Fallout 3 (PS3)

Let us go, through certain half deserted streets
10/28/2008 5:25 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

It begins with a fade-in to blood on the lens, but not for the reason you'd think. It's not the last time you'll see blood on the lens. Fallout 3 throws plenty of things between you and the game, whether it's a lens, an interface, an awkward dialogue tree or some world-cracking lapse of logic. But if you can cut it the slack any good role-playing game deserves, you'll get a bleak, bloody and epically open RPG the likes of which you haven't seen since, well, Oblivion. And 30 hours later, the fade-in still hasn't managed to make it past grey.

What branches grow out of this stony rubbish

The first thing to point out is the color of this apocalypse. It hasn't got one. Apocalypses from the '80s couldn't resist their weird splashes of color and humor, whether it was the dyed Mohawks in "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior," the rouge and lipstick at the end of "A Boy and His Dog," or all that merchandise in the "Dawn of the Dead" mall. There is no such thing in Fallout 3, which is an almost entirely joke-free post-nuclear holocaust of crumbled buildings, chunks of concrete and subway tunnels littered with debris. There are ruined cars everywhere. No, you can't drive them. This isn't that kind of game -- you're hoofing it. It's downright depressing at times, owing more to Cormac McCarthy's downbeat "The Road" than the punky post-apocalypses established in the '80s. From dust to rust, from ashes to brackish water, it's sullen and mostly humorless. The exhilaration doesn't come until late in the game.

But for a place so grey and lifeless, the production design of Fallout 3 is unparalleled. It's awfully brave to be this barren. Fallout 3's version of the escape from the sewers that unveiled Oblivion's lush world is almost a slap in the face. This? This is what I'll be exploring? These sparse trees and gutted buildings, these piles of rubble and cracked highways, under this grey sky, before this shattered skyline? The answer is, yes, this is what you'll be exploring, and it's as oppressively homogeneous as you expect. That's the point. But there's nothing lazy about the way Bethesda has built this world. Quite the opposite. It's easy to make a fancy fantasy world out of trees, glittering ponds, bustling townsfolk, castles and hot lava -- consider the breezily hung-together but effective world of Fable II. Fallout 3 has to work harder. From the mechanism that opens the door at Megaton, to the view from a Tenpenny Tower balcony, to the ghosts of Vaults 87 and 106, to the last face you see, this is a consistently and shrewdly built world that rewards exploration for how well it fits together.

Empty bottles, sandwich papers, silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends

A lot of the gameplay involves picking your way through the sad leftovers of civilization, looking for things you can use. Ammo, raw meat, liquor. Cigarettes and sensor modules to trade for gun repairs. That one guy said he wanted Sugar Bombs. Oh, and you need a pilot light from a stove to make a flamethrower. Wasn't there an old stove in that diner shell to the northwest? It's a hardscrabble existence. Inflation might kick in by the end for power gamers, but otherwise, it's a delicate barter economy struggling its way into currency, using bottle caps as money to even out the trades.