My late experience with Fallout3.

[Methal]

Been playing it for a couple days. Doing some of the main quest, side quests, and a lot more just running around exploring.

Its...kinda good. i'd give it a 5 of 10. (reference: Star craft I give a 7, Diablo2 an 8, WoW vanilla 8, Morrowind a 9 (best game i've played yet) Halo a 7, Oblivion a 7, redneck rampage a 2, unreal 1 an 8, fable a 6, dungeon seige1 and 2 a 6, everquest a 7. civ 1-3 a 4) I typically wont even try a game unless I'm sure I'm going to like it. (redneck rampage was free =D and it was the stupidest game i've ever played.

The biggest problem I have with it, is the same with all bethesda stuff. It all feels half-assed.

Let me explain. I know they do this on purpose to give people a reason to use Mods. However I dont like mods. Morrowind didnt feel real enough until I had over 50 mods running. Oblivion was even more so. Small world, A lot of crap crammed into one small space.

I've reached level 12 or 13. I haven't found a weapon upgrade since like level 3. The 308, with a sniper scope, and a chines assault rifle. What else do I need?

Rocket launcher for the 3 big guys i've encountered.

Starting out is ridiculously hard. I used that damn bat until I wanted to quit the game. VATS was TERRIBLE! I couldn't hit earth while standing on it. There was NEVER enough ammo around. Even now I find myself switching weps all over the place just to use ranged weps.

3rd person is strictly a vanity mode I only used when I found the "naughty nighty" or the "sexy sleepware" For anything else its useless.

The setting is all off. 200+ years since the last nuke fell. Yet the world is dead, grey, and full of mutants. Everything has a bored greyish green hue.

I dont like that stats can't go pasted 10.

IMO Morrowind was as good as it gets with bethesda. I'm glad I didn't spend 50 bucks on this game, (stole it from my brother =D)

anyway. I'm trying to DL and install FO3 Wanderers Edition mods, but they are proving to be smarter than I am. I'll figure it out, but holy hell there is a lot of crap to get, extract, and load in the right order. Another thing I don't like is you can't watch which mods are loading. That would tell me for sure which is crashing my game.

Biggest yet. It wont run stable on windows 7. I have hit f5 so many times Its wearing my finger out. It crashes to the desktop about every 15 minutes.

I'm not OCed. I've fully updated the game, and Win7. No anti-virus or anything else every forum suggests, still no go.

Trying it now on my XP machine with mods that fix a lot of my gripes. Giving it another go before it hits the "nice try" game box.

[Krogen]

When it comes to hitting things with an untrained character, I think Morrowind was even worse. You had to fight with a mud crab for a few minutes before taking it down. :bang head

As for the not enough ammo problem, I didn't really had that much of an issue with that. I would always flip between two weapons pretty much until the end of the game (IIRC, Chinese Machine Gun and a Hunting Rifle), two different types of ammo.

But I have to agree with you on some aspects, Morrowind was the best game, then Oblivion, and then Fallout 3... Nothing can stand against Morrowind. Superb graphics for its time, epic & memorable quests, great rpg user interface, and just an awesome game overall.

[Mooyo]

It's funny you post this - I recently started playing the game again myself with the 5 DLC packs

Regarding stability - have you updated to the latest patch? Vanilla Fallout 3 was known to crash quite often - something I also experienced at first.

I will say that part of the Fallout 3 experience is having played fallout 1 and 2.

The limit of stats reaching 10 is part of the original series. Just how it is and really makes you pick how you want to play the game. No super badass, smooth talking, quick-as-lightening main hero. The game still isn't realistic overall but it does make it a bit better.

Vats - What is your small guns skill at? I pretty much only use VATS to kill enemies and I can't say I miss that often or have problems killing people.

Environment - what were you expecting after nuclear winter?

Weapons/ammo....can't say I really had a problem with it. Pickpocket as much as you can. Quicksave before you do it, if you fail just quickload and you can go at it again.

Also with ammo/guns - I regularly use 3-6 guns. Makes it easier to spread out the ammo concern. The heavy weapons I pretty much never use at all. Energy weapons and small guns are where it's at.

