Character Stats & The Developers Who Don't Get Them
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I'll tell you a secret, and that's that this blog, though many of the specifics are not related to Fallout 3, is being written because I had a look at the Broken Steel DLC and the new Perks it added. It is, as it were, the straw that broke the camel's back; while these are my views and have been for a while, I don't normally think they need airing, but Broken Steel managed to remind me that developers just don't seem to play the systems they design, and so this is the fallout (sorry) from that.
I complained about Fallout 3's Perks when I talked about levelling up, and I'll go into more detail now. Most of the Perks improve your Skills. But if you play the entire game, you will cap out your skills at 100 with an Intelligence score of 4, and one Perk, Comprehension. With the exception of Unarmed, I don't believe any skill gives you any benefit after hitting 100. Certainly Science, Speech, Repair and Lockpicking don't. So, amazingly, a lot of the Perks are essentially dedicated to being able to max your stats if you don't play the entire game.
It's as if the majority of the world of Fallout 3 is only there to give you the illusion of an immersive world: the Perks speak clearly and they say that it's not really necessary to play the entire game, and instead of exploring all the interesting places we've put into the game, they'll help you make up for not playing it. It's as if they're trying to put two opposite views into the game. Here's the world for you to explore, and here are books that improve your stats and items as a reward for exploring it. But here, on the other hand, are Perks that make exploring unnecessary and conflict with the rewards you get for exploring (because of the aforementioned 100 cap and the massive surplus of skill points).
