This is a "Let's Play" playthrough of some early bits of Fallout 3. This article is fairly light on spoilers as most of this has been covered in previews and early showings, but there are a few spoilers in here. No Mutants Allowed will publish impressions pieces and a review later, this is intended as a light-hearted glimpse and not to be read as a review.
My Fallout 3 adventures
By Vince D. Weller
Day 1 - Vault 101
Painful.
You start as a newborn and slowly move through different ages, FINALLY becoming a teenager. Your birthday is an especially painful "level". You play the role of a dumb 10 year old with an amazing repertoire of dialogue options.
Couldn't the Overseer help out more with your birthday? Who comes up with this shit? You can also harass every adult and either demand presents or complain about what they gave you. I guess Bethesda thought it's a good example of Fallout humor.
Anyway, after taking a painfully long GOAT exam, I'm awakened by the Overseer's daughter. I wonder what she wants.
My dad, the light of life, my moral compass and the only friend, is gone you say? Good for him. The girl informs me that the Overseer's thugs are looking for me (I guess they didn't think of looking in my room) and have already killed Jonas. Oh my... Poor Jonas. She gives me a gun - thanks, kid - and tells me how to escape the vault. Apparently everyone knows it but me. I expect troubles, so I equip a baseball bat (I'm too cheap to waste bullets at this point). Let's take a look at my stats:
Strength 5, Melee 15. In Fallout 1 that would mean a painful death. In Fallout 3 that means 94% chance to hit in VATS mode.
I run into two armed guards in combat gear. The guards manage to reduce my health from 200 to 141, but die easily. Then I kill more guards. Then I kill the overseer. Then I kill some more guards, leaving a dead vault behind. At lvl 1. Unskilled. Wearing nothing but my vault pajamas.
The Overseer's last seconds.
I killed the entire vault and I'm a Vault Guardian! I wish my dad could see me now.
Day 1 - The Great Outdoors
Welcome to Morrowind. Bring guns.
When you're walking outside the game feels like a typical Elder Scrolls game. Very Morrowind-ish. Everything is grey, including Megaton.
Megaton is conveniently located within 5 minutes walking distance from the cave where the entrance to 101 is. Well, looks like everything is conveniently located within 5 minutes walking distance. Probably to make traveling easier but that doesn't work in the wasteland setting AT ALL.
Anyway, I walked slowly to Megaton (slowly because I was overloaded with all the loot from the vault). The doors were immediately opened (too friendly for the wasteland?) and the infamous Calamity Jane sheriff greeted me:
Dialogues in the game are bad. Really bad. I can't believe that Bethesda can't find someone who can, like, write sentences without sounding like a 12 year old. *sigh*
"Have you see my father? He's a middle-aged guy..."
I've offered the sheriff my help with the bomb and successfully used a speech skill to increase my pay from 100 to 500 caps. Not bad at all.
I sold my loot to Moira the storekeeper. She looked surprisingly like the Overseer's daughter. She is writing a survival guide and needs my help. First task is to check a local (within 5 min) store and see if there is any food and drugs there. I see. So, Megaton was around for "several decades". Within a 5 min walking distance is a store and you want me to check if there is any food left? I see. Makes sense. 'Cause it's a dark and gritty game, right?
So, being a helpful guy I went to that store. The combat got tougher. Wild dogs reduced my health to 42, but died easily. I shot one dog's head off, but the body remained standing. Oh well...
Inside the store I was attacked by 5 raiders. Very tough fight. I was killed 7 or 8 times. That's a huge and pleasant difference comparing to my vault exploits. I had to save and I used VATS a few times. It's pretty good. At least it's more interesting than the FPS mode.
I found two laser pistols in poor conditions and plenty of ammo. Kind of too much and too soon, I think. The dead raiders supplied me with 3 different types of raiders armor, a few handguns, a combat shotgun, and an assault rifle.
Tried "repair". When I've heard about this feature, I imagined something out of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" - swapping parts and such. Unfortunately, it's much more simplistic. You click on an item you want to repair, select a similar item from the list (this item will be completely destroyed, but it looks like you won't lose any money as the "merged" item would have the value of the both items), and that's it. As you can see it increased the condition by 9%! Yay!
Now let's look at my new armor and weapons. Nice glasses.
Overall, it looks like it's a much better game than Oblivion. It's not a Fallout game, of course. It's not even a Fallout-inspired game as I quietly hoped. It's a game with things you've seen in the Fallout games. Like vaults and super mutants.
