Bethesda has just revealed a neat collection of Fallout 3 avatar items for Xbox 360 owners. The snazzy collection will be available to download from the marketplace Thursday 26th Novemember. No power armour though, awwww

The prices are as follows:

Vault 101 Suit – 240 MS Points

Bethesda Game Studios Shirt – 80 MS Points

Fallout 3 Ringer Shirt – 80 MS Points

Vault Boy Shirt – 80 MS Points

Vault Boy Suit – 240 MS Points

Vault Boy Head – 80 MS Points

Bethesda ha annunciato che il 26 novembre verranno rilasciati sul Marketplace una serie di indumenti per gli avatars dedicati a Fallout3.

I capi d’abbigliamento che troveremo da acquistare saranno i seguenti :

Well it looks like Bethesda is releasing some Fallout 3 Avatar clothing this week.  So if you’re into changing up your avatar’s look then make sure you’ve got some Microsoft Points ready when this stuff drops.  Is anyone wondering where the Brotherhood of Steel armor is?  Come on Bethesda!  You deny us access to the coolest clothing in the game?  WTF?  And not for nothing but are developers aware of the Avatar Awards?  You know where unlocking certain Achievements in game also unlock clothing and props for your Dashboard Avatar?  Was creating a patch for the Awards to difficult?  Or is it just easier to have us pay a couple of bucks for this stuff?

Um, yeah, I know I’ve said before that paying for digital clothing and trinkets to dress up your digital self is silly and a stupid waste of money. War never changes, sure, but my outlook on this stupid trend just might because…

On Thursday, November 26, Bethesda is releasing the following Fallout 3 items on the Xbox Avatar Marketplace:

• Vault 101 Suit — 240 MS Points
• Bethesda Game Studios Shirt — 80 MS Points
• Fallout 3 Ringer Shirt — 80 MS Points
• Vault Boy Shirt — 80 MS Points
• Vault Boy Suit — 240 MS Points
• Vault Boy Head — 80 MS Points

Of them all, the Vault 101 Suit is looking the slickest.

As it’s the last Mon-Wed-Fri I have before break, I want to throw in a quick post here to announce my crazy shenanigans.

• I apparently renewed my World of Warcraft account (I normally pay via the Blizzard Store and purchasing 30-day cards through it), but last month as I was raiding, I got the “You have 30 minutes left” warning in ToC 25 Heroic.  So I went and renewed my account… but through the WoW website, not the Blizzard Store.  A-durr.  So now I have a month of game time.  Went and told LE that I would be in after the break, as I do have a freaking thing to finish up in a few classes… I think I’ll finish up leveling my Shaman, perhaps level my Hunter.
• I picked up Borderlands.  Surprisingly a fun game.  It’s a pretty good mix of RPG and FPS, of which the last I played one of those was that one failed MMO… oh, what was it called… crap, can’t remember for the life of me (wait, it’s Hellgate: London);  I only know it lasted for like several months before people just disliked it.
• I reinstalled Oblivion.  I like the game, couldn’t run it too well on the old PC, but now I can (heh, it’s only like 3 years).  I really enjoy the genre of a RPG-FPS, and Oblivion is one of those games… though, I wish I could make an orc in that game really look orcish, can’t really do that.  Warhammer Online got their orcs right, as far as I’m concerned… stupid and crazy and all about the WAAAAAAAAAAGH!

That’s it for now.  More later.

I’m not really sure where to start with Borderlands. It can be a great game, but it can alsto be a really bad game. Why? Because having a Xbox Live connection or a few good friends to play split screen with is crucial in order to enjoy this game.

Borderlands is a hybrid between a first person shooter and an action role playing game. I love the idea of that mixture, because I think the traditional straight forward first person shooters are downright boring. Adding a bit of role playing elements to it is welcomed.

