Open world games are always keen to get you into the action as fast as impossible. It only took a brief crawl through a dungeon and underground cave network in Skyrim until players were granted freedom, while 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 4 speeds through its modern day nuclear disaster and settlement tutorial before the entirety of Boston is yours to command. The jury is still out on exactly how 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield will unleash us upon its seemingly endless universe, but deep down I hope it takes some time to build its world and characters before hurling a daunting feeling of destiny upon us. Whatever it does, I struggle to see it topping the brilliance of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 3.
Bethesda wasn’t afraid to keep us trapped in the confines of Vault 101 for the first hours of its post apocalyptic debut, knowing that the Capital Wasteland’s eventual reveal would land so much harder if it was revealed to us with no way back into the safety of a place we called home for our entire lives up u🎃ntil that point. There was no path forward except to adjust to a blinding light and keep moving forward, pistol held close ready to blow away any bloatflies or bandits who dared cross our path. It’s a marvellous first impression, and one that wouldn’t ♏be possible if it wasn’t for the restraint shown prior to it all going wrong. Liam Neeson helps too.
It all begins as your own life does, kicking and screaming your way out of tᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚhe womb. Here, with blood still smeared across your infant body from your dying mother, Fallout 3 has you create the avatar you’ll spend the rest of this game controlling. Your ethnicity reflects in the appearance of your family too, which felt oddly groundbreaking in 2008. As your mother passes away, the screen fades to white, and you’re a toddler crawling around on the nursery floor, a button normally used to start conversations capable of little more than an incoherent babble. Here you’ll jump around, kick a ball, and pick some of the stats that will define much of the playthrough to come before your father delivers a slice of thematic exposition.
Minutes later an🌟d the screen fades to white yet again, and now you’re a little kid at a birthday party you clearly have no time for. Everyone is here, even bullies you can deal with by taking the high ground or beating the shit out of them; moral decisions that reflect how Fallout 3 will expect you to tackle the majority of situations. Even as a teen, you begin to take hold of your own destiny, all while shooting radroaches in the basement without a care in the world. You then take your GOAT exam, a glorified questionnaire designed to figure out which perks will best fit your character, or in canon terms, decide the job you’ll be doing for the remainder of your life in the Vault. You can sit the test, or bullshit your teacher into letting you rig it to what you want out of life. Then, another fade to white leads to your whole life turning upside down.
Your childhood friend Amata is screaming you awake, telling you that your Dad has decided to leave the vault without a word, turning the blame to you as the Overseer locks the entire facility down, so nobody can escape. Liam Neeson has upended centuries of societal norms in pursuit of a destiny you aren’t yet privy too, and all you can do is try to follow in his dusty footsteps until you’re 🐲locked away forever. Whaꩲt follows is an anarchic march across all the hallowed halls and abandoned classrooms you grew up frequenting, now swarmed with a mixture of giant bugs and hostile guards wanting nothing more than to usher in your death.
I felt guilty gunning down people who’d known me since I was a child, but opportunities also came along to talk down guards still holding onto a conscience, or redeeming myself in the eyes of bullies by saving their family members from hordes of radroaches. I’ll be leaving this place behind for good in a matter of minutes, so I’m tasked with tying up loose ends however possible. Fallout 🦄3 manages to cement narrative arcs and a tangible sense of place before the game has even really begun, making me miss something I’ve only been a part of for the better part of an hour. Compared to Skyrim or Fallout 4, this is on another level entirely.
When you’re finally forced out of Vault 101 there’s a pervading feeling of grief looming over you, a fear that you might have made the wrong decision an🅺d now have to survive in a world you simply aren🍰’t built for. But with no safe haven to return to, all I can do is figure out where I am and if anywhere can be called home in the harsh, irradiated biomes of Washington D.C.
Fallout 3 understands the importance of setting up stakes and setting up world building that will come to define our entire adventure. Your experiences in Vault 101 stick with you, tying into everything from the main quest to random individuals you meet within the sinking bowel🐬s of Rivet City. Everything matters, and in the decades since Bethesda hasn’t come close to it.
