Fallout 3 E3 Previews
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Visually, Fallout 3 is unremittingly bleak. So it should be, although you have to wonder if there will be enough variation in this vast wasteland to sustain interest. But let's give Bethesda's artists the benefit of the doubt on that count, because unfortunately the game has much more tangible shortcomings to take them to task on: the flat, sterile lighting, the excessive contrast, the feeble effects (excepting the mini-nuke explosions of wrecked cars' power units) and, worst by far, the hilariously, embarrassingly wooden animation.Their European colleagues at GamersGlobal like it for the most part, but hate V.A.T.S.:
This was a weakness of Oblivion's, too, but it's even more jarring in Fallout 3. The game presents itself in the first-person perspective, but you can pull the camera out to quite a distant third-person viewpoint and move it in full 3D. This means you can examine your character's Gerry Anderson jerking and flailing from any angle; we'd recommend you don't. Unfortunately, you can't help but observe the erratic path-finding, motionless trances and limp movements of the few enemies you encounter this early in the game. You simply can't invoke the visual style of an action game and get away with this stuff.
The game's showing in the Microsoft press conference was something of a bum note as well, with its gleeful ultra-violence and portable nukes failing to evoke the more down-to-earth flavour of grit Fallout is known for. We accept that was probably a hard sell for a broad audience, though. We accept that the game's setting, however dreary within the context of gaming in general, is refreshing within the world of RPGs. Above all, we accept that it's impossible to properly judge a game as vast as this in such a short time span, and that it undoubtedly has many hidden riches.
But beyond that, there are simple questions of quality that it's impossible to avoid: characterless art, cold visuals, wonky animation, weak real-time combat, off-kilter writing. As it stands, Fallout 3 just doesn't feel right, and it will leave many players shivering for warmth in its nuclear winter.