One of the things I didn’t like that much about Borderlands is the opening, because there is no real introduction to either your character, nor the game world. You’re just trown in there. You find yourself in the middle of a Texas looking planet, and you’re given these odd messages by an odd woman that wants you to find something she calles “the vault”.

I don’t mind a Texas looking planet, or a woman telling me things, but I do like to know what’s going on. It feels like a bit of a weakness to the role playing factor of Borderlands.

That being said, I have mostly good things to say about the gameplay. It’s action driven, loot getting, level climbing and skill aquiring, just the way you want a good action RPG to be like. It’s almost like a mixture of Diablo and Fallout 3, and that’s meant in a good way.

It would be nice, however, if the single player part of it was better. You simply have to play this game as a team with other people, because that’s basically the only way it’s fun. Running around alone is just boring, because the game design is so aimed at a multiplayer co-op experience. If you don’t have another Xbox 360 controller, have no Xbox Live connection, or simply have no friends; don’t bother to buy Borderlands. If you do, this game is something to remember.

In a multiplayer game I usually don’t mind the story or storytelling qualities of the game. In a single player experience, I get put off by poorly developed and poorly delivered story elements. For Borderlands, the latter applies. Happily, I do have both friends and an Xbox Live connection.

Because I love Bandwagons.

Censorship, and specifically the debate over an R18+ video game has been something quite important to me for some time now. This isn’t just because of the games that get mutilated in order to pass classification or the games that simply don’t pass classification, no this is about freedom of choice, freedom of expression and my belief that no one person should hold ultimate unanimous power over what an entire nation considers “Moral” and “Correct”.

Those of you who are up to speed with the debate could probably work out that the man I refer to in my previous paragraph is Michael Atkinson, Attorney General for South Australia. Being the self-righteous and opinionated man that he is, Mickey has decided that his (and only his) opinion is of any worth when it comes to the rating of video games in Australia. One could be confused by this statement, as he professes to encourage discussion on the issue, before attacking the games industry for saying that he is censoring a discussion paper. However, one need only listen to a recent interview on ABC radio national to understand perfectly Mickey’s beliefs; anyone and everyone who states an opposing view is actively working against him and even those people responsible for the rating of video games in Australia are a group of sneaky, underhanded, conniving liars who disregard all guidelines and ideals that they are supposed to follow in a depraved attempt to corrupt the youth of Australia.

Not in so many words, obviously.

I do not exaggerate when I say that Mickey believes the Classifications Board is actively seeking ways to push games that should be rated R18+ (AO for some other countries) through the grinder as MA15+. This isn’t to say he doesn’t have some evidence of this occurring but, as with most political arguments, the evidence lacks consistency or even substance. It does raise an interesting point, however. If Mickey is allowed to take it upon himself to decide what is right and good for Australia (remember, this is a man with only the loosest ties to the entertainment industry and video games specifically) why should the Classifications Board, the people who are employed and trained to decide how something should be classified not be given the same power?

Obviously because they aren’t able to say with an overly smug voice that they had a 76% vote in a two party preferred system at the last election. Or because they can’t legitimately send out letters to thousands of gamers around the nation with a bold-faced challenge to stand against them at the next election.

Yes, good old Mickey did both of those things too.

As has been mentioned in so many different articles, forums and discussions, Mickey’s argument reeks of “Think of the Children!”. So many of this comments are aimed at protecting our youths and one can’t help but get the feeling that this is less an actual pillar of moral reasoning and more an attempt to scare parents who have little knowledge of the problem into submission. As evidenced by David Doe in the same interview on ABC Radio National, the introduction of an R18+ rating is not the only layer of protection that parents have available to prevent their children from playing content deemed inappropriate. Every new generation console has parental controls to prevent the playing of certain ratings of games and the children still have to get their hands on the games in the first place.