[Methal]

It's funny you post this - I recently started playing the game again myself with the 5 DLC packs

2 )Regarding stability - have you updated to the latest patch? Vanilla Fallout 3 was known to crash quite often - something I also experienced at first.

3) I will say that part of the Fallout 3 experience is having played fallout 1 and 2.

4) The limit of stats reaching 10 is part of the original series. Just how it is and really makes you pick how you want to play the game. No super badass, smooth talking, quick-as-lightening main hero. The game still isn't realistic overall but it does make it a bit better.

5) Vats - What is your small guns skill at? I pretty much only use VATS to kill enemies and I can't say I miss that often or have problems killing people.

6) Environment - what were you expecting after nuclear winter?

7) Weapons/ammo....can't say I really had a problem with it. Pickpocket as much as you can. Quicksave before you do it, if you fail just quickload and you can go at it again.

8) Also with ammo/guns - I regularly use 3-6 guns. Makes it easier to spread out the ammo concern. The heavy weapons I pretty much never use at all. Energy weapons and small guns are where it's at.

1) what is the DLC pack? I'm currently trying to get the Wanderer pack to work. People have said it really adds to the game.

2) It was updated fully. Still would only run for at tops, and hour before crashing.

3) Should I go back and try them? or would it be like trying to go back and play wolfenstein original after playing crisys?

4) I didn't pay much attention to it, but leveling agi to 10, and perception, didn't seem to make any noticeable difference.

5) I didn't even know about VATS until level 5 or so. My small guns was about 60 or so at that time. Its now 100. Before getting a couple good skills I would use vats and often never hit anything as close as across the river from the metro ent where you go to find the radio city thing. I think that is the 2nd part of the main quest. There were Giant mutants that had chain guns. They murdered me many times before I gave up.

6) 200+ years is a long time. Only isolated areas would be uninhabitable. The bomb in megaton would not be radioactive. However IF a modern uranium 238 fission type nuclear device had been dropped on DC, some parts of it would not be habitable by ANY cellular life form for a period of 26,000, to 4.45 billion years. depending on how much u-234, u-235, and u-238 were displaced, and at what area they were spread. That said, after 200 years some places would look as though a bomb was never dropped, other places would look like glowing glass, and would "melt" any life that got near them.

7) i'll have to try that with my next char. I don't think i picked anyone in the first.

8) I did end up carrying as much weps as I could get my hands on simply because I would run out of ammo on almost every fight. I never had enough money to repair anything, I just switched to a new gun. I also never used the energy type weps. I'll have to give that a try.

I'll have to check it out with your suggestions.

[burningcpu]

You can repair your own guns with other picked up guns. Paying for fixing is much too expensive.

[Enablingwolf]

There is all sorts of weapon scattered around the world. Also NPC's will sell weapons.

There is a few neat guns you can use. Fun to get them too. The Terrible Shotgun is or can be a one hit killer for any creature in the game. Not hard to get, but finding it is half the fun. The combat shotty is not as good, but easy to find them and ammo for.

Long as you know where stores are, ammo is not a issue. If your not able to scav around the world and have a few extra guns that have high use and you are able to repair and find loads of ammo for.

9mm and 5.62 guns are all over and super easy to get. I like the semi-auto 9, also the assault rifle. Stack them in your inventory so repairing them to %100. It also let's you sell the loot for more caps too. Optimally, you should be able to scav for all your weapons and ammo. Selling off (self repaired of course) what you don't need. Not hard to do. Unless your toon is not developed and your missing a lot. Wasting ammo badly. The mount of free weapons and ammo in the game is one of the things I like about FO3. Only in the first part you may need to purchase that.

If you pick your perks well. There is a good chance you won't spray all around the NPC's trying for a kill. Until you develop the toon. It is hard to hit anything. Once you do develop the char out. It is a neat experience spraying instead of saying. VATS is fun for the odd shots and finding hard to locate targets. Once the action points are used up. You can then go fer it manually and take the critter down.

