Happy 15th Birthday to FALLOUT 3!

 "War.  War never changes."

 

It was on this day in 2008, exactly fifteen years ago, that the long-awaited Fallout 3 was released.  And computerized role-playing gaming was never the same again.

This was the first Fallout game that I ever played.  I bought it a few months after it was released.  At that point in my life I was needing something to distract my mind from itself, after a lot of recent events had rocked my world.  I bought Fallout 3 on something of a lark, having heard how much it sucked the player into it.

I am very glad that it did.

At the time I blogged about my journey through the Capitol Wasteland: the grim setting of the game.  Fallout 3 became not so much a game as an experience.  Something that put you in situations that you share as tales you tell your friends.  To this day I have to giggle whenever I think of going into the Lee Mansion and finding that shrine to Abraham Lincoln down in the basement.  Fallout 3 is rife with little details like that.

I've played other Fallout games since.  Though I haven't finished Fallout: New Vegas (one of these years I will) and Fallout 4 was certainly worth waiting to get a proper rig to play it on.  I sincerely tried to get into Fallout 76 but ultimately it just didn't have the same allure.  And I did eventually play and enjoy the first and second game in the series, which are definitely products of their time and not the 3-D worlds of the third game onward.

Fallout 3 though.. that's the one that I'm going to take with me the rest of my life.  It and I have a very rare connection between a game and its player.  And I'm always going to appreciate that.

Think I'll have the Fallout 3 soundtrack album playing for the rest of the afternoon as I work on some things...

 

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FALLOUT 3 Brotherhood of Steel costume

In one of the more impressive examples of video game-inspired costuming, some folks in Seattle have put together a full set of Brotherhood of Steel power armor from Fallout 3. Looks hella sweet, especially the helmet and that laser Gatling gun!

Now we just need an entire regiment of these guys to walk into Washington D.C. and free the land from the tyranny of the Enclave :-P

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Finally, FINALLY finished FALLOUT 3

It was back in February that I first started playing Fallout 3: the next generation follow-up to the classic computer role-playing series of the late Nineties. I have been playing on and off since then, but in the past week or so decided to plow on through to... whatever the heck it was that was waiting at the end.

A little while ago, after logging just over eighty hours of game time since then, I completed Fallout 3 at long last. By my calculation I could have wrapped everything up in about twenty hours, if I hadn't been such a fiend for exploring the Capital Wasteland (what the irradiated ruins of Washington D.C. are called almost three hundred years from now).

And I still didn't get to scout out every location on the map! There's roughly 1/4th of the Capital Wasteland - almost entirely in the northeast quadrant - that I thought I'd be able to get to see somehow, until I got catapulted into the showdown with the Enclave at the Jefferson Memorial.

So what did I think?

Fallout 3 is an unparalleled achievement in video gaming. Never before had I known as much freedom and utterly vast territory to run around in. The story is solid, the characters are rich and well developed, and on a technical level the graphics, sound and programming alone will be a milestone by which games will be measured for many years to come. I also loved the voiceover work, especially Liam Neeson as James and Malcolm McDowell as President Eden.

But the real star of Fallout 3 is the Capital Wasteland itself. Along with Rapture in the BioShock series, the Capital Wasteland is a character all its own. And I think that both Fallout 3 and BioShock have set a new definition for gaming excellence with their sheer geography: in my mind, this is the "virtual reality" that was so vastly hyped a decade ago.

Anyway, I finally finished the game. Won't say that I "won" it, anymore than you could say that you "beat" a book by reading it. And I honestly can't remember any other video game that left me at once feeling a sense of profound achievement and terrible exhaustion. Going to let this one rest for awhile... before playing the Operation Anchorage, The Pitt and Broken Steel add-on content! :-)

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The South will writhe again: Perversely funny FALLOUT 3

What I would give to have a brain gifted enough to handle stuff like math and software coding (and I've tried folks, believe you me). 'Cuz then I could maybe work for a company like Bethesda Game Studios, who not only are very talented at making video games like Fallout 3, but also have a twisted sense of humor.

So I've been working my Fallout 3 character through the Capital Wasteland, 200 years after the nuclear exchange between the United States and China. Just levellin' him up more or less. Well tonight I wound up in the ruins of Arlington National Cemetery...

Out of curiosity I went looking for Arlington House, which was the pre-Civil War home of Robert E. Lee and his family. It wasn't hard to spot and I gotta give serious props to the Bethesda staff for including such a nice historical location...

Guess what? You can go inside of Arlington House in Fallout 3! There's even a queen-sized bed (presumably in the Lees' private chambers) that you can sleep in and recover from in-game injuries.

But look at what's down in the BASEMENT...

A shrine to Abraham Lincoln?!? What the heck?!