This segues nicely into another wonderfully flawed argument put forth by Mickey. That the introduction of an R18+ rating will do nothing to prevent children from acquiring video games because they can easily get them in their homes. Well let’s think about this for a minute shall we Mickey? If the game is bought by the parents and the child is allowed to play it, that is not the fault of the R18+ rating. If the parents don’t know about the parental lockout systems, that isn’t the fault of the R18+ rating. If the children are able to purchase the games themselves, that isn’t the fault of the R18+ rating.

Are we starting to notice a trend here?

This is by no means a definitive article on the topic. I just felt that it’s important to highlight not only the logical fallacies within Mickey’s wonderfully political argumentative style, but also the arrogance and contempt for people with differing opinions that the man who has installed himself as the moral voice of Australia carries around and brandishes like a Medal of Honour (If you’ll excuse the terrible pun).

Keep debating it Australia, and stand up against him. Stand up for freedom of expression and choice, stand up for your right to choose how you want to live. And most importantly, stand up to what can only be described as a dictatorship.

A feature article of mine can be found over at Games Abyss. It details my thoughts on the direction video game narratives are headed and how they can become more effective of their immersion of the player.

A ton of people have written me about Fallout 3, which is a post-apocalyptic-mutant-shoot’em-up-role-playing-survival game. The premise is the world has been nuked to all hell and people have survived by living in vaults. Your character was born in the vault and soon enough you leave and discover an apocalyptic wasteland full of crazy humans, mutants, guns and junk. “Sounds interesting.” I’d say, “but I’m no gamer, I know I’d just get addicted to something like that.”  Well last week I tried it out and nobody has seen me for three days.

I’m not going to review this game, and I’m certainly not going to suggest that this game will prepare you for the apocalypse. Nothing could prepare you for that, but overall the game does a good job of showing just what a wasteland the earth could become. It’s full of trash, abandoned buildings, slave traders and sickos. It’s also good because even though it’s a violent game, but more time in the game is spent sifting through old soup cans for food  than shooting anyone.

 It also brings up the issue of what you will do to survive. Will you eat radioactive easy-mac? Will you kill for supplies? Will you drink from a toilet? Will you drink the blood of a mole-rat, or better yet another human? These are everyday options in the game, and will be after the apocalypse. 

So before I get any more of you nerds excited by talking about role-playing games, I’m going to end this by saying, HOW THE HELL DO I GET PAST THE SLAVERS!

To define what a circumlocution is, let’s take it from the Webster dictionary…

1 : the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea
2 : evasion in speech

And let’s be honest, I’m a huge fan of not just using a bunch of words to express a very simple idea but for doing it in a sarcastic, angry, evil, demeaning, and douchebaggery way.

Recently, I decided to quit the World of Warcraft for other things that I could spend my time on.  I did this for several reasons, some actually outlined on my last post on “Lowered Expectations, the Blog“.

But when it truly comes down to it, my leaving of the guild and of the game stems primarily from the lack of fun I was having in the game.  It wasn’t necessarily the people, or the content, or the scheduling… but it was the fact that when I thought about logging on, it felt like a chore.  It felt like I was logging on so I could be angry about it.  I just can’t do that anymore, and I didn’t feel like making excuses to not show up to raids (though, honestly, a lot of writing music and practicing prevents raiding when you need to graduate).

I’ve found some other games that have truly taken my time and wasted it in a very efficient manner.  I’ve picked up Dragon Age: Origins and found it to be a very fun, interesting, and strategic game.  A lot of people have issues with the ending and about how “easy” it is… but honestly, the game is still fun and you can find many different ways to get to the end with all the various decisions.

Left 4 Dead 2 has been released recently, and even playing for 30-45 minutes of the first campaign was exciting.  I’m looking forward to the challenges of Realism Mode, which makes it so head shots are going to be lethal… and body/limb shots, not so much.  It’s going to be a doozy, given my current L4D 2 group (composed of Brian, Andrew, and a random person) was able to get through most of the Gold Medal challenges in the original L4D Survival mode.  Granted, I’m an okay shot— I rely on handguns more than any other weapon.

