Spectacle & Silence - Fallout 3 In Retrospect

you hear that silence it's something bethesda is pretty good at building in their games and what fallout 3 excels at using silence to create tension create moments for the player to reflect or just moments of peace for the player to catch their breath before the next frenzy when looking at what people remember and talk about with this game i see a lot of people focusing on the moments of spectacle super mutant behemoths blowing up megaton getting lit up by super mutants in the dc ruins but i don't see many people talk about the moments of silence wandering the wasteland or slowly moving through and looting a building i just cleared out these are just as iconic of fallout 3 moments for me as retrieving the new satellite dish for three dog from the museum of technology sure it might not be as sexy as some scripted segment in a carefully crafted level but these periods of peacefulness allow the game to deliver something different sincerity fallout 3 is an interesting game because it tries to do a lot it tries to hit quite a few notes and check off quite a few boxes some of it i think bethesda was directly aiming for and the results were intended but some of it i get the feeling just occurred on accident the incidental result of some of their other design choices much like many of the sincere moments that occur between the bigger moment-to-moment beats something stirs between the lines of bethesda's main design goals of fallout 3 that ends up creating something a little less observable but is absolutely felt by the player bethesda's lacks rules on who can design and make quests and game segments is another factor i believe plays a large role in what makes fall 3 so special if you actually dared to subject yourself to my series on oblivion you'd hear me eventually get to the point that bethesda has a very open policy when it comes to who gets to add content to the game due to the simple nature of the design tools it's pretty much the same things modders get to fuss around with anyone in bethesda from writers and programmers to animators and environmental artists could design write build and script sections of the game this creates a range and quality of things like quests and guilds that go from being absolutely amazing to absolutely terrible this is where i think the emptiness of the dc wasteland comes from looking at a lot of bethesda games there tends to be quite a bit of empty space and everything winds up existing compartmentalized behind loading screens this emptiness isn't an intended design choice it's more just necessitated by the way bethesda builds their games that doesn't make all that empty space bad in fact i'd argue bethesda is probably the best developer out there when it comes to making empty space interesting it's just something i rarely see them get credit for but that's kind of getting ahead of ourselves first though i want to introduce the protagonists of this romp for the dc wastes whose high drinks will help us look at fallout 3 a little more closely c sammy is a simple guy whose only prime directive is to do no harm to the undeserving if he sees someone in trouble he is compelled to help he doesn't care what he has to do so long as it's in the service to goodness and maybe that's not the best type of person fit for living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland not entirely gifted in the looks speech or brawn department he'll have to rely on his above average intelligence to get by in the wastes reportedly born in vault 101 an underground bomb shelter where no one ever enters and no one ever leaves sammy's mom left by way of post-birth complications and his soft-spoken dad james was left to raise him on his own sami got to know his fellow vault residents as his extended family and his best friend amada being like a sister to him and definitely not a girlfriend and like a good sister she coordinates his 10th birthday which is a big deal in vault 101 because that means her dad the overseer and ruler of the vault gets to put him to work sammy always thought him to be a little stuck up but he is the overseer and that means sammy does have to listen what he says sammy continues to grow up content to living his life within the bounds set forth by the vault knowing what's above is really no life worth living he continues to be a best friend to amada and listening to his dad and teachers and getting bullied by butch in his gang of misfits the general aptitude test ordained sammy will be the vault tattoo artist for the rest of his life which isn't exactly what he'd picture for himself but if that's what he's gonna do then that's what he's gonna do yes life seemed to be going for sammy that is until the overseer tries having him killed when his dad busts out of the vaults leaving sammy behind sensing all manners of treachery from james and everyone close to him the overseer sends out his goons to kill james's friend and his son which isn't very kosher with sammy so with the help of amada who 19 years later is still just a really good friend of his sammy makes his escape from the vault it's a complete [ __ ] show of an exit and leaves sammy alone in the wasteland looking for any indication of where his dad went and why he left in the first place he wanders around the blasted remains of a town trying to reconcile what was once his life and the blighted world that is now his reality he stumbles into an old school full of raiders who take a shoot on sight approach to anyone that isn't them and that's where sammy learns how to shoot at things that aren't just rad roaches he comes out battered but wiser and having found some supplies he figures will be necessary in this new world he wonders if this is all the world is or if there are actual areas of civilization over in the town of megaton he finds that oasis of civility a megaton is a ramshackle little city built in the crater of an undetonated nuke sami doesn't find much about his dad but he does run into moira brown who is in the middle of working on a wasteland survival guide seeing this as a noble cause and a great way to learn more about this new world he eagerly agrees to help even if the work is going to be dangerous how dangerous well moira sends him into a raider infested supermarket into an active minefield with a crazed lone sniper taking pot shots at him into a rat infested sewer to beat things with a stick and has him suck down dirty irradiated water and break some limbs not exactly glamorous work but she does reward him well and her enthusiasm is very infectious for sammy making the two of them a perfect match despite most of the tasks being about the needs of survival and the harsh realities of the dc wastes he does get to go to a library to fetch a catalog with some books and head to rivet city and learn about the history of the most successful