How much choice does Fallout 3 REALLY allow for?

[Azaraxzealot]

im about to buy it, and i want to know if i can basically craft my own story with this game, as follows:
i want to be a sadistic vigilante who takes pleasure in shooting individuals and asking questions later, and i want to do this all without haveing to worry about being caught by the law.
because one thing i HATED HATED HATED about Oblivion was the fact that for a game touted with "choice" i couldnt so much as brush up against someone without a guard going "HEY! YOU BROKE THE LAW! YOU'RE GOING TO JAIL!:and then the guards were do powerful that i really had no choice in the matter as to whether or not i wanted to commit crimes.
i hated that game so much because of its overpowered and unjust law enforcement that i couldnt take on evenly (really, GTA and Saints Row have an easier time at making me feel like i want to feel in a virtual world)
anyways, CAN i do this? will i be allowed to be a dispenser of brutal justice with nary any consequences besides bad karma?

EDIT: I'm not trying to be Jack the Ripper, I'm trying to be the Punisher
EDIT2: I have only an xbox 360 and a laptop, so i cant do PC gaming. yeah. i've heard of STALKER, but no, i dont have a PC

 

[Jack and Calumon]

-Snip-

Massively opinionated much? You're trying to sell this to me as a fact, but I know my lobsters and you're selling a crab. This is not fact, but opinion. Could you change it so you're saying this is your opinion? Alot of people like it.

OT: You can do what you want from as soon as you learn the skills to do so. Learnt combat? Beat up everyone. Of course, make sure you got the fire-power to make these kind of decisions first. Some guy in Rivet City has a tendency to pick up a Nuke Launching Big Ass Gun called a Fatman, so getting decent weapons is kinda a must before you go out on a killing spree. Shouldn't take too long though. Just get some Good Armour by Scouring the wastes and steal from every enemy you see.

Calumon: Is being nice so hard? : (

 

[rockyoumonkeys]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

I will counter/cancel out this post by saying that Fallout 3 is my favorite game of all time. Ever.

As for choice...how much do you really need? There's a main plotline, and you're given a few ways to proceed along that line, but in the end you still need to go from point A to point B, as is the case with every game ever made. There's a ton of optional quests you do or not. There's a ton of open space to explore, and it's a very long game.

 

[benderinTime]

The game has a few endings, but, no, there isn't a TON of free choice.
There are optional quests, and a large area to explore, but the exploration, in my opinion, gets boring after a while, and, in terms of pure game quality, I disliked it immensely. There was no immersion because I had to save every 5 minutes just to make sure I didn't encounter a bug that forced me back a few hours.
You can kill anyone you want and such, but it only goes so far, especially since killing everyone can take away a lot of optional quests leaving the main storyline as the only thing left.

 

[Woodsey]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

Two things (that I managed to read before my exploded from the ridiculousness of that picture, and I only thought FO3 was a standard 'good'):

- How can you complain about the quality of voice acting in a game and then cite Deus Ex (where all they've done is say Deus Ex has more voice actors) of all things?

- It's not a first person shooter, so there's no point having a section saying it's a terrible one.

 

[Me55enger]

kill the wrong folk and you'll be unable to finish the game in respects to one of the prescripted endings.

but... you can blow up a town of innocent folk, complete with adorable children and a surprisingly uncharismatic Irishman inside the first hour of play.

and who doesn't want to see that?

 

[Azaraxzealot]

Calumon: Is being nice so hard? : (

i'm basically going to live the golden rule, calumon, im going to do unto others as they have done unto others (or me)
if they're rude and trying to blow up a city full of innocent people, ill stop them
if they're insane and trying to hurt people, ill stop them
if they're wishing me good morning and giving me helpful advice, ill be friendly back to them and wish them a good day

tahts the kind of person i want to be, but i dont want to ask for permission before taking out the bad guys, i just want to shoot them on sight

 

[Ninja-Jordan]

Being a huge fan of Fallout myself (although admittedly I started the series at 3) there actually is a surprising amount of choice in New Vegas. Unlike 3 where in the post apocalyptic world there is no jail so if you shoot one person the whole town rallies to kill you,and Fallout 3 has a sort of Mass Effect-y, martyr or villain system, New Vegas introduces factions, so choosing to help one faction has the potential to anger other factions or rally other factions towards you. Its perfect because you feel like your actions have real consequence in the world, not to the extent that Mass Effect would have, but its pretty solid. Also, don't be fooled by "benderin time" there are only 3 endings. A good, a bad, and a neutral. Fallout 3's ending is EXTREMELY anticlimactic and EXTREMELY disappointing. If your looking for the kind of choice where you feel like your in control of your own destiny, i'd say skip Fallout 3 and go straight for New Vegas. Also the two aren't connected so you're not missing much.

