I Love Fallout 3
The great thing about a game like Fallout 3 is that by making small changes to your routine on each play through, you can drastically change how the game plays out. Simply taking a different path through the game world makes a huge difference. Meeting people or exploring buildings or visiting your favorite landmarks in a different order make a big difference in the pace and flow of the game. Doing quests in a different way also makes a big difference. You don't always have to go in guns blazing, and most of the time figuring out a peaceful way is more fun anyway.
And, of course, leveling up your skills in a different order has a great impact as well. I'm fond of boosting my speech, science, and lockpick as early as possible, personally, so I can hack and break into pretty much anything as well as sweet talk my way into more information from people. But on another play through I might take a completely brute force approach and power up my weapons first. Either way, or in any of hundreds of other combinations, is crazy fun. When you pair them with taking a different path like I mentioned earlier there are a million ways to play through the game. The game world stays the same, but the way you see and experience it changes. And I have never gotten tired of it.
On some trips through the game I'll focus on specific tasks. Collecting all of the special named weapons. Taking all of the pre-war money and making a huge pile in my house. Collecting all of the teddy bears and lawn gnomes. Finding all of the toys. Sometimes I'll go crazy in my search for scrap metal and pre-war books. Doing little things like this help keep the game interesting.
I've already memorized where the 20 bobbleheads are. I can find 30 bottles of Nuka Cola Quantum within the first couple hours of the game.
But I still find new stuff. On a recent playthrough, Mr. Crowley actually managed to find the special power armor and almost made it completely out of Fort Constantine alive. I had to fight him right inside the door of the base. In my 7 previous trips through the game, he never, ever made it that far. It was interesting. I never bothered to open the Keller Family Refuge in the National Guard Depot before until recently, and it turned out to be one of the coolest side quests in the whole game. I meddled in the election at the Republic of Dave and caused all sorts of problems. I helped the Ghouls gain access to Tenpenny Tower in a peaceful way and they didn't end up wrecking the joint. Well, you do have to kill Roy Phillips at a specific time so he can't screw things up, but it was mostly peaceful.
Did you know there is a computer that you can play a text-based adventure game on in the basement of Hubris Comics? Have you discovered evidence of the great Teddy Bear vs. Gnome war? Have you actually bothered to pay attention to the notes and audio files and computer memos all over the game? Piecing together the past through these notes is fascinating. It is easy to get tunnel vision and focus on the main quests, but there is a ton of detail and cool stuff scattered all over the Capital Wasteland, and it is definitely worth the effort to find.
New Vegas Sounds Even Better
Fallout 3 is just crazy deep and excellent. But I'm ready for Fallout: New Vegas. I don't think I've seen and done everything Fallout 3 has to offer yet (!), but a vacation to New Vegas sounds like a good time. Reports are that New Vegas might be a little smaller size-wise than the Capital Wasteland, but is going to be more dense with more stuff to do, which is all right by me. I'm also very much looking forward to the new optional hardcore mode where you have to eat and sleep every day and keep hydrated. And ammunition will have weight (instead of being able to carry around 30,000 rounds of ammo like you can by the end of Fallout 3 ...), and healing will be handled completely differently.
I don't know that I'll do hardcore mode my first time through, but I'll do it eventually. That just adds another layer of depth to all of the stuff I listed above for Fallout 3. New Vegas will let you take different paths, do things in a different order, level differently, and do all of that, but now you can throw hardcore mode on all of those things to completely change the game even more on each playthrough. It is going to be awesome.
Fallout: New Vegas is on track for release on October 19th, 2010.
