no, not the dialoge choices all that much.
those are mostly affected by your speech skill.
the int of 1 will hurt you in the long run, as the number of skill points you get per level depends on your int . .
with an int of 10 and that one perk you can get 23 skill points per level . .

Actually went and got it. After strugging with some ffdshow technical issues, I got it to run.

It's not exactly the same as Fallout 1 or Fallout 2. However, it's also a good game. I feel like I can see both sides of the coin and plan to write a more detailed review for a friend's gaming website.

Basically, if the designers peed on anything, they peed on the turn-based strategy of Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. My hunch is that whereas melee characters were ultra powerful in Fallout 2 and Fallout 2 they'll probably be screwed in Fallout 3. However, in terms of immersion, characters, and so forth, Fallout 3 is probably superior to the earlier Fallout games. Let's face it...lots of characters in Fallout 1 had a conspicuously limited and semi-broken set of ways they could respond to dialogue and game events, and there was a lot of poorly written dialogue and text descriptions in those games. Fallout 3 probably handles characters, immersion, and quality of script a lot better.

haven't tried VATS yet have you?
if you can get close enough, have STR and close combat skill on moderate, a good weapon and use VATS, you can kill allmost anything . .
especially later on, with a burning sword, an electrically charged power-fist, the super sledge or the Death-Claw Gauntlet . .
stay out of firing arc and go into vats, if you have enough AP through agility and are in range, you can basically act as if you had SRone or two Wired Reflexes, as you will hit several times, before the enemy or rather victim gets enough time to turn around and face the music . . but of course, it's like in Shadowrun . . you play a melee Character, you have to find a way around the simpe fact, that the opposition has things like grenades, rockets, nukes, miniguns, laser-gatlings and plasmathrowers . . but at leat early in game, if you can keep your baseball bat in good shape, you can whack most everything using VATS

Yeah, it's a shame you can't go with dumb dialogue options, but even in Fallout 2, after the first town (the dialogue with Torr is awesome), you can't really follow the plot (you have no way of finding out that Metzger has Vic, and even if you could, he you're too stupid to make a deal with him, so you'd have to take on a band of well-armed slavers with nothing but a single-shot hunting rifle). You basically had to metagame your way through the entire plot, because you were too stupid to actually find out what you had to do.

Given the choice between leaving it as it was (low int is funny for a little while but basically ruins the game) and changing it to the current situation (low int means less skill points) I'd take how it is now. It would be nice if they allowed for an idiot character to complete the game, but that would likely mean a LOT of extra work. I think they've managed to find a nice balance between the Fallout / Arcanum model of completely stat-dependant dialogue (which fell over in certain places) and the stat-irrelevant dialogue you get in most RPGs (which is kind of boring), by occasionally allowing certain perks / stats / skills to give extra dialogue options while keeping the basic choices the same for every character.

most likely a aspie thing, but i didnt notice at all...

iirc, a similar thing was used in neverwinter nights 1 (never played 2, maybe i should try and get hold of it, now that i think about it).

basically you had conversation options with some skill or stat next to it that would open up new conversation branches.
(and some other silliness, like a drinking game based on constitution )

its something i hope more computer rpgs make use of, as it opens up the chance of going thru a game in a (mostly) non-combat way.

Dude but think of it! if the science dude does get them to shrink back to normal size...you get fire breathing ants of normal size. SURE there tiny, but think of how many are in an ant hill? and they breath fire!


For those of use in the south part of the US of A we all know well how many ants are in a fire ant nest heheeh.

i did the right thing . . i did not kill the ant queen, only the 5 guards, then went back and got the reward from old doc crazy down there . . then went back and killed the queen and got the karma reward for doing exactly that and went back to the little boy and made sure to get him to rivet city for even more . .

almost bought the game today at circuit city. 15 percent off all games on account of them closing down the store...was tempted a bit...

15% off of how much?

I know for a fact that they have a clearance crew working those stores right now, as opposed to actual employees. (all the real ones got fired on election day)

they raise the price of everything, then "markdown" from there.

It was $50 at Wal-Mart, $60 at CC. 15% off would make it... $51.

