I’m just over 20 hours in and, much like when I reached this point in Oblivion, I feel like I’m just getting started. This is actually a great feeling to me, especially since I was just thinking that I’d love another good free-roaming RPG. It’s actually the reason I bought Fable II. It turned out that in addition to all the other things I disliked about that game, the wonky area transitions and long loading times in Fable II killed any sense of continuity in the world. Fallout 3, then, should be absolutely ideal for me.
I’m pleased to say that in many ways it lives up to be exactly what I want. Nearly everything I heard about the game is turning out to be just as presented, from the smaller-but-denser world (a welcome design decision) to the incredible range of roleplaying possibilities. I found myself really enjoy the combat too, all the “just an Oblivion FPS” rhetoric aside. The VATS targeting is a fantastic idea, the perfect way to get some turn-based gameplay into a very differently-styled game.
With everything working so well, I have to say there is one thing that isn’t going over very smoothly with me. It centers on how they chose to present the main quest… and really, the issue may lie with the fact that there is a “main quest”. I find myself asking, “Why is it here?” I really don’t think it’s necessary, especially the way it’s being done. If this one particular aspect were removed, I would probably feel more immersed in the world. As it is, I have to go against my natural roleplaying urges in order to get the full experience.
The central plot is one of urgency, leaving your only home in chaos and being thrust into an unfamiliar wasteland to search for your father. Its purpose is to give the feeling of being just on the cusp of important events, and to urge you to catch up or else. This serves the purpose of letting the player know what to do and where to go to reach the game’s conclusion, but I find it counterintuitive to the game’s biggest accomplishments. To follow it directly to its end is to ignore 90% of a world that hundreds of people have spent years crafting, and because I know that, I’m forced to put the Main Event on hold until I’ve had a chance to see the sights. I feel further vindicated because my roommate beat the game after playing only about 12 hours to find that (zomg spoilarz) the game has a hard stop after the main quest has been finished.
When I sit down and think about it, there are only certain kinds of games where a “flashing-arrow-to-the-end” actually bothers me. With Bioshock or Dead Space for example, I love having the ability to see exactly where to go to complete my current objective. This allows me to, almost paradoxically, explore with complete freedom since I know that getting back on the right track is just a button press away. Since these games are fundamentally linear experiences (especially when compared to Fallout 3), I don’t mind the game acknowledging that with its own version of a glowing trail on the floor. If a game isn’t telling me it’s an open world, I don’t have any problem with it not being one. Since Fallout 3 is, having a rigidly linear path to follow (especially as the main impetus to proceed) doesn’t work anymore.
Honestly, I don’t see why the story wouldn’t work as-is if the main quest were removed entirely. For example, here was my experience of the very beginning of the game: Immediately after leaving the vault I was drawn towards a big settlement just a few hundred meters away from Vault 101. After going around meeting the folks in the town, I spoke to a local shop owner who had what turned out to be a very lengthy quest chain to do. This one conversation ended up taking me all over the wasteland and actively rewarded me for exploring my surroundings. Going about these tasks naturally lead me through other populated areas, and thus more people, who had more things to do. And even further, (though I admit I may be the only person who feels this way) I didn’t need even that. Wandering around out in the wastes just trying to survive would have been compelling enough.
As I’ve completed more and more quests, I’ve come to realize how I personally would have tried to shape the experience. If the game had been built on meshing together all the stories and quests into a final event tailored to you, based on how you handled yourself, that would have been totally rad. Yes, I have heard all the hooplah about the two hundred-whatever endings, but my guess is that it’ll be like a series of on/off switches dependant on whether you did objective X on quest Y and play out like a montage of Where Are They Now? character cameos. Now of course, I won’t really know until I see it and this is only my guess. I’m completely open to being very impressed.
The only thing that’s clear is that it’s looking like Pappy’s gonna have to wait a long time for me.
