Fallout 3 Previews

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Written by BuckGB on October 1st, 2008

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I stumbled my way across the barren nighttime landscape, and just as the sun began to rise, I found a walled-off city called Megaton. The friendly robot patrolling the door could tell I was in a bad way (I think my busted and throbbing face tipped him off), so he let me in right away. Immediately inside, I was greeted by a rough-and-tumble-looking fellow in a cowboy hat. He introduced himself as Lucas Simms, Megaton sheriff and sometimes mayor (but only when the need for civility arises). I chatted him up for a bit, asking about the giant atomic bomb sitting smack-dab in the middle of the city as some sort of twisted town-square statue. Even among the makeshift scrap metal and airplane-fuselage houses, that thing stood out like a sore thumb. (...)

Thankfully, the shopkeeper managed to flush out most of my radiation with some Rad-X, and in the process I picked up a new mutant ability to regenerate crippled limbs. Score! Finally, I was sent off to the remains of a Super-Duper Mart store to find some old junk food and see if it was still any good. I ran into a big group of raiders camped out inside the store, but they were no match for the sniper rifle I picked up off of the guy back in Minefield. The best part is that taking care of these squatters gave me enough experience points to put my explosives level above 40. I found the food and rushed back to Megaton to put my newfound skills to good use.

9:12am: For finding my way to the nearby town of Springvale, I earn my first level-up, with requisite points to add to my various character abilities -- I also get my first perk. Perks are like super value meals of character-building, bundles of trait-boosting that you pick at every level up. For yucks, I choose "Lady Killer," a creepy 10-percent damage bonus for attacks on the opposite sex. This will apparently affect my social interactions with female characters as well. Something tells me it's not an aphrodisiac.

9:20am: Fallout 3's about 1,000 times more appealing than previous Bethesda magnum opus Oblivion. Not that Oblivion remotely appealed to me -- it always felt like a graphical interface for world's loneliest LARP. I could never relate to magical elves and knights in shining armor. A vision of the United States as a smoldering ruin? That I can relate to.

Though I'm not talking about following the main quest thread, I did follow in the direction indicated by the marker arrow on my compass. This led me to my first city discovery, which is the ramshackle community of Megaton. The city was literally formed around an unexploded bomb, which has also become the focal point for the Children of Atom church group. Talking to the various community members I happened across showed an overwhelming sense of concern and paranoia from most of Megaton's citizens, though the city dwellers with names (other than titles such as (Megaton Settler)) brought the potential for more concrete info on my main quest, as well as other side quests.

I met a lady named Lucy, who told me about the lack of successful communication with her family, who lived a relatively short distance away though in telling me that it wasn't that far, Lucy confirmed my suspicions that it was going to be a dangerous trek (or else she would have done it herself, she said cheekily). While I had close to 200 bullets for my gun and a little more than a dozen stimpack healers, I didn't have a lot of other protection, and it soon became clear that I probably should have spent more time rummaging around the vault and Megaton vicinity first. At the least, I figured I needed more Caps, which serves as the new currency in the Wasteland region. But, hey, it's only four hours and how deep could the hole I put my character in get in such a short period?

Fortunately, one of the raiders had left behind an extremely cool weapon against humans and dogs alike: a laser pistol. Much like its bullet driven counterpart, the Laser Pistol was very effective at close ranges, and had the added benefit of potentially blasting the opponent into a pile of ash with every critical hit. While the bodies might have been vaporized, their gear remained behind, so blasting these enemies was a satisfying way of quickly eliminating them. However, my skill with weapons definitely came at a serious price while my character was extremely skilled at blasting creatures or picking locks, he was horrible at some of his other abilities, such as accessing computers. In fact, the few times that he tried to use computer terminals, he quickly locked them up. Ah well, who wants to be an egghead in this environment, when a good trigger finger will do?

Actually, I found that having an itchy trigger finger could accidentally get me into some quick trouble. As I wandered through the wilderness and crossed a hill, a laser blast flew past my head into the distance from behind. I immediately swiveled and targeted the offender, only to realize that it wasn't a raider or Super Mutant, but instead was one of the random Enclave robots that had been broadcasting the signal of the remnants of the American government into the vast wastelands of the country. Apparently, the floating Enclave bots have no problem attacking Mole Rats, RadScorpions or other animal life in the wastes, and if you happen to be in the way, they'll sometimes graze you as well. Although I was glad to see that the accidental shot was targeted for a Mole Rat up ahead, the droid's aim was too weak for my taste. So once the Mole Rat was dead, I immediately turned on the robot and attempted to blast it into pieces. It took a couple of shots, but I was able to destroy the droid and salvage some items from its innards.

Though there are plenty of statistics to bump up in the game as you level, it seems some of the most important are lockpick and repair. During my travels I ran into quite a few areas completely inaccessible without a high enough lockpick skill. Considering some doors lay buried within mysterious laboratories and blocked the entrances to curious spires topped with satellite dishes, I think it's pretty safe to assume that had I been able to get them open I would have been given some interesting rewards. Repair is another skill needed regularly, as it helps maintain weapon stability while in the field. By picking up versions of the same armor or gun type, you use your repair skill to consume one and improve the durability condition of the other. If you ignore these repairs, weapons will deteriorate to the point where they'll break, and then you'll be staring at a radscorpion with nothing but your bare hands for defense and only yourself to blame.

Depending on how high your repair skill is, you can continue to combine like-type weapons and armor to higher and higher durability ratings. This, in addition to keeping the weapon in a functioning state, also helps manage your inventory weight limit, since if you pick up too much and your character will be slowed down. By combining items with the repair skill, you can very easily lighten the load without the hassle of trying to find a vendor to sell off items or simply toss them aside. It seemed that after nearly every fight with humanoids it was a good idea to stop to combine weapons and armor to ensure you were in the best condition for moving forward. And of course stim-packs that regenerate health are also a big help, as you'll need to use them to inject yourself to replenish your general health or stick them into individual body parts to repair damage there. If you ignore individual body parts, they'll become crippled.

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