I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout 3.  It’s still a great game, though the expansions are a little buggy.  It is a much more “borderless” game compared to Dragon Age, you can destroy an entire little town.  Not so much in Dragon Age unless they truly deserve it.  I also like the character models and armor in this game, as it is a post-modern versus fantasy thing.

—

One strange thing happened in Dragon Age: Origins not too long ago.  My Alistar decided to instantly lose 1 strength point, which meant he lost the ability to wear his tanking gear.  So now he’s walking around naked with a helmet, sword, and shield… and getting cut up pretty damn fast.

I think I like my warrior better than my rogue (Dwarf female commoner vs. City elf male).  Probably because I don’t get instantly destroyed due to actually wearing an armor that is a number above 10%.  Those armor penalties don’t kid themselves.  I also have a problem with the AI Tactics, which is that during some fights where bosses are unable to hit (there is one encounter where you fight spirits to click on anvils to hurt the actual boss) and the AI kind of goes fucking nuts.

—

“Rochelle is black Zoey / but missing the major sass / of a pop-culture fiend”.

And that’s it for this post.

Fallout 3 is an action role-playing game released by Bethesda Game Studios, and is the third major game in the Fallout series.

Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2277, 200 years after the nuclear war between the United States and China that devastated the game’s world in an alternate post-World War II time line. The game places the player in the role of an inhabitant of Vault 101, a survival shelter designed to protect a small number of humans from the nuclear fallout. When the player character’s father disappears under mysterious circumstances, he or she is forced to escape from the Vault and journey into the ruins of Washington D.C. to track him down. Along the way the player is assisted by a number of human survivors and must battle myriad enemies that now inhabit the area now known as the “Capital Wasteland”. The game has an attribute and combat system typical of an action strategy game but also incorporates elements of first-person shooter and survival horror games.

This game really makes you feel that you are free to do anything you think of. From being a good guy who is following the story line and help everyone on the was, till just have fun (being a bag guy) and kill people rub cities etc.

MMORPGs have never interested me. Not even ones based in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. I know. Cah-razy, right?

That said, screenshots of a Fallout MMORPG have recently surfaced thanks to some court battles, and while it does look like a rather bleak place to spend one’s time…I’m all for it. Hope these images only mean that “Project V13″ is one step closer to becoming a reality. Check out the other two shots below the cut.

Believe it or not, quite a few things happen behind the scenes here at Threevue HQ. For instance, did you know that we spend lots of time procrastinating, napping, and dry-heaving from worry worting? Bet you didn’t. And because we’re so busy, sometimes we let reviews of games slide right through the cracks. Cleaning House is a feature in which we attempt to right the wrongs of our past, and provide you with some quality, half-assed product. Enjoy!

Russ:
Although I don’t want to admit it, I was slightly drawn towards Oblivion. But its mixed reviews and fantasy-world setting were enough to keep me away, anxiously waiting for my swan song (at least initially): Fallout 3 was developed by the same company, and there wasn’t an elf to be found anywhere. I haven’t played a solid RPG in a while – I feel that games like Mass Effect and Fable II were more like “adventure” games than a bonafide grinding/leveling role-playing experience – and I was ready to jump in whole-heartedly.

I’m glad I did. Fallout 3’s FPS viewpoint brings an intimacy I’ve never experienced in an RPG, and I loved it. Most of my RPG experiences don’t expand beyond the Final Fantasy games, and I’ve never felt any connection with the main characters; but in Fallout 3, I was immersed. If you look beyond the critics’ gripes (mostly just pop-up and somewhat glitchy gameplay) you’ll find yourself dropped into a world that is both parts old and new, ugly and beautiful, frustrating and exhilarating. I completed all 30 missions and discovered 100 locations in less than 40 hours of gameplay, and I was disappointed that my adventure ended so quickly. Thankfully, the DLC extended the experience significantly, although in hindsight I partially wish I had waited for the Game of the Year edition and spent $60 instead of the $110 I paid altogether. Then again, experiencing each new chapter of the game as it was released was a lot of fun, too. At the end of the day, Fallout 3 is one of the best games of 2008 that bled well into 2009, and a truly must-have experience for any Xbox 360 owner.

