I’m roughly a dozen hours into Fallout 3, and so far my experience has been very entertaining but highly inconsistent. Every flash of brilliance, moment of wonderful storytelling and interesting nook of the vast capitol wasteland has been marred by stiff character animations, sloppy A.I. and show-stopping bugs. I thought I might take a moment to chronicle some of the ups and downs on the roller coaster of quality that is Fallout 3.
HIGH: Having your character gradually evolve his or her stats and appearance while growing up in Vault 101 was a terrific introduction to the post-apocalyptic Fallout universe. It was highly interactive and allowed the player to establish their personal narrative right from the outset. Furthermore, it helped to contrast restrictive life in the Vault with bare survival in the Wasteland, a major theme of the game. In fact, it’s a shame that I had already seen so much of this particular sequence from the prerelease promotional material, but I suppose it’s my own darn fault for peeking.
LOW: While the NPCs look fine when they’re standing still or gesturing, the illusion is shattered once they start moving. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why their movements look unnatural, but I suspect the leading cause is the fact that characters don’t move their shoulders when they walk or run. I haven’t seen animations this bad in years, especially not on modern systems.
HIGH: Stepping out into the sunlight of the D.C. wasteland for the first time was spectacular. Bethesda absolutely nailed the environmental aesthetic, and the impressive draw distance meant that the ruins stretched out for miles in all directions. Every crumbled building, abandoned playground and irradiated cola bottle told a story of the pre-war world. Thankfully, this is a truly seamless transition into the third dimension for the Fallout franchise.
LOW: The artificial intelligence of both friend and foe is sub-par. Assailants charge right at you and have difficulty navigating obstacles and terrain. I have yet to see them take advantage of cover or hold a strategic position even if their weapons have a range advantage. Furthermore, the pathfinding occasionally glitches in spectacular ways. I once walked into Megaton to find a friendly old man NPC dead in the middle of town. It turns out this is a known bug, where NPCs can occasionally die from “falling off walkways or radiation exposure near the bomb.”
HIGH: There are new quests, cities and characters hidden in every nook and cranny of the wasteland. Furthermore, because of the open-ended mission structure and large number of quests, you’re encouraged to start wandering as early and as often as you’d like. If the goal is to promote exploration, then Fallout 3 does “open world” better than Oblivion, Grand Theft Auto 4 or even Far Cry 2.
LOW: After installing a new broadcast dish at the Washington monument, I found myself locked out of the GNR building (Galaxy News Radio, not Guns ‘n’ Roses.) Apparently this is another known bug, but this time it was preventing the completion of one of the main storyline missions. In a more linear game this would have required a new playthrough, however…
HIGH: …this is not the case in Fallout 3. The game prides itself on having multiple solutions to every problem, and this situation was no different. It turns out I had two options for progressing: either raise my lock picking skill to 100 to enter a second story door, or simply skip the quest entirely and move straight to the next storyline NPC.
Once you get into the swing of it, the charm of the gigantic world and its fascinating inhabitants glosses over the game’s many glaring flaws and glitches. It’s just a darn shame that a game as good as Fallout 3 lacks not only polish, but in many cases basic quality assurance.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I’ve had the game lock up once on 360, but that’s about all. For some reason, I don’t mind the animation or AI clunkiness at all. I think I’ve somehow become immune! Either that or I’ve played too many of Bethesda’s games. Just think, if the animation and AI were great, what would people have to complain about?!
Really enjoyed the review. I like the high/low format you use, it seems to get straight to the point and give a good impression of the game in a short space.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Skrud, the animations in Fallout 3 really are that bad. It’s much better to play the game in first-person mode and not spend a lot of time watching other people.
Matt, you’ve hit the highs and lows on the money. I’m finding myself in absolute awe of the world, but my interactions with it are destroying my sense of emersion. I can understand Quests that break when someone tries to game them, but when they break when I’m just playing the game… something’s wrong.
November 11th, 2008 at 11:16 am
While I loved Oblivion, I can still relate to why calling Fallout 3 “Oblivion with guns” is insulting.
The sad thing is despite how good Oblivion is, it had some even worse problems. At least in Fallout 3 they used more than 4 voice actors for the entire freaking world = |
November 11th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Skrud, the animations are really REALLY bad. They took multiple steps back in the ‘evolution’ of movement in video games. You really need to see it to believe it if you’re not convinced :)
Gangles you have hit everything dead on. Just like David mentioned about being in awe but then having it pulled away from you from the obvious flaws…it is really unfortunate that the ‘mood’ gets killed with such unacceptable bugs.
I remember at one point in a certain city someone was trying (emphasis on trying) to get to a podium to speak. An epic-fail occurred where the character just started turning back in forth 180 degrees because they hit something on their way up the stairs….to make matters worse his speech started with him still spinning at the bottom of the stairs…the audio was too faint because of the failure and I couldn’t hear what he had to say no matter what part of the room I was in.
