Fallout 3 | The Completionist

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go to keeps.com completionist right now or click the link in the box down below to receive 50 off your first order again that's k-e-e-p-s dot com slash completionist sign up today thank you so much for watching and enjoy the show fallout 1 and 2 were some of the most popular rpgs of the late 90s while they were well received critically and sold decently there was a strong stable of hardcore fans who strongly believed the first two fallout games were the greatest games of all time due to the unique setting and incredible attention to detail but despite all of that the developers went out of business and no more main series games were released for over a decade and in that time bethesda came in and bought the rights and assured fans that fallout 3 would be similar to the first two focusing on nonlinear gameplay a great story and true fallout humor bethesda then turned the whole franchise on its head by changing the whole experience to a first person action rpg more akin to their elder scroll games those fans were pissed off but because of these changes for fallout 3 it put the franchise back on the map the evidence was there the fallout franchise was back so where do i stand on fallout 3 well that's pretty easy i love it hey everyone and welcome back to an all new episode of the completionist where we don't just beat the games we complete them today we're looking at one of the biggest games of the late 2000s both in terms of popularity and in literal size seriously this is one of the most expansive games that i've ever had to tackle so no more stalling let's open up that vault door and step on in into the nuclear wasteland that is fallout 3. step step out of the vault into the nuclear wasteland of fallout 3. you know what i'm saying let's start the show yes all glory goes to the winner game over wake up last one standing twins [Music] fallout 3 is easily one of the most well received games released in the 2000s and that's crazy considering all the incredible games that came out just in that year alone seriously look at all these games however that doesn't mean that everyone liked it that's because fallout 3 isn't the first game in the franchise i know right there were at least two other games that came before it fallout and fallout 2 were more traditional rpgs that were developed by black isle studios releasing in 1997 and 1998 respectively and they were originally working on fallout 3. it was code named van buren and would take place on the west coast specifically california and near the hoover dam unfortunately their parents company interplay entertainment went bankrupt they sold the rights to the fallout brand and closed black isle studios right before van buren was finished and although a partial demo was released in 2007 the full game has never seen the light of day don't you worry though a lot of those developers went on to form obsidian entertainment and worked on many successful titles including fallout new vegas the spiritual successor of van buren but then who picked up the reigns of fallout 3 that would be bethesda proper who then scrapped just about everything that was originally in van buren to create something that was much more in their style and in 2008 10 years after the release of fallout 2 fallout 3 finally arrived reaching more fans than ever with any other fallout game before it and hardcore fans of the first two games like i said were pretty angry the first two fallout games were famous for their attention to detail and realism and a lot of fans were mad because they felt it just wasn't there in fallout 3. how are wooden houses still standing after hundreds of years after a nuclear bomb went off more importantly how are various electronics powered and working in most of these opinions this didn't feel like a fallout game this felt like an elder scrolls game with some vague references to fallout but all of these nitpicks did nothing to stem the public from buying and loving this game it initially sold better than the previous two games combined and even outsold bethesda's very own elder scrolls 4 oblivion and as of 2015 fallout 3 has sold over 12.5 million copies so if fallout 3 is so incredibly popular why haven't i taken a look at it yet simply put this is a freaking huge game like most open world rpgs there are a ton of missions that need to be done a ton of items that need collecting achievements and a morality system that affects the ending that means i'm going to have to beat this game three different times at max level but as you guys know that's not all there are also five different dlc packs that came out later one of which increased the max level from 20 to 30 so that's at the very least 10 additional levels will have to get in each playthrough hands down this is going to take upwards to 100 hours to complete the only good news about this is that the 72 achievements actually help you keep track of everything you have to do instead of just giving you a bunch of random tasks to do even with all this going on i feel fairly confident in my ability to complete this game that's because i actually almost completed fallout 3 when it first released the only thing was completionist didn't exist yet this fortunately gave me the foresight to know that i couldn't just sit down and bulldoze my way through this game it's too damn big and i have too much going on in my life folks so i decided to pace this game out and really take my time with it and i really mean take my time because i first started completing this game in 2019 yeah that's right this video is almost two years in the making but i can still remember that when i first started playing fallout 3 i couldn't stop thinking about the same two words over and over and over again holy [ __ ] [Music] i went into fallout 3 expecting it to be a good first person rpg with a lot to do kind of like skyrim something i would enjoy and not full out love though what i didn't expect was one of the most immersive video games i've ever played i mean i was hooked as soon as the intro started now this was mostly because of the incredible voice of ron perlman in fact this whole cast is way too stacked william bassett malcolm mcdowell liam neeson all of the voice acting was great the immersion really kicks in with the tutorial level normally i'm not a fan of tutorials that stop you and take the controller away from your hands when it comes to a game