93/100

Tyler:
Russ said it; Fallout 3 is an experience. And in that experience is a gigantic whirlwind of people, locations, items, enemies and a storyline that sometimes collide into each other in less than favorable ways. In this game’s case, it’s unforeseen glitches. Dead NPCs, prematurely-ended quests and accidental thievery can put a damper on any adventurer’s journey through the wastes. Thankfully these instances in Fallout 3 are hardly game-enders; in fact, they serve to reinforce the notion that this game is massive. So massive that it’s hard to feel satisfied even when completing side-quests. As a player you feel that there has to be more out there, another quest in the next town. That’s what Fallout 3 gives you. Now that’s pretty immersive if you ask me.

While those collisions don’t ruin the game, they do tend to break the illusion and the flow of the play. Added to this are the rickety animations and robotic models of the characters, the repetitive dungeons subways segments and fact that sometimes the game just doesn’t give you clear information and you kill the wrong people or make the wrong deal. I can deal with those things, the only real wish I have for Fallout is the tightening of the shooting. Think of how you firefights in COD4 play out… skillfully, accurately and with a certain finesse, right? Now how about Fallout 3… stiff, analog and not the most fun, am I right? If you don’t agree then just imagine playing the whole game without VATS. Good luck sniping!

I hope it’s clear that I frontloaded this review with all the worst things I have to say. In the end, after playing the game for so many hours, helping the tykes in Little Lamplight, fending off the Garys, leaving Vault 101 for the last time and fighting along with Liberty Prime, I came to really love this game. Like, “one of my favorite games of all time” love it. All of the misgivings I listed above are still there, but like Dennis Quaid in Enemy Mine, I’ve now spent years with something that I originally had trouble dealing with, but after so much time I now I know and love it (and it’s having my baby). I’m still not done with the game, but Ive played it for over 80 hours. With two more DLC packs to go, I’m very hesitant to complete what has been one of the best video game experiences of my life.

95/100

Giang:
Somehow The Wasteland may be described as a barren landscape. At the same time the world feels so full of life. You quickly learn that this infertile land is one of opportunity – quests, loot, a variety of towns and recognisable landmarks that echo a once standing D.C.. And how you approach it is entirely up to you (it is interesting to note that ironically, the Vaults are a place where life is a fruitless existence).

Most of the missions you encounter can offer reward or ramifications. This all ties in the with the game’s Karma system, dictating whether you’re good, evil or neutral. Progression through the main story line will also present you with these choices, even though they are few and far between. And it all climaxes at a rather dissatisfying ending. All NPCs look like wax mannequins and their animations are startlingly underwhelming. Everyone seems to be ice skating and moon jumping across the world, including yourself when you’re in third person view.

Real-time combat can be a frustrating experience if you opt for the FPS controls. The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) rather offers players an opportunity to assess and think about how they might approach the situation – something is near impossible with regular shooting controls. You pause time, target a creature (human, dog, mutant, weird lobster thing) and a specific body part (limb, head, tentacles), each one having a percentage of chance to hit. Once that’s done you press play and watch the decapitation unfold in vivid, blood-spraying slow-mo. It’s an incredibly satisfying and fun to watch system, especially if you have the gratuitous ‘Bloody Mess’ perk turned on.

Gaining a level offers players to cash in skill points and a perk, allowing players to customise their game style. You could go all Rambo, with focus of melee attacks, or be the silent killer, picking off enemies with stealth and precision. What you end up with is a character that should be deeply fine tuned to your playing system.

This game is filled with choices. Where to go, what you do and say, who you kill and how you do it. It can get clumsy at some spots, but otherwise it’s a well imagined world that will keep you continually seeking out for more.

