so secret that the US military was terrified that it could ever leak to the Chinese, who were known to have spies everywhere. This development, which had the real possibility of winning the Resource Wars, along with being THE cure to all disease, especially The New Plague which was ravishing the United States as the world went to Hell... was handed over to Vault-Tec.
Of course, Vault-Tec had to then base an entire vault experiment around it. Which, of course, they lost control of. And so the super mutants have been running around, freely, looking for more people to dip. For. Two. Hundred. Years. The door to Vault 87, by the way, is also the most radioactive spot in the game, which nets nearly 4000 rads a second. Again, after two centuries.
These are all dumb dumb super mutants, because they've been using wastelanders as "breeding" stock. The only super mutants that show any basic thought are Fawkes and Uncle Leo, and both are outcasts to their fellows because they "talk like a stupid human". The Master would kill himself in atomic fire once more if he knew that his grand plans for a new humanity was superseded by over a century of stupid mutants who lack logic, common sense, the ability to think and a purpose beyond being screaming orcs that the player can shoot.
It’s been attempted to try and “explain” why Vault-Tec got the FEV. A lot of it has to do with the Enclave, who also shows up in the game. Because Bethesda made a parody of the thing that was meant to be serious, while trying to take seriously the thing that was parody. But more on them later.
So, the super mutants are one of the big groups in D.C., but who else is there? A bunch of knobs called Talon Company. There’s no actually explained reason as to why these guys exist, much less where they came from. They have a military structure, but nothing comes of it. For a group that operates in D.C. and has a military nature, you'd think they would have a backstory, possibly a connection to the US military, maybe even the Enclave themselves.
But no, they're just better equipped raiders, existing only to be shot by you and looted. If you have good karma, they spawn randomly and attack you, because they've been hired to kill you, specifically. By somebody who is evil, of course, who hates the notion that you're not Super Ultra Mega Hitler. This person is also probably who hired them, as an official guide claims that they've been hired to keep the Capital Wasteland in chaos.
What a lame handwave to who and what they are.
There's also the Brother...hood... of... Steel... oh Christ, why? Oh, I'll talk about them, don't you worry... but they do exist in some places in D.C. to act as a third group that's fighting over things.
... Well, okay, let's just talk about some plot. May as well get to popping the abscess. Or rather, the tumor that has grown so large that it's taken over the face.
I know I said I'd skip it, but I guess I have to talk about the opening, just a little. It covers the first nearly two decades of your life. In it, your father is the only parent you've known, since mommy dearest died in child birth. These two decades are the longest feeling part of the game, even though it's actually very short and you get barely any character out of it for your father.
One day, dad leaves the vault that's supposed to never open. You learn fairly quickly that this is a lie, and well, all your life was a lie. But through plot contrivance, you are forced out of the vault, because otherwise the Overseer will possibly kill you. For the crime of being the son of a man who he let in decades before. Because the experiment for 101 was making an asshole a godlike figure. That and lack of genetic diversity, but uh, that's a whole other issue.
So you get out of the vault, stark beauty, blah blah, find Megaton, the dumbest town on the cesspit they call a planet wedged in Satan's anus, and find the most cliche bad guy saloon owner. If you didn't already figure it out, you find out in no uncertain terms that your whole life was a lie, that you were born outside the vault. A few bullets later (well, you can just do a quest to hunt down a whore to get the info, but fuck this guy), you find a lead on dad from a terminal and have to give chase.
Now, I get why the player character would want to find dad. But why do I want to find him? The game has given me very little to go by when it comes to him. I don't have any connection to the guy, I don't like him, much less hate him. He's just there, a thing to push the story forward. Even if I wanted to role play as this person, I have no reason to care about James.
That's his name, by the way.
But because the story just has to go on, we hike on over to Chevy Chase... no, not him. But frankly, I would prefer if I got to meet an actual legend of comedy like him. Instead, it's a D.C. 'hood where, if you're just following the main plot, is the first time you run into...
The Brotherhood of Steel. No, no, not yet... there will be time for the ranting later...
