…but I’d certainly play it. It’s one of those games where you’re going to be chugging Rad-X until you can get your radiation resistance up (all that standing water), sure; but it’s got lots of potential. Not to mention a way to segue into some out and out supernatural horror; they hinted at it a bit in Fallout 4* (New England is Lovecraft county, after all), but more wouldn’t hurt. Swamp monsters and voodoo: works for me.
*Nice deal on the physical PC disk right now, by the way.
At this point, I’d wager the European registration is fake. However, it’s plausible that Bethesda would let Obsidian have another crack at a Fallout game, and New Orleans would be a rich mine of material.
Rather than chug Rad-X, you’d just prioritize Aquaboy/girl perk, as I did in my Fallout 4 survival mode run. Makes alternative overland travel a snap!
Sadly, the probability of Bethesda letting Obsidian make another Fallout game is pretty low. The two companies did NOT get along during development of New Vegas. Obsidian got on Bethesda’s nerves so much, that when New Vegas came within one Meta Critic point of meeting a bonus payment requirement (it got an 84, the threshold was 85) Bethesda told them to stuff it. To this day Bethesda is more than a little annoyed that New Vegas is held in such high regard.
It would also throw some red meat out to the fans to distract them from how long it will be before we see the next proper Elder Scrolls OR Fallout game.
Oh, it’s hinted at before Fallout 4 .. “Dunwich Building” gets downright eldrich up in D.C.
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Mew
I haven’t gotten that far. Everybody told me to stop playing Fallout 3 and go play New Vegas instead.
I think NV is better, but Fallout 3 is still worth playing.
Everybody was .. mistaken.
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Fallout 3 – especially with the add-ons (I have the “Game of the Year edition” for XBOX) – is *in this cat’s opinion* the better game.
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New Vegas is more sprawling, but D.C. is .. more content-dense, and it often feels less like the wanderer is “on rails” the way “the courier” is. .
There are, however, more opportunities to ensure you’ll never achieve the end, though, so .. *if* your goal is a play-through, then .. you have to sorta figure out where the rails are.
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Mew
I found most of the DLC for Fallout 3 underwhelming to downright bad.
So YMMV.
I would remark that it feels like the wanderer is less on rails than the courier, simply because Fallout 3 is not tied together very well. There are lots of brilliant locations and NPCs, but it’s all a fairly incoherent jumble.
The DLC for Fallout 3 (a.k.a. D.C.) are just as disconnected (untied?) as the rest of it, so .. I decline to say “bad” or “underwhelming”.
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It seems the main difference is whether one prefers a totally open, chaotic world, or whether one prefers a more linear, narrative-type world.
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I prefer the former, so ..
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Mew
I like an open world.
That said, if there’s a major conflict going on that affects everyone, I kind of expect most NPCs to be at least aware of it, and many of the subplots to be at least tenuously connected.
Sure, there should be some eclectic stuff, but there should not be only eclectic stuff.
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😉 Funny that you mention the linear narrative, when the original ending of Fallout 3 is a textbook case of “but thou must” when there were obvious solutions that didn’t involve dying.
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It actually wasn’t the little eclectic DLCs I disliked, it was the big ones. (Although it was unintentionally hilarious that the much-hyped big moral choice in The Pitt is so easily avoidable by just shooting the guy before he begins to monologue. And V.A.T.S makes doing so all but certain. Did anybody actually hear his speech on the first play through?)
I will admit to not finishing “Into the Pitt” .. in part because it seemed, to me, to drag .. and after “Mothership Zeta” I was tired of side-quests I couldn’t pick up and put down.
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I did find Big Mountain quite fun .. and also annoying, for the same reasons .. the fun made the annoying fetch-quests tolerable, although harvesting the poor zombies (sorry, lobotomites) did get a little old.
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Mew
The Dunwich building was the “ghouls in the mist” that we were discussing.
It’s a great location. One of the best.
But New Vegas is the better game, and actually has a good plot at the center of things.
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BTW, I’ve been playing the new(ish) Tomb Raider. (Since you asked about it a while back). It’s good. Parts are more interactive movie than pure game, but I don’t actually hate all the quick time events during those portions. They’re done well, and are more immersive than gratuitous.
Actually, when I mentioned “Gorilla’s in the mist”, I was not referring to Dunwich, I was referring to a really non obvious place you can get to in DC.
Without spoiling Moe, search for Isabella Proud in the Fallout wikia to see what I am talking about.
If Obsidian does New Orleans ala New Vegas, I am completely down. As a Fallout location, it would be something different, but as in real life, after a nuclear apocalypse most of the modern city would be under water.
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By the same token, it is always fascinating to see how they decide to put you through the lens into the aftermath of Fallout’s America, a proud, utterly confident version of America that never lost the clarity of the 50’s (Yes, I realize that Fallout is supposed to be a satire of that culture, but at a certain point, satire can cross over into homage- which I think it did a while back, for me at least.)
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We could see the old parts of the city mixed with floating islands of deco towers of gleaming glass and steel.
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I’m in.
Also, on the subject of Fallout 3 vs Fallout New Vegas: They are different types of games.
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Fallout 3 will always hold a special place for me simply because it was FALLOUT AGAIN. After 9 YEARS we were finally getting a new game. I took vacation from work for the day it came out. I went to the midnight release at gamestop (this and New Vegas were the only times I ever did that.)
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I got the special edition and it was a LUNCHBOX. I hurried home without opening it. Then turned on all the lights and slowly, reverentially opened it. I popped the game into the 360 and played through the opening, and the thrill that went up my spine as you emerged from the vault and looked out on the capitol wasteland for the first time.
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One of my top 5 favorite moments in gaming. Considering that includes the twist in KotoR, The battle from Mass Effect 1, Finding Ciri, and the question from Planescape:Torment- it is in darn fine company.