settlement around while in the library sami gets to meet the brotherhood of steele a well-armed and organized group that seems to be trying to instill some order and help the people of the wastes rivet city on the other hand seems more like what vault 101 was like with plenty of bickering and politics taking more of a central role to the day-to-day as opposed to basic survival by the time he and miss brown wrap up the wasteland survival guide sammy is a much more seasoned wasteland survivor an expert by maura's account or a guru as three dog the zany radio personality likes to call him but that's not the only thing three dog knows he also knows where james went according to his broadcast and so that's where sammy will be heading next fallout 3 is probably the most open of the bethesda games i've played once we are free of the tutorial vault segment the game truly opens up in every bethesda game i always have some opening moves i like to make that are just more optimal for getting my character started but fallout 3 offers the most freedom in that regard this is because the main objective early on is very simple it's just survive in order to survive we need weapons ammo meds and experience points all these things can be found more plentifully by just exploring the world and combing through the numerous ruins that doubt the landscape it's a very compelling gameplay hook because the moment we step out of the vault everything is reminding us of just how unforgiving the waste can be we got raiders and mutated animals and insects trying to kill us most sources of food and water being highly irradiated money is very hard to come by even finding a place to sleep can be a challenge i mean all of this can and will change as we progress but the first few levels is all about this in other bethesda games we want to progress because we want to get more powerful in fallout 3 we're progressing because getting eaten by more rats isn't really enjoyable that's not to say fallout 3 is a particularly difficult game it's not but the thematic relevance of survival that is present throughout the game is most viscerally felt during the first few levels where we are definitely more squishy the fact that things are so dire around here that someone feels compelled to write a guide on how not to get killed is pretty telling of how people live lucy west would rather pay someone to deliver a letter to her family than have to risk traversing the waste to see her family in person the fears of the people in vault 101 of the world above them were maybe a tiny bit exaggerated but really not that much time and again we meet people who say how dangerous the wastes are and how they'd rather just be hiding in their little protected oasis rather than traveling and seeing the world this all leads into making the wasteland feel well lonely the player is referred to as the lone wander and this is once again bethesda's signaling another very important theme of fallout 3 loneliness the player is out there searching for the only family they have left raving all sorts of terrors just to find the one personal connection that they have in this world after having been evicted by the people that they thought with their family their whole life the player will come across orphans slaves irradiated ghouls who were born before the war isolated bands of soldiers and mercs lone scavengers and tons of other people who are just alone these people who literally got no others left in the world helps to reinforce why our characters would be willing to risk so much to find a real relation even on a bigger scale all of the settlements we've come across are isolated and aside from the rare traveler or caravan contact with the outside world is almost non-existent news is hard to come by with most information being little more than unreliable hearsay and this results in each settlement being very insular and contained going back to bethesda's design choices this theme was most likely struck upon just because making self-contained segments is how bethesda makes games so it's really a match made in heaven when they got a game where they can turn that into a central theme and suddenly what could have felt like a weird game contrivance turns into something a lot more thought-provoking and all the while there's that silence that ubiquitous presence of just nothingness there's the ambient music of innanzor's score to help keep us company which is more ambient and sound as opposed to being laced with catchy melodies but when the shooting stops that silence returns so it makes sense why someone like three dog might come along and make a radio station devoted to piercing that silence and deliver the news to these isolated people all the while spreading his message about something he likes to call the good fight in order to get to the galaxy news radio studios sammy will have to dive into the heart of the super mutant infested dc ruins something he'd only been flirting with thus far he'd gotten a taste of what everyone has described as a total war zone when he was making his way to rivet city and doing some chapters for the survival guide but now he's got a head into the dark metro tunnels that connect the isolated sections of the city deep in the dark dank underground tunnels sammy is met with stiff resistance from packs of wildfire ghouls and more super mutants these are places even raiders are skittish about visiting really only the desperate adventure of these parts either fearless or senseless sammy plunges through eventually makes it to his destination though only to run smack into even more super mutants fortunately the brotherhood of steel maintains a strong presence in the area and sami stumbles upon sentinel lines and a group of elite soldiers they aren't the friendliest of people but at least they are humans shooting at the same thing sammy is and with them he is able to carve a path to the gnr building which is essentially under siege by the beauties one mutant the size of an apartment building comes barreling in beating on the brotherhood's defenses like a drum and it takes everyone pouring bullets into it and sammy firing mini nukes at it to bring it down once the plaza is safe though sammy is allowed into the studio to meet the man himself the look on your face says it all you're wondering who the heck this guy is and why you should care well prepare to be enlightened i am three dog jockey of discs and teller of truths lord and master over the finest radio station to grace the wastes galaxy news radio and you well i know who you are heard about you leaving that vault traveling the unknown just like dear old dad huh met him already yup guilty as charge i don't usually have exposure to the public like this it's nice to know someone's listening makes karen on the good fight that much easier three dog's charisma definitely translates well even when