 

[Iron Mal]

The moral choices in Fallout 3 are....limited at best.

You're tied between being either Lawful Stupid (Good), schizophrenic (neutral) or a frothing at the mouth psychopath (Evil).

To elaborate, being good essentially requires you to help everyone out and basically be more whipped than a full-time gimp.

Being neutral requires you to basically switch randomly between being good and evil in small doses (so give Christmas presents to the orphans and then burn the orphanage down while they sleep inside).

And being evil essentially requires you to be omnicidal and kill everyone.

I tried playing through the game with a Judge Dredd mentality (that the law must be upheld regardless of good or evil, so I was aiming for a sort of lawful neutral character) but I still found my ruthless and unforgiving lawman being regarded as a living saint and the messiah of the wastes (I even went overboard and went Judge Death a bit by sentencing homeless people to death for public disturbance and loitering) mostly because I did the main quest missions (most of which give you very good karma meaning that unless you murder and cannabalise people almost constantly you're going to be a good guy whether you like it or not).

 

[rockyoumonkeys]

-Snip-

Massively opinionated much? You're trying to sell this to me as a fact, but I know my lobsters and you're selling a crab. This is not fact, but opinion. Could you change it so you're saying this is your opinion? Alot of people like it.

Well I dunno, but I'd say that plotholes are pretty much fact. And the quotes are real too. Most of the stuff in it is fact, the only opinionated stuff is that the hundreds of flaws make it a bad game. But yeah, for some reason, people seem to have enjoyed the game, I did not however. I didn't make the picture, just got it from /v/ some time ago.

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

I will counter/cancel out this post by saying that Fallout 3 is my favorite game of all time. Ever.

Then I will counter/cancel your post by saying that you've got a terrible taste in videogames.

That's not how it works. We've already canceled each other out, you can't cancel me out again.

 

[Woodsey]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

Two things (that I managed to read before my exploded from the ridiculousness of that picture, and I only thought FO3 was a standard 'good'):

- How can you complain about the quality of voice acting in a game and then cite Deus Ex (where all they've done is say Deus Ex has more voice actors) of all things?

- It's not a first person shooter, so there's no point having a section saying it's a terrible one.

Slow down, I didn't make the picture, I'm merely reusing it. So it isn't exactly me saying everything in there, but most of it is true.

Yeah, Deus Ex doesn't have the best of voice acting, I know. But it still had more voice actors, and better voice acting, than Fallout 3. When Fallout 3 has the same 10 or so voice actors it kinda ruins the game when you hear the Imperial City Guard for the 100th time, or something along those lines.

It's a first person RPG. Why does the fact that it's also an RPG excuse the horrible shooting mechanics of the game? Look at BioShock, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 or STALKER. They've all got the RPG label too, but they don't have shooting that's even half as bad as the one in Fallout 3.

BioShock isn't an RPG, Deus Ex's is worse since it's defined even more by being an RPG (and isn't an FPS either), haven't played System Shock 2 or STALKER.

And Deus Ex's voice acting is also absolutely dire - Fallout 3 doesn't have enough "ambient writing" (like when NPCs talk to each other), and there aren't enough voice actors by a mile, but the acting itself isn't half bad by most. There are some inconsistencies in the editing though.

 

[Hosker]

Um...State of Emergency?

You can kill people in Fallout 3 as well, actually. Law enforcement is usually only in the big cities; you can kill people in the smaller settlements as much as you like, or anyone you meet on the road... Just be prepared to miss a few quests.

 

[Jedamethis]

I guess you could do that. Good luck not worrying about being caught though, you'll have to make sure nobody sees by either being sneaky or killing all the witnesses and hiding for a while.

Also, I've never noticed that the combat is terrible. Seems alright to me...

 

[tikalal]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

I agreed with it at a couple of points up the top and then what I thought was a humorous look at Fallout 3's drawbacks became an arrogant, opinionated angry rant that isn't of use to anyone.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

The Bethesda games are not so much about story choice as they are character choice. It will always play the same, the story really doesn't change to much even if you play through it multiple times. The point is to have alot of different archtypes, as apose to a wide story. They did the same thing with Oblivion. so if you're into alot of character choices, the Elder scrolls games and Fallout 3 and New Vegas are kick ass. As for story I would try something like Mass effect or Dragon age.

