My defense of fallout 3

In Arcanum, there's this bit where you've got to get in to a mansion belonging to a famous industrialist, and speak to him. The guards won't let you in as you're a security threat, but they offer you the opportunity to prove yourself by performing a task for them.

If you don't want to do that, you can try talking your way past if your intelligence and speech skills are high enough.

You can try sneaking past if your stealth skills are high enough.

If you're a mage, you can teleport past them.

Alternatively, if you're a mage in the right school, you can turn the guards into sheep.

You can go in all guns blazing, and just kill everyone.

You can learn that new servants have recently been hired, purchase a servants uniform for you and your companions at a tailor, and tell the guards that you are the said servants.

You go underneath - sneak in through the sewers that lead into the kitchens and convince the chef you're not up to no good. Or use the aformentioned servants uniform as a disguise.

You can pickpocket the key from one of the guards, and let yourself in.

You can, instead, find a rival industrialist who wishes to sabotage this one, and side with him instead - who himself has another multiple branch of quest lines.

In Fallout 3, there's this bit where you've got to get into a city. You can say "Have you seen my dad? He's a middle aged guy".

 

Spoiler

I swear that quest was designed as a deliberate "fuck you" to fans of the first two Fallouts because that's sure as hell what it came across as

Linear? I don't say FO3 is linear, necessarily. I say it sucks. It sucks at nearly everything it does.
Obligatory:

Spoiler

 

Why is it that people who hate Fallout 3 in this site are all witty while people who defend it aren't? C'mon people, pick up the slack!

Although I have to admit, ever since I joined this place last year so I could get tools and get information on how to mod Fallout 1/2 which I was just getting into, my blind love for F3 has gone down a tad.

DAMN YOU NMA!!! DAMN YOU!!!

 

Does this man seriously has two threads for the same shit? Jesus, you don't need to defend Fallout 3, enjoy it as much as you like. But don't try to convince me and many others that is a good RPG because it's not.


Like me and some other people explained in the other thread, all of those quests are either black or white or "pick between these two or more terrible scenarios". Not to mention a lot of them clearly tell which side is good or evil, like in Tenpenny Tower. Extremely piss poor amount of choices for a RPG.

 

Ha, I didn't notice. I guess he must be insecure about his passion for the game and is looking to justify it or have others validate it for him. His reasons for liking it aren't that good either, or he just makes a poor attempt at presenting them, which is a shame.

 

It's not just him, for well over a year more and more people are showing up to defend Fallout 3 and want to tell you how wrong you were about the game. And it seems just because Fallout 4 exists, it makes most of Fallout 3's problems just suddenly go away.

None of these arguments are going to convince me because i analyzed Fallout 3 thoroughly and to me it's a terrible game and a disgrace to the series.

 

***This will be a wall of text, anyone reading this is warned, read at your own peril.***​

This sounds awesome, to be honest. Too bad it is not really like how it sounds.

As soon as the first quest-chain of the game ends, (while you're still 2 years old) it is dictated to you that Amata is already your friend (your father says "Let's go see if your little friend Amata wants to play"). And she will always be your friend, this is very restrictive from a roleplaying point of view.
At your 10th birthday party, Amata treats you nice and is all friendly. You can be mean to her but she is still your BFF.
You are still bullied by Butch and can't fight back if he attacks you, you have to take it like a wimp and cower in a corner until Gomez stops Butch. So you can't be a "violent" kid (like Butch).
You still have to shoot a radroach with a BB gun and kill it, so you can't be "pacifist" kid... Wait, first you have to be a pacifist kid and then you have to be a murderous one? And you have no choice in the matter.

The next part of the tutorial is just the G.O.A.T. and there is the case of the Tunnel Snakes bullying Amata on the way to the classroom. You can stop them by fighting them, by a dialogue choice (without the need for a speech check) or by a speech check. You can just ignore it or you can be evil and tell them that Amata is sensitive about her weight, which gives negative karma, Amata is still your BFF even if you choose the "evil" option.

There is no instance in the vault 101 start to do or decide anything about how your character treats his family. You can't be mean to your dad, you can't be mean to your dead mother, you can't be sad about it either, you can't be angry at your parents, you have to be the kid that is always polite to his dad and never shows any emotion about his parents at all.