he's off the radio waves and he clues sammy into the way things are going in the wastes he paints just as bleak of a picture of things as everyone else has thus far and insists his radio is his way of fighting back against those who want to use violence and evil to exploit the innocent people of the wastes who are really just trying to survive the day he is especially critical of the enclave who claimed to be the remnants of the old world american government but nobody even really knows how old those broadcasts from president eden even are three dog does know where james went but he wants sami to do something for him before he tells him when he knows which is maybe a little [ __ ] up to hold something like that over a teenager to coerce him into doing something extremely dangerous but hey sammy does want to help the good fight so he agrees willingly deep in the heart of the downtown dc ruins as the old mall where the super mutants are thickest and the mall are two key points of interest for three dog and sammy the washington monument and the museum of technology on top of the washington monument is the broadcast relay dish for gnr which a lame-brained super mutant took pot shots at and ruined the broadcast range for the station the museum of technology has an exhibit with an old lunar lander with a similar radio dish that could be swapped out for the busted one to boost three dog's signal the objective for sammy is to get into the museum kill the mutants get the dish and install it on top of the monument once that's done three dog will tell him all that he really knows so sammy hops to it slaying mutants and getting a look at some old world tech in the process the museum of technology is anything but boring and sami eventually makes off at the radio dish and then fights his way across the trench carve mall to the washington monument where the brotherhood of steel vigilantly stand their ground then it's just a quick elevator ride up to where sammy gets a fantastic view of the downtown ruins and then it's a simple job of swapping out the dishes and making it back to the man with the voice to report his success three dog stays true to his word and tells him all that he knows which is that he and james had a long and interesting conversation about the wasteland the plight of the people and whatever else james then mentioned something called project purity in that he needs to go see his old colleague dr madison lee in reverend city three dog assures sammy that he's struck a major blow against tyranny and that three dog will be forever indebted to him and then it's off to rivet city to see the good doctor blee isn't difficult to track down it was her lab after all that made rivet city so famous over the years she recognizes sami and that's when she gets to revealing all the falsehoods that have been fed to sammy for years she tells him that neither sammy nor his father were born in vault 101 but gained entry during a brief period where the vault actually opened sammy had been born in the wasteland and his mother was a scientist that worked with james and dr lee on project purity a large-scale water purification system based out of the old jefferson memorial but when sammy's mother died james abandoned the project and set off with his newborn to fault 101 while lee went and started her lab in rivet city as to why he left the vault again well he seems to have never given up on the project and recently decided it was time to start again he made it to rivet city asking lee to help him get it back up and running again but she refused saying her place was with her new team on the old aircraft carrier he went back to their lab at the memorial and that was the last she'd heard from him she wonders why sammy is even out in the vault because james didn't want his son running around the wasteland but when sammy tells her that he's out looking for his dad she tells him that he really shouldn't risk going after him that it's too dangerous and whatever else sammy isn't concerned though and even though lee isn't able to offer much else the brief five-minute conversation with her has given him more answers to questions that he hadn't even thought to be asking all these years sammy can see project purity from the deck of rivet cities so it's a quick walk over there only to find it's been reclaimed by super mutants as dr lee had warned after gnr sammy is kind of an expert at evicting super mutants from this mortal plane and makes quick work dispatching them from the memorial in the control center he finds a few logs belonging to his father but james himself is nowhere to be found it's unclear how he got to project purity and recorded the logs when there were super mutants all over the place but maybe they were just on vacation when james happened to roll through regardless james talks about his long nights spent in vault 101 where he would try looking for technology or information that could help project purity seeing as vault-tec vaults were some of the most technically advanced things ever created he hit a lucky break after hacking into the overseer's computer one night which explains why the overseer wasn't the biggest fan of james if he so blatantly disregarded the vault security like that but in the terminal he saw mentions of dr braun a vault-tec scientist who was something of a wizard back in the day he'd been working on some experimental technology to create habitable land out of nothing through the use of something called the garden of eden creation kit or geck and that these devices had actually been created and sent to a few vaults he saw braun was conveniently listed as a resident in one of the nearby vaults and james figures if he can get to this vault 112 he might find clues at the very least that can point him to what he needs to get the purifier working so just as james set out for the vault so too does sami the vault is hidden in the basement of an old car repair shop and it's quite unlike vault 101 the vault is still active with its robot caretakers keeping the place pristine and operational meanwhile all the original residents are jacked into some sort of computer system via these big sleeper pods not really knowing any better sammy finds a vacant pod and hops in getting pulled into a virtual reality simulation of pre-war america it doesn't take long for him to realize that he's imprisoned in the place the residents seem as happy as can be well all but too old lady dithers who is the only one aware that this is a simulation and mentions the abandoned house having a fail-safe terminal and betty a little girl with some twisted ideas pay a visit to the rockvilles they're very happily married and i'd like you to change that put an end to their marriage and we'll talk rationalize it any way you'd like if you succeed we'll continue our discussion hurting people isn't exactly in sami's