sometimes i just want to jump in as soon as possible but the beginning of fallout 3 does such a great job of establishing the world and the main character's backstory that i can't help but love it the tutorial begins with you literally being born at this moment you get to decide what you look like while also meeting your mom and dad in this brief five minute period i am already 100 invested in this story since i got to experience this moment as the character not just to have it told to me and that's just the first stage of the tutorial the rest of the tutorial takes place at random intervals in your character's first 19 years of life like playing in your home as a toddler and your 10th birthday and it is incredibly effective unfortunately this is also where you say goodbye to your mom because she dies while in labor not only does this help you decide your stats and skills but you also get to experience life inside of fault 101 it's clean safe and formulaic very much the perfect 1950s ideal of a sci-fi utopia so when your father escapes and all the guards are looking for you things ramp up very quickly you eventually escape as well and are greeted with rocks destroyed buildings and a man with a weird cow thing this change immediately makes the new world outside of the vault seem dangerous vault 101 was pristine and restricted with everything pretty much planned out for you but the world outside of the vault doors is nothing like that common sights like a gas station or a playground are dilapidated and filled with dead bodies supplies are so limited that bottle caps are considered currency now there are raiders and super mutants that want to devour you whole these visuals also amplify the stakes of the story itself not only are you in this new world but you're looking for your father who has been by your side your entire life for the first time ever you are completely alone and this whole world is lonesome and depressing and that is great the sound design pulls you in as well things will mostly be quiet until you hear a radio in the distance playing patriotic songs for america's songbook this is the music that is supposed to fill you with pride but with this huge barren and intimidating world i was left feeling sad and alone now the nuclear remnants of a country i know and love is just sitting in front of you and i can't help but just want to explore it all exploring this world is made relatively simple by the controls you see the world in first person and can wander just about anywhere which is good because you're going to want to see all 225 locations on the map yes 225 all of these offer new missions and opportunities to continue the story some of my favorites include the robco factory a whole city built on a crashed battleship and of course megaton megaton is probably one of the first locations you'll find in the game it's got its name because it was built around a nuclear bomb that never went off and is still technically active and it's here where the first character choice really comes into play a lot of what happens to you in this game is determined by your karma or whether your character is good evil or neutral throughout the game you'll be making decisions that are either good or evil determining which ending you get and there is a pretty big decision here that pretty much determines which path you'll be heading down two characters lucas sims and mr burke want you to either disarm the bomb in order to protect the people of megaton or detonated to remove the town off the map since i wanted to go towards the good route in my first playthrough it was obvious which side i took after burke made the offer to blow up the whole town i told lucas sims we went to confront burke and while escorting him out of a saloon he shot sims from behind now i shot back and killed burke but it was too late sims was dead this affected the whole town of megaton including sims the sun i shared this particular story that happened right the very beginning because it really represents why i love the way that choice works in fallout 3. now in a lot of games choosing good and evil is usually black and white you either pet the dog or you kick it but every decision that you make in this game affects your overall journey now i made the good decision in this scenario right burke was a bad guy and needed to be stopped however it still led to a negative moment with sims death and i could have prevented that i could have killed burke right when i saw him pull out his weapon but i didn't act fast enough and because of that a good man died not only is this a perfect example of hundreds of stories just like this throughout fallout 3 but it was this moment here that made me want to get better with all the equipment that this game has to offer i wanted to get stronger not just because this was a video game but because i failed to save someone's life i was actually emotionally invested in getting stronger in order to defend yourself you have access to armor and various weapons these include melee weapons ranged weapons like guns and explosives and while a lot of weapons can be purchased or taken off of dead bodies the way to get the most interesting weapons is by crafting them in order to get the 8 craftable weapons you simply need to get the schematics for the build and find the components to build them although this is time consuming and can cost a decent amount of bottle caps it is still really easy and a ton of fun to do my personal favorite was the shish kebab a flaming sword that can put some serious hurt on enemies however melee weapons are not the most effective way to deal with enemies for that i would recommend guns or missile launchers but even then it could be hard to take out enemies from far away this is mainly because of the controls aiming at enemies can feel clunky and inaccurate at times probably because fallout 3 is now at this point over a decade old you know what still like them these older controls make me feel like i am actually a man who has been stuck in a vault for almost 20 years and is now exploring a world i could never have imagined of course my skills with rifles and swords would not be the same as a soldier who's been training their whole life so nowadays these sort of more cumbersome controls may be a turn off to modern players but like my sentiments toward the tank controls from the original resident evil for some reason these controls really help drive the overall feeling of the game and the