I've been devoting a lot of time to Fallout 3 over the past two weekends, but it has been a little tough getting into the game. As a huge fan of the original Fallout, I guess I was fully expecting this game to shoulder the reputation of its predecessors. I guess that harboring such expectations is entirely unfair. This excellent game stands on its own, and carries the series in an entirely different direction. Admittedly, it may be hard for someone like me to reconcile the new game with the ones that came before, but I can see a game that has been lovingly crafted, and it deserves our full attention.
One thing the game really nails is how utterly bleak and desolate the Fallout world is, and how immersive it is. It is not a pleasant place to be in, much less explore. And yet I feel attracted to it all, driven to return to it constantly, and to witness how much more horrible the world can get. The pockets of surviving humans, the run-down tin-shacks, the horrendous living standards and the disgusting food really helps to paint a picture of hopelessness. And juxtaposed to all this despair are people who are so willing to hang on to any shred of hope. There is a real, living world that has been created here.
This has made my gameplay experience especially compelling. Between the despair, and the people, there is a continuing burning need to push forward. And within that space, I have grown to identify and emphatise with my character, and to play the game as she would have lived.
That immersiveness was nerely broken when I murdered two NPCs just so that I can steal a gun off them. But my instant rationalisation that this action was taken by me, the human gamer, speaks volumes of my emotional investment into my character. I felt strongly that she needed to be absolved of any guilt, because the action was taken by an external third-party who had tried to game the system.
The things that I didn't like about the game were mostly technical. Managing the inventory can be troublesome sometimes, especially when buying/selling with in-game characters. There aren't many facial variations between NPCs, so many characters look the same. The voice-acting is a mixed bag (a character named Butcher from Reiley's Rangers has a oddly deep booming voice for someone so diminutive in size). Game-wise, many things have not been useful regularly as mechanics are geared towards combat; But combat remains uncomfortably straddled between an FPS and a turn-based strategy.
The one thing that I really didn't like about the game is the lack of memorable characters. The points I made above were more reflective of the relationship that I had built with my own character. Having played about 10 hours, I still haven't been able to form a similar link with any of the in-game NPCs. Perhaps this may change as I delve deeper in the core quest, but the side quests haven't produced any memorable moments for me as yet.
3 comments:
Hmmmm to me most of the NPCs in the game are quite forgettable. Even the team mate/companion that you finally manage to get is but an inventory mule with a gun. Probably the most endearing companion that you'll find and possibly learn to love as a human gamer is the dog. Hard to find as it is only found at the scrapyard somewhere NE of Springvale ( I only managed to find it after like 35 hrs of game play). The irritating about the dog is that it always seems to attack any perceived threat without taking into consideration if you are planning to sneak up or avoid the fight entirely. This behaviour is constant with your team mates as well. Because of this, the mutt (and the followers) died a number of times because they thought they could take on a fully grown death claw or Enclave petrol by themselves.
The game is quite addictive and I have invested quite a godly amount of time on it (75hrs) but in the end, it got tedious as the landscape remains the same in all of D.C. except for the Oasis. The bleakness has finally taken a toll and it prompted me to do 2 things:
1) Finish the game after spending 75hrs
2) Go on a killing spree and wiping out whole towns and what nots before loading the game.
I definitely agree that there haven't been any particularly memorable NPCs so far. And that's a quite a problem, I think.
And I also do agree about the landscape that has been portrayed in the game. It's all very same in its bleakness. One thing I considered was whether the environment would mean less to us because we're not from DC? Perhaps someone who really did live there can recognise certain landmarks andd therefore identify with it more?
What I've found so far is that the game is very much about my personal journey in the game. It's less about the relationships between my character and NPCs, and more about the relationship between my character and myself. That is why the instance where I killed off a couple of people resonated so much with me. And why the game continues to be intriguing... Her discovery of the world mirrors my own.
I will try to pick this up soon.
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