Fallout 3

Fallout 3

Some worried that, after last year’s end-of-year sucker-punch of gaming releases – Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Call of Duty 4 and so on – 2008’s festive holiday season might seem a little sparse by comparison. Fallout 3 is the game to refute that claim, a colossal post-apocalyptic RPG that expands upon a well-loved series and comes from the hands of one of the most respected developers of our time.

Fallout 3 takes place in a post-apocalypse United States. You play as a resident of Vault 101, a fallout shelter serving Washington D.C. You’ve been living in relative happiness inside the vault with your father (voiced by Liam Neeson) until one day you wake up to find him mysteriously missing. When other residents of the vault begin to suspect your hand in his disappearance you venture out into the capital wasteland in search of him.

The game’s built upon similar technology to the multi award-winning Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and while the setting and art style is wildly different (Oblivion being set in a ancient, otherworldly land of orcs, wizards etc. and Fallout 3 being set in a desolate post-nuclear wasteland) the games also share a similar structure and mechanics. For example, you’ll be chatting to non-playable characters in order to accept missions, fighting humans who have fallen foul to extreme radiation via a real-time combat engine and, of course, the decisions you take through the game shape your character’s personality and, ultimately, destiny.

Fallout 3’s combat is a mixture of real time and turn-based combat and can be experienced through first person or third person perspective. This introduces an interesting pace to battles whereby one moment you’ll be taking down feral ghouls with one of Fallout’s iconic 9mm submachine guns and the next you’re firing off slow-motion precision shots at specific enemy body parts (a feature of the original Fallout games).

Developer Bethesda has indicated that Fallout 3’s core story will last for around 20 hours, with dozens more in store for those who want to get stuck into sub-quests and side-missions. Conversations with other characters will be handled with branching response options, much like those seen in Mass Effect or Oblivion and new quests will be sent as brief on-screen text messages that fade away.

In fact, for an RPG of this size and scope the HUD is remarkably uncluttered, keeping visual interruptions to a minimum at all times. From what we’ve seen of the game thus far it looks as though Bethesda is succeeding in its aim: to create a role-playing game with the exploration and freedom of Oblivion, the real-time combat of a first person shooter and the story and mythology of the Fallout universe. If they manage to pull these threads together, Fallout 3 could be one of the strongest games, not only of the year, but also of the Xbox 360 system as a whole.