93/100

Steve

Gargantuan: (adjective)
enormous; colossal
Epic: (noun)
A literary or dramatic composition that resembles an extended narrative poem celebrating heroic feats

There are a great number of terms that can be used to describe Fallout 3 when trying to give people a better sense of what the game is all about; action-adventure, RPG/FPS hybrid,  and post-apocalyptic science fiction to name just a few of them.  However, the two definitions listed above are probably the two most apt terms I can think of to describe the experience I had playing this game.

To say that Fallout 3 is huge really does do it a disservice; I put in the region of 130 hours of play time into it (including all of the DLC).  This is due in large part to the fact that playing it is like having the videogame equivalent of ADD – it’s far too easy to start what is essentially a simple 30 minute fetch quest, only to find you’ve spent ten hours wandering around, meeting people, finding new quests, getting into random fights, pillaging loot, and becoming genuinely absorbed into the rich world that Bethesda have created.  In my opinion, this quality is Fallout 3’s single greatest strength, and one which had me captivated by the time I left Vault 101.

It’s because the game is so absorbing that it’s easy to forgive much of the games faults: it’s filled with minor glitches, the FPS elements are a little clunky, sometimes choosing the wrong option in a dialogue tree will result in quests being denied to you; couple this with the game’s too-frequent autosave feature, and you can find yourself having to revert to an older save and replaying sections of the game again just to correct a mistake made in the blink of an eye.  It’s also worth noting that using the VATS system slows the combat down to a crawl – whilst I actually quite liked this (though the combat isn’t exactly frenetic, the slower pace does make it feel more methodical – even tactical) it does make the game quite slow in places.  Those who suffer from a lack of patience may not be so ready to forgive this.

However, as previously mentioned, all of these faults are relatively minor when weighed against just how utterly compelling this game is.  Whilst Fallout 3 may be a little technically deficient in places, it has a vast amount of charm.  For example, a side-quest in one of the DLC packs sees you clear an area of enemies; the game then rewards you, not just with XP for completing the quest, but in a strange juxtaposition to all of the violence that’s just occurred, lets you play tag with a child that lives in the area you’ve just cleared out.  After moments like that, I find it hard to say anything bad about this game at all.

94/100

At a time when John Lydon advertises butter and Iggy Pop has become an insurance sales- man, one would be forgiven for thinking that the apocalypse has already passed without so much as a murmur. Our collective fear of the apocalypse and its many causes has been a subject of curiosity and intrigue in world culture for millennia. From the Book of Revelations to The Matrix, our vision of humanity’s survival beyond its destruction is a theme which is as vital today as it is frightening.

Fallout 3 begins in 2277; 200 years after a war between America and China has left America a desolate wasteland where the earth is scorched and dead trees remain, blackened and twisted. The game begins at your birth; the blurred and confused images and the immediate death of your mother in childbirth set the scene for what follows. Your character is raised in Vault 101, a radiation-proof vault (somewhat reminiscent of a Dhama station in Lost, retro computers and all) which was built before the war and is the permanent home to a number of families who have been told that nothing survives beyond the Vault.

Over the next hour of gameplay you are taken through a series of key events in your character’s development; including your tenth birthday (where you receive your first gun), and your exams (which help define your character’s key attributes), to the climactic scene where your father, James (voiced by Liam Neeson), leaves the Vault and you decide to find him. The first hour seamlessly blends character creation and tutorial aspects with storyline. The way in which you conduct yourself, how you communicate with the other Vault-dwellers and the choices you make during your exam all have direct consequences upon the development of your character.