nature but as it turns out braun is betty and this virtual world is his playground he retired from science and reality itself to torment the residents of the vault for all eternity sammy being fed up with the evil things braun slash betty is having him commit goes into the abandoned house and [ __ ] around with some ordinary objects until the failsafe terminal appears and this allows him to permanently bring to an end the simulation by killing all the residents which ends up killing them in reality too was this actually a better alternative to them being toyed with and then forgetting every time things reset well who really knows it's too late to be asking that question now though burn is pissed but admits he's now powerless to stop sammy now that he activated the failsafe and reveals his dad had been in the simulation the entire time as a pet dog so sami and james leave the charming and sadistic doctor alone in his empty world for all eternity and make it back to reality to finally be reunited james is grateful to see sammy and to be free from the simulation but he's not pleased that sammy put himself in so much danger to chase him across the wastes for some reason sammy forgets to mention how the overseer lost his mind had jonas beaten to death and was probably going to do the same to james's son and just tells james that he had to find him because he left without saying goodbye having already been told just about everything by dr lee the only thing left on sammy's mind is why james left the way he did and he insists the work was just too important to him his team and most importantly his wife to leave it unfinished forever he didn't tell sammy about his plans because he didn't want his son following him not that sammy really had a choice regardless he's happy to have his son with him again so it's off to rivet city to tell lee about the gek and what is needed to get the purifier working lea is hesitant but eventually agrees even though james basically dismisses all the work she's been doing on hydroponics and portable fusion power over the years insisting his project purity which has yet to produce any results is more important because a crazy scientist who had been torturing people for two centuries told him he needs to get anyways with the old team back together it's off to the purifier to get back to work sammy tells his dad he'll catch up with him because he's got some things he wants to do first with father and child reunited the first major act of the story comes to a close this act is very much about learning about the worlds our character inhabits and getting to choose how those worlds shape our character both in terms of gameplay and in terms of story in the broadest sense our character knows two worlds the mundane relative safety of vault 101 and its polar opposite in the form of the vast dc wastes from creating our character and experimenting with playstyles to dealing with bullies and the crazed overseer bethesda actually gives us quite a bit to think about when it comes to who and what our characters are and will be and when we get into the wastes this remains pretty much a constant as we level up and interact with characters settlements and quests my criticisms aren't with how these choices are presented but really how consistently they are implemented and that's more so aimed at the story aspect of our character and not the gameplay in terms of gameplay options there's a multitude of ways for a player to make their characters and in the beginning those choices matter quite a bit in the moment-to-moment gameplay but we'll get back to that when in later levels character builds begin to dilute a lot instead i really just want to focus on the story role we the player get to choose for a character originally i wanted to make sammy an edgy teenager who hates established rules and was really going to be something of a rebel without a cause but while i was sometimes able to find quests that supported that concept more times than not the choices a player gets to make story-wise were just anemic at best let's take helping three dog as an example look at all these responses we have to three dog telling us we need to contribute to the good fight if we want to learn more about where dad went what if my character is just really into the good fight and came to three dog wanting to contribute where's that option or how about threatening three dog where's there an evil or morally grey choice in general our only options are to say how much we miss daddy and how much we miss daddy but aren't able to help just yet every single option makes my character sound like a simp and not a rebel and this is where the original character edgy eddie died and simple sammy was born now let's compare these options just how we can greet lucas sims once hitting megaton we can in about 10 seconds flat go the town sheriff into gunning us down charm him with our do good attitude or just creep him out by remaining silent these tonal inconsistencies are all over the place in the game and probably has a lot to do with the writing being handled by whichever developer was designing that specific quest in interaction a lot of people complain that fallout 3 doesn't offer any moral or character specific choices and that simply isn't true the problem is that they're just so damn inconsistent we can go from nuking a town for no reason other than to be evil [ __ ] to being railroaded into being a lost child with three dog we have more meaningful dialogue options with moira brown during the weeks and survival guide quests that are actually consistent the whole way through and even affect the perk we get at the end of the quest if we're snarky punks the whole way through who do the bare minimum effort in researching we get an entirely different perk as opposed to being a foolhardy kid and as opposed to being a smart and clever mercenary even playing as a mercenary is an inconsistent experience only sometimes are we able to inquire about our rewards before agreeing to take a job and even less often are we able to use things like speech and barter to negotiate our choices more times than not boil down to playing the simp who will always get involved and do the morally pure thing no matter what the personal consequences or just flat out refusing to help sometimes we get an evil choice less often we get to play the mark and do it for caps and sometimes we just get weird off the wall options that never reappear anywhere else to let us make that our character's thing and nowhere this is more evident in the early game than in tranquility lean i see a ton of people praise this as being one of the real highlights of the game but personally i've always found it extremely dull sure if we agree to play along with bronze game we get to tackle each task in several ways though all of them are already scripted in so the thrill is