Fallout 3 E3 Previews

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Written by BuckGB on August 1st, 2008

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Fallout's environment is incredibly impressive, especially considering that the smoldering wreckage that the landscape consists of is an actual replica of Washington, DC. We didn't have time to get to the White House, but we did take a moment to ask Hines if it was out there. His reply, (Oh yeah, it's definitely there, you just might not recognize it. It's a smoking crater now.) This comment came not long after another developer relayed his constant fear that he was going to be arrested during development because he was spending so much time checking out historic monuments and wondering what they would look like if they were irradiated or blown up. All his hard work has definitely paid off though, as the bleak, barren landscape immediately sucks you in and refuses to give you up from the moment you set foot outside the Vault.

The inventory system is far improved from the clumsy mess that was Oblivion, but it still feels pretty clumsy. . The menus are broken down a little more intelligently than in Oblivion, so there's less hammering of the triggers to cycle through stuff. Equipping and using items is kind of a pain in the ass. Up to eight items or weapons can be hot-keyed on the d-pad, but you better have a damn good memory of where you put everything, because there's no way to tell what you assigned to each direction outside of the item menu.

Thirty minutes, that's all I had. Thirty minutes of Fallout 3. You see, that's not nearly enough time to really get to know this huge, enormous, gigantic, epic game. Yet thirty minutes is about all I needed to know that I was playing something truly amazing. I was playing something that would change my life. I was playing what may just be the single best game of the year . if not one of the most important games of the century. Judging by the 30 minutes I spent with Fallout 3 I'm not afraid to call it a masterpiece.

Then again, it could be that everything after the thirty minute mark is absolute rubbish. I guess we won't know until the game comes out later this year.

I wandered around the wrecked cars and destroyed roads, switching between the first and third person. I stumbled across a desolate village that looks like it was one of those prototypical 1950s neighborhoods. The kind where each family had a nice yard, a swimming pool and 2.5 kids. Of course, none of that is around after the nuclear war erupted. Some sort of robot was flying around, minding its business while playing a patriotic tune. I shot it for no particular reason. Nothing was found when I checked the body, so I hit the right bumper to scan the surroundings. The screen zoomed in and showed the vitals on a couple enemies located hundreds of meters away.

Also it's by Bethesda, developers of Oblivion and patron saints of games that look awesome in screenshots and preview videos but ultimately play like bowls of scummy dishwater. Case in point is the demonstrated combat system where the game cuts to a dramatic angle to watch you execute a successful kill which is groovy pants the first time but since it seems to happen with every kill I'm sure repetition will swiftly boil it down to just plain pants.

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