Taking down a Deathclaw is super tough being a stealth hand to hand char.. They are best dealt with from long range or the Terrible shotty. Or you can just drop that Fat Man in their lap.

[Methal]

You can repair your own guns with other picked up guns. Paying for fixing is much too expensive.

could never figure that part out. What items do I need to repair them? The repair option has always been greyed out.

[Enablingwolf]

To repair a weapon, you need a same class weapon. When you highlight a weapon. The R will show up in the upper right side of the Pip. (If something in your pack is there and can be used.)
When you are in the screen for repairing/ You will see the available weapons. That can be used to repair with. Just make sure to not select the weapon you are wanting to repair, you want the one you are planing on using to repair with. Repair and poof, that weapon is now gone and the one you wanted to repair is now fattened up in the dmg bar. I call it the wear and scare bar. lol

The easiest way to attempt a repair. Is to grab two Chinese Assault Rifles. Select one, and go from there. This is probably one of the most common gun/ammo in that world. So relying on it is easy for upkeep and feeding it. Once you know, that you need two of the same class. It should fall into place for you. It is easy to do and pretty straight forward. It also makes for cleaning up your pack easier and selling loot for more caps. Plus the weapon does more damage too.

You can use the sniper rifle to repair the freedom rifle if you found both of them.

I lost my Terrible shotty repairing with a Combat shotty once. AFAIK, there is only one in the whole world. I was forced to reload the game, back a few hours. Since I did not notice until then.

Final edit:
In case you may of not ran across it yet. There is a wiki for Fallout. It helps a lot for simple questions that you might not want to discuss and wait on an answer. I know it helped me a bit locating certain things and seeing what was up.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Fallout_3

[ScottinIndy]

I enjoyed Fallout 3, However I was a big fan of 1&2 as well. I didn't think finding weapons and ammo was much of a problem, I went with one of the scrounger perks as soon as I could for finding more caps.
Finding the bobbleheads is a nice way to increase your skill sets as well. The first time I played the game I found 15, The last time I got all 20.
I would suggest the perk that adds 2 pts for every book you read as well. I can't recall the name of it though. I get that one as early as possible and then make sure to keep an eye out for books.
As mentioned the Terrible shotgun is great, The Victory rifle (enhanced sniper rifle) is awesome. Assault rifles and the Chinese assault rifle's are pretty common.
Until you can get to the power armor, The Talon company armor is very good as is Riley's Ranger armor once you complete that quest. IIRC both can be repaired with combat armor.

[DarkVirusVx]

fallout is/was written from the point of view of the 50s and what people thought 2077 would be like. Fallout didn't have a nuclear winter because the theory wasn't put forward until the 70s. the planet is dead(but not really, the are a few living and green areas in the three games) because that's how people thought the world would be.

In fact nuclear winter wasn't only mentioned once in Fallout Tactics(and in no other fall out game. Not in any of the others.

As for mutants. Most of the mutations were caused by FEV(Forced Evolutionary Virus) there where 4-6 strains that had different effects.

[TollhouseFrank]

my fave weapon was a board with a nail in it. Used that the whole way through the game.

[terran2k]

fallout 3 was good, I used the hunting rifle and I think AK-47 alot.

[Kenshiro]

damn.... now you guys just tempted me to start playing this game. I got it on the first day it was released.

[SeasonalEclipse]

I used a hunting rifle among a couple other things. I found that the chinese weapons broke much quicker then others.

[burningcpu]

Fav gun was the magnum with scope. Most effective was the terrible shotgun.

I used the hunting rifle most the time.

I very rarely used VATs as I considered it cheating.

[ScottinIndy]

Fav gun was the magnum with scope. Most effective was the terrible shotgun.

I used the hunting rifle most the time.

I very rarely used VATs as I considered it cheating.

Yeah, I forgot to mention the 44 magnum with scope, One of my fav's as well. You can get the blackhawk version which has a bit more umphh after you complete one of the quest's. ( I don't want to give too much away ). I never used VATS either.

[Kenshiro]

I used a hunting rifle among a couple other things. I found that the chinese weapons broke much quicker then others.

