Fallout 3 - Preview

Hey all,
So Fallout 3 comes out on the 28th, which is very soon, so lets recap what we know and why we should all be excited:

Fallout 3 takes place in post-nuclear-apocalypse Washington D.C. You are a from a Vault, Vault 101. Now, before the nuclear holocaust, Vaultec set up Vaults to keep people safe from the nuclear war. What the people didn't know is that these Vaults were also to be used as laboratories for social experiments. One vault (Vault 12) would not be closed in the event of an emergency. Other Vaults were designed to have constant water problems (cue in Fallout 1) and others had no entertainment stations, some only had 1 male and the rest female, etc etc etc. Vault 101's experiment was to keep the people in there forever. Vault 101 was never to be opened.

So, how would you feel when your father suddenly dissapears? He's not in the vault, everyone says. He got out. How'd it happen? Why'd it happen? Cue in Fallout 3.

You start the game with the quest of having to break out of Vault 101. When you do, you are only the second person from vault 101 to see the post-apocalyptic world, the first, (we assume) was your dad.

Bethesda studios has been extremely hush-hush about the story of the game. Really, we only have a 5-part miniseries of short movies (which runs on our live stream, so stay tuned and watch it!). In the short gameplay videos, we see how the V.A.T.S combat system works. V.A.T.S stands for Vaultec Assisted Targeting System. It pauses gameplay so you can pick and choose which area of the body (or the whole body, in the case of some weapons [grenades]) you want to destroy, and then after hitting the A button, you see a slo-mo version of your amazing shot. This is a nice option, and the great thing is you never have to use it, or you can use it for all combat damage, or some area in between. You can go through the whole game as if it is a first person shooter with all live action combat, or you can go through with turn based V.A.T.S awesomeness.

Leveling allows you to add points to different attributes such as strength, chrisma, etc. Also, each time you level, you can choose a "perk". As you get higher level, and as you start to lean either evil, good, or a grey inbetween, different perks become available. One perk that is mentioned in the 5 videos released by Bethesda is a 'super gore' perk. This means people die in extremely gorey ways, which is always fun. You get 1 perk per level, and they get cooler as you you continue through the game. fun!

A big factor of the game is Kharma. If you kill innocent people, or you choose to blow up Megaton (watch the 5-part video on our streaming player!), you will lose kharma. As you lose kharma, you get more evil. Think Fable. The opposite is also true, as you do good things, you gain kharma, and get more good. Now, each has its pro's and con's. Super good NPCs will start coming after you to collect a bounty on your head if you're super evil, and super evil guys can come after good guys just because they hate all things good, and you're a good thing, so you're on the kill list.

Fallout 3 has been called Elder Scrolls 4 with guns, which, I guess could be true, but personally, I like nuclear holocaust a lot more than gates to hell, but that is just me.

Fallout 3 hits store shelves on October 28th. Hope you save your money up for this one folks, it looks like it will blow things to nuclear proportions. And just to get you to the top of your possible excitement, here is a nice little headshot to whet your appetite. Bon Appetite!



~Tuza