T w e n t y S i d e d

The town of Megaton, which is built inside of a steep crater. An undetonated Fat Man sits at the very bottom, and nobody knows what to do with it.

This is not the worst quest in the game. But from a writing standpoint the dialog suffers from an almost criminal lack of ambition, and as someone who would love to write this sort of stuff I found the missed opportunity to be endlessly frustrating. And since Pete Hines won’t return my phone calls, I’m afraid you must bear the brunt of my ravings.

As you enter the town of Megaton – a town built around an undetonated atomic bomb – you’re approached by two NPCs. The first is the mayor, who will pay you to disarm the bomb. The second is a shady character named Burke, who will pay you to set off the bomb and destroy the entire town. If you do as the mayor asks, you’ll be given a house in town. If you do as Burke asks…

So… he wants me to blow up a city of people because it’s not scenic enough?

The man who wants you to destroy the town is Alistair Tenpenny, a wealthy old man who wants the town gone because it’s a “blight on the landscape”. His instructions are very explicit. He wants the town gone, and you’re not to warn the residents, because he wants them all to die as well.

Megaton is one of the largest most successful towns on the map. It represents a major concentration of human survivors. Alistair doesn’t want to take it over, or steal from it, or rule it, or enslave it. He wants to get rid of it because it’s ugly. Remember that this is a post apocalyptic wasteland we’re talking about. Everything is ugly. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Fallout 3:
The Power of the Atom”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Fallout 3 is a fusion of two wildly popular game franchises, in much the same way that Taco Ice Cream would be a fusion of two wildly popular foods. It takes the gameplay of Oblivion, and splices it with the setting of Fallout. There are other gameplay elements they’ve introduced to act as adhesive between the two disparate systems, which both add and detract from the whole in equal measure. In order to help confuse both players and (more importantly) reviewers, Fallout 3 has better gameplay than Oblivion, but a worse story than Fallout. So figuring out if the game is good or bad depends a lot on which axis you’re traveling on – which of its progenitors you’re using as a standard.

The name “Fallout” carries expectations with it that I can’t just dismiss with a hand-wave. The fact that Fallout 3 is good doesn’t change those expectations.

In case you missed it, I just admitted that Fallout 3 is good. And now I’ve said it twice. It was no less painful the second time, and I hope you’ll not ask me to do it again. It is entertaining. Inasmuch as that’s what we want from games, it is a success. Despite all my Fallout-based disappointments, this game has merit, and – amazingly enough – manages to hit a few home runs. Let’s go over a few of them:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Fallout 3:
The Good Parts”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.