[size=9]Kill it with bottlecaps!

Firstly, it's been a while since I wrote anything here, and I guess I ought to apologize for that. Not that I have dedicated readers, but it did feel like a sudden desertion. I thought it fitting, though, to pin my return to something that really deserves it. I just finished my first playthrough (hopefully of several) of Bethesda's opus, and I felt inspired in a way that few games really inspire me. Inspired enough - startlingly? - to come back here and write of some of the impressions the game left me with.

That I thought the game was a risky enough investment to split the cost with a friend should be enough of a sign that I wasn't confident in it. I only played the original Fallout less than a week before I bought Fallout 3, so I didn't have the rosy-tinted reverence for it that some of the vets around here do, but I had been extremely impressed by the first game and I wondered how Bethesda - a developer with such a spotty reputation - would do.


Bethesda thinks deer are pretty badass.

Granted, Bethesda's games have been nothing but good... overall. But they have the nasty flaw of fucking up little tiny things about their games, then fixing those and fucking up something else. Morrowind? People hated the rigidity of character progression and how tough the combat system was to deal with. Oblivion? We'll streamline combat, and throw in a little scalable difficulty and conversation pie. So, I didn't really know what to expect from this latest piece.

The biggest worry that I hear is that this would be "Oblivion with guns", and I'm here to allay your fears and tell you that is completely and utterly fucking true. And... it doesn't bother me at all. The combat functions like Oblivion's would, and if you played Oblivion as an archer or spellcaster then you're in for some nasty deja vu[i]. But [i]Oblivion's problems were never really about the combat. They were about much bigger reasons that were much more distasteful, sweeping things like story and characters. And in those departments, it seems Bethesda's finally done us a good turn.



Oblivion and Morrowind were great games, and I loved both of them, but beside the main storyline, the game was largely an exercise in fetch-and-return or kill-quota MMO sidequests, and because the goals and mechanics of the quests were so predictable and uniform, there wasn't a lot of incentive to wander. The quests were shallow, so players stayed in the shallow end. Oblivion's world was huge, but at times all the wandering felt like it was in vain: the world was so dry and sparse that exploration had no goal or focus.

If this was a worry for you, I can tell you that the same mistake hasn't been made here. Fallout not only provides the type of deep diversions that Oblivion was missing, it offers them wrapped in heart and a sense of purpose. Every sidequest that you're offered - though there's probably fewer of them - feels like it only got into the game by being a paragon of good design, every single task feels like it has greater implications than just rewarding or punishing you, and every step in those missions feels like it's put there for a reason.

Best of all, these assignments are often emotionally profound, including saving a town at a young boy's behest after mutant fire ants have burned it - and his parents - to the ground, or to step onto bitter ground, you can capture and sell Wasteland survivors to the slavers in Paradise Falls for profit or reputation.



But by staying so close to the heart, Fallout points out it's own greatest weakness:nothing really resonates in the Wasteland. Maybe the problem sleeps where designers are afraid to go, something fundamental about sandbox games. Maybe they just aren't good storytelling mediums: after all, given a limited palette of animations (etc.) to work with and so much content to finish, nothing can really feel as intimate as if it was carefully scripted. For whatever reason, though, in Fallout, as in GTA or Elder Scrolls or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or what-have-you, the stories can be as affecting as you please, but nothing hits close to home because it all feels mechanical and alien.

Granted, Fallout's voice acting helps with this problem. Compared to Oblivion's procedural voicing, which sampled from about five actors for a world population of definitely more than five actors, Fallout's voices line up better with the characters, and everyone you meet feels like an individual with desires and backstory that you can dig up from their conversation. But even with that treatment, Fallout is slightly off-putting. Nothing really feels genuine. The scary bits are still scary, the heartfelt bits still heartfelt, but it's so near to sublimity that it's miles and miles away.



Overall, though, I'd still suggest this to anybody who's interested in a game they can sink time into without regret. I spent eight hours in it my first day and didn't feel a lick of self-consciousnes. Compared to any other game I could have bought, this is the one I think I'd have had the least buyer's remorse about. Honestly, there were small segments of this game that packed more emotion and meaning than the entirety of games like Bioshock and Half-Life 2, and the scope and sheer audacity of it certainly help. If you're like me at all, this game will leave you just short of absolute bliss, but short enough so your wallet sleeps happily.