Finished Fallout 3

I managed to kick my ass enough to play through Fallout 3.

The story is garbage. I DESPISED the fact that either you have to sacrifice your ass to power on that shit purifier or have the BoS do it. The BoS is so overrated it's not even funny.

The Outcasts are alright, though, I wish there had been an option to join them. Speaking of which, wouldn't that have made for a better story? But NO, Bethesda wanted big robots, big booms... Liberty Prime is an absolute farce but his dialogue about Communism did have me a chuckle. I could almost hear "America Fuck Yeah" play in the background...

The Enclave was kind of cool. I am not familiar with Fallout nor Fallout 2 so I don't know how they mesh in, canon-wise, but I liked their power armor, especially the Tesla Armor. Walking in the BoS bunker wearing an Enclave armor and getting no reactions whatsoever gave me a chuckle.

I bought the GOTY edition, so I had Operation Anchorage, Into the Pitt, Broken Steel and Point Lookout.

I enjoyed O:A to a degree. Into the Pitt was garbage. I haven't yet played Broken Steel, and Point Lookout was also garbage.

Edit: Oh yeah, I also had Mothership Zeta. Not too fond of that either though the Alien weapons are nice.

F3 was definitively a mixed bag and a piss poor game. FNV is SO much better it's not even funny.

The original Brotherhood is much more like the so called outcasts in this game. You just have to play some FNV to see how different the real BoS is.

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I enjoyed O:A to a degree. Into the Pitt was garbage. I haven't yet played Broken Steel, and Point Lookout was also garbage.

Funny, I enjoyed the Pitt DLC a lot probably because it was a relief to get some moral ambiguity after all that had been going on before that. I also found Point Lookout fun but I really didn't like Operation Anchorage.

Broken Steel makes the Fallout 3 ending a little less silly but don't expect too much from it.

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F3 was definitively a mixed bag and a piss poor game. FNV is SO much better it's not even funny.

Go tell that to all the clueless players who rave about Fallout 3 and keep saying FNV sucks... They don't deserve to play a real Fallout game. Not that we will get another real Fallout game anytime soon anyway. I for one don't have any expectations when it comes to Fallout 4 and Bethesda.

The only really good thing that came from Fallout 3 was FNV and that's only because the people responsible for Fallout 2 were in charge.

F3 isn't completely rotten but there's not much to redeem it.

I played the BoS in New Vegas, and I agree, they reminded me a lot of the Outcasts. Their armor is bloody sweet, too, red and black? Works for me.

BoS vs Outcasts would have been a great story, just like the Stormcloaks VS the Empire in Skyrim. But Bethesda have a way of clusterfucking something that is perfectly good. Joining the Outcasts and waving war on Lyon's BoS would have been sweet.

I am not hoping for much when it comes to Broken Steel. Joining the Enclave is fine with me, if for no other reason than to stick it to the "BoS".

NV beats F3 to death and pisses on it's corpse.

I am cautiously optimistic for F4. NV was a step in the right direction, maybe F4 will be a gem.

Most likely noy knowing Bethesda but whatever.

While I think Fallout 3 is the best Bethesda-developed game, it's the weakest Fallout game (the PS2 BoS game notwithstanding).

I didn't mind the start so much. I was able to get into the quest to find the PCs father. Where it really goes off the rails for me is when you return him to Project Purity and the Enclave shows up. It's like that's the moment when they ran out of ideas and had to blatantly rip-off the previous games.

I thought it was a huge mistake bringing back the Enclave, especially as the primary antagonist. Between the Enclave and the Supermutants abducting people, it felt like they had just thrown the scripts for Fallout 1 and 2 into a blender and then poured it out to form a game. I hope we don't see anything more of the Enclave except for Remnants.

For this reason, I really dislike Broken Steel. Yes, it fixes the stupid ending, but to enjoy any of the additional quests it offers, you have to get into the conflict between BoS and Enclave, essentially fighting Lyons' war for him single-handedly. I just don't care about any of that, and the game doesn't give me a reason to care. As far as I'm concerned, my character's stake in the plot ended with the activation of the purifier (if not with the death of James). The character has no motivation to go to war for Lyons. Throughout the time I played Broken Steel, I was constantly asking myself, "Why am I doing this?" It's a bad sign if you can't answer that question in a roll playing game.

Bethesda actually had an interesting idea with the conflict between Lyons and the Outcasts. A much more interesting plot could have been constructed out of that, but they were sidelined to make room for the Enclave.

I've tried going back to play Fallout 3, and I just can't. After New Vegas, it just feels so... pointless.

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I am not hoping for much when it comes to Broken Steel. Joining the Enclave is fine with me, if for no other reason than to stick it to the "BoS".

Sadly not an option.