The BoS lets you tag along with them, because they're... such... nice... folks... and help you kill some... super... mutants... on the way to Galaxy News Radio. And then the dumbest thing to happen since meeting the BoS happens.
See, east coast super mutants can apparently keep growing, into what are called behemoths. Titans of orcness that scream and smash more than the other gits. The game gives you a Fat Man... a device designed to launch mini nukes... yes, small nuclear warheads... at an enemy. So you can easily just kill the behemoth with this unearned new power and get back pats for being THE COOLEST.
Take that, Tunnel Snakes. I rule now!
You get let in, having done all the work, and meet your new stalker: Three Dog. He's a so called disc jockey who is in the running for most annoying character ever, as all he does is talk about the so called Good Fight... and shit talk you, specifically, if you do bad things in game.
Hence, your own personal stalker who will tell the whole world about how bad you are for not caring about the assholes in the wastes. Or suck your dick if you're nice. How he finds out about any of this is unknown, since he never, ever leaves GNR.
He has info on dad, but it'll cost you; you have to steal a communications dish from a lunar lander (yes really), to boost the signal of GNR so that the whole of the Capital Wasteland can hear this insane person ramble. Or, if you have a decent Speech stat and/or don't mind save scumming, you can skip it and have him tell you where to go.
Sadly, you cannot just shoot him in the face and still find out. You can kill him, but the trail goes cold, leaving you to just wander. The horror, I know, not having a marker to where you have to go next.
If you do kill him, he's actually replaced, sort of, by a tech who just reminds everybody that Three Dog is dead. Frankly, I like this better. She doesn't comment on how mean of a meanie I am for selling an annoying kid into slavery.
Now, assuming you did the quest, talked him into telling you or you've looked at the script, you'll know that the next place is RIVET CITY, the objectively best city, because it had one foot in the race while all the others had bloody stumps. So you go there, get harassed by a Courser (oh God, we're already starting Fallout 4), wander around and find ol' doc Li.
I said she had resting bitch voice, and I mean it. You can hear it in her voice and the way she speaks that she doesn't like you, specifically. And ya know what? I like that. I like that she has contempt for the fact that you were born, maybe even contempt for your mother and that your father picked her over Li. You can hear it in her voice when he shows up later, and how quickly she drops everything when he asks.
Unlike everybody else, Li doesn't have some kind of quest for you to go on for information, or a check to pass. She just tells you to go to Project Purity, because that's where James went off to. Of course, I'm sure she knew what was waiting for you...
Or not, because once you get to Project Purity, there's super mutants all over the place. In fact, just getting there from Rivet City puts you close to one of their camps where you can save a hostage, if you so choose. It also nets you a Minigun, but uh, they suck in Bethesda games, so maybe just pass.
The thing is, James left fresh holotapes that you can find, implying that either he has a hidden 100 Sneak skill, used a Stealth Boy, the super mutants were so dumb they didn't notice him, or they moved in after the fact. But given how James seems to know there are super mutants later...
Whatever, the tapes talk about another vault. So you have to go there.
You gain access, get into a VR pod of the future and either obey the commands of a psychotic little girl who is actually an old German man who is based on a Nazi scientist who has been torturing a bunch of people for centuries in a seemingly ideal version of the 1950s (but actually 2070s) or, if you have the patience, do a sound puzzle to kill everybody in the sim outside of yourself, your dad (who is a dog) and the crazy man-girl.
Normally I would like to just kill 'em all, but that gives you good karma. And we're not about that, because the game is too full of good karma choices. Of course, obeying a man-girl is also kind of lame, even if you do become a child with a knife who stabs people. So uh, your choice on that one.
Now, here's the thing I like about all this. See, if you already know that Vault 112 is where you need to go, you can skip all the nonsense that leads up to 112. Of course, it also makes an already short main plot that much shorter, but if you're looking to keep your psychotic urges in check by not killing named NPCs, well, there you go. But the fact that the option is there is great, because all too often games won't enable plot important NPCs or other things until you activate certain event triggers through following a linear plot.