just more in discovering those methods and not really how the sandbox reacts to them but if we are playing the goody two shoes the only moral option is killing everyone in the simulation via the fail-safe chinese invasion it's definitely a unique and memorable segment but its thrills are kind of just skin deep going back to three dogs task the whole sequence of getting to his studio and then getting to the museum of technology and searching through the ruins for the radar dish is probably the highlight of the entire main story for me because it's here more than anywhere else in the main story that the game relies on what it does exceptionally well to carry the experience when you're in the ruins hip deep and mutants are combing through the empty halls of the long abandoned museum getting the occasional smirk out of some of the environmental storytelling and world building the game is really at its prime how even getting to fight alongside lion's pride and bringing down the behemoth is more engaging and memorable to me than many of the more emotionally charged segments of the game because at least i'm not having to read my character's brain-dead responses to what people are telling him and it is very brief i don't want to lament over the missed opportunities in the game but i feel like three dogs should have been the real testing ground for a character's moral guidance he's one of the most charismatic and politically charged characters we meet in the game and with just a few more lines of dialogue from him and from our characters he could have been someone our character could actually debate with they've spent enough time in the wastes and involved one-on-one to have some opinions and three dog is ready to hear them and challenge them but the lack of choices with three dog are only the beginning anyone familiar with what comes later knows what i'm talking about but before getting ahead of myself i want to instead shift focus on the other two characters we meet dr lee and of course daddy james there's remarkably little to say about dr lee except that her voice actors seem to have been given some terrible directing in the booth because she comes across as a total [ __ ] for really no reason but inconsistent voice acting aside she offers nothing but exposition info dumping that really takes a lot of the wind out of the sales of the story she basically answers almost every question we might have before we even meet up with dad from what project purity is to what happened with our mother and father to the fact that we weren't even born in the vault like the game has been building all of these questions up for a few hours and dr lee comes in and just tells us everything in a few sentences with a little embellishment okay i guess it's time to find dad because we still don't know why he did all this but then we find him and he goes why are you even here and the only thing we can say is well you left without saying goodbye or i didn't need the vault no mention of the fact that the overseer gave us literally no choice or even tell him that his friend for 20 years was murdered no there's none of that and as to why james left with his only child on the clutches of a homicidal paranoid maniac well he wanted to honor the memory of his wife who'd been dead for 20 years so he abandons his own child presumably forever without saying goodbye or anything to chase the ghost of his dead wife i mean maybe on some level that makes sense and maybe if he expressed serious regret about doing that and admitting how bittersweet it is that his child is now with him his choices would have been more believable and maybe even sympathetic but no he just berates us for leaving the vaults oblivious to the complete social meltdown he initiated in leaving which resulted in like a dozen innocent deaths and then he dares and calls us the reckless ones hold on to that thought though because we really aren't even close to criticizing james's motivations and actions because he starts to seem downright psychotic at the end at least brawn was aware he was an evil bastard and made no apologies for himself but james just acts with complete detachment so sure that what he's doing is the right thing just because it results in clean water it's more important than food and electricity judging by the fact that he will permanently derail dr lee's work on those two things in rivet city i promised myself i wouldn't rag too hard on the main story of the game but it's important to contrast what fallout 3 does so well everywhere else with what it does so poorly when it's trying to concentrate on a point for an extended period of time it's a weird collapse that occurs in just about every bethesda game and it's probably the worst in fallout 3. for some reason bethesda just can't make a competent main story when bethesda doesn't have to drag out a segment for the sake of creating a major story arc they are capable of making some brilliant stuff that is introduced and concluded in just under an hour and that's what we're going to start looking at next come on here you are in the mall of our nation's fine capital taking in the sights visiting the monuments face it you're a tourist with his dad relatively safe and sound with lee at project purity sammy figures now is a good time to explore more of the wastes particularly the downtown dc ruins which seems to be a very happening place his first stop is rivet city where rumors of an escaped android from some place called the commonwealth is supposed to be running around dr zimmer is a real piece of work and flags sammy over to tell him about his missing property unconvinced these androids aren't just being used as slaves sammy tentatively agrees to look into things he begins collecting rumors and hollow tapes from various sources and it turns out the android is real and he did in fact run away from zimmer he was an android specifically built for tracking down other runaway androids so this is clearly not an isolated incident convinced these androids are in fact slaves sammy knows he isn't going to be turning jack shit's zimmer but he's still curious about the android and keeps digging eventually finds those who help the android by performing a facial reconstructive surgery and a mind wipe so the robot will be convinced he is a human when sammy finds out that this android is the head of the rivet city security he figures the bot on a know his past so he confronts the guard and using a passphrase helps him remember ah my god i i remember i remember it all from before zimmer the commonwealth the institute my god all those runners i brought down you you made me remember why how i never mind i just my god what am i going to do my life everything it's all a lie sammy has given harkness a unique opportunity to get even with his former master and the two of them head to the science lab to hand out some