You can't be a mean bastard that is part of the Tunnel Snakes, you can't be a pacifist kid because the game forces you to get your first kill at age 10, you can't be a violent kid with a short fuse because you can't fight back Butch during your birthday even when he is punching you, you can't hate or be mean or sad with your dad or dead mother, etc.

The only things you can "decide" playing vault 101 is if your character was always polite, always rude or sometimes was polite and others was rude. Helped, ignored or made it worse for Amata when being bullied once. Gave in or not to bullying once when he was 10 and saved or not Butch's mother.
But that doesn't change the fact that when you leave the Vault 101, you are always the 19 years old kid that is friends with Amata (no matter what), that was always liked by Jonas, hated by the Tunnel Snakes, had his first kill at age 10 with a BB gun, didn't fight Butch in the birthday party even if attacked and is always polite and nice to his dad.

It is not a nitpick because like I said in the other thread:
It makes no sense since the guards have orders from the Overseer to capture you for interrogation. You can't interrogate a dead person... So the game is already contradicting itself right at the start.


Also some words about playing different build characters. Most if not all Fallout 3 builds will end up being a fighter that can hack and lockpick.

Tenpenny Tower is totally black and white. You will be doing an evil thing if you kill the ghouls or if you kill or allow the ghouls to kill the Tenpenny Tower residents. You are doing a good thing if you convince the residents to let the ghouls live in the Tower.
These are all the three different ways you have to finish this quest. I don't see anything morally grey in it.
Killing resolution = Evil = Game gives negative Karma = Three Dog berates the player on the radio for it
Peaceful resolution = Good = Game gives positive Karma = Three Dog praises the player on the radio for it

Blood Ties is totally black and white. You will be doing an evil thing if you kill and doing a good thing if you don't kill. If you don't kill and manage an agreement between Arefu and the Family it is a very good thing.
Let Ian stay with the Family, it is good for him, convince Ian to return to Arefu, it is good for him. Kill Ian and it is evil.
Not seeing anything besides black and white decisions.

Trouble on the Homefront is still black and white... You can decide to help the vault who wanted you dead (Goodie Two Shoes) or ignore the help message (not very Goody). If you decide to go back to the vault you have these options: kill the overseer, kill amata (negative karma), kill everyone (negative karma), make them all friends again and overseer still rules (good karma) or Amata rules (good karma)...
No matter what option you pick (with the exception of killing everyone), the Vault will become peaceful and it's dwellers will be safe.

Oasis is also Black and White.
Black = Kill Harold with a flamethrower...
White = make Harold stronger, weaker or kill him destroying his heart.
Why are all those three white? The first accelerates the natural growth in the wasteland, the second makes that growth slower, but I doubt it will stop it and the third is doing what Harold asks and I doubt it will stop the wasteland natural growth too.

Super Human Gambit is once again black and white.
Or you kill and kill (evil), or you kill and don't kill (evil if you don't kill the Antagonizer, good if you don't kill the Mechanist) or you don't kill and don't kill (good).

Replicated Man is once again black and white. Kill Zimmerman (good), lie to Zimmerman (good), deliver Harkness to Zimmerman (evil).

Rescue From Paradise... This is really only a white quest... All you have to do is free the kids from the slavers, anyway possible. From all the options (sneaky, paying for them, killing all the slavers, etc) there is not even one that is evil (or black), they are all white options (good)...

... Now I think I finally get what you mean about those quests not being black and white... You're confusing the terms "black and white" with "no options". That is not what "Black and white" means.
I will quote the Cambridge Dictionary definition to make it easier to understand:

Can't debate that, I consider Fallout 3 a RPG .

But what makes a game a RPG is (like I said in the other thread) that the character uses his skills, strengths and weaknesses to deal with the world and it's challenges. The player only uses their mental skills to decide what the character does, the character has to do it themselves.
Since in Fallout 3 the player has to aim, lockpick and hack by themselves, it makes is a hybrid of a shooter and RPG, being a hybrid makes it already a not so great RPG. But it still uses the character skills and stats for several things, so it is still a RPG, but a simple one... So like I said, it is a hybrid shooter RPG.

Like I mentioned in the other thread. It's very easy to say this game is linear because the main quest is totally linear:

Spoiler: Fallout 3's Main Quest

Let's compare it with Fallout 2 main quest (I would compare it with other games, but I only made the image for FO3 and FO2 because it was first made to be posted in a FO3 vs FO2 thread, and it took longer than I expected to make these):

Spoiler: Fallout 2 Main Quest

Fallout 3 base game has 71 quests 16 of those are repeatable quests where you just deliver a specific item to a NPC (like donating to a church for good karma or delivering scrap metal to a specific NPC).
This leaves only 55 quests in the game that are not just the very basic "give me something and I will reward you".

