2008 was a revolutionary year for gaming; open-world games were starting to come to the forefront, with better storylines, dialogues, even graphics. Sadly certain games like this one are living in the past when it comes to ideals, race issues and how karma is approached. Karma isn’t an “either-or” concept where you can be sort of good or sort of bad you can only be good or bad, no in-between. The concept of choice is a MAJOR indicator of what kind of person you will be in this game. This game takes away the choice to just be human. It is forcing you to be the good little quiet one crumbling to the will of your overseer, a cannibalistic murderer, or a manipulative raider.
We’re all the same…aren’t we? When stepping into the world of Fallout 3, I found myself, at first like a child inquisitive and exploring the game and its surroundings with wonder and awe. While yes the graphics are dated and quite clunky, and the bugs are an issue (which we will get into), going at this game I was over the moon with excitement since I had been waiting a VERY LONG TIME to play this, and psychologically it is a game that can be opened up dissected, and put back together again with its unique take on a post-apocalyptic world where there the people in the vault take comfort and complacency in isolation, the same with the raiders take complacency in a world of violence. It was not on my radar when it first released, so the appeal was never there for me. The world of Fallout 3 is one of nostalgia and memories tucked away in those early years of the 2000s for some. Walking in this world is like going back in time, and with experiencing an older game we tend to run into older ideals and things that went under the radar then, which would not have been accepted now. Things such as racism appear early on in the game and are sprinkled throughout, sometimes more obvious than others. Now depending on your choices, you might experience things differently, but from my experience, it was very telling of how the developers’ minds were at the time of creating this game.
Early on when I was in megaton I met the mayor and a weird, mobster esque character. The one I encountered wanted me to blow up the town in exchange for caps (the game's currency). I denied the offer, and when I talked with the mayor of Megaton I picked the option where I was explaining who the man was and what he wanted to do. Fast forward to the mayor, who is African American, telling the “mobster” who is white that he was arrested, this lead to the mobster calling the mayor a “knuckle dragger,” which to me, showed racism in the game. Now I wasn’t aware that I could shoot the characters during this impromptu cut scene, so since I didn’t know that, I let the situation play out and the mayor ended up getting shot. I was, needless to say, shocked by and the entire situation and was left with a bad taste in my mouth. Now, if it were this one incident I could write it off as the developers not really caring what they were putting into the game and how it was going to be perceived, but this was not the only incident of racism. Getting farther into the game I found that there was a way to bypass Tranquility Lane by clicking on several items in a specific order so you don’t have to do any gruesome tasks in order to escape. When you bypass the tranquility lane a computer appears where you can begin the “Chinese Failsafe Program” where a group of Chinese officers gun down everyone in sight and were speaking Chinese in a mocking tone, and I don’t even think they were speaking proper mandarin. Needless to say, I feel it tone-deaf to add racism in a game where it doesn’t belong yes the game is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is a cruel fight for survival in a kill or be killed world, but that does not, and will never excuse developers need to be edgy for edgy sake. Prove a point if you will but do it in a way that is educational for the player.
Karma Isn’t About Being Human Anymore: The karma system in this game is a weird one for sure. Making any bad decision heavily impacts your overall “view and worth” within the game. It's almost as if Fallout Three makes you feel guilty for making the choice to kill someone over 6 caps then to just run away. The concept of kill or be killed is quite intricate in the Fallout universe, and the game really pushes you towards the narrative that you should be good. Even if you make very bad choices, you still have the last-minute choice to choose good over evil. Psychologically the karma system within the world of Fallout three is unrealistic, in a world where you have to fight to survive we would have to ban together, creating shelters and places that are a suitable means of survival. Fallout three is what happens when survival turns animalistic and desperate; it’s not in any way a realistic form in which society would turn considering the fact that humanity as a whole clings to stability.
Bugs, Glitches, Stalling, Re-used Dialogue… Speaking of stability this game is by far one of the more unstable in terms of performance I have ever seen. The game was littered with bugs, glitches and would stall at certain points and was nearly almost impossibly to finish with how many times it would freeze. What I am wondering is why this game did not receive a remake and make it useable for future consoles? Fallout Three has the potential to be something amazing with how vast the story is, how many quests there are and how different the characters are from other games I've seen, and how the characters who are evil will try to help you. Fawkes is a great example of this where he will help you through vault 87, through the radiation chamber to get the G.E.C.K. this game COULD HAVE been something amazing, it could have been diverse and well-formed had it not been for the bugs that would make it impossible to shoot at certain enemies, a character that uses its hammer when not provoked or controlled too, and the poorly done and reused dialogue that occurs throughout the game. Reused dialogue makes the NPC’s lackluster, robotic, and quite frankly dull. It’s a shame honestly since there is like I’ve said so much potential within this game to be something magnificent. But this is, im afraid of what happens when you make a game that is restricted to its time and doesn’t age with the times.
Finishing Thoughts: This is the first time in my reviewing and playing through a game that I have a strong dislike for it. it’s a shame really it could have been so much better. Bethesda in my opinion should just stick to publishing games instead of developing them; the games they publish are incredible. DOOM, The Evil Within, Wolfstein, need I go on? By the end of the game, we have to choose who dies basically to save a machine called the purifier (a machine that is supposed to deliver clean, pure water to the area). Which if you think about it, this is the main point of the game, finding a solution for clean water. An environmentalist's dream. Through all of the convoluted plotlines, and confusing mixtures of stories fighting the government in order to get pure water is the takeaway. In my playthrough, I went into the chamber died a victorious martyr-Esque death, by radiation poisoning and glitches. I give this game a 4.5/10 the game has potential and is a rough draft of something that could have been amazing.
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