There was one case where I was in a certain cave and I saw all the red dots on my compass and heard all the ‘growls’ and couldn’t find my enemies….then I realized….they generated inside the walls…luckily I loaded from an earlier save and all was well…but imagine what would have happened if someone wasn’t a save nazi like me and had an NPC generate inside a wall?
I do have to say if it weren’t for me having ~200 saves right now I would have given up on this game a long time ago with all the dead-end bugs I’ve been reading about. The thought of realizing I could never progress past the ~30 hours I have clocked in so far makes it really really hard to restart knowing that it could happen all over again.
Bethesda…..please get a new QA team.
On a brighter note…..these bad bugs still do not out weigh the awesome of the game……I still plan on playing it a second time…the next time I will play as a sociopath…it’ll be fun.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Though I haven’t played the game (yet) … your talk about the NPC animation reminded me of the Uncanny Valley. That is, as animations approach realism, there’s a point where they start to depreciate because our brains start to see them as messed up humans instead of really good animations. It might not be that the animation is so bad, maybe it’s so good that you’re firmly entrenched in the Uncanny Valley, and not good enough to get out of it.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I feel bad, because you have had far more technical problems than I’ve had with the game. I’ve had NPC’s disappear on me entirely, but nothing too big apart from that. This is actually something I didn’t even touch on in my recent write-up on it. I guess it just didn’t bug me that much. I guess your closing statement really nails it there when concerning me in particular.
“the charm of the gigantic world and its fascinating inhabitants glosses over the game’s many glaring flaws and glitches.”
November 12th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I’m just waiting for more good mods to come out. The Oscuro Oblivion Overhaul mod really changed Oblivion for the better in a huge way, improving the AI hugely. Oblivion could really use some good mods. There are a few out, but nothing that’s blown me away.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:10 am
@Travis: I’m certain they’d find something else to complain about ;) I’m glad you liked the format.
@Skrud: I’m familiar with the idea, but unfortunately that’s not the case in Fallout 3. The animations just look old and fake, like an early PS2 game.
@David: They did a decent job of keeping the quests consistent even if you try to break them. The locked door thing is just a plain old bug :(
@Mike: From what I’ve read, Fallout 3 also scales much more nicely as you gain levels. No standing in one place and casting for hours either ;)
@snoogans: The game definitely warrants a second playthrough, I feel like I’m missing so much by playing a nice guy.
@SnakeSonicLink: I can love the game warts and all… but still REALLY wish it didn’t have so many darn warts.
@Greg: I hadn’t considered that angle, and A.I. mod would be really nice for this game. What a shame that they’re being coy with the mod tools.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
All I have to say is that I have loved the game in all aspects. EXCEPT for bugs preventing me to complete the game. Everything I have read in the review and replies are highly accurate.
I personally want to add that the current game I am playing (which is stated as 101 hours of game play on my saved game file) is now freezing while I am just plainly walking the wasteland, or trying to continue with the main story line.
I am considering taking the game to a second hand store and get as much money back for it while I still can.
If anyone has any good advice for me on the PS3 version of Fallout 3 please email me at megakiquy@gmail.com
November 24th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
@Harrison: A patch is apparently in the works for all versions in the near future, you might want to hold out for that. Good luck!
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:22 am
man i cant even start about how many problems there are with this game, its an amazing game once you first start it, like the first couple quests, getting out of the vault, etc….
but after a while, the bugs add up and the experience is ruined, ive had the game totally freeze on me countless times, which then i have to restart my ps3 and start again from my last save, but the game lags all the time, i get enemies spawning inside walls, i got locked out of gnr, and ive had weapons dissapear inside my home (cuz im collecting all the unique weapons and putting them on display in my megaton house)
ive also had alot of trouble with the DLC’s, the pitt ive had people fall through the ground making them unlootable, which is needed to get a certain unique weapon, O;A, ive had the chinese general dude not promt his speech which he is supposed to, causing me to just stand there as i watch the battle happen, and in mothership Zeta, ive had the AI freeze when i got abducted causing me to just sit there as theres this alien thing jabbed in me, to make things worse when i loaded my previous save, my hand was somehow stuck blue, as if i was still bieng abducted,
prior to getting the GOTY version for ps3, i bought it for pc, and maaaaan did i have such a hard time with it.
as soon as i started, the game would occasionally lock up and crash to desktop, but as i progressed throughout the story, the CTD’s started to happen literally every 2-8 mins, i would have given up on it if it werent for the fast loading times on pc. but i tried everything i could to try to get the CTD’s to stop, deleting nero, shutting off live, defragging my hd, but anyways it was a hassle,
matt, u got it down to the T! its great, but the bugs ruin it! bethedsa needs to do something about it, or make the next one better,