wasteland justice grateful for his help harkness gives sami his plasma rifle a holy death machine that sammy will charge forever harkness just asks that they keep his true identity between them because he has no desire to abandon his position as security head of rivet city having picked up some leads for interesting work in the goal city of underworld sammy heads back over there where the residents are cool if unwelcoming turns out ghouls are barely tolerated by most humans who seem to be unable or unwilling to differentiate them from feral ghouls who live underground and attack humans on sight they are relatively safe and secure in underworld even the super mutants don't bother them possibly seeing them as kin or something but the brotherhood of steel and talon company marks are a different story they seem to enjoy harassing the ghouls though they usually have the decency to at least not murder them outright sami thinks these people are pretty alright though and are just suffering from the worst sort of injustice he'd seen yet in the wastes those injustices come to a head when he meets sharon and azure call in the upstairs bar talking to sharon reveals well not much except that he should go talk to azeroth sharon isn't exactly a man of many words taking his advice and talking to the man behind the bar sammy finds out sharon isn't as recall's employee as he holds sharon's contract and anyone who holds sharon's contract has complete control of the giant ghoul courtesy of some brainwashing he underwent years prior despite sharon being so useful to azer call like any good slave owner he's willing to part with his property for a price sammy unwilling to let this injustice continue agrees to buy sharon's contract talk to you purchased my contract from raz recall so i am no longer in his service that is good to know please wait here i must take care of something never seen a ghoul before as recall i am told that i am no longer in your service that's right sharon have you come to say goodbye yes could happen all right let's as go was an evil bastard so long as he held my contract i was on her bound to do as he commanded but now you are my employer which freed me to rid the world of that disgusting rat and now for good or ill i serve you with sharon in tow sammy heads over to the doctor's office where he saw an unconscious human earlier with his knowledge of medicine he is able to wake riley whose grogginess wears off quite quickly when she remembers her team is trapped on the roof of a hotel being bombarded by super mutants she tried to sneak off to get some help but she got her ass kicked by some mutants and left for dead and was brought into underworld for rescuing she's really in no condition to save her squad and ask sammy to do it for her sammy helpful as always agrees unconditionally and makes his way over to the hospital where the trail begins he and sharon then begin a long and bloody climb through the old hospital crossing a makeshift sky bridge to the hotel and once more continues up each mutant infested floor they make it to the top floor and find riley's rangers making a valiant stand against endless waves of super mutants sami dispenses some ammo gets the elevator working again and they all take it to the lobby where all of them unleash on one more horde of mutants they then book it to their compound on the edge of the city where riley is super appreciative of sammy's help rewards him and makes him something of an honorary member of her rangers using the cats he's been saving for a while now sammy gets himself a new set of armor befitting a sentinel of the wastes he also gets sharon some new gear and a unique mask to disguise his affliction and the less tolerant parts of the wasteland decked out in their super cool gear they pick up a job from abraham washington and rivet city to retrieve the declaration of independence from the national archives securing the most sacred document in american history seems like a noble cause and so it's back to them all in the archives they meet up with sydney a mercenary aw hired for the same job days earlier he probably and incorrectly assumed she died on the job which is why he hired sammy they team up to fight off the super mutants assaulting her position and then gain access to the secure vaults below which are being secured by an army of robots being egged on by some voice on the intercom they press through finding a few other worthwhile documents along the way and make it to a protectron wearing a powdered wig and sporting the unique personality of benjamin button button is convinced sammy is an english spy but sammy is able to smooth his feathers and gain access to the vaults housing the declaration of independence the three then make it back to aw and split the reward and sydney thanks sami and then goes off to get drunk and get laid you gotta respect somebody with priorities the next few tasks take sammy out of the downtown ruins for a while the first order of business is delivering the letter lucy west and megaton gave him when he first got out of the vault to go deliver to a family he goes to arufu a small settlement set up on a crumbling overpass to attempt just that when sami arrives though he finds a town guard sheriff mayor standing guard at the entrance raging about the group calling themselves the family apparently this gang of hoodlums have been harassing arfu for weeks and just recently killed all their cattle now the town has scared witless and evan king asks sammy to check on the residents of the town so he does that meeting some interesting characters in the process most of them seem to have just about had it with the family and evan king but are trapped in their houses regardless but when sammy reaches the house of the west family he finds the decomposing bodies of lucy's parents with bite marks on them evan convinced this is the work of the family but realizes sammy didn't mention their son ian sammy tells him that ian wasn't there and so evan now believes that they must have kidnapped a teenager and then asks sammy to find their hideout and bring ian back sammy came just to deliver a letter but now he finds himself having to track down and stop a gang of troublemakers and possibly cannibals he finds their hideout in a nearby metro station gaining entry by bribing the guard and things are not what he was expecting the leader of the family vance is just sitting there with his followers peacefully going about their business not bothering sammy talking advance reveals he's got a mission with his family and he never meant any harm towards the town his group is unique because all of them are in fact cannibals but vance is trying to reform their weights and instead turn them into vampires or at least something like it ian wasn't kidnapped he ran off to the family when his cravings for flesh drove him to start snacking on