Of these 55 there are 3 that are the tutorial ones (Baby Steps, Growing Up Fast, Future Imperfect), where there is no meaningful choices that affect the character or the game in any way).

These leaves us 52 quests, but we can count 21 of those that are just going from *this place* to *that place* or go here and read/listen/use/get *this*/etc without much (or any) options in between (some are unnamed so I made up names for them):

1. Escape - Go from your room to the entrance/exit of vault 101, leave Vault 101 cave.
   
2. Galaxy News Radio - Go to Museum of Technology, get the Macguffin, go to Washington Monument, install Macguffin, return to GNR and talk to Three Dog.
3. Scientific Pursuits - Reach Rivet City, reach Project Purity, listen to holotape, reach vault 112.
4. The Waters of Life - Go from Rivet City to Project Purity, kill all Super Mutants, install the Macguffin, escape to the Citadel.
5. Picking Up the Trail - Go from the Citadel to Little Lamplight, got from Little Lamplight to vault 87 (to clarify a point: one of the way to enter Little Lamplight is by doing a different quest "Rescue from Paradise", but that is a different quest and it is already accounted on the initial number, Picking up the Trail is a totally different quest that is also accounted on the initial number).
6. The American Dream - Escape Raven Rock, forced to take modified FEV, nothing in the game or quest results change with destroying Eden or leaving it functional (only choice we can make in that quest).
7. Strictly Business - Enslave 4 specific targets and send them to Paradise Falls. Forced to use the Mesmetron to achieve this and forced to return to Grouse after each target is enslaved. No choices.
8. Find Argyle - It's just that, find Argyle.
9. Sticky - Take Sticky to Big Town.
10. Pronto Restock - Get Chinese Assault Rifle for Pronto.
11. Gallows Name - Pass a speech check to find out Gallows name.
12. Prime's Riddle - Answer correctly to 3 questions and get the location for a secret stash.
13. Keller's Family - Collect 5 holotapes and get a code for a military stash.
14. Investor - Invest caps on the merchant caravans.
15. Formula for Redux - Go to the Nuka Cola factory, deal with a robot, get the formula, give it to Redux.
    
16. Where is Cheryl - Collect 4 logs to find some loot.
17. Kids for Sale - Convince a kid to follow you outside of Little Lamplight and into the hands of a slaver.
18. Initiate Pek - Rescue Initiate Pek from Super Mutants.
19. Fix my Leaks - Fix water leaks in Megaton.
20. Paulie's Dealer - Give Buffout and Psycho to Paulie until he dies.
21. Project Impurity - Infect Project purity with the FEV (yes, it is a separate quest from all the others)

We are left with 31 quests in the base game, but of those there are 7 that only have simple and black and white choices (2 choices only, and usually one is good and the other is evil):

1. Agatha's Violin - Get the violin, give it to Agatha's [good] or sell it for 200/300 caps [evil].
2. Council Seat - Work with Bannon to incriminate Seagraves [evil] or expose Bannon's blackmail [good].
3. Election Results - Tell Republic of Dave's "citizens" to go vote, you can let the election go normally or you can tamper with it.
4. Charon's Contract - Pay caps [good] or do Ahzrukhal's a favor [evil].
5. Leo Stahl's Addiction - Convince him to fight his addiction [good] or make him a drug dealer for you [evil].
6. Lincoln's Memorabilia - Collect several items connected to Lincoln and sell them. This quest is in this choice section because you can choose to sell the items to 3 specific people for more caps than regular vendors. But selling the items doesn't really affect anything differently, you just get caps (some pay more than others though). Sell to Hannibal [good], sell to Abraham [good] or sell to Leroy [evil].
7. Andale's Secret - Find out Andale's secret and kill them [good] or befriend them [evil].