main character out there the controls on fallout 3 are weighty on purpose plus if you really have issues with it you can also take advantage of that the vault-tec assisted targeting system if you hit the button that activates vats all the gameplay will pause and you will zoom in on your closest opponent now you can select different parts of your opponent's body in order to kill them or try and [ __ ] them in the process although this does take a little bit of control out of the player's hands it makes for a great way to take on particularly tough enemies or ones that are simply too far away however if you don't want to just rely on yourself you can get a companion to join you on your journey some are just mercenaries like jericho while others have a deep and interesting backstory like fox a super mutant who has become civil since the mutation process didn't drive him insane however all this pales the comparison to possibly the greatest companion in all of video games dog meat dog meat is a dog what more do you need to know here if you want to make any character beloved and instantly memorable make them a dog this works so well for dogme that they are now just as iconic as vault boy and has been since in some way in every fallout game to date but even though dog mean has been around since the original fallout fallout 3 is what made them popular another way you can get stronger is with perks every time you level up through story moments or combat you can add points to skills and get a perk most of these improve skills stats and weapon proficiencies but the best ones give you additional abilities in fact there are a ton of really funny moments that make fallout 3 surprisingly charming there are tons of funny descriptions interactions and visual moments that stuck with me like any conversation with moira who runs the supply shop in megaton all of these things are what i love about fallout 3 the meticulous details the sense of immersion even the slow movement but for me the immersion is perfectly summed up by probably the most recognized item from the fallout series the pip boy so the pip boy is a wrist attachment that serves as the main menu for everything that happens in the game here you have access to every single item weapon and piece of armor you pick up plus you have a map and access to all the notes regarding your current missions which you're going to need for completion but it's not the utility that makes the pip-boy so cool it's everything else around it when you open the menu it doesn't just appear you watch your character raise their arm when you scroll through a menu you can see a dial turn as if you're the one moving it there is a constant hum while you have it open too it makes you feel like you're a part of this world and not just a random person playing a video game even though it completely breaks immersion by pausing the world around you when you look at it followed by me immediately eating dozens of pounds of food then i remember that yes this is a video game the other thing that reminded me of this being a video game was in fact it's dlc four of these were folded into the plot of the main story so they didn't feel all that intrusive just fleshing out the world that was already there but the broken steel dlc actually extends the game past the ending of the original story okay so this isn't totally terrible because fallout 3 is a fun game and i didn't want to spend more time in it however this came at the cost of the incredible ending of the original story now in this playthrough i saved the entire wasteland by sacrificing myself to extreme nuclear radiation very similar to how my own father died the final shot is the camera slowly zooming in on a picture of me and dad and this is personal poetic and kind of beautiful then the screen says two weeks later and i am back on my feet again that original gorgeous ending is completely undermined for something that doesn't feel nearly as good it felt like the game was suddenly trying to make me feel big and strong instead of just trying to tell a good story yes it's cool to bomb your enemies with their own insane weaponry but it is not nearly as effecting as sacrificing your own life for the good of humanity the dlc is also where most of the collectibles are introduced in the pit you have to collect 100 steel ignots and in mothership zetta you need to find all the alien captive recordings now these are both frustrating for very different reasons the steel eggnots are annoying for the sheer amount of them while the alien recordings stink because the first 19 can't be missed and you won't be able to go back and get them fortunately you will be playing through the game at least two more times so you can easily get the 25 alien captive recordings on a later playthrough no matter what i highly recommend using a guide to get these no shame at all the only other collectible in the game i'd like to find was the bobble heads throughout the main game there are 20 unique vault-tec bobble heads these are great because not only are they cute as a button but they provide immediate benefits each one increased a different stat or skill at the end of the day my first playthrough of fallout 3 was an incredible experience even with the minor issues i had with its dlc however there were still two more full playthroughs that had to be completed and when you're repeating that same process again and again immersion can wane so i mentioned earlier there is a karma system that keeps track of whether the decisions you make are good or bad this gives you an overall rating of good evil or neutral since there are different endings for each alignment as well as the achievements attached to getting max level with all three alignments i had to beat the game three times at max level and it was these two additional playthroughs that really started to ruin my experience with fallout 3. for my second playthrough i decided to be as evil as humanly possible and it wasn't nearly as satisfying as being good this is because all the subtlety that came across in the good playthrough didn't exist at all in the evil one let's take a look at the first choice i made back in megaton again this time i decided i was going to blow up the atom bomb in the middle of the town and when i did i was immediately given the max amount of bad karma and deservedly so i literally nuked a whole town full of innocent people but where does that lead me to go there's no way in hell i'm gonna top that