Okay, that is so way wrong. But awfully hilarious just the same :-)

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FALLOUT 3 getting more DLC... and it's coming to PS3 too!

What the boys (and girls) at Bethesda are doing with their nigh-unstoppable hit Fallout 3 is possibly the future of single-player video games as a successful business model: pour a lot of effort into making an outstanding game experience, and then use the initial game as a platform upon which to build and sell more content that is just as outstanding. The Operation Anchorage downloadable content alone is letting Bethesda sleep atop a pile of greenbacks.

So I hope y'all have some room on the hard drives of your PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (yes, the PS3!) 'cuz Fallout 3 is about to get a bunch more DLC.

The big news for PlayStation 3 owners is that the previously produced content is coming to their system at last, beginning with Operation Anchorage later next month. That'll be followed up by The Pitt and Broken Steel. Everyone will also soon be getting Point Lookout (featuring a swamp environment) and Mothership Zeta (marking the return of the "aliens" to the Fallout saga).

If downloading new content ain't your thing for whatever reason, Fallout 3 Game Add-on Pack #1 - containing Operation Anchorage and The Pitt - will be available for retail sale next week, and Add-on Pack #2 with Broken Steel and Point Lookout on sale in August. And if you don't own any Fallout 3 yet, a Game of the Year edition with all five add-ons will hit the street in October.

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For those having tech issues playing FALLOUT 3 on a Windows machine...

Two days ago I wrote how I was currently hooked on Fallout 3, Bethesday Softworks' amazing continuation of the classic Fallout video games from the late Nineties.

Well since I wrote that, I had to take my copy of the game back to the Target store that I bought it from. Why? 'Cuz my copy of the Windows version didn't have the white sticker inside the box that had the Windows LIVE Access Key printed on it for that particular DVD. So I uninstalled Fallout 3, exchanged the original copy for one that did have the sticker with the key numeral, and installed the game fresh.

So everything was cool... except that the game "hung" shortly after the birth/character creation scene started, and would go no further.

Some reading on the Intertubes showed that a lot of people have been having this problem also.

Well, this morning I worked at it a bit, and I found a solution. So I thought it'd be a good thing to share it with others who are also going through this...

If you are playing Fallout 3 on Windows Vista or XP, uninstall the game. Make sure that the Bethesda Softworks folder that's within your Program Files folder is deleted also.

Now here's the messy part that requires a bit of daring: use Regedit (you can run it from the Start button) and do a search in your Windows registry for all entries containing "Bethesda" or "Fallout3". This is what I figured had snagged me: my computer was having an "identity crisis" as to which copy of Fallout 3 it was supposed to be running. So scour your registry and carefully delete anything that refers to Bethesda Softworks or Fallout 3.

When that is done, close out Regedit. Then reboot Windows.

You should now have a fresh, pristine machine on which to re-install Fallout 3, that so far as it's concerned there'll be no evidence that the previous install ever happened. Since going through this procedure I haven't had any further problems with Fallout 3: it's running perfectly, and I also ran the update to version 1.1.0.35, again without any trouble.

Hope this helps some folks out. Now go gird up and get ready to take the Capital Wasteland by storm :-)

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Listening to Three Dog on Galaxy News Radio while stalking the Capital Wasteland...

The first time I played Fallout 3, my character escaped the bowels of Vault 101 by killing the Overseer before he could do me in. For my heinous act of self-defense his lovely daughter jilted me forever. Tonight I started fresh, and for sparing his life the girl came to my aid and wished me well as I prepared to stride into the nuclear-blasted ruins of Washington D.C.

Fallout 3 is my current drug of choice so far as video and computer gaming goes. Bethesda Softworks' follow-up to the classic series of the late Nineties (and if you still want to play Fallout and Fallout 2 check out my review of GOG.com) maintains all of the elements that made its predecessors such a gripping experience, while also rebuilding the mechanics with the innovations of modern video gaming. The result? Not a "reboot" at all, but a fully-fledged brilliant continuation of the series. And yet Fallout 3 also looks and feels much like modern titles such as Grand Theft Auto IV and BioShock: the "sandbox"-style that lets you roam and explore as freely as you wish. In that regard Fallout 3 may be the standout of the potential that modern video gaming has: the narrative is extremely non-linear, to the point that there is no "right or wrong" way to play the game. You come to discover that much just from the introductory tutorial scenes (perhaps the most clever that I have seen in a game like this).

And did I say how incredibly beautiful Fallout 3 is? I hope and pray that Washington D.C. is never really nuked... but if it ever were, I can't imagine it looking much different than how it is portrayed in Fallout 3.

The game is available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows machines. I bought the Windows flavor, since I'm of the school which teaches that role-playing games need to be enjoyed on something with a mouse and keyboard. But however it is that you play, give Fallout 3 a looksee.

Just mind the radroaches. And try not to drink the water.

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