his parents vance is trying to reform ian before he becomes consumed by his hunger and lost forever sammy still has the letter to deliver to ian though because he has been so tolerant and understanding vance allows sami to go speak with ian hoping maybe he will have better luck helping the young cannibal come to grips with himself so sammy does just that giving ian the letter which reminds him that there's at least one person who still loves him and he's convinced staying with vance and his reformed candles isn't really the life room advance is disappointing ian chose to leave but is understanding but there's still the matter of arufu that needs to be settled in exchange for deliveries of blood packs from the town which the family can use to satiate their hunger for flesh vance agrees to protect the town from waste and threats and with that sami has managed to settle another group's problems there's just one place left on sammy's itinerary and that is the temple of the union a settlement of escaped slaves he's heard about in secret on several occasions sensing they'd be a group in need of a doer sammy seeks their hideout in some old office ruins in the middle of the wastes the guard isn't very trusting but the leader of the group hannibal sees potential in sami hannibal confirms the rumors that all of these people are in fact runaway slaves and they do help other escaped slaves from paradise falls but their temple isn't very secure or well known to achieve both those ends hannibal wants to reclaim the old lincoln memorial in the dc mall to act as a safe haven and a beacon for any and all slaves where the group can act with impunity sami doesn't even have to consider this one he was practically destined to help this group to that end he's given two objectives make sure the memorial is clear of any dangers and retrieve reference material for the group's stonemason so he can restore the old monument the latter is simply enough it just involves delving into an old lincoln exhibit at the museum of history where the ghoul city underworld is located in there he finds plenty of feral girls and lincoln memorabilia including an old photograph of the monument before the war so he makes off with anything lincoln related and it's off to the memorial down the road he gets there to find the places overtaken by very unneighborly slavers he's taken to the leader of the group leroy walker and gets grilled for information on any runaway slaves he may have come across sami plays it cool and leroy mistakenly believes sammy can be used as a slave catcher he also lets on that he and his crew are there not only to track down any missing slaves but also to desecrate anything lincoln related because he rightly surmises the escaped slaves like to use lincoln as a symbol to unify under once the conversation is done sami and sharon waste no time wasting the slavers turning them into little piles of gory bits then it's back to the temple to tell hannibal the good news and give them the reference photo for their restoration efforts hannibal is naturally ecstatic and grateful and invites sammy to meet them at the monument back in the mall he rewards sammy thanking him again and sami sells them all the lincoln memorabilia he collect in the museum so they can venerate their idol and achieve their aims with enough good deeds done sami figures it's about time to link back up with the folks of project purity and see how things are proceeding over there as i was saying earlier while bethesda can't seem to cobble together a coherent continuous plot they're very adept at making short and sweet quests and gameplay segments that don't require the player to think too hard for too long there isn't a whole lot to scrutinize in these sections but they all do begin to create something much greater than the sum of their parts going to our food to deliver a letter only to get dragged into a conflict between a struggling settlement and a pack of cannibals is definitely something out of left field the pacing of it is quick enough to avoid any serious plot holes to begin opening up but is unique and interesting enough to be very memorable i don't think you even have to kill anything during the quest which means it's gotta rely on the merits of its premise in writing alone and it actually does manage to pull that off very well finding out the family are in fact want to be vampires and vance is just some edgy guy pulling off some serious larping the quest has enough charm and character to make me go okay i can dig this it adds something special to the wasteland something the player doesn't expect and that's what makes fallout 3 so special it's just got tons of moments like that the temple of the union quest falls into a similar camp in that its bounds of seriousness and silliness creates something memorable that adds to the patchwork that makes up my impressions of the game in comparison to a game like fallout new vegas which requires a lot of context and examples in order to explain its brilliance fallout 3 is more just a large collection of moments that when added together makes it what it is then there's the riley's rangers and stealing independence quests which are more just long stints of combat with some relatively clever premises and these end up being some of my favorite quests in the game the environments are interesting and varied enough and i actually enjoy fighting super mutants but we also get these periods of silence where it's just us going through rooms looting containers and getting little bits of side stories and lore that get us thinking a little bit like when going through the hotel for the rangers quest you can find a voice recording of sydney's father who she thought ran off on her but in fact he just got trapped by mutants when he was scavenged we can then give her that recording and get her unique smg there's so many little things like that which are just rewards for exploring and paying attention but with some of my favorite side quests now covered it's time to get back to the main quests and begin watching as the yarn unravels there's no shortage of work at the old purifier and james wastes no time putting sami to work running some menial repairs in the basement while his team takes care of the big brainy stuff upstairs sammy comes across some huddle tapes that actually have his mom's voice on it and it sheds a little light on what life was like before he was born and he even comes across the room that he'd been born in assuming we get the results we need we'll move on to james stop i need to finish these notes we'll move on to diagnosing the issues with the radiation dampeners that should oh jeans now we really shouldn't james then sends sammy into a drainage pipe to clear a clog when the biggest plot twist of them all rears its head by the authority of the president this facility is now under united states