After you leave Vault 101 you realise that the world is a big and dangerous place. Supermutants, Radscorpions, feral ghouls and Raiders are all out to take you down. Everyday is a fight for survival for you and its inhabitants, who are as varied and intriguing as the Wasteland itself. The Wasteland’s residents have made improvised homes and communities out of what remained after the nuclear war. Communities are found across the Wasteland: from warships to old subway stations and the town of Megaton. Megaton is a community of shacks built from old aeroplane parts and surrounds an unexploded (and still active) atomic bomb. I got talking to some of the town’s residents, enquiring about Megaton’s history and discovered that the town was initially set up by a religious sect called The Children of the Atom who worship the bomb and see the war as a positive and cleansing event for humanity. As my investigations deepened, I discovered that, far from being a cleansing symbol, the bomb was actually leaking radiation and polluting the town’s water supply. I spoke to the town’s sheriff, who commissioned me to deactivate the bomb. I agreed and went searching for information on how to deactivate the bomb and was offered 500 caps (‘Nuka-Cola’ bottles caps have replaced money as the currency of post-apocalyptia) to activate the bomb – I declined the offer, shot him in the face and deactivated the bomb. This is what is so great about Fallout 3, you are given a number of moral choices, many of them not as clear-cut as this first one.

The core of Fallout 3’s gameplay involves exploration and dialogue, coupled with brutal violence and adrenaline-fuelled action. You can charm, smarm, or lie your way through the game, or you can try and be intelligent, helpful or funny – the choice is yours and you have to live with the consequences. Fallout 3 evolves the moral causality of Fable (Xbox/PC), with its clearly defined ‘good’ and ‘bad’ actions having a direct impact upon the world around you being replaced in Fallout 3 by a more subtle and ambiguous ‘karma’ level, which has a direct impact on your reputation: opening up or closing dialogue options, information and available quests. One such dilemma occurred at the small settlement of Arefu. What began as a simple delivery task developed into a complex storyline involving a town under attack by a vampire cult called The Family (they are not real vampires, just people who think they are vampires – visit a goth club and you will probably meet a few examples of these in the real world). After a number of Arefu residents had been murdered by The Family and one of the settlement’s teenagers had gone missing I went to investigate. Finding their hideout in a disused subway station, I quickly learned that The Family were not as evil or brutal as they initially appeared. They offered a place for outsiders and the misunderstood, living under a strict moral code which revealed that they had not actually committed the murders in question, but the murderer was actually the boy who had gone missing and The Family had taken him in precisely to stop him from doing this sort of thing again. This being said, The Family still drank human blood, so you can see the dilemma that emerged: do you leave the whole thing alone, allowing The Family to continue striking fear and terror into Arefu’s residents or do you blow them to bits? But, of course, I wanted to do the right thing. Drinking blood is bad, but then again The Family do provide a home for the disenfranchised… I ended up negotiating between the residents of Arefu that the residents would provide blood packs to The Family in exchange for their protection. Looking back, I’m not sure whether I made the right decision, perhaps a bit of shotgun diplomacy would have worked better, who knows? And who knows what consequences this had for the development of the game…

Fallout 3 is a game which has a very consistent and bizarre mythology. The game is set over 250 years into the future, but creates the sensation of ‘retro’: with large whirring computers, green-screen monitors and a graphic style which screams 1940s. This sense of the past is reinforced by the game’s soundtrack which comprises of oddly sentimental Big Band tunes and vocal groups with songs by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots for your listening pleasure. The music is played on one of the Wasteland’s many radio stations, Galaxy News Radio, presented by ‘Three Dog’ a tireless DJ ‘fighting the good fight’ to ‘bring you the truth, no matter how bad it hurts’. Three Dog reminds me of Super Soul, the blind DJ from the achingly underrated existential road movie Vanishing Point (1979), whose role, as is Super Soul’s in Vanishing Point, is to act as narrator and commentator on the development of the story, both adding to the mythology of the narrative and celebrating the protagonist’s achievements. Galaxy News Radio isn’t the only radio station in the Wasteland. Occasionally you will stumble across localised talk radio stations, distress signals and the sinister Enclave Radio, which broadcasts a mixture of reactionary patriotic talk-radio voiced by the ‘president’ John Henry Eden (voiced by Malcolm McDowell) and American anthems such as Hail to the Chief, the Star Spangled Banner, and Yankee Doodle. All of these stations create a real sense of emersion in the game-world which very few games achieve.