Here, you can just say fuck it and run right to 112. It's perfect for people who want to replay the game and do things differently. Whoever decided this was to be a thing at Bethesda should be rightly praised for this choice.
The Enclave was a parody, a joke. They were a gotcha take on the government. They didn’t need to come back, especially in the poor form they did. For a bunch of people who see the wastelanders as inferior and have a fear of anything mutated, their armor sure doesn’t block out rads and they sure do eat the same 200 year old packaged food that everybody else does.
Speaking of parody, the Brotherhood of Steel. Look at what they did to my boy. The Outcasts are the only close to true version of the BoS, and even then, they’re not exactly on point. The real shame is, you can’t go back after The Pitt and throw Lyon’s self righteous attempt to save people back in his face, given what’s become of the place since then.
The main story of the game is a song and dance that gets old. You have barely any time to get attached to dear old dad before he leaves you. You are then compelled, through the plot, to find him. You take a grand tour and meet a bunch of insufferable people, especially Three Dog, who becomes your stalker and can’t stop talking about you. You then find dad, become his weapon to clear out a place, he offs himself when the Enclave shows up, and you swear VENGEANCE on them, like this is Daggerfall and you’re an angry ghost. Along the way you find some companions who can handle radiation, especially a friendly Super Mutant who likes to tag along.
You then end up at a place that will kill you with rads. Your friendly Super Mutant WHO IS IMMUE TO RADS says that it’s your destiny to die. Charon, a ghoul who is ALSO IMMUNE TO RADS AND IS UNDER BRAINWASHING TO OBEY YOUR EVERY COMMAND also refuses. You can get a robot, Sergeant RL-3, who also refuses.
So you have to kill yourself. Because destiny. Because the plot stated in the opening that you were born, you will die. You have to die. Like dad. To honor his memory. Because screw what you want.
Fallout 3 makes me angry. It has so much potential, and it was all just squandered on being the greatest hits of Fallout 1 and 2, because of brand recognition. And you know what? I still love the game. It’s irrational, it’s illogical, it’s like I’m on crazy pills, but I love the game. Having come back to it via Tale of Two Wastelands, it hit me hard. I took to the Capital Wasteland and didn’t let go. I had so much fun romping around, and still do.
I can’t hate this game. It makes me angry, it lets me down in so many regards, but I love it, warts and all.
Recommended: Yes, because I’m on crazy pills.
–Broken Steel (AKA Fallout 3.1: The Revenge of the Lone Wanderer)–
What’s that, I hear you say? This review isn’t going in release order? That’s right, Jay! At least, not with this part being moved up, specifically because it is a direct continuation of the main game, and as such, it should be reviewed before any of the other DLC.
So, we rewind a bit. You can have a companion start the Project Purity now, but even if you do, you still end up in the same state; a two week coma. You wake up just in time to be given more running around quests, because that's how your life goes.
The Brotherhood of Steel have taken to organizing caravans to give out fresh, clean water, as per the ending of the original game. Even if you managed to poison it with a sample of FEV, one of the few actually truly evil acts the game lets you do. It's almost funny, watching them happily continue the Enclave plot to wipe out all life.
You run here, you run there, you get to watch a giant robot be nuked from orbit. You get to go to Old Olney, now actually plot important, to get a Tesla Coil. No, not so they can replace your brain, this ain't unpossible SCIENCE!, it's just to make a Tesla Cannon. Which, to be honest, isn't that great of a weapon.
It does more damage to robots and power armor. Robots don't show up that often, and frankly, aren't that hard. How, power armor, on the other hand, should be a useful boost in attack against, because Broke Steel places dozens of new locations where Enclave troops are either stationed or get dropped off by vertibird. The issue is... power armor sucks in Fallout 3.
In previous Fallout games, power armor was a big deal. It was some of the best armor in the game, allowing you to take far more of a beating than you could ever dream of with anything else. Even Fallout 4 ended up making it better, what with it being a tank that you can pilot, Iron Man style. But here, in 3, power armor... just sucks.