This left us with 24 quests with more choices... And from those, 11 are very simple quests that are usually also black and white but have more choices:

1. The Power of the Atom - You destroy Megaton by blowing the bomb [evil] or you defuse the bomb (good), you can also snitch on Mr Burke [good]. But while it unlocks Leo Stahl miniquest, one can also just talk to Doc Church, Lucas Simms or read Moriarty's terminal and get the same information about Leo drug problem (thus unlocking it too).
2. Finding the GECK - Only choice it has is to free Fawkes [good] or ignore him [evil]. I put this quest here even though it only has one choice because unlocking a follower for a good karma player is significant for the game (I guess).
3. Take it Back - Has two choices, you can convince Autumn to surrender and leave and you can choose who sacrifices to activate project purity (you [good] or Sarah [evil]), only change it does is a short sentence in the ending credits berating or praising you. This is in the base game, in Broken Steel it was added the option to send a follower.
4. Reilly's Rangers - You can give ammo to the rangers [good] or keep it for yourself [evil] (this only happens if you got the ammo crate code) and you can help the rangers [good] or kill them [evil].
5. Tenpenny Tower - You have three choices here, you can kill the ghouls [evil], you can kill Tenpenny Residents [evil] or you can convince the residents to let ghouls live in the tower [good].
6. The Replicated Man - Three choices, deliver the synth to Zimmerman [evil], lie to save the synth [good] or kill Zimmerman [good].
7. The Superhuman Gambit - You have three choices, kill them both [evil], Kill only one of them [evil if you kill the Mechanist and good if you kill the Antagonizer] or convince them to stop their nonsense [good]. Wait, I think i already mentioned this before in this post... I am starting to repeat myself...
   
8. Trouble in the Homefront - I already mentioned this too in this post.
9. Silver and Moriarty - You can kill Silver [evil] or you can not kill her and then lie to Moriarty [good]. This quest is in this section because you can pass a couple speech checks to get/reduce more caps.
10. Angela and Diego - Convince Diego to marry Angela. You can provide a drug for Angela to "drug rape" Diego [evil], you can convince Diego to leave the church [good] or you can lie about Diego having sex with Angela [evil].
11. Naughty Nightwear - Find the naughty nightwear, kill Lug-Nut or convince him to let you keep the nightwear, keep the nightwear or sell it to Ronald.

In the end we have 13 quests left and there are some of those that are still very simple and totally black and white, like, for example "Dealing with Mei Wong and Sister" (enslave Mei [evil], tell Sister Mei was a slave [evil], give Mei some caps for her to buy a weapon [good], kill Sister [good]).

Out of 71 quests we have around 10 that have a bit more choice... While many of those are still black and white.

 

Risewild shows up and delivers the truth.

Forgot how atrocious some of the quests are. I guess my brain is trying to forget all the crap from Fallout 3.

 

@Risewild

Your post literally nails it. Well done!

 

I love the irony that even though he is beating the hell out of the game in his post, he has obviously played it multiple times to be so critical about it.

 

He's making the Tale of Two Wastelands mod, so of course he knows a lot about Fallout 3. He also says he likes the game. You can be super critical of something and still like it.

 

Oh I'm fully aware. It's the reason I'm not a hardcore F3 fanboy anymore since I joined this site and truly got into the originals. With that said, I do still enjoy it greatly and look forward to playing it again.

The OP just sounds like a blind MrMattyPlays fanboy. God, is that how I was last year? *Shivers*.

 

The God Emperor of Mankind does not approve of that statement!


Joking of course

 

I am critical of Fallout 3 because I have fun playing it. I can't choose what I have fun playing, but that doesn't mean I can't see the imperfections in something I enjoy.

This is even more accentuated by the fact that my favorite gaming genre is RPGs and I had the pleasure of playing all the kinds of RPG sub-genres in existence for more than 25 years now. I even developed and edited RPG systems before as a hobbie and I am at this moment developing a brand new P&P system to share with the No mutants Allowed community...

So I am highly interested and invested in RPGs and how they work, all the mechanics that go into them and in their game design. That is what I mean.

 

I think is because people liked fallout 3 and was hoping that 4 would be in the same scheme.

They were not counting on the fact that instead of Bethesda launching a game, they launched a product of abortion, so they are nostalgic of the time when they had a good time in FO3

 

Nah. tl;dr and You are just a nitpicky son of a cock and can't see the FACT that The Replicated Man is the EXACT SAME QUEST as The Three Card Bounty.

(I give up trying to talk to this guy...)

 

"dO peOPlE sTiLL rAnK F2/NV ovER F3????!!!?!?!?!?!?111"

 

It is totally possible in FO3 to not only expend all the BBs at the dad's head, but to then ask him for another box of BBs to do it again; and again, and again, and again...