[Colonol Dekker]

boobleheads?


i'm out of the citadel and not found one yet, but i'm playing it on a time-budget, maybe two hours a night if i'm stringent with other duties.

[CP5670]

Still, even though F3 has been dumbed down as seems to be the trend on every modern sequel of classic games, F3 is still a good game and worth its price tag, at least when the price has dropped a bit. Anyway, F3 does not require you to type in serial key to install or play the game, it does not need the DVD to be in the drive while you play, it doesn't even seem to have any noticeable copy protection. This alone is a good reason to support the game and buy it. If for nothing else than to show example that games without copy protections can sell well.

It's known to have the standard, non-internet Securom. It would have been bashed for that a year ago, but the sad thing is that this is almost preferable in the current gaming climate, with increasingly more games moving to the limited activation variety.

[Shade]

You actually completely bypass Securom on FO3 simply by not using autorun and instead running the setup file off the DVD yourself. I get the strong feeling that Bethesda wanted to ship it without any DRM at all but were forced into using Securom, and then simply made it impossibly easy to bypass instead. As such, FO3 is effectively DRM-free, given that all you have to do is hold down shift for 10 seconds after inserting the DVD and then run setup yourself.

[gevatter Lars]

Interesting, if true, I have just avoided securom by not haveing autorun enabled in the first place.
Still it could be true that they just used it to labe the DVD "copy protected" and so make it illegal to copy it...since in some places its legal to copy non-copy-protected CDs/DVDs.

[Shade]

Actually, come to think of it, it may be you also have to run the game's .exe directly instead of going through the launcher. Still, that hardly qualifies as an obstacle either. Anyway, I wouldn't have bought it if it forced a DRM on me, so the fact that it is so trivial to get around is just Bethesda's luck. If they like getting paid for their games, anyway.

[Bob-san]

Actually, come to think of it, it may be you also have to run the game's .exe directly instead of going through the launcher. Still, that hardly qualifies as an obstacle either. Anyway, I wouldn't have bought it if it forced a DRM on me, so the fact that it is so trivial to get around is just Bethesda's luck. If they like getting paid for their games, anyway.

I think they're gauging piracy--if this goes well, who knows. We could have a manufacturer that does DRM-free and reaps the benefits. Anyways--I've had days of gameplay on F3. It's a good game.

[CP5670]

So they have put Securom in the DVD autorun program but nowhere else? That would be the first game I've seen like that. Just about every other Securom title embeds it in the game exe itself and not the installer.

[SadisticSid]

FO3 is a good game in its own right: perhaps the best implementation of an open, seamless world I've seen. I liked the rolling of old FO skills into the same ones to make each of them more balanced. I actually liked most of the changes they made to adapt SPECIAL to the Oblivion engine as well.

What I didn't like was the complete lack of content and arguably a worse main plot than Oblivion. They could have cut 90% of the characters out of the game, because most of them parroted each other with one of about 10 voices. For example Tenpenny Tower was filled with people, all of whom reacted the same way to your actions. Why? What's the ****ing point? They're just copy and paste characters with different voices and faces! Arghh!

If Bethesda had the balls to say **** it to the hours upon hours of repeated voiceovers they might have had time to put some interesting sidequests into the game. The only ones I really enjoyed were the android and the wasteland survival guide. In the end I got so frustrated with the sidequests I just gattling lasered my way to victory each and every time.

So no, FO3 isn't great, but it's still a lot of fun and it's only a shame Bethesda wasted an opportunity to make it truly memorable.

[TrashMan]

What I didn't like was the complete lack of content and arguably a worse main plot than Oblivion. They could have cut 90% of the characters out of the game, because most of them parroted each other with one of about 10 voices. For example Tenpenny Tower was filled with people, all of whom reacted the same way to your actions. Why? What's the ****ing point? They're just copy and paste characters with different voices and faces! Arghh!

To create the illusion of life? More people around ya know? There's no other way to really do it. You can't create a city of thousands and have every single NPC be unique, with it's own conversations options and quests. It's just too much of a job.

[Molybdenum]

I am a veteran of the original Fallout series.

Now that I've finally played Fallout 3 I can say that the complains of the fans are malcontent. Some of the style from the previous Fallouts was hampered but its still very atmospheric. The only things that bother me are minor. Everything else is top-notch(up until now, I'm level 4)

I don't expect the fallout series could have been(realistically) continued any better. I was either a really good commercially successful(slightly consolified, but tastefully unlike Bioshock) game like Fallout 3 or the death of the series altogether. I've read some of the comments on No Mutants Allowed. Although I agree with them most aren't valid issues, if the people that state them played the game beyond the bias I believe they would have a blast.

There are several thing that IMHO improved over the third installment. Namely the combat system, which reminds me more of System Shock 2 and Deus Ex than of anything else. Oblivion notwithstanding. Which is a good thing. Say what you will about Fallout but the combat wasn't exactly dynamic or, I risk say "tactically" engaging as those titles.