 

[Koljin999]

well at the time your posting this it could be new veges. (some people only call it fallout 3 so maybe your one of them, ya never know)the 2 have very different ideas of justice.

fallout 3: Petty much every man/town/city for it self, and big things like blowing up megaton (as if no one knew about that part) goes almost unnoticed with only one or two people being effect outside the blast, and no one really cared. The only assassins you might incounter would only be after you because of your karma.

fallout NV: This has a much more reinforced idea of justice. If you mess with the bigger groups, you will be attacked by assassins and hit squads but you can still rip the hell out of any small town you want but it may still get some bigger groups all pissy at you, and at a low level that's the last thing you want. If you do anger a town be sure to kill them all or they won't sell you anything and you can't just find a crate with all the stores stuff and take it.

 

[Chomajig]

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

Two things (that I managed to read before my exploded from the ridiculousness of that picture, and I only thought FO3 was a standard 'good'):

- How can you complain about the quality of voice acting in a game and then cite Deus Ex (where all they've done is say Deus Ex has more voice actors) of all things?

- It's not a first person shooter, so there's no point having a section saying it's a terrible one.

Slow down, I didn't make the picture, I'm merely reusing it. So it isn't exactly me saying everything in there, but most of it is true.

Yeah, Deus Ex doesn't have the best of voice acting, I know. But it still had more voice actors, and better voice acting, than Fallout 3. When Fallout 3 has the same 10 or so voice actors it kinda ruins the game when you hear the Imperial City Guard for the 100th time, or something along those lines.

It's a first person RPG. Why does the fact that it's also an RPG excuse the horrible shooting mechanics of the game? Look at BioShock, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 or STALKER. They've all got the RPG label too, but they don't have shooting that's even half as bad as the one in Fallout 3.

I've played through the entirety of Fallout 3 and all it's DLC twice. I loved every minute, except for Mothership Zeta and Operation Anchorage, which were pretty shoddy. To answer OP, there is not that much difference with the methods you play the game, it's more small things (like blowing up Megaton) which change the game story for me personally. It may not do it for other people but I was fine with that. I think it is a great game, and basically all of the points in the image are whiny and bullshit. You complain about a colour for starters. A colour. That's just pathetic, especially as it only really turns up on the Pip-boy and a couple of instructions at the start of the game. I don't see how you can complain about the animations and voice-acting while falling back on the original Fallout and Fallout 2. I have played bot these games, as well as Fallout Tactics. There is no voice-acting, crummy graphics and the fighting was awful, it was just a matter of running at the enemy with as many companions as possible. The text in these games was far worse than in Fallout 3, and it's practically a text RPG. Such examples as a farmer saying "Oh, okay then. I might try that" and the BoS saying "If you want to join us, go to this place where you will almost undoubtedly die" (a retarded fetch quest if ever there was one). The aiming without sights worked just fine, only missing as much as you normally would. It was completely random whether or not you would hit your target in Fallout 1/2.

 

[easternflame]

im about to buy it, and i want to know if i can basically craft my own story with this game, as follows:
i want to be a sadistic vigilante who takes pleasure in shooting individuals and asking questions later, and i want to do this all without haveing to worry about being caught by the law.
because one thing i HATED HATED HATED about Oblivion was the fact that for a game touted with "choice" i couldnt so much as brush up against someone without a guard going "HEY! YOU BROKE THE LAW! YOU'RE GOING TO JAIL!:and then the guards were do powerful that i really had no choice in the matter as to whether or not i wanted to commit crimes.
i hated that game so much because of its overpowered and unjust law enforcement that i couldnt take on evenly (really, GTA and Saints Row have an easier time at making me feel like i want to feel in a virtual world)
anyways, CAN i do this? will i be allowed to be a dispenser of brutal justice with nary any consequences besides bad karma?

EDIT: I'm not trying to be Jack the Ripper, I'm trying to be the Punisher
EDIT2: I have only an xbox 360 and a laptop, so i cant do PC gaming. yeah. i've heard of STALKER, but no, i dont have a PC

I'm going to be completely honest with you, its a great game, and because there is no law you can, kill the whole town, but beware, you kill a guy and they find you, and the whole town will try to kill you.