It's too heavy. It's not worth all that much. The only reason you would want it is for increased strength, some of which give +2, but if you're so low strength that you need it, the weight will only be an even bigger burden on you.
Plus, it just doesn't look good, be it the new T-45D (because we needed a new suit for the box) to the... garbage that the Enclave tries to pass off as "advanced".
So anyway, the Tesla Cannon kind of gets its time to shine, because you have to find Adams Air Force Base to stop an Enclave plot. Those cunning fools have themselves a satellite weapon that can destroy whole cities. And when you get there, you do indeed find that you can nuke targets. Like Rivet City. And Megaton. And also The Citadel, which is the Pentagon, where the BoS hang out. There's also Project Purity, where the water comes from.
Now, you may ask if they can target The Citadel, why haven't they blown it up yet? After all, the Enclave and BoS are at war, and have been all the while your character was in a coma.
The answer is... stop asking questions. The whole reason why they have a target lock isn't for them to win the day, no, it's for you to be evil and blow up the BoS. That's really it, honestly; because they wanted to give you an evil option.
Many, really. You could blow up Megaton in the original base game, so this is another shot to do it if you didn't. You can destroy Rivet City, Project Purity and The Citadel all to return things back to the way they were; a dead world, with no hope. The way that Tim Cain, Todd Howard and so many others who have touched Fallout want it to remain. No progress, no hope, just misery.
But hey, you get wacky, zany side content, so that's fine and dandy. Don't take it too seriously, bro, Fallout was never serious.
... Bleck...
Well, okay, I'm being slightly hyperbolic here, since you actually can't take out Megaton, Rivet City or Project Purity. It's just funny how the Enclave has enough ammo left to actually reset all the progress made in under a month, yet choose not to. And also, ya know, having themselves be a viable target as well.
It's really like they never wanted to win.
Broken Steel also started the ghoul problem that Fallout 4 would make worse. In 4, they danced back and forth between ghouls needing water and food to live. It had feral ghouls laying face down in river beds for hours, just waiting to be able to ambush you. Fallout 4 leaned pretty hard into they're just zombies.
Broken Steel added in the Apostles of the Eternal Light, which are lead by Mother Curie III. She uses water that has been tainted by radiation to make people "achieve Enlightenment", she claims will make them not age, not feel hunger, etc. Save for one, her entire following are ghouls. So already, Broken Steel is telling us that ghouls don't need to eat. But it gets worse, because when you're in the Presidential Metro, the Metro Authority Rapid Governmental Transit System (M.A.R.Go.T.) informs the player that there's been a security breach. The system cannot identify any body heat... and when you go to find out the problem, IT'S GHOULS. So, according to Broken Steel, ghouls do not need to eat and they have no body heat. No wonder come Fallout 4, they can lay face down in river beds for however long they want, and don't need any sustenance. They're literally zombies, and have been since 3, despite what the game says about how they're just humans, albeit ones who have survived and mutated from massive radiation exposure.
Recommended: Yes, because screw destiny (and also maybe Destiny, the streamer. And Destiny, the game.)
–Operation: Anchorage (AKA Fallout 3.25: Call of Future Warfare)--
Nanomachines, son! Er, I mean, biometric seals, son!
Recommended: No, because power armor is lame in FO3.
–The Pitt (AKA Fallout 3.5: Legend of the Eastern Gun Runners)--
Steal a child or don’t. Everybody is still a jerk.
Recommended: Yes, because it shows moral ambiguity and people trying to rebuild.
–Point Lookout (AKA Fallout 3.75: You Become the Scarecrow)--
“The Great Game” was added just to make it seem like there’s more to this whole nonsense than there really is.
Recommended: No
–Mothership Zeta (AKA Fallout 3.99: To Infinity and Beyond!)--
Giddyup Buttercups with FRICKING LASER BEAMS!
Recommended: No, because it started the whole Zetan nonsense.
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