Made in China... hah hah hah....

[Mooyo]

1) what is the DLC pack? I'm currently trying to get the Wanderer pack to work. People have said it really adds to the game.

2) It was updated fully. Still would only run for at tops, and hour before crashing.

3) Should I go back and try them? or would it be like trying to go back and play wolfenstein original after playing crisys?

4) I didn't pay much attention to it, but leveling agi to 10, and perception, didn't seem to make any noticeable difference.

5) I didn't even know about VATS until level 5 or so. My small guns was about 60 or so at that time. Its now 100. Before getting a couple good skills I would use vats and often never hit anything as close as across the river from the metro ent where you go to find the radio city thing. I think that is the 2nd part of the main quest. There were Giant mutants that had chain guns. They murdered me many times before I gave up.

6) 200+ years is a long time. Only isolated areas would be uninhabitable. The bomb in megaton would not be radioactive. However IF a modern uranium 238 fission type nuclear device had been dropped on DC, some parts of it would not be habitable by ANY cellular life form for a period of 26,000, to 4.45 billion years. depending on how much u-234, u-235, and u-238 were displaced, and at what area they were spread. That said, after 200 years some places would look as though a bomb was never dropped, other places would look like glowing glass, and would "melt" any life that got near them.

7) i'll have to try that with my next char. I don't think i picked anyone in the first.

8) I did end up carrying as much weps as I could get my hands on simply because I would run out of ammo on almost every fight. I never had enough money to repair anything, I just switched to a new gun. I also never used the energy type weps. I'll have to give that a try.

I'll have to check it out with your suggestions.

DLC - there's 5 of them out from Bethesda. I haven't used any of the non-official mods yet though it does intrigue me. Added innumerable amounts of gameplay to Morrowind.

I do recall the point where you cross the river and there are the super mutants. The way I went across the river I actually wasn't close to where the super mutants spawn at all. By the time I saw them so had the raiders and they just duked it out across the river. The raiders won and I just cleaned up the straglers.

Sounds like you've definitely put a decent amount of thought towards everything, it would be interesting to talk about the nuclear bomb aspect more but science/physics isn't exactly my strong point. I would note that weapons could and probably would advance in the next 60-70 years than we're at now, kind of hard to predict what would happen.

But alas, not my strong point. I find the world's setting very post-apocalyptic and fitting. Then again Fallout is probably my favorite PC game series...ever.

As far as playing 1 and 2 through again I would say thats up to you. The graphics do suck in comparison but it's almost more of a turn based strategy game to an extent. When you aren't in combat it's free movement based on a map, when you're in combat you get action points to spend for movement, gun firing (varies between gun and gun modes semi auto vs full auto, etc). They aren't for everyone but I know I wasted a large amount of my time as a kid playing them.

Enablingwolf is right about the perks. The sniper and commando? (the one with two handed guns) perks make vats considerably more useful. Some people hate VATS but it came from the first two games so I'm used to it, and frankly expect it. I bought the game for Fallout, not Oblivion with lasers (...even though it is, to a certain extent).

In any case, let me know if it gets any better or worse for you!

[Locobot]

I'm playing through it for the first time too (it's great to be a few years behind with games). I use grenades with VATS when things get hairy, terrible shotgun up close, and the hunting rifle at distance. I don't at all consider VATS to be cheating since the game is already skewing your shots based on probabilities (skill level, weapon type, and repair status).

Repair skill is definitely worth building up since it will save you a ton of money and most vendor repair is capped at like 50%. I would guess if you're not paying attention to weapon status that you're probably unable to hit anything because your stuff is too beat up.

So far I've crafted 3 weapons and all three are pretty awesome: shishkebab-brutal melee weapon (but I don't melee too much), Rock-it Launcher-can use any small object for ammo-awesome for indoors encounters, and the Railway gun-cripples every time it hits a limb.

[Kenshiro]

I don't see VAT as cheating. It's there as an option, so just go ahead and use it as fun. Without VAT, then the game becomes more challenging. Saying using VAT is cheating is like, you must play games in their hardest mode. Anything easier is cheating.