The problem of radiation is something that Fallout 3 expands for the first time in the series. In the originals(probably on purpose as part of the general message) radiation wasn't truly present in a way to make you feel you have to cope with it. In the third installment its a very important aspect as you have to balance between healing wounds and irradiating yourself.

Well that my 2-cents now that I've got to run the game. Which i did on my absolutely ancient gaming rig.  That also set me favorably to the game

[Bob-san]

I am a veteran of the original Fallout series.

Now that I've finally played Fallout 3 I can say that the complains of the fans are malcontent. Some of the style from the previous Fallouts was hampered but its still very atmospheric. The only things that bother me are minor. Everything else is top-notch(up until now, I'm level 4)

I don't expect the fallout series could have been(realistically) continued any better. I was either a really good commercially successful(slightly consolified, but tastefully unlike Bioshock) game like Fallout 3 or the death of the series altogether. I've read some of the comments on No Mutants Allowed. Although I agree with them most aren't valid issues, if the people that state them played the game beyond the bias I believe they would have a blast.

There are several thing that IMHO improved over the third installment. Namely the combat system, which reminds me more of System Shock 2 and Deus Ex than of anything else. Oblivion notwithstanding. Which is a good thing. Say what you will about Fallout but the combat wasn't exactly dynamic or, I risk say "tactically" engaging as those titles.

The problem of radiation is something that Fallout 3 expands for the first time in the series. In the originals(probably on purpose as part of the general message) radiation wasn't truly present in a way to make you feel you have to cope with it. In the third installment its a very important aspect as you have to balance between healing wounds and irradiating yourself.

Well that my 2-cents now that I've got to run the game. Which i did on my absolutely ancient gaming rig.  That also set me favorably to the game

Spoiler:

Or irradiating yourself to heal your wounds. If you do the Wasteland Survival Guide's radiation portion, get 600 rads and then talk to Moira. You'll have Rad Regen, which is IMMENSELY useful. Become a liquor addict (beer is cheap) and you get a nearly-constant strength boost. When you can as well, get Power Armor or Combat Armor or Rangers Armor, and enjoy dosing up on a lot of rads and eating anything you want. There are disadvantages, but rad'ing up like that means all you need is a source of food or water and you can survive just about anything. All your limbs will regenerate when damaged--not just when crippled. Only do the required dosage of rads to have this effect (400 I think), and stay under the even more serious doses or you'll lose strength. Rads + booze + (irradiated) water = fun. And RadAway costs less than StimPaks, so you still use less aide that way.

[Colonol Dekker]

I finished it . . . Well worth it. So. . .much. . . I . .need. . .to . . . spoil. But i won't. I'm gonna go back to an earlier save and claim the whole map.

[TrashMan]

IMHO, steampacks are too readily found, and drinking irradiated water or eating irradiated food brought you very little rads.

I never had any trouble with radiation, and I wasn't even trying to avoid it.

[Colonol Dekker]

Railgun wins ^_^

[Akalabeth Angel]

I picked up Fallout 1 from GoG the other day and gave it a play through. Wasn't overwhelming, but it was okay. Starting Fallout2 (again from GoG). Thing I don't understand is that they go for this 50-60s style of artwork and presentation but the nuclear war is supposed to have happened like 2080 or something. Doesn't really make sense imo. If you want a 60s style artwork then have the war take place in the 50-60s, just put some super science alternate reality spin to explain the vaults, superweapons and so on.

[Colonol Dekker]

50's culture stabilised due to the "tangent" timeline outlined in the Fallout 3 manual. Tech increased, but it stayed true to the 50's mould, much like Flash Gordon etc...

[Akalabeth Angel]

50's culture stabilised due to the "tangent" timeline outlined in the Fallout 3 manual. Tech increased, but it stayed true to the 50's mould, much like Flash Gordon etc...

        Sounds like a made-up excuse to me. Especially if it only ever hit the books in F3. I have some "fallout" bible from Gog, but as it talks about F2 I haven't read it yet. Even if culture stablised (stagnated) why would the technology in the cutscenes not be on par with the weaponry? Old style radios and televisions, black and white even. The world has plasma guns but no colour TV?  Bring those guns into the past and saying there were weapon advances or whatnot makes sense, having the weapons develop at today's standards while completely limiting civilian technology seems off to me.

[Colonol Dekker]

If it ain't broke don't fix it

[brandx0]

The divergence in technology between our universe and the fallout universe happened somewhere in the 40s or 50s IIRC.  I believe the microchip was never invented.  The other point of it, which has always been the core of Fallout is that yes it's the future, but it's the future as they thought it would be in the 40s and 50s, not the actual future.  Just in the same way that modern games set in the future probably will be nothing like the real future, so is fallout's future nothing like the real future. 

[Bob-san]

I was about to say something about that. In pop sci-fi of the day, plasma weapons, laser weapons, &c were all common. It seems they developed new tech but not improved old tech. Just take a look at Megaton: it's clearly a WW2 style atom bomb, and the limited blast in the crater leveled the town and didn't do much more.