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really guess its funny the different effects situations have on people, we were walking round with 'the terrible shotgun' and couldn't stop laughing as they start running after us going, "GGAaaRRYYY!"

I went in there as a third level Small Guns character who had run out of ammo. I left pretty quickly, and came back ten levels later when I remembered to.

That's what I always hated about Oblivion - the dungeons would only contain opponents that were at your level. Fallout 3 had a bit of that with the wilderness encounters, but overall there were plenty of challenges worth walking away from at lower levels.

The quest involving certain oversized insects with unusual pyrotechnic abilities. I bumped into the quest at level 3 and attempted it with my paltry selection of 10mm pistols and a laser pistol, with a small handful of grenades. I completely ran out of ammunition; bullets, grenades AND mines, and I still didn't finish the quest. Came back at about lvl 10 and wrecked the place with a chinese assault rifle and combat shotgun.

yes the main quest is quite short but you can get massive gameplay hours in with the side quests

It also deserves to be said that Fallout 3 is designed in such a way that there is absolutely no grinding needed in building a character. You level up quickly, without having to worry about using a skill too much and leveling up too quickly to get the full stat bonuses like Oblivion. The gameworld is smaller by overall size than Oblivion, but is absolutely packed with things to do.(again, fitting an urban/suburban environment). I reached level 20 doing sidequests before I even reached the point where your character is taught to use power armor. It isn't even necessary to "max out" on stats either. You start with 35 points spread between 7 stats(so 5 each, but you can redistribute them before leaving the tutorial section) with 5 extra to use as you see fit. You have immediate access to a perk (a passive bonus that comes with each level up, you choose which) that can add extra points. Even then, you have inventory items you can find that boost a stat while you hold them, and you find Vault-Tec Bobbleheads that, once found, either permanently increase one of your skills by ten or a stat by one and do not count toward your carried weight. As you cannot raise any of your 7 stats over ten, it is often unnecessary to raise them beyond 7 unless you are going for something extreme.

On normal difficulty you really only need a small bit of planning regarding what type of playstyle you would like to stick to, and with a little discipline it's entirely possible to be great at what you want, but still have respectable options. My first character was a sort of an experiment;I had given him 10 luck at the outset just to see how it would work out. I had planned to make a character with high Speechcraft and respectable Small Guns, and decided that I didn't particularly care about lockpicking shenanigans. By the time I had reached level 20, I had actually reached max level in Small Guns, Medicine, and Repair, 85 in Speechcraft, 60 in explosives(fun), 50 in Big Guns, and 50 in Sneak. I even went back and raised both lockpicking and hacking to 50 just because. I could lay waste to just about anything and could play with Big Guns when it wasn't absolutely necessary to kill something as fast as possible. 60 is sort of a plateau for explosives. At that point they will do very large amounts of damage, and that level of skill opens up a perk that raises your explosives damage by 20%. I never needed any more than that. You just don't know how fun it is to hunt Deathclaws with a dartgun and homemade claymore mines created by filling a lunch box with cherry bombs and bottlecaps with a sensor unit duct taped to it.


:Edited for TextWall

I too maxed out my character doing side-quests before learning how to use power armor.

I was actually quite bummed when I found out that 20 was the max because I had burned a lot of my perks taking the ability that makes you level up more quickly. . .which is essentially a wasted perk in the end.

If I was to start all over again I would be very careful to only pick perks that have an interesting game advantage first (child at heart, ladies man, etc) and only then go for perks that increase stats. And I most certainly wouldn't take the 'quick learner' (or whatever it was called again) because leveling up ASAP really isn't that big a deal.

The one leveling perk I would probably still take (and much sooner this time around) would be the one that doubles the stat bonus you get from reading books. I had no real idea that there would be so many books in the game and by the time I did realize it and take that perk I had probably wasted about 20ish books that could have given me 40ish stat upgrades instead of just 20ish.

Ladies Man and Black Widow are used in about 5 places each. They're really kind of wastes of perks as well.

lord_sutekh wrote:Only glaring trouble I had with the game was occaisonal dialogue issues... like one ghoul claiming to have been a scientist "and then those damn bombs dropped." Does becoming a ghoul make you immortal, or something, because last time I checked, the bombs dropped 200 years ago... It's like some of the people writing the dialogue remembered the background, and some others just kinda skimmed it.

Incidentally the same character has provided me with my new favorite quote. " Things weren't always this way, I was a goddamn scientist". I can't understand the hardcore fallout fans bitchiness. Sure, it isn't perfect, but I don't think anyone can convincingly say that Bethesda hasn't made the old college try to stay true to the franchise.