I cannot help but think, much like I thought with Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, that Fallout 3 would have bigger balls if instead of "futuristic" Small Guns like 10mm pistols you were running around with 1911s and M14s to make it more Americana and in line with the retro theme of the rest of the game. Like, I'd rather fumble around with my M14 than with my "chinese assault rifle" which is chambered in 5.56.

that did that on purpose, to dodge the gun nuts that would complain endlessly about their fav real life gun and caliber not being in the game or represented wrongly.

also, its not real life after the bomb, its a alternate future, seem from 1960, after the bomb...

the chinese communist thread DID invade Canada if i got that part right . . so the chinese stuff has it's place . . i like how EVERYTHING with the CHINESE before the name is essentially worse than the same without the chinese in front of it O.o
wonder how that goes over with chinese players

everything but the assualt rifle (didnt mess around much with the sword tho).

maintain it well and it will outperform the non-chinese assault rifle...

altho i guess it could have worse accuracy. and given how it was modeled...

i didtched automatics as soon as i could get my grubby paws on some energy weapons ^^
difference between laser und plasma
Laser shoots red, leaves green glowy dust . .
Plasma shoots green, leaves green glowy sludge ^^

The Chinese assault rifle is the cat's furry balls! It does a lot more damage than the FN FAL looking "assault rifle".

Wait 'till you get your hands on the 'Xianlong' (or something like that) assault rifle. Does even more damage and can be repaired with normal chinese AR's. Or Sydney's 10mm Ultra SMG. That thing is nuts.

No, I won't tell you how to get them. =P

Hmm, I've been playing and I have a "problem" were I stumble into advanced quests I'm not supposed to be doing... sometimes bypassing 3-4 quests I was supposed to do before actually being supposed to do this one. Anyone else get that?

It's probably "shenlong", the mythical dragon.


The anal retentive aspects of my personality are really showing as I play this game, though. I have taken a lot of time to cart all the loot my character can carry back to Megaton in order to amass stockpiles of stimpacks and ammunition. Partially because I was expecting things to be has hard as in Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 whereas Fallout 3 is easy. But just by visiting Megaton repeatedly my character has like 150 stimpacks bought from the stores by trading in each and every piece of Raider armor encountered in the beginning of the game, like 700 rounds of 5.56 ammo, 150 shotgun shells, etc., and I can really go nuts because these items I like to stockpile are weightless. Of course, this is basically what you needed to do in Fallout 3 to keep your character running through all the difficult combats.

My favorite weapon is actually shaping up to be the Hunting Rifle. The ammo is cheap and my character is always running around with 5 of them so as to always be able to Repair. In spite of its low damage and ROF it's so dependable and seems to give terrific criticals with headshots. I feel like there's lots more panache in blasting someone's head off with a bolt action rifle than there is dumping an AR mag into them. There's so much more finesse involved with using the Hunting Rifle.

Next game I think I'll play as a female melee specialist. I'll see what I end up doing mentally when I don't need to be carrying around several duplicate firearms for Repair purposes.

Not me. But then again I try to anal retentively "clear" all the quests from earlier areas before exploring later areas.

even if i only spoilered what one should not do to not skip half of the game

Thanks for the spolier.

Spoilers! use em please.

apologies. please update your quotes as i included spoilers. sorry if it's too late . .

I didn't really see any energy weapons until I got hte named plasma gun (fav for a while, too hard to maintain until near the endgame...) so my primary killy thing for a long time was the Combat Shotgun...

Sadly, since I ALSO got the Ghoul Mask, I often found little use for it (Ghouls being excellent shotgun bait as they run right at you...)...

The weird thing is the Assault Rifle (and Chinese variation)... when I stick with 'strictly VATS' combat, the assault rifle barely kills anything, even with 100% Small Arms skill. Unlike almost everything else, when I drop from VATS and run it like a cracked FPS, the assault rifles magically become death on wheels.


THough I am somewhat sad that the 'big guns' seem to be worthless to me. Mini guns and gatling lasers are no fun compared to stealthy one shot kills on supermutants from a plasma gun or even laser rifle. Bah.

OF course, once you hit 20, have power armor, and so on, the side quests/exploring becomes almost boring (and sadly, I didn't have a companion until, um... 18 or so...), so I'm just about ready to do the last mission and start over as a ninja. Of course, I'm half tempted to skip the 'Giant robot of Doom' part of the final quest just to see how badass I really am, commando style.

Also: Where did I get 'Fisto!'? First Power fist I ever saw and when I go 'ninja' I will totally want it, and I have no idea where I got it from. Like Wounded Ronin I pretty much keep everything I find at my house in Megaton (though... Ninja will be Evil... yar!)

Dogmeat got killed minutes after joining me. I told him to go wait at Vault 101 cause he doesn't fare well against miniguns, and I went on with my mission, but mid-level, I just get a message that says dogmeet died. Like, wtf. He was SUPPOSED TO BE SAFE. I mourned him, perhaps he will fare better with my next character.

Great game, like everyone says. I enjoy playing it on 360.

My sadnesses:

The shortness of the main quest. Or possibly more accurately, how abrupt it is after a certain point. I wish the game had subtely implied this would be a good time to go do side questions, if you don't want it to be game over.