[Atlehunekonge]

Hi,

Priority 1 in this game is to max out the lvl in REPAIR.
Saves alot of money, and get you good firepower.

[Enablingwolf]

I don't see VAT as cheating. It's there as an option, so just go ahead and use it as fun. Without VAT, then the game becomes more challenging. Saying using VAT is cheating is like, you must play games in their hardest mode. Anything easier is cheating.

There is a few perks with VATS.

One like if your in a room and are tired of taking hits from an obscured roof turret or something shooting at you. Pop into VATs find out where the bugger is, and take it out. Also if you hear a mutie taunting you. Pop into VATS, and see where he is, and place yourself in a better spot to screw with him. I love messing with muties.

The cool thing about VATs, besides using it for strategy. Is the "haha I targeted only your gun. Now what are you going to do - shots."

[Douken]

Why would you play a game you don't like? :shrug:


Probably you didn't make good decisions, for example I prioritized the repair skill, there are tons of weapons lying around from monsters, specially orcs, so what I did is used the rifle they release, the Hunting Rifle, and up my skills in smallguns. Always had ammo, and with plenty of the same rifle I could repair it any time. That was the main rifle I used 85% of the time. You should get the Point Lookout DLC. It has a Backwater rifle which is a good replacement for the regular Hunting Rifle. Or explore the Museum of American History in DC, maybe you can find something useful there like I did.

[burningcpu]

Oh getting back to this, when I said I considered VATS cheating, what I really meant was lame.

It was just too easy to run around and vats everyone. It made me feel more like a spectator to the game.

Saying I considered it cheating makes it sound like I judge people that like to use it. To each his own.

[Enablingwolf]

VATS is limited by action points. So solely relying on it. Becomes, moot and obtuse. It is a slow strategy that works in some cases. Myself, I did/so not rely on it, but use/used it when needed to be specific or screw with a NPC.
Yeah let's go against a giant Mutie (you know them huge two story tall Muties) and not target him in his weak spots...
I have many times used to it check out a weakness, and move into place. For a kill and not use action points.

I am an old school player who is all about action points. This skoot and shoot stuff peeved me at first. In some ways, the FPS was not my FO game. Then I told myself, Least I got some FO action. I am going to go old school and "be unique like everyone else."

[Methal]

UPDATE:

Been playing it now for a while. On my second char. Scrapped the first, and decided to have another go. I've been putting a lot of points into sneak, small guns, and repair. Medicine is also nice. I am currently level 17 i think...I don't really pay much attention to levels.

Here is my up-to-date opinion of Fallout 3.

-Game still runs EXTREMELY unstable. I still crash about every 2 minutes to every hour. I've run it on windows XP pro/home on sp2, and sp3. Windows vista ultimate, and windows 7 home premium, and pro. Tried it on Q6600 with gtx285, i7 with gtx285, and mobile i7 with ATI 5730. They all crash an equal amount.

when running through the tunnels before the enclave attacked the jefferson building If I looked up the game would freeze. I changed all the settings, bloom, HDR, AA, and others to no effect. As long as I'm outside the game runs fine, its inside buildings that crashes it.

-VATS is ok. I don't use it a lot, unless the monster isnt moving. If they are moving vats wastes ammo thinking it can shoot through things. There also seems to be a bug. If im crouching with the Monster in LOS but behind a rock i can hit them while crouching. If i use vats to try to hit the target from the same place, for some reason my wep fires into the rock.

-EVERYTHING is bullet proof. If a target, or if I am standing behind a sheet of plywood, or sheet metal, a good gun would be able to blast through it and kill the target behind.

-200+ year old cars explode (!?!)...yeah, give me a break. After 50 years let a lone 200 anything that flammable would have changed into a completely tar like substance with the explosive potential of wax. Still its fun for getting a target hiding behind one.