I've read over in the Fallout Wikia that ghouls are marred for life AND made effectively immortal as a double whammy(unless of course someone drops a piano on one). A major theme of the game is the silly, completely rediculous misunderstandings concerning how radiation worked that the public had during the 50's and such. Ghouls, Super Mutants, Giant Ants and Scorpions, freaking GLOWING Ghouls. Besides, though Fallout 1 and 2 fall many, many years apart, there is a Ghoul character in both of them that returns in 3. Age is not an issue for them and I don't see how anyone can honestly have a problem with it.

the game is very funny

The "help" you receive for the end battle was the most perfectly hilarious thing I'd seen in years.


The game does, unfortunately, have some perks that are misleading because you think they would be useful. The experience boosting perk and the "immediately gain one level perk" look absolutely irresistable to someone who slogged through oblivion. Rad resistance is useless as there is only one fairly weak enemy in the entire game that uses it against you. Extra damage against bugs is unnecessary when you realize that you can literally run circles around a giant radscorpion and punch it to death. Why take a perk to have another chance at hacking a locked computer when you can just log out and start over with full tries?

Some are actually recommendable to anyone though. One of them gives an extra 3 skill points to use per level. Another gives you another 10% damage resistance. Extra 5% chance at criticals, yes.

sorry small spoiler coming up for anyone that hasn't finsihed the main quest yet



agreed some perks are next to useless, i accidentally took the +1 level one at level 20, what a fool i was for that, hopefully the promised DLC will include extra levels and more perks to play around with *crosses fingers*

I've had some great experiences with VATS (My main character relies on unarmed combat though, so that might explain things a bit). One great example:

I was fighting a mercenary on the top of a satellite dish in the northern DC wasteland. We were both almost dead, and I had disarmed him of his weapon, so we were both fighting unarmed. The last hit in VATS entered extreme slow motion, and we both connected fists. Unfortunately for him, his arm exploded when his hand hit mine (thank you, perk system), and he ended up spiralling face first into the ground from about twenty stories up. It's things like that that make it so the combat in Fallout 3 never gets boring.

All of the Vaults in that game are so awesome, and kind of create their own story to tell you about things that Vault-Tec tried to do to people that they had locked inside. Some of them are disturbing. Some of them are hilarious. My personal favorite is the vault (I don't remember the number) that drives it's inhabitants insane (the only one that does so to you as well). You go in, and start having flashback type moments. Out of nowhere, Amata and her friends attack you. When you get far enough into the Vault, you get a full-on hallucination with a room full of computers. The computers all speak from your own mind's perspective, telling you things like "This is nice. We should stay here. Forever."

That was just one of the best moments in the game for me.

It's just too bad I got kind of bored with the game. It just doesn't have the lasting power that the Elder Scrolls series does for me (I still play Morrowind, even when I've beaten every single quest in the game, most of them multiple times. I swear, I could probably beat that game blindfolded).

Yes Deery. Exactly. I can't remember the last time I actually genuinely enjoyed a videogame so much.

Vats can get silly. It just isn't right when you shoot a guy in the head, but his entire head comes off and spirals away into the sky while his body flips backwards over a cliff. However, it is incredibly entertaining. I love getting deathclaws to chase me over a few bottlecap mines. His huge bulk kinda "hops" up, but his limbs go flying.

It's weird though. Most of the Vaults were either control vaults used to compare experimental results or actually used to preserve valuable segments of society, but you only ever run into the Mengelian experiment vaults. Even your own Vault 101 was an experiment. Although it didn't vivisect it's inhabitents, intentionally expose them to massive amounts of radiation, infect them with FEV, drive them into killings frenzies, etc., it was never meant to open. Ever. To observe a society contained entirely within such a small world.

99MDeery wrote:sorry small spoiler coming up for anyone that hasn't finsihed the main quest yet

Spoiler:

that help wouldn't happen to be a giant mech running around screaming "death to communists" and other such lines would it, i laughed so much i forgot i was meant to be killing enclave soldiers that thing didn't wipe out

agreed some perks are next to useless, i accidentally took the +1 level one at level 20, what a fool i was for that, hopefully the promised DLC will include extra levels and more perks to play around with *crosses fingers*

That perk should raise the level cap, too. That would be a nice bonus.

There has actually been a problem with many, many people believing this to be the case. Honestly though, there is no reason for that perk unless you are on a 3 day rental or something.
Right now I'm building up a character for energy weapons and explosives. Others say that small guns is vastly preferable due to the number of different options it gives you and how common they are. I just take care of the few energy weapons I get and treat all of the small guns and ammo for them I find as income. Lots and lots of income.

DLC raises Level Cap to 30!

WEOWNEDTHEOTHERTEAM.

Yeah, VATs makes for epic fights. Like 4 Raiders running at me with Pipes, Knives, and Tire Irons. I queued up 3 headshots, ran out of AP, was like "Fine, I'll do this Freestyle!"

I pull R Trigger, three perfect headshots with Xuanlong Rifle. Then I get out of VATs, run away from the final Raider. I pull out the Hunting Rifle, and fire randomly: it skims his leg, he stumbles. Then, turns and runs like a woman. So, I hunt him down with just chop him up.

OSSUM.

~sA