With the collapse of Interplay Entertainment earlier in the decade, plans for Fallout 3 were virtually crushed. Bethesda, seeing a golden opportunity, snatched up the rights and went out about developing their own take on Black Isle’s post-apocalyptic world. Bethesda has taken the Fallout world and everything in it and applied it to their own technologies and development ideologies, resulting in a game that feels a lot like a futuristic Elder Scrolls title. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; the added accessibility gives it wider appeal, and the solid foundation helps make Fallout 3 into a great game – although existing Fallout fans may feel otherwise.

The Fallout 3 story starts in Vault 101 with the birth of your character, after which you determine your sex and looks. The early moments of the game chronicle your life in the vault with your father, including your 10th birthday party and the day you take the GOAT exam (which determines your job inside the vault) at school. Fallout 3 intertwines the creation of your character and selection of your specific stats and abilities with growing up, which is pretty cool. Everything goes haywire one day when your father decides to leave the vault, which pisses off the Overseer, who promptly starts killing your father’s friends. Naturally, you decide to leave the vault in search of your father.

After you leave the “safety” of the vault, you’re at the mercy of the Capital Wasteland, the area which was once Washington DC. Once your eyes adjust to the natural light, you see the remnants of the once-great city; famous landmarks such as the Washington Monument litter the skyline – still standing, but almost completely destroyed. It’s chilling, but almost beautiful in a slightly deranged way. The wasteland is vast and full of danger, including high radiation zones, mutated animals, mutated humans, and everybody’s favourite; raiders. On a technical level, Fallout 3 isn’t quite as impressive. The texture detail and geometry is fine, and the game runs at a nice steady frame rate throughout – it’s just that the characters have that same stiff, robotic look and feel synonymous with the Elder Scrolls games; perhaps it’s time Bethesda brought in some fresh blood.

Once you venture out into the wasteland, you can pursue the main quest line which is a rather enjoyable, if slightly short adventure, or you can wander off on your own terms, exploring cities, taking on side quests and generally helping/hindering the progress of post-apocalyptic humanity. Most quests in Fallout 3 have multiple solutions, usually one good, one bad and one neutral. The availability of these solutions depends largely on the way your character is constructed. Every outcome affects your karma, which in turn has other effects on your future, opening up/closing off dialogue options as your reputation improves/disintegrates, affecting who joins you on your quest, and ultimately determining what sort of an ending you’ll receive. Some quest solutions will obviously have a larger impact on the world – particularly ones like deciding the fate of the bomb in the middle of Megaton.

The world of Fallout 3 seems to fit in pretty well with the continuity and atmosphere developed by Black Isle, and players retain many of the same freedoms as they did in the first two games. There are some memorable characters out in the wasteland, and some fantastic performances from the voice cast, which includes Liam Neeson, Malcolm McDowell, and Ron Perlman as the narrator. Radio stations playable through the wasteland give off the feeling that the place is still alive.

The whole retro future concept returns, with VaultBoy featuring prominently through the game, and the radio stations (playable through your PipBoy) belting out easy listening tunes from the 50s. Bethesda really hammers the 50s tone home in the game, which makes it lose some of its kitsch value. A lot of the trademark Fallout humour seems to have been lost over the last 11 years. That’s not to suggest that there aren’t some funny moments in the game - Dr Braun’s simulation in Vault 112 springs to mind - but it isn’t on the level of the older games. Playing as an evil character tends to yield a lot more chuckles, purely from seeing just how far you can push people before they crack.

Fallout 3’s character development systems stick pretty closely to what was established by Black Isle. Main character attributes are driven by the SPECIAL system, which lets you spread points over strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility and luck. The way you play the game differs based on the way you distribute points among your SPECIAL attributes; if you trade off strength for intelligence and charisma, you can talk your way out of potentially hostile encounters. Fallout 3 doesn’t allow your experience to vary to the same extent as the first two games, where you could play as a complete moron who spoke in grunts, but the basic idea is there.

The SPECIAL system is complimented by skills and perks. Skills are broken up into areas such as small guns, energy weapons, medical, lockpicking, explosives and science, three of which are tagged when you create your character to give them a substantial boost. With each level your character gains (up to 20), you’ll get a number of points to distribute among your skills, as well as a choice of perks. Perks come in many different forms; some enhance existing skills, some grant you extra SPECIAL points, while others are rather unique, giving bonuses for eating human flesh, or enhancing the gore when you fight. Skills work more like they did in Oblivion than older Fallout games; lockpicking and medical skills are now tied to the use of items like lockpicks and stimpacks – you can’t do the related skill without the item like you could previously. Harder lockpicking and hacking tasks require certain levels in the skills before you can even attempt them, which is a bit of a pain.

No matter how much you try to avoid it, you’re going to have to fight at some stage in Fallout 3. The game gives players access to a wide variety of weapons. These weapons are broken up into a few groups; melee weapons (bats, brass knuckles, knives), small weapons (pistols, machine guns, rifles), big weapons (mini-guns, rocket launchers), energy weapons (laser pistols/rifles, gatling laser) and explosives (grenades, mines). Weapon accuracy and damage is affected by condition – weapons bought from a store will always be in better shape than ones found on the field. You can take them to a trader for repairing, but those with a high repair skill can fix theirs up themselves. Knowing that turn based combat is not very palatable to the masses, Bethesda has opted to take combat in a new direction. Players can fight in real time, but I advise that you don’t, because it’s bloody awful; enemies move around like headless chickens, so it’s difficult to get a shot in, the hitboxing is all over the place, and the enemies just don’t seem to react to being shot. It really just feels like Oblivion with a gun. Fortunately, combat is complimented by the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting system (or VATS).

VATS basically stops gun combat in Fallout 3 from sucking. When you activate VATS, the game comes to a stand-still, and you can target various areas of the enemy’s body for your attacks. Each area of the body will have a different chance to hit, but it’s usually the areas with the smallest hit chance (like the head) that will result in the largest damage. You can queue up a number of attacks, but are limited by action points (which are dictated by your ability statistic). When you’re satisfied with your battle plan, you hit the go button, and watch your attacks unfold. The beauty of VATS is that many of your locationally focused attacks result in some rather ghastly damage to your opponents – legs and arms being blown off, decapitations and sometimes explosions of giblets, all in slow motion. The system does feel like it tips combat in your favour in situations with fewer opponents – you can basically run up to a super mutant, and as soon as he’s about to squash you, hit the VATS button and queue up a bunch of shots to the head, taking him out without getting hit.

Playing through the main quest of Fallout 3 will take about 12 hours, but if you’re chasing down side quests and achievements, you’ll easily be able to push it beyond 40 hours. The experience does vary quite a bit based on whether you seek the good or evil solution to each quest, so there’s plenty of opportunity for replays. Choices made at the end of the game can result in fairly different endings.

Fallout 3 is one of the finest role-playing experiences of the year, even if it does feel like a futuristic Elder Scrolls game. The atmosphere of the world is amazing, the quests are genuinely enjoyable, VATS is really cool, and the character development systems are fantastic. There are a few weak points; real-time combat is horrid, VATS can feel a bit unbalanced, the series’ trademark humour has mostly been lost, and characters have that same robotic animation and facial expression that plagued Oblivion. Fans of the older Fallout games might take exception to the execution and a lot of changes that Bethesda has made, but everyone else should have a blast exploring the future wastelands and saving the world once again.