How much choice does Fallout 3 REALLY allow for?

[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

 

[Lord_Panzer]

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.

OT: When you're in it you feel like the world is your oyster and you have 12,000,000 different tools with which to open it. When you finish it and step back, you realize it's actually fairly linear, aside from the metric fuck-tonne of stuff to do outside the main story line.

But really, all you need to know is the game is ridiculously fun. Plus the GoTY edition can be super cheap now, depending on where you shop.

 

[Wintermoot]

not that much they basicly say: they are bad and we are good there is ONLY ONE FACTION. If you want choice FO NV is a better choice you can choose your own story path and your own faction

 

[natster43]

While you can play the game what ever way you like, be it kill every asshole in your way or be a friend to all, yet the end is either the good or bad choice. A lot of the actual choices that you make are very small to the actual story at points and are usually just end in a good or bad choice, and each basically boil down to: I help everyone for free! (good) I do everything for caps. (Neutral) and I kill everything! (Evil). Though the game is still one of my favorites, it does have its faults, and it has one of the best moral choice systems I have seen in a game. Just be wary that if you do just kill everyone you don't like, you may have everyone in a town trying to kill you.

 

[Ghengis John]

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

Wall of text incoming but the op at least should read it.

If you want to craft your own world, and you have a 360, go out and pick up Mass Effect. Start at the first one and by number three you will have a world you have well and thoroughly created. The combat in the second one if a lot of fun, the combat in number one, not so much but the story's top notch. You want to be the punisher? The renegade path is EXACTLY what you are looking for. As for fallout 3. It's playable, you can spend a lot of time with it wandering around and looking at things and killing other things. But really it's a poorly written game.

If you like old cartoon story lines about good versus evil then you'll be fine. Frankly I liked seeing the brotherhood living up to the potential for good it always possessed. For those of you that follow the series I'm sure goody two shoes Elder Lyons raising the next Maxon will have a positive effect on the brotherhood's fortunes in future games. But the game itself is lacking. It will dangle options in front of you that don't really exist like joining with The Enclave or finishing a quest without killing everyone. The game thinks so little of speech that speech checks are presented in percentages. Dice rolls that even the most advanced skill level can fail or the crappiest skill level can pass. Pliny the Elder said no book is so bad it isn't good in some of it's passages. To that end I will point out the game has one well written quest and that is the "You gotta shoot them in the Head" Quest. Beyond that I don't know what to tell you. You'll be wandering around a sewer and subway for hours. That's what I can tell you.

Why in the world are the super mutants trying to kill everyone? Where do they get the idea that they are the future? They are moronic imbeciles. They could not have formed these complex ideas as the mutants in western fallout did. The people are all like cardboard cut-outs. The place is a desert like mad max when it should not be. It made sense that southern California was a desert. It IS a desert. In reality it rains in Virgina, hell Washington DC is surrounded by swampland. People eat 200 year old food. I dunno what to tell you. The whole thing feels very juvenile. Like kids wrote it or it was written for kids. Everything is black and white, the violence is the focus, children are invincible and there is no sex at all. You'd think at the very least your character could get a peck on the cheek from some of the ladies he helps along the way like sentinel Lyons or Amada but all they give you is a "Thanks for saving the world, now here's a curt and platonic nod of respect. Maintain three feet of body distance at all times." Humans don't act like that. Everything seems off about it.

I won't tell you how the game ends, but it is the least satisfying ending of all time. You get three pictures and about 30 seconds of dialog from Ron Pearlman reflecting whether you were good or evil. what happened to the people and the towns you helped? What the hell do you care, go blow up some more mutants and laugh about that.

Which brings me to my next proposal. If you want to play a game like fallout three but better. Buy New Vegas. You can complete the very first quest in the game half a dozen different ways. Everyone in town has their own voice actor. It's like, what universe did you pop out of strange and better version of fallout 3? Yeah there were an assload of bugs at launch but patch 1.02 killed most of them. So go buy it and enjoy it.

You might like fallout three, seriously lots of people do. But New Vegas is (with the exception of no post-game play) just better in every way. And when it ends, there are individual endings for different places you visited and even people. And the nuances, one decision influences another. You can help different factions take over new vegas for instance, and the fate of a gang called The Kings can pop out at least three ways for the NCR faction alone.