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I didn't mind the start so much. I was able to get into the quest to find the PCs father. Where it really goes off the rails for me is when you return him to Project Purity and the Enclave shows up. It's like that's the moment when they ran out of ideas and had to blatantly rip-off the previous games.

The only problem I had with the Project Purity part is that you had to take a backseat. The real hero is the father James. That's plain and simple and that's just bad storytelling in an RPG. No NPC should be more central to the story than the PC.

That being said I could have forgiven that if it wasn't for all the absurd references to previous Fallout games. I mean the Amata "you're a hero but you have to leave" speech could be seen as a direct homage but there are so many examples of situations when they went out of their way to bring back some Fallout element no matter how absurd it was. Bringing back Harold is just the best example. It just kept reminding us how better the original was.

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I've tried going back to play Fallout 3, and I just can't. After New Vegas, it just feels so... pointless.

I haven't tried but I do see what you mean and that's another reason why I don't have high hopes for Fallout 4.

FNV may have been a step in the right direction but it was a tribute to the original Fallouts and I have doubts that Bethesda can pull off what Obsidian did (if Skyrim is any indication).

I can only assume that Bethesda is going to please the Fallout 3 crowd, i.e. the people who discovered the franchise with Fallout 3 and what they want is not the choices that FNV offer but running around giant robots and collecting bobbleheads.

To this day I don't understand why Bethesda did bother spending money to get the Fallout name. They could have easily made their own franchise. The only reason is that they must have been fans of the original games which is probably also the reason why we got FNV. I'm not sure that's enough for me to be confident that Fallout 4 will be a true Fallout game.

In any case what Bethesda need to do with Fallout 4 is to find their own voice instead of trying too hard to make it look like a Fallout game.

I fully expect Fallout 4 to be a standard Bethesda open-world sandbox, miles wide but ankle-deep. Bethesda's games are all about exploration, and their stories are little more than flimsy pretexts for the player to go wandering around the game world gawking at all the "cool' stuff and killing mooks. I've given up on Bethesda doing anything else.

However, I remember reading Obsidian saying they were open to doing another Fallout game for Bethesda. My hope is that they will alternate between Bethesda-developed numbered Fallout games and Obisidan-developed side games. Let Bethesda do all the work on the engine and assets and make their game for their own core audience, then let Obsidian focus on making a solid campaign in a separate game.

I do think Bethesda would have been better off creating their own new IP rather than buying Fallout, but I guess they felt the name recognition was worth it. I know people say, "But at least we got New Vegas out of the deal." But if Bethesda hadn't bought the IP, we might have got a proper Fallout 3 developed by Obsidian or inXile, more in the style of the originals. And Bethesda wouldn't have had to deal with all of our nerdrage.

That makes a lot of sense... And I must confess I didn't think about that. After all the original Fallout 3 was supposed to be an isometric RPG. I would have loved a new Fallout game that looked like Shadowrun Returns instead of the mediocre FPS Oblivion with guns turned out to be. Thinking about that makes me sad. I miss the late 90s.

After all these years I'm still wishing for a game that has the depth of Fallout or even Arcanum.

Hopefully Project Eternity and the new Torment will turn out ok.

So basically Broken Steel is being a Brotherhood lapdog?

[Expletive] that.

There's a half-hearted and totally illogical option to betray the Brotherhood at the end of Broken Steel, but that only comes after you have personally fought their war for them with virtually no assistance. If you wanted to destroy the Broherhood, why do all that work for them? Why not just waltz into the citadel with a plasma rifle and turn them all into green goo? That would be a lot more satisfying, if half of them weren't marked essential.

That essential thing is so stupid. I remember the first time I tried to accompany James to Project Purity without using fast travel... It was hilarious. He would just get back on his feet over and over again. It would have made sense to give him some means of transportation or at least something to conceal himself so he could evade enemies on the way instead of going for what they did.

Fallout 3 can't implement being "evil" in that game being evil is just being psychotic killing people and destroying things for no reason. Turning your back on the BoS doesn't make any sense at all. At least blowing up Megaton could be understood as the expression of some unsound curiosity.

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Why not just waltz into the citadel with a plasma rifle and turn them all into green goo? That would be a lot more satisfying

And I did that in the original Fallout because I was playing a guy who was tired of their attitude (Rhombus has always been a dick).

Fallout 3 could boast great environments to explore (you still have invisible walls though) but like any game made by Bethesda the (sham) story and (poor) choices are only excuses for going out and looking for stuff in trash cans.

Fallout New Vegas may have more invisible walls (and less randomly generated spawns but thankfully there are mods for that) but it has a great story with actual choices without losing the possibility of looking for stuff in trash cans and dumpsters (without those Fallout 3 freakingly stupid bobbleheads).