I played fallout 3 completely for the first time about a year ago. And it was kind of awful but also surprisingly enjoyable at times. When you consider this in the legacy of a game franchise with 3 of the best RPG's of all time in it, it's an abomination that should be scorched from the earth. So we won't be doing that.
Oblivion with guns is what it says on the box, it's oblivion with guns. A famous actor yaps at you for a bit, dips from the plot and shows back up for a bit and dies. Wild changes from it's source material I know. Unfortunately that's about all the postive I can say for the main story. It doesn't make any sense when thought about with the slightest scrutiny, it doesn't involve any of your actions through out the rest of the game and half of it can be circumnavigated by simply walking in the correct direction for doing which, you miss nothing but some of the most boring quests in the game that are not worth doing to begin with. A superior game would use this time finding famous person voice actor to direct you towards worth doing quests but instead the best side quests in this game are seemingly randomly placed out of the way and with no indication of how to get to them. Needless to say the world design could use some work.
But there are good quests and some of the dlc even breaches into the realm of being genuinely good across the board. Moira is obviously one if you look into any of the people talking about side quests Moira's wasteland survival guide is high point and for good reason. It's an actually good quest that sends you out to places with usually other interesting stuff going on, it's almost like it should have been the main quest instead of the actual main quest. You also get charming and witty dialogue options as well as Moira herself being quite the charmer which is rare but a pleasant surprise in this game. Another one is the comic book heroes who are terrorizing a town with their stupid antics and it's up to the player to help them sort out the mental health issues that is leading them to engage in this activity. The low point here is that an unlabeled comic store at a random spot on the other side of the map is how you unlock the good ending for this quest. But there is also obtaining the last straivarius violin, a story that is beatiful and charming about the story of ones relationship with art in a time that seems utterly hopeless. Genuinely very compelling writting, not even including the vault it was contained in with it's own narrativve which acts as a bit of a horror story. Unfortunately though the vast majority of quests are not nearly this interesting. Want to blow up a town? For no reason what so ever? A guy just walks up to you and asks you to do that. His boss is also a racist guy you gain karma for killing but for killing his band of kkk members in his lil tower that you can see from the start of the game, it suddenly starts getting judgey with you for not wanting to sympathize with racist pieces of ♥♥♥♥ who actively allow the endangerment of other people's lives. That said the games quests are a mixed bag between shockingly thought provoking and genuinely mind numbing with how stupid they are and it's tragic that the best parts of this game are genuinely difficult to find.
Speaking of finding things, most of the game you will be looking at a lot of green. I've seen people argue that this is intentional as the outside world genuinely looks like it is sick and falling apart. Which is a valid take however I willl suppliment it with critique, where is the contrast? The game gives you no point at which you see actual healthy environments even at what should be the healthiest parts of the terrain. Meaning that it leaves the player with a headache because it simply looks nauseating, so yeah it accomplished it's goal I guess but considering this isn't Cruelty Squad I don't personally believe that this effect was done as well as it could have been. And also on things falling apart for whatever reason people live in the most random of locations in this game. A boat falling apart literally split in half with corrosion? One of the main locations of the game. A nuke with a bunch of garbage and junk surrounding it? First location you see when you start the game. That is not even to get into arguments about trade routes work that these communities do or how they get any of the resources they have which you could go very deep into and find that genuinely no one in this game seems to have anything to do at all except for Moira somehow. All in all a lot of the look of this game seems rather smart at first and at the very least creative but then poorly thought out.
So all that is left with any meat to really sink my fangs into is the dlc for this game. Which range from genuinely great to utterly worthless. I will Address these in no particular order. Broken Steel, boring, played one quest, quite, ending change is stupid and funny. Anchorage, funny good and entertaining but it's strapped to rails that make it not an rpg. The Pitt is easily the worst DLC I've played in maybe any game ever. It's also the only DLC I've seen act like slavery is justifiable in anyway and if you don't understand how bad the Pitt is by playing it I suggest you learn to read and think critically. Mothership Zetta is far less offensive and much like Anchorage back on rails making it somehow much better while having far less to say than Anchorage, it's fine enough. But point look out ends the show and surprise, it's genuinely amazing, good narratives throughout quests that actually make sense and are interesting and substantive choices to be made through out the whole DLC. At the end I even decided to interrogate the internet for clues on how I should approach it. That is when I finally actually had this game become and rpg as I stared at a quote from gameFAQ's telling me "do not get caught up in decision simply choose what feels right and let the pieces fall where they may" or something along those lines. I then killed the two most major characters for once the game letting me do such. And with that being the peak I end this.
Fallout 3 sucks with moments of Brilliance that make you mad that those moments aren't all the game is.
