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Fallout 3 preview
“War, war never changes”
And indeed it doesn't. This is the phrase that kept gamers awake for nearly 10 years as Black Isle gave them the bread and water they needed under the form of Fallout. It is probably the single greatest game ever made. Not because of high poly count, latest shaders, use of directX 10 or any other tricky little tech term but because of the fantastic gameplay, one that could easily kidnap you from real life for hours.
It was maybe the only RPG that dared not to use sorcerers, damsels in distress, dragons or any other fantasy related object or being. It dared to be different and the bet Black Isle made with the gaming industry was by far the craziest one. But in the end they won. They won the hearts of countless gamers and some of them probably started worshiping the game studio right after that. I know I did.
But if war never changes, developers and the owner of an IP has to, sometime. After 10 years the Fallout IP landed in Bethesda's own backyard and for a second the gaming world went nuts.
Not because Fallout would come to life again but because of another cataclysmic event known as “Oblivion with guns”. This is the term gamers invented for Fallout 3 as soon as Bethesda went ahead and gave news of the recent purchase.
...and the past is here again
As a great man once said you cant have future without past so, without further adieu, lets see why Fallout was so special.
You are a fortunate survivor of the nuclear war that just ravaged Earth. The Vault, Fallout term for underground bunkers, saved your life. But, as always, something has to go wrong and this is when you come into play. The chip that controls the whole system of water purification breaks down and, by popular vote, you have to go outside and get a working one. Wandering around the desert, doing different things, you come across a settlement.  Its not a big city but its one of the most important places in the game. This is where you find out what happened during the time you were stuck in that sardine can.
The game was pretty straight forward. You could do whatever you pleased in given situations and of course, the game would react to your choices. You could kill the mutants that were threatening you or you could as well join them and start killing people. And talking about killing, Fallout had a lot of things to offer. Weapons of any kind, from boxing gloves to laser guns, all of which could be upgraded, were placed there just for our fun. And talking about fun, there is no party if you don't have skills, and skills it had. Not a lot but few and very well done. Unarmed, small guns, medic, stealing, lockpicking and negotiation are just some of the 18 skills that were available in the first incarnation of Fallout. Along these the gamer had another useful thing called SPECIAL, its not just fancy term but the abbreviation for strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility and luck. It doesn't look like something out of the ordinary at first but bare in mind that this SPECIAL was one of the most important things in the game because it changed the whole experience.
Just like in recent games like Knights of the Old Republic or even Fable, the gamer would be free to choose any path, dark, light or somewhere between, being as evil, or as good as he wanted to.
Not to mention one of the most greatest things ever to be put in a RPG, Fallout 2 style, where you could just throw a grenade into a toilet and...  well.. you can imagine what happens next.
But enough about the glorious past. To make a long story short if you haven't played any of the Fallout games please turn off your pc and find another hobby because you cannot call yourself a gamer.
After 2 great games, 1 Fallout that was more RTT than RPG and a failure with a console Fallout Black Isle started working on a new game for the series, which was entitled, as you'd expect, Fallout 3, codename Van Buren. For years the future of this game was pretty uncertain, and not because of some other cataclysmic event like a space comet hitting the Earth but because of financial problems. The evil master behind all this was Interplay which almost went bankrupt and, in a very odd moment, decided to let Fallout 3 go. But things went on and on June 5 the IP was bought by Bethesda and this is were our story begins.
Lot of things have been said until now. On one side we have the old-school gamers that crave for real Fallout and not a remake of Oblivion and, on the other side, we have the “other” gamers, not familiar to the Fallout universe, that have nothing against Bethesda's new project. |
