Duck and Cover

As a kid, I wasted hours relishing Atari’s big-pixel carnage. I mastered games like Missile Command and Pitfall, not caring everything on the screen looked like Legos. In high school, I discovered girls and sports and lost interest in gaming. Then, in 1995, my grad school roommate blew his tax return on a Playstation. He stuck in a game called Doom, and I watched slack-jawed as he engaged in real time spiritual warfare with a double-barreled shotgun. From that day on, I have been a first-person shooter (FPS) video game fanatic. I have eschewed all other genres as dull and slow.

I’ve always found role-playing games (RPGs) the most cumbersome and boring. RPGs require the player to acquire cash, build skills, assemble an inventory, win friends, and influence people. This might be tolerable if the results weren’t so predictable. You can spend hours developing a morally upstanding character who struggles at the beginning but becomes strong and rich by the end, or create a naughty character who progresses quickly, only to struggle with betrayal and deceit later in the game. RPGs require long delays for little gratification and few surprises. I’d rather make a quilt.

Bethesda Software’s Fallout 3 is an RPG, so maybe it will mean something when I tell you that it’s the best video game I’ve every played. Other games feel like cheap rip-offs in comparison. Halo 3 now looks like a bad cartoon and Grand Theft Auto IV feels soulless and dull. Here’s why:

FPS inside RPG

Even though it’s an RPG, you can run and gun your way through most of Fallout 3. Though it’s possible to play the game from third-person perspective, it’s clear the designers want you to play it in first-person. Gameplay is awkward in the third-person, especially during battles. Even if you’re a hardcore FPS fan like me, however, you’ll gladly break the action to use the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S).

V.A.T.S is a computerized targeting system that stops the game and lets you pick where and how to shoot your enemy. This comes in handy if (a) you’re a bad shot like me or (b) you need to adjust aggression according to your enemy. If a radioactive albino scorpion is scampering toward you, for example, you’re better off shooting his stinger before he gets close enough to strike instead of trying to kill him. Is a super mutant taking aim at you with a rocket launcher? Disable his weapon before he blows you away with one shot. But if a garden-variety wasteland raider charges you in the open, you might as well go for his head. The game’s gore factor is adjustable to suit everyone from the squeamish to those suppressing rage.

Size (and setting) matters.

The Fallout 3 world is massive, encompassing Washington D.C., northern Virginia, and southern Maryland. I spent two years living in D.C., and Bethesda Software nailed it. Despite the realistic size of the game, you don’t waste time plodding over well-trodden ground. Once you discover one of the games 187 locations, you can “fast-travel” there from anywhere in the map. The game logs the appropriate travel-time, so when leave somewhere in the morning, you’ll find the moon and stars shining above when you arrive a few seconds later.

More impressive than the size is the setting. Fallout 3 gives us the future as imagined by 1950s science fiction. Technology is big and stylized, giving the game both a futuristic and retro feel. The nuclear holocaust freezes this world in time, and a grimier, grittier (not to mention irradiated and mutated) world emerges around it. It’s Leave it to Beaver meets Star Trek meets Mad Max.

Character Development

Among Fallout 3’s many exceptional features, character development stands out most. As in other RPGs, you begin by choosing relative strengths and weaknesses. As the game progresses, you have the opportunity to choose from dozens of new abilities. A single character cannot amass all the abilities and perks the game has to offer, forcing you to create a refined character with a particular set of skills. Choices in Fallout 3 have lasting consequences, making decisions more challenging and more interesting. Gaining something almost always means loosing something else.

Your morality and personality matter more than your skills and perks. Every interaction with a non-player character (NPC) includes dozens of response variations. You can be angry, indifferent, mischievous, charitable, expedient, good, or downright evil. You can do what’s best for you, best for others, or strike a balance. As in the real world, being kind and self-sacrificial doesn’t always ensure the best outcome, even in the long run. Though character development has a strategy element, it has much more to do with the type of character you want to create. Many situations present true ethical dilemmas lacking definitive “good” or “bad” choices. The game frequently requires you to choose between Old and New Testament brands of justice, and trust in an NPC’s innate goodness is punished as often as it’s rewarded.

The Story(ies)

Your choices in Fallout 3 determine the course of the narrative – not just the ending, but the entire plot. Game designer Todd Howard claims the main quest has over 200 different possible endings. Entire sub-plots open and close depending on seemingly insignificant choices. This raises the emotional stakes and gives you ample reason to play the game again. I’ve gotten more value out of Fallout 3 than any other game, much less one without a multiplayer option. I’ve taken two very different characters through very different storylines.  I have a warm-hearted fellow with powerful friends but limited money and supplies, and a cold-hearted woman with few friends (she’s killed most of them), lots of guns and cash, and lots of enemies. Because of their moral differences, they participate in long sequences of the game that would be unavailable if they had different karma.

If the 100 hours+ of play offered in the regular game isn’t enough for you, Bethesda offers five add-ons you can download for around ten bucks apiece. Add over twenty hours of gameplay battling your way through Andrews Airforce Base, the Deliverance-style backwoods of Maryland, the steelyards of Pittsburgh, the mountains of Alaska, or an Alien mothership orbiting Earth.

It’s art

The complex interaction of moral and psychological features make this the game for people who want to do more than blow up bad guys and horde supplies. Literary and historical allusions fill the game. Both Jesus and the Devil show up as NPCs, but only those with some book-learnin’ under their belts will notice. Fallout 3 sets a higher intellectual and creative standard for adult video games. Bethesda wanted to do more than sell games. They could have eliminated many sophisticated touches and still had a great game. Instead, Bethesda chose to create one the most imaginative and engrossing games in history.