Analysis: Fallout 3

Intro

 

Ever wonder what it’s like to be in the game? Bethesda made a strong bid to grant you that experience in their game: Fallout 3. Centered around immersive mechanics, Fallout 3 is a triumph of design and story that leaves very little to the imagination of its sci-fi/fantasy players. 

Nobody will argue that Fallout 3 is a beautiful game (at least nobody who sat atop Tenpenny Tower and witnessed the megaton light show). I want to dissect the game design and, hopefully, shed some light on what made this game such a successful RPG/FPS. 

Like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, the game features a strong RPG core, effectively employing character development, item management, and NPC interaction. Fallout 3, however, brings some fantastic new battle mechanics as well as a massive new world to explore. As a player, you will find yourself addicted to the incredible amount of possibilities this world provides. 

Interaction

 

Unlike the Metal Gear series, who effectively build the fourth wall behind the player, the  universe of Fallout 3 is carefully encapsulated allowing the player to interact with it only in ways that he might expect to do as one of its citizens. Thus the player feels totally steeped in the world. There is a myriad of ways in which the player may interact with the universe, all of which are crafted to produce a totally immersive experience.

You walk into your first town outside of Vault 101. Upon entering the mayor comes to greet you with a friendly warning: Be good, or be dead(essentially) This is a great example of the game’s ability to engage the player, it tells the player, “you are being watched” and “the choices you make have an impact on the world/people around you”

Environment interactions, both outgoing and incoming, are core to the game’s ability to suspend disbelief and lure the player into emotional experiences. When the player attacks a person, for example, he has initiated an encounter with another person. Not a set of digital content, abstracted into an NPC within a digital universe, but a person. And that person will react in predictable and realistic ways. Maybe he will run and cower, maybe he will fight back, or maybe he will get his friends.

It felt like the reactions were a bit too predictable at times. It seems like more realism could have been employed in some sort of threat assessment algorithm. For example, if you ran up to and punched a woman while unarmed, maybe the woman could have decided that her gun was more than enough to take you on(instead of running and screaming). That being said, there seemed to be some compensation for this mindset: There was a mercenary guarding the storekeeper in megaton, for example.

Interacting with npcs provides an added dimension of immersion. For example, I went and talked to one of the residents of megaton. After asking him a couple questions, he mentioned a couple other residents who were no longer alive(for various reasons). I was admittedly surprised at this as I’ve never played a game where characters are given secondary knowledge of another NPC’s death(that wasn’t scripted to happen) Furthermore, unlike just about any other free roaming RPG, you can’t simply walk away from a talking person.  You must end the conversation by saying, “good bye” or something to that effect.

The immersion factor of the game’s interactions is not limited to that of NPC interactions. The player has many options when he wishes to interact with the environment, which provide creative ways of performing standard game mechanics. I love the menu system(The armband). Not only is it integrated into the universe of the game, but it feels a menu should. The flow is efficient between sections and the options are arranged well within the space provided.

Scarcity

 

Another game mechanic which supports the game’s immersion factor is the idea of scarcity. The player is dropped into a world which is strapped for money and food. There, he must use the resources available to him to explore this world and fend for himself. In effect, the player must be constantly concerned with what he is using and how much of it to use.

First and foremost is the importance of weapons and ammo. While playing the game, I never felt comfortable with any one weapon for very long because I knew that once its ammo was depleted I probably would not be getting more soon. Typically in RPGs, a player may explore a hostile area, kill monsters there, and sell the stuff back to a store owner who seemed to have an infinite supply of funds and a desire to stockpile  tons of garbage. In Fallout 3, however, the  store owners have a limited supply of funds, as well as goods, themselves. The standard RPG economy simply does not apply here.  I’m not sure how I feel about this. I like the ability to make money, and I like a reliable source of income when it comes to game economy. I understand the importance of this mechanic relative to immersion, but I feel like the ultimate limit that was placed on the economy could have been reworked to give players like myself more options(like opening up a store of our own and selling stuff that way.)

In light of these economic conditions within the game it is necessary to pay attention to the particular weapon you are using. The player then must choose the best weapon to fight the enemies at hand. (forcing the player  to make choices like these, where they have to figure out the best solution to the problem without being fed this information up front is the hallmark of great design IF done correctly. I cite Command & Conquer  1 as a bad example of this, and Metal Gear Solid 4 as a good example(lateral thinking)) Sometimes the player would be forced to use a weapon that makes the challenge even more difficult(like a melee weapon against super mutants) because they don’t have the ammo, or want to save it for more dire circumstances. These situations required even more skill, and are yet another great permutation of a simple mechanic: scarcity.

Consequence

 

Simply put, if you murder the guy who is going to train you to use power armor, than you might not get to use power armor, need I say more? Well I’m going to. The best way to teach a  child is through natural consequence. It forces the child to deal with the results of his actions and teaches him that consequences are unavoidable. Thus the saying, “you can choose the choice, but not the consequence to the choice.”

Fallout 3 employs consequential mechanics in various ways, one of which is murder. There are two flavors of RPG, those that allow you to attack town npc, and those that don’t.  Usually when you are given the choice to attack town npcs, it isn’t used as a story driven mechanic. Its simply to provide an immersive experience through the gift of ‘choice.’ You are saying to the player, “go ahead, kill that shop owner. Whatever floats your boat.” Of course, in Fallout 3, that choice carries certain consequences: any quests that npc might have given you are gone, and any quests that npc is involved in may be gone as well. But, the designers took the idea even further by providing the player opportunities to attack/kill/enslave npcs in town and gain rewards for them.

Of course it would be nearly impossible to go over every consequential mechanic in the game, but one thing can be said of each of them. They are all crafted to provide an immersive experience to a player seeking to enter another world, and they add to the success of the game almost without exception.(I always felt a little bit shafted when I couldn’t sleep in a bed, even after the owner was murdered)

Conclusion

 

This review has been, by no means, a non-biased one. I am not here, however, to sell the game or defame it. I believe the success of the game communicates itself through playing it, or even talking to somebody who has played it. Whether the game was a success or not is not really important in this paper. That being said, I don’t think anybody would claim that the design behind the game isn’t solid or that it wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.

The mechanics and design elements that were used to craft the game form a cohesive and awesome whole, A whole that present players with no less than an engaging and fun experience. The game was an ingenious mesh of an RPG base and FPS action elements that, when combined, formed a truly unique experience.