If the action, narrative and mythology were not enough to secure Fallout 3’s legacy, then it is the sheer vastness of its beautifully rendered landscape should do so. Visually, Fallout 3 is stunning. At one point in the game you are asked by Three Dog to help increase Galaxy News Radio’s signal to broadcast across the Wasteland. After scavenging a satellite dish from a lunar lander in the ruins of the Museum of Technology, you make your way up to the top of the Washington Monument. At the top you can survey the Wasteland in its panoramic enormity.

In Fallout 3, Bethseda Softworks have created a game which perfectly fuses the elements of some the best RPGs on the market with the action and intensity of a first-person shooter. It’s bleak, but it’s bloody good.

This plugin adds 8 new inhabitable homes in Fallout 3’s major locations, 6 of which may be rented by the player.

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Fallout 3
Homes to Let
by Princess Stomper

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Index:
1. Installation
2. Playing the Plugin
3. Save Games
4. What It Does
5. Credits
6. Usage
7. Bug Reporting/Known Issues

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1. Installing the Plugin

To install the plugin, unzip the .esp file into the Fallout 3/Data directory

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2. Playing the Plugin

From the Fallout 3 Launcher, select Data Files and check the box next to the Homes to Let.esp file.

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3. Save Games

This plugin will not invalidate your old saved games. If you save your game while this plugin is loaded, you may encounter error messages when you reload the saved game without the plugin. But you will be able to continue on with the original game.

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4. What It Does

Adds a number of homes in major locations:

- Megaton (annexe to Moira’s house, sleeps 2. Window view)
- Rivet City marketplace (an apartment, sleeps 1. Window view)
- Paradise Falls (a furnished truck, interior-as-exterior, sleeps 2. View of sky through holes)
- Underworld (a cave home, 1 dbl bed)
- Dukov’s house (new bedroom, 1 bed)
- Tenpenny Tower (a new suite, sleepmarker on floor for companion)
- Reilly’s Rangers (a new self-contained apartment in compound, bunk bed)
- Arefu (a new annexe backing onto West house, 1 dbl bed)

With the exception of Dukov’s room, each location contains a “gnome” activator, which is scripted to accept either 150 or 200 caps (depending on “luxury”) once every 30 days. Payment is entirely optional.

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5. Credits

Bethesda Softworks
Miaximus – troubleshooting

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6. Usage

Subject to the terms of Bethesda’s EULA. There is no restriction on the distribution of my mods so long as they are kept intact with all their files and the readme. If you do upload or redistribute the mod, you take responsibility for ensuring that you have the latest version, and of uploading any subsequent versions of the mod that are released.

DOWNLOAD from FO3Nexus

DOWNLOAD from ElricM.com

(baogame.vn) – Dù nhận được nhiều ý kiến trái chiều của các fan xung quanh trò chơi. Tuy nhiên, có một thực tế không thể phủ nhận rằng Fallout 3 vẫn là game xuất sắc nhất năm 2008 theo đánh giá của nhiều website, tạp chí uy tín về game. Và để đạt được thành công này, Bethesda Game Studios đã phải làm những gì, sau đây là những chia sẻ của họ trong quá trình phát triển Fallout 3.

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<!–{12582986855522}– Dù nhận được nhiều ý kiến trái chiều của các fan xung quanh trò chơi. Tuy nhiên, có một thực tế không thể phủ nhận rằng Fallout 3 vẫn là game xuất sắc nhất năm 2008 theo đánh giá của nhiều website, tạp chí uy tín về game. Và để đạt được thành công này, Bethesda Game Studios đã phải làm những gì, sau đây là những chia sẻ của họ trong quá trình phát triển Fallout 3. 
 

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Source: Những điều thú vị về Fallout 3