How much better is it? People actually grow their own food here. You SEE them farming. THEY FARM! MY GOD HOW THEY FARM! And they make fun of the idea anyone would eat "that 200 year old stuff!? Good GOD!".

 

[OniaPL]

I heard that the original Fallouts (1&2) have a more realistic and apocalyptic feeling than Fallout 3. Well, it never had any to be honest. I mean, fetching radioactive soda for a crazy ass *****? Aside from Megaton and Rivet city, every "major" settlement consists of about 8 people? Shooting a dude in the head from a point-blank range with a shotgun, and he keeps swinging his lead pipe at me? And... Umm... Where was I? Right. Does anyone know if there exists a version of Fallout 1 that I could play on Windows 7? I never got that game to work.

 

[ZydrateDealer]

There's some freedom of choice when it comes to how you want to survive in FF3's brutal wasteland. Go it alone and kill everyone and everything in site...or deal with people nicely and nick all their stuff if your caught most of the time they take it back, but everyone in the goddam world is a vigilante.
Shoot a guy in the face because he called you a prick in megaton and everyone else in town will appear brandishing lead pipes in a futile attempt to stove in your head. Massacring one town has no effect on another town, hell I wiped out every settlement once and Rivet City's guards still let me in after I'd insulted their chief of security with a quick blow to the head for acting like a douche.
There isn't the freedom to dive out naked on old ladies, but there is freedom in how you choose to go about getting bigger and better guns to fend off the bigger and better enemies. It's more of a whacky adventure in survival rather than a serious RPG for Sir Questsalot to dungeon delve in...that said there are an aweful lot of caves, tunnels, metro stations and irradiated craters to delve into.

 

[No_Remainders]

Choice in Fallout 3 basically boils down to "Do you want to blow up Megaton or not?"

Most of the other quests have one single path, and those that ACTUALLY have two different choices are, apart from blowing the SHIT out of Megaton, pretty samey.
All in all: Get New Vegas.

 

[No_Remainders]

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.

Hold on. WHAT THE FUCK?
Did you just say Deus Ex isn't an FPS game?

I'm pretty fucking sure it is...

Yeah, that's definitely an FPS game [http://www.sg.hu/kep/2000_07/deusex_bemutato_05.jpg]

I'm pretty sure it looks like an FPS..

Maybe I wasn't actually playing Deus Ex all those years ago...

 

[manaman]

...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.

Well now I have to ask if you even played Fallout 3. That doesn't seem like the kind of mistake you can make talking about that game. Seeing how there isn't even a hint of an empire, or a non destroyed city, in that game.

 

[Ghengis John]

Choice in Fallout 3 basically boils down to "Do you want to blow up Megaton or not?"

Most of the other quests have one single path, and those that ACTUALLY have two different choices are, apart from blowing the SHIT out of Megaton, pretty samey.
All in all: Get New Vegas.

This. Even the combat in New Vegas is better. There's no broken Chinese stealth suit, melee weapons and unarmed have more options in VATS than "beat the shit out of it" and you can actually play the game without vats at all. Iron sights work great for the guns and unarmed and mellee have non-vats special attacks like the scribe counter.

 

[Woodsey]

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.

Hold on. WHAT THE FUCK?
Did you just say Deus Ex isn't an FPS game?

I'm pretty fucking sure it is...

Yeah, that's definitely an FPS game [http://www.sg.hu/kep/2000_07/deusex_bemutato_05.jpg]

I'm pretty sure it looks like an FPS..

Maybe I wasn't actually playing Deus Ex all those years ago...

Of course it's not a first person shooter.

You don't need to fire a gun at all throughout the game and accuracy (apart from moving a very large crosshair over an enemy) is judged entirely by skill points.

Those two points far outweigh it's first person perspective and the fact that you might possibly use guns.

But yes, your screenshot and swearing were a very convincing argument.

 

[FernandoV]

A lot of people will tell you that Fallout 3 is great and bla bla bla, moral choice system, VATS, great story. It's overhyped. The picture posted is pretty much accurate. The moral choice system is easily bypassed by meaningless acts, you can avoid the wrath of cities by being RIGHT OUTSIDE of them for three game days, which you can skip through in 15 minutes. Nobody really reacts differently if you're bad other than making a snarky comment here and there but they'll still sell to you and talk to you normally during speech tree-esque convos. It's a fun game but it's no choice heavy game.