-If you are a good char, and sleep, especially at lower levels, you'll die.
don't believe me? a 9mm pistol isn't going to kill the guys that are coming for your bounty before they kill you. (I was at the shack where you get the victory rifle-(hunting rifle still seems better) slept there, woke up, and went outside. almost immediately I get blow off the cliff. 3 guys were waiting for me. 1 had a rocket launcher. It took me like 15 trys to get out of that shack without dying. I ended up setting my mouse sensitivity way high, and swinging it back and forth as soon as I got outside while hitting "E" to go back inside so I could have a chance to kill them.) I could have loaded a saved game, but I both quick saved, and it auto saved while in the shack. I would have lost about 10 hours of play time loading my manual save.

-Mercs. I hired one, he died so easy it was a waste of time. Their AI is down syndrome. I'm sneaking, they sneak, mob appears, they get up and run....and get smacked down. Grob (or whatever his name is from Undercity) is a tool. I fired him after he downed 15 stimpacks and still kept dieing on every pull.

-There needs to be a "restore to vanilla" option. I've got a lot of mods that I don't like. Wanderers Edition mod isn't that great. I'd like to restore the game back to original without reinstalling.

-I can't sneak up on anything, agi is 10, and sneaking 100. Still things see me as if I am not using it....might be wanderers mod though....


Other than that on a 1 to 10 Its getting a 6 so far.

[Enablingwolf]

The crashing is usually from installed codecs on your machine conflicting the game. A straight up install should be stable if patched. Once I figured out the InstallShield was preventing installing the game once. I never had it crash one or become unstable. I do know Ffdshow can cause the game issues, and you have to exclude it.
Bugs could be anything you might of done the the game install. Though it has some bugs in itself. So if you haven't patched, might want to consider doing so. The only major bug or crash I ran into, in the game was in Big Town. The bot was nowhere to be found.It is the only time I actually had to use a console to get past something. Now I avoid the bot aspect and teach them something else. Not being or being able to shoot through stuff. Is a a new one on me.

The cars blowing up is really fun. I think the cars were nuclear, so the half life would be much longer than liquid fuel. I never thought of the realism on that aspect. I just enjoyed blowing cars up. :D

As for restoring it back to the base game. Search for the games save folder. Back that up, and then reinstall the game without the mods and whatnot. It is not hard to do.
I never used a mod, but there should also be a spot in the game menu to un-check the mod you have running. It might even help with the stability/quirkiness of the game. Yeah the game is sort of quirky by itself, but that is part of the franchise and has been since Fallout 1. It is a feature. o.O

[Douken]

Omg XDDDD this guy is super funny .If you complain so much about the game, why you play it so much?

[Methal]

The crashing is usually from installed codecs on your machine conflicting the game. A straight up install should be stable if patched. Once I figured out the InstallShield was preventing installing the game once. I never had it crash one or become unstable. I do know Ffdshow can cause the game issues, and you have to exclude it.
Bugs could be anything you might of done the the game install. Though it has some bugs in itself. So if you haven't patched, might want to consider doing so. The only major bug or crash I ran into, in the game was in Big Town. The bot was nowhere to be found.It is the only time I actually had to use a console to get past something. Now I avoid the bot aspect and teach them something else. Not being or being able to shoot through stuff. Is a a new one on me.

The cars blowing up is really fun. I think the cars were nuclear, so the half life would be much longer than liquid fuel. I never thought of the realism on that aspect. I just enjoyed blowing cars up. :D

As for restoring it back to the base game. Search for the games save folder. Back that up, and then reinstall the game without the mods and whatnot. It is not hard to do.
I never used a mod, but there should also be a spot in the game menu to un-check the mod you have running. It might even help with the stability/quirkiness of the game. Yeah the game is sort of quirky by itself, but that is part of the franchise and has been since Fallout 1. It is a feature. o.O

Codecs? Not sure what you mean by that.

I've got my saved folder on my flash drive. I'll be reinstalling tonight to get ride of mods and mod leftovers. There were a couple things I'd like to mod, I'd like to sprint, and i've heard that "bullet time" or slow-mo is really useful....haven't tried it myself though, some people swear by it, i just figured that was what vats was for =D

I may just start over, using advlevel to get back to level 10 or so....ugh nm i don't want to do all those quests again =D some are cool, some are stupid.