That you don't actually get to fix the giant robot. I wish we were more involved in it's process (either officially, or behind the Brotherhood's back).

There is no Pancor Jackhammer. No full auto shotgun is sad.

But not being able to mod weapons is sad. I want to be able to put scopes on wierd weapons, and laser dot pointers, and underbarrel weapons, and, and STUFF! And perhaps mods for armor to.

Great game though, so much fun to play.

Yes, I am playing this on the 360. It works out quite nicely.

I'm sure I'll miss the mods available on the PC, but I just can't afford to upgrade my 4 year old box to run it.

LOVE the game, by the way.

one can hope for mods, patches, addons and other such things . . at least i hope there will be some <.<

expansion mods would be nice, especially ones expanding the story from the "evil character" standpoint.

being able to talk to and do quests for Talon mercs, the raiders in evergreen mills, and possibly even selling out to the Enclave would be cool.

I still haven't gotten around to beating the game yet. Also as far as I know, I only have one side quest left.

For those playing on the PC there are plenty of mods coming out already.Scripting support was cracked open pretty recently, so expect some more in depth mods to be showing up shortly.

so it seems, i wonder if there a way for people to add VATS zones to unarmed, or even new ones to existing weapons.

hell, just the robes i found here:
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=675

makes me consider starting up again, paying lip service to the main quest ones i hit rivet town or there about...

Mod tools have been anounced, along with 3 download able content packs for PC & XBOX

(suck it, PS3 owners)

info here

heh, it was pretty clear that a game with such an OLD end still active fanbase would get stuff like that fast ^^

I'd like to see Bethesda Produce a Shadowrun RPG using the fallout engine with VATS and the whole works...oh i guess ill just have to keep dreaming for now.

-Josh

Maybe if they can get the license away from Microsoft, then again, maybe they'd be willing to dump it after the success of the shadowrun fps that came out last year.

maybe someone will just mod it in?

bah saw some gameplay

is this a FPS?

It sorta is. But with the VATS system, it turns the FPS into more of a... first person rpg game?

It's not really a FPS. I mean, it's first person, and you can shoot, but VATS kind of makes it a RPG FPS playable by people who suck balls at FPSes. Stats are more important than tactics.

if by "active" you mean "bitching and moaning on NMA"

then yes, they are quite active.

then again, these are the same people who whined about F02.

now that reminds me of something...

don't knock it untill you tried it.
you can switch to 3rd person too

I've heard all sorts of praise for Fallout 3 concerning the combat and the scope of the game, etc. However, I also heard gobs of praise for Morrowind and Oblivion, two games with writing so bad and NPCs so generic that after 100 hours total of game time, I couldn't bear the experience any longer and stopped playing. While I think what Bethesda has created in the Elder Scrolls games is fantastic considering all the items, books, and large tracts of land they crammed into each game, their dialogue options and lack of any personality for the majority of NPCs infuriates me to no end. The generic side quests also drove me to distraction after the 100th time I got a variation of, "go kill Foozle. Oh, great! You killed Foozle? Here's some gold!" So, my question, that I haven't seen addressed in the comments and reviews of Fallout 3 that I've read, is: is the writing better in Fallout 3 than in the Elder Scrolls series?

I haven't played Fallout 3 yet, but that's exactly what I felt when playing Morrowind and Oblivion. And even when quests weren't that generic, they were completely scripted with little to no alternate solution to the one that was clearly written in your quest book. I was also very disappointed with the fact that talking was only useful to gather information and persuasion only useful to bargain with merchants...

Yeah, well, I've got you beat. I stopped playing Morrowind after about 20 minutes! And I'd absolutely been enthralled with Daggerfall and played it until my constant playing broke the CD rom drive on my old Winbook laptop!

But Fallout 3 holds my attention a million times better than Morrowind.

somehow, what's generally considered a menial task(gather and go kill quests) are actually fun to do in F³ . . i don't know how they pulled that one either O.o

Yeah, that was a big deal for me too. I prefer to play talky characters and in most computer role-playing games I tend to max out my speech skills first before focusing on other traits to acquire as many dialogue options as possible. It was a sad day in Kamquat-land when I discovered all the focus I was putting into my Elder Scroll speech skills was essentially only giving me better prices at the shops.
So, then in Fallout 3 can you actually have conversations with NPCs and put your speech skills to good use rather than being limited to saying, "yes," or, "no," to whatever the NPC is asking of you? Do most of the NPCs give the same rote response every time you ask about, for example, supermutants, or do you get to interact with characters with distinct personalities?