I picked up a new copy of Fallout 3 from my local game store close to release, "Oblivion with guns!" I'm told and was very excited!
It was plain to see the game was jank and broken, but there was nothing else like it and I just LOVED it; so immersive and enthralling.
I would play up... until one of the very last missions in the game, when, at this point, the NPCs that need to go somewhere now stand in the doorway looking at you doing nothing, refusing to move; this was a repeatable, permanent bug. Let me just make that clear: the original, physical Xbox 360 version we had of this game could not even be completed because the NPCs completely bug out, right at the end of the game.
Not a single person at Bethesda had bothered to play-test the game through one time before shipping it, not even the main story; the honest to god, physical copy required a patch just to complete. This meant, back then, taking my Xbox to my friend's house, plugging in their ethernet cable and slowly installing an external patch onto the system.
I've played in the years since but not for a long time. So I wanted to revisit, this is the 2026 experience so far!
I install and play. Even the latest steam version is a buggy, stuttering, crashing mess, and I can barely suffer it. Mods to the rescue?
Well, this basically open source game, that Bethesda released at 60% completion (let's be honest) has now had 18 years worth of mods and it is a rat's nest of current and long abandoned mods, out-of-date tutorials and contradicting and conflicting fixes and recommendations.
Understandably, the NUMBER ONE most endorsed mod on Nexus (which was actually updated just this year) is "The Unofficial Fallout 3 patch" and I'll let the description speak for itself:
"[It patches...] ...around 58,000 records. Which means this patch touches A LOT of the coding because Fallout 3 is a very buggy game. One of the buggiest games I've ever seen."
Then let's look at this mod's dependencies:
"FOSE v1.3 beta2
Command Extender
ButcherPete FOSE
Fallout Anniversary Patcher
Unofficial Fallout 3 ESM Patcher"
So five mods so far, not including each possible dependencies for these dependencies to get this 1.6GB patch to work. So that's them installed.
ABOVE this in the description, "Highly Recommended Mods You Should Install"
"High FPS Physics Fix
Triple Buffering
ActorCause Save Bloat Fix
Combat Lag Fix
Black Terrain Bug Helper
FO3 BSA Decompressor
Zlib...."
It ends up giving 13 mods to go through; along with their additional dependencies. I ended up with over 20 mods, including other highly endorsed fixes, all with their own installation recommendations, all while checking the comments of each mod to make sure it's not been made redundant in the 10+ years since it's last update.
I play the game, leave the vault. The first thing to notice is the stutter from the "stutter fix" and the "stutter fix crash fix" (one itself needing user comment to fix) hasn't actually fixed the stutter; it's changed the stutter into smoother type of random lag (Why yes, it's unique to this game) but okay I'll live with it.
I play on, I reach Megaton, I visit the first store. Crashes to desktop, unveiling my mod manager and my 20+ strong list of egg-unscrambling mods that didn't work. I give off a hopeless sigh, and boot up the game again to see if the error repeats. It doesn't, I enter the store fine.
I keep going. I save both my game often and the people of Megaton, everyone loves me... but still! Every single time I so much as glance at a door or container that's locked "YES THAT'S LOCKED AND YES I SEE YOU EYEING THAT" "YOU BETTER NOT THINK OF BREAKING IN THERE" "YES THAT'S LOCKED AND YES I SEE-". Hmm, well this is much more annoying than I remember, I had no plans of stealing, I was just, you know, LOOKING IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS NEEDED TO NAVIGATE A 3D ENVIRONMENT. I won't know if a door is locked, UNLESS I LOOK AT IT! Well, maybe Bethesda wanted to make sure the player does not look at any doors at all or explore at all.
I play on, hit into something "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" "MUST YOU DO THAT?" "CUT IT OUT WILL YOU?". Oh, I'm sorry, random NPC! I didn't run into the BITS OF CRAP THAT ARE ON EVERY SQUARE INCH OF EVERY ENVIRONMENT IN THE ENTIRE GAME on purpose just to annoy you, despite the fact guys also walk into these things constantly in silence. Perhaps Bethesda wanted the player to just stand completely still with perfect posture doing absolutely nothing like a lot of NPCs like to do for hours.
Two NPC comment disabling mods later, I play on. It does crash, in completely unpredictable time increments (one day: 5 hours: no crash, next day: 30 minutes: 2 crashes, excluding when it crashed while I was saving) but I'm able to get into it.
I got some power armour and the training to use it from a DLC. It quickly degrades. Oh, I can't use anything to repair it, and repairs are very expensive. I'll wait until I see power armour and try again.
There aren't many guns to find, huh? Okay, I'll install a highly endorsed, gun variety mod. Mod I used to use has been long since deleted by increasingly Reddit-like Nexus moderators. Comments are saying "Works perfect" "So much better". I install the mod; bandits get advanced modern weaponry and proceed to shoot me to absolute bits in seconds. One difficulty change later, I still prefer this to without the mod, so I move on.
I follow a main character across the wastes "You think you'll will stop me? After everything I've been through!?" he posits, to a scorpion. "I didn't want it to come to this." he laments to an aggressive molerat. "Has the entire world taken leave of it's senses?" IT'S AN ANNNNNTTTTTT!!!!!!! YOU RAN ACROSS THE WASTES TO GET HERE! YOU KNOW THIS! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!? Ahem. Anyway. I waste a not insignificant amount of my carefully collected ammo and carry on.
Something bad has happened in the story, my character is surely very upset, one character "ESCORT ME TO SAFETY STRANGER, ALL OF THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT, YOU IDIOT!" the other character "ESCORT ME TO SAFETY. What IS it!? Escort me! Actually I need a break! What IS It!? Don't you want to make sure I'm safe. What IS it!?" YOU'RE STUCK!!! THAT'S WhAt "It" IS!!
One PTSD, one save and load, one "stay here" and "follow me", two more "What IS its!?"s and one "I reluctantly admit I can't kill these people" later.
Great! Enemies with power armour! Now I can use my trained-up repair skill to- oh, never mind. I can't use this power armour to repair my power armour. Must need a particular TYPE of already really rare power armour, never mind me investing all these points into the repair skill and playing an entire DLC to get something now useless 90% of the time.
One "armour repair kit" mod lat- oh, it doesn't work. Mod doesn't show up in the game at all. Check the description to see it I missed something "UPDATE YOUR PATCH WHEN INSTALLING THIS MOD, REQUIRES A MOD I DIDN'T LIST IN THE REQUIREMENTS AS REQUIRED!". One comment says to use this utility to patch it, but another says I should use another mod to patch it as that's out of date. I install, I patch, it still doesn't work, I uninstall.
One "repair armour with X" mod lat- oh, there are comments saying it doesn't repair the specific type of armour I'm using.
One "repair armour at workbench" mod lat- oh, it costs the same as just going to a merchant anyway, which there are many more of.
One "I'm cheating" later.
"Wow, good voice acting at this gate scene, it really doesn't fit the character standing completely stiff and smiling awkwardly at the person she's shouting at, though." I hope I never see these main characters again.
I could go on.
This is the worst good game ever made. It, frankly, SUCKS to play these days, and 18 years of free fixes barely fix it. There's still nothing else like it, but do I recommend it? HA HA HA HA!! NOOOOOOOOOooooooooo......