that isn't saying that fallout 3 doesn't try they give you plenty of opportunities to be an evil [ __ ] you can push a suicidal old man to his death make another person overdose but it doesn't feel rewarding after nuking innocent people either way that sounds awful all around i'm not trying to stand on some moral high ground here if you want to play a game and be the most evil creature imaginable do it that's the whole [ __ ] point here but in fallout 3 there is no growth to being evil you start off at the bottom and you stay there compare this to being good where you actually have to try and get the highest level of karma that actually takes effort and that actually kind of might be the point it does take a lot of work to be a good person sometimes but even if that is the case with fallout 3 being evil didn't make me feel like i was going to go on an epic journey all it did was make me feel like i was being a dick this is also the play through what i learned that almost all npcs can die yes i saw lucas sims get gunned down previously but even during out of story beasts npcs can die even if you haven't finished their quest yet and i learned this the hard way i was working on the nuka-cola challenge quest when i went to return some of the nuka-cola quantums i found to the woman who gave me the quest when i returned to her shack she was dead and there was a rad scorpion there instead and now i couldn't complete the quest until i started a new game because she was deceased that sucks yes it's cool that the world of fallout 3 is living and breathing and can change in a moment but it's decidedly not cool when the quest i just spent hours working on could not be completed due to factors outside of my control so by the time i got to the very end of this playthrough i was feeling pretty sh and i've been playing through the game for about 160 hours total and i still had one more playthrough to go now the neutral playthrough was particularly boring because instead of committing to one moral outlook i had to basically alternate my good and bad choices so since i saved the town i now have to shove that suicidal old man to his death because i'm neutral you see this playthrough is when i became really thankful for the dlc since almost all of the quests in all 5 dlc don't have karma attached to them so i could actually do all of them without having to worry about what the outcome was for the last quest but believe it or not being neutral took me even more out of the game than being evil did that's because my playstyle had to become calculated i wasn't experiencing this fascinating world the developers built i was making sure i made the right choices to get a specific outcome i was effectively playing on a seesaw but not trying to bounce up or down the worst thing about my second and third runs through the game were how they made me feel worse about fallout 3 as a whole a lot of the things that i enjoyed in the good play through suddenly became obnoxious those immersive sluggish controls they were now annoying the pip boy now was something commonplace that i had to look at thousands of times so these last playthroughs did not feel good at all right now there's still a great game here but i had easily had more than my fill if i didn't have to get max level on each of these playthroughs it could have been a different story but that wasn't the case here instead i'm left here feeling bored and tired and at the cost at the center of it all was 240 hours of my life and even spread across two years that feels like a hella long time like most of these sandbox games there really isn't a completion bonus for doing every single thing you can in the game closest thing would be the tesla cannon you receive by completing the broken steel dlc the tesla cannon is a massively powerful weapon that basically works as an energy missile launcher it's a fun addition and a great weapon but it doesn't really feel like a culmination of my entire experience playing fallout 3. i feel like this is one of those situations where the concept of this show is detrimental to enjoying a game when i started playing fallout 3 i was completely absorbed by the atmosphere scavenging for everything i could find and surviving battles by the skin of my teeth the story felt meaningful while also incredibly personal to our main character i was in love and then the second playthrough started everything about fallout 3 suddenly became mathematical i did this good action here so i have to do this bad action instead i was no longer emotionally invested because i had already done everything i could even though i had given myself the time to finish fallout 3 i still wanted to finish it as quickly as possible because i was bored out of my mind and this was even more true on my third neutral playthrough in all of its dlc i thought that taking my time with the game would make it feel like less of a slog that wasn't the case here there was less physical and mental exhaustion for me but i still had to play this game for well over 200 hours and when i was revisiting old plot points i knew like the back of my hand i lost interest almost immediately by the time i did everything that follow three had to offer i was more than done even though i tried to really take my time with this one there was just way way way too much to do when it comes to this game and i think this is because fallout 3 isn't supposed to be played like a game i mean obviously it's a video game in an rpg but it's not about the numbers going up or getting that perfect score it's about a man trying to find his father and survive a world that wants him dead as well as the stories that players create for themselves along the way polo 3 is supposed to be an experience and it is an experience that i highly recommend that you experience you get what i'm saying i think you do so with that in mind guys i give this game my completionist rating of finish it [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 349,428

Keywords: fallout, fallout 3, fallout 3 review, fallout 3 gameplay, gameplay, review, game review, game reviews, completionist, the completionist, g4, g4tv, attack of the show, fallout review, fallout 4, fallout 76, new vegas, fallout new vegas, bioware, RPG, game pass, fallout shelter online, project mojave, fallout tactics, bethesda, gaming, skyrim, oblivion, skyrim anniversary edition

Id: ieFoW2HfbGI

Length: 27min 45sec (1665 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021