 

[Therumancer]

im about to buy it, and i want to know if i can basically craft my own story with this game, as follows:
i want to be a sadistic vigilante who takes pleasure in shooting individuals and asking questions later, and i want to do this all without haveing to worry about being caught by the law.
because one thing i HATED HATED HATED about Oblivion was the fact that for a game touted with "choice" i couldnt so much as brush up against someone without a guard going "HEY! YOU BROKE THE LAW! YOU'RE GOING TO JAIL!:and then the guards were do powerful that i really had no choice in the matter as to whether or not i wanted to commit crimes.
i hated that game so much because of its overpowered and unjust law enforcement that i couldnt take on evenly (really, GTA and Saints Row have an easier time at making me feel like i want to feel in a virtual world)
anyways, CAN i do this? will i be allowed to be a dispenser of brutal justice with nary any consequences besides bad karma?

EDIT: I'm not trying to be Jack the Ripper, I'm trying to be the Punisher
EDIT2: I have only an xbox 360 and a laptop, so i cant do PC gaming. yeah. i've heard of STALKER, but no, i dont have a PC

To answer your question, right now even sandbox games are limited by the constraints of a scenario. A game that allows the freedom of say a GM ad-libbing for you in person simply doesn't exist, and by definition is going to be impossible without some kind of AI technology involved.

Even in MOST PnP RPGs there are limits to what players can do, within the constraints of the scenario. For example if your playing "Temple Of Elemental Evil" (old, classic module) there are certain bounds to the detailed area, and the reaction of other elements in the scenario (bad guys acting on their own towards specific objectives) is liable to ensure that the action takes place within a certain basic framework. You can predict most of the variables likely to occur when you read through the module to prepare to run it.

Most RPG systems put standards of conduct on people, with rules detailing what is considered to be good and what is considered to be evil in an absolutist sense. Most RPGs will not allow for a good character that does very evil things to actually be considered good in a karmic sense. It's also noteworthy that one of the big points of "The Punisher" when he's properly written is the question of whether he's considered a good guy at all. Like 90% of the marvel universe's costumed vigilante community hates him (including other characters who will kill) and Captain America kicked him to the curb.

That said, killing towns in Fallout 3 isn't all that difficult, though most of the settlements that could be considered towns will earn you massive evil karma for killing off the people (and even a "Punisher" type guy would have little reason to). Shooting criminals is how it normally works, but there isn't much potential for being sadistic, despite the way bodies fly apart under vats.

Fallout 3 also includes a plot line, where your a kid from a vault looking for his/her daddy and the entire game interactions are scripted along that plotline. You can go wandering around and diddle off as much as you want (with some fairly lengthy unrelated adventures to be discovered) but in general your not going to be Frank Castle meets Mad Max in the way the world treats you.

Honestly "New Vegas" probably has material more along the lines of what your looking for, as it puts you in the shoes of a Mercenary/Courier who amazingly manages to survive getting shot in the head and heads out after revenge. That's only the tip of the iceberg though as the whole thing turns into a situation with you deciding whose going to get to control New Vegas (one of the few settlements untouched by the bombs), The Hoover Dam, and this whole region of the wasteland, including the option to try and take it all over yourself.

No graphic torture, but there is a hidden perk you can get by killing and eating all of the major faction leaders (both good and evil) along with a guy who thinks he's a cross between Elvis and The Punisher. That might float your boat if your looking to be a malevolent anti-hero.

 

[Macrobstar]

-Snip-

Massively opinionated much? You're trying to sell this to me as a fact, but I know my lobsters and you're selling a crab. This is not fact, but opinion. Could you change it so you're saying this is your opinion? Alot of people like it.

Well I dunno, but I'd say that plotholes are pretty much fact. And the quotes are real too. Most of the stuff in it is fact, the only opinionated stuff is that the hundreds of flaws make it a bad game. But yeah, for some reason, people seem to have enjoyed the game, I did not however. I didn't make the picture, just got it from /v/ some time ago.

Seeing as you haven't bought Fallout 3 yet, I will take this chance to try and persuade you into not buying it.

Spoiler: Here you go

[img]http://imgur.com/TVFXW.jpg[/img]

Hooray for me posting this image for the third time today. I hope the image answers all your questions about this horrendous game.

I will counter/cancel out this post by saying that Fallout 3 is my favorite game of all time. Ever.

Then I will counter/cancel your post by saying that you've got a terrible taste in videogames.

That's not how it works. We've already canceled each other out, you can't cancel me out again.

what would me saying that it is also my favorite game do to the situation