government control the person in charge is to step forward immediately and turn over all materials related to this project that's quite impossible this is a private project enclave has no authority here i'm going to have to ask you to leave at once am i to assume sir that you are in charge yes i'm responsible then i repeat sir that you are hereby instructed to immediately handle all materials related to the purifier i'm sorry for that furthermore you are to assist unfair scientists in assuming control of the administration and operation of the facility at once facilities never happened sir this is the last time i am going to repeat myself stand down at once and turn over control of this facility i assure you that this will not function you've never been able to successfully suggest you can fly immediately sir in order to prepare any more incidents are we clear yes do whatever you want there's no need no violence then you will immediately hand over all materials related to this project he doesn't make it operational at once a few months enough of these delays just another minute run run this place is not safe james he's gone a lot just happened and james is now dead but there isn't time to process and mourn because lee and her team are now public enemy number one of the re-emerged enclave the only place they will now be safe is the brotherhood of steel fortifications in the ruins of the old pentagon the team has to crawl through some old sewer tunnels with sami and sharon leading the way to clear out hordes of enclave most of them manage to make it out and lee has a mental breakdown on the conspicuous intercom at the front gates of the citadel and thankfully the leader of the brotherhood was listening at the time and is able to let them in inside the citadel fortress elder lyons meets with the group at the gate and lee has another outburst before needing to take a chill pill and go lie down this wasn't exactly the plan to get the brotherhood involved with project purity again but sammy and lee aren't about to turn down the offer alder lyons gives to shelter and help them the news of the enclave returning has the brotherhood unsettled as they've already been juggling more issues than they can currently handle in dc wastes adding a more technically powerful fall into the mix might just be the thing that sets them over the edge so in many ways lee and sami's motives are now aligned with the brotherhood still not many are as keen as lions is to help the project but they are able to point sammy in the right direction for finding a geck some of the vaults high computers in the citadel list vault 87 as one of the vaults in the aries have received one but upon further inquiry the brotherhood mentions that getting into the vault is going to be extremely challenging as the main entrance is completely irradiated they recommend a detour through the nearby caverns and lit a lamp light and so that's where sammy goes not really taking any time to reflect on the loss of his father whom he went through so much trouble trying to reunite with in the caverns of little lamplight sammy meets one of the most eccentric and exclusive settlements in the wastes it's there he meets mccready the kid mayor of the town guarding the gates of the settlement inhabited only by kids there's no chance he's going to let sammy aka a mungo pass his gates that is unless he does something to above and beyond earn his trust up north is a settlement of paradise falls a place sammy has only heard about especially when he was helping the temple of the union and had to deal with the slavers from paradise falls looking for the runaway slaves a bunch of kids from little lamplight had been abducted by said slavers and mccready would like them rescued the biggest challenge here would be gaining entry to paradise falls sammy could bribe his way in or do some work for the slavers to earn their trust but sami doesn't negotiate with evil doers and goes in another way then bring it on reverend so oh dammit [Music] that takes care of that with all the slavers purged sammy is able to set everyone loose including the kids from little lamplight then it's back to mccready to gain entrance to the little underground town so he can make use of the aptly named murder pass to make it to vault 87 to start looking for that geck what sammy finds in there is more than he thought because he ends up finding the home base for the super mutants of the dc wastes all over the place are labs where subjects would be subjected to the forced evolution virus which results in the people turning into super mutants or other things this explains why people were being abducted all the time by the mutants but it also looks like the vault has run out of fev so it's possible that's why they are at war with the wasteland now trying to track down the locations that might have more also in that vault he meets the first and possibly only friendly super mutant in dc wastes fox fox would be intelligent by the standards of the typical wastelander but for a super mutant they may just be a damn genius because of fox's unusual intelligence they'd been shunned and locked away by their brethren with sammy coming along fox sends the opportunity to be free and strikes a bargain with a lone wanderer if he sets fox free fox will retrieve the gek for him which is housed in a room flooded with radiation so sammy gets fox's cell opened and the group makes it to the geck chamber where good to their word fox gets the gekk and hand delivers it to sammy they then part ways and sammy starts making his way back to the surface when out of nowhere the enclave make another appearance knocking him out and abducting him to their secret facility colonel autumn is back again somehow and begins grilling sammy on information and the code to the purifier which they took over once james and his team had been evicted earlier with the code in the gac they'd finally be able to get the purifier up and running and that's a problem because well i don't actually just trust me it's it's a big problem so sammy tells colonel lazarus to go [ __ ] himself a few times and then just when the torturing was about to begin president john henry eden calls the colonel away so he and sammy can talk one-on-one the president remotely releases sami and returns all of his possessions and invites him up to his office to have a more civilized discussion but eden fails to convince the other guys in the base that sammy is to be unharmed and autumn staging a coup supersedes those orders forcing sammy to start slaughtering them room by room eventually making it to the president who turns out to just be a computer program he listens to what eden has to say eden tells him that the enclave have been working on a new strain of the fev that would kill anything with any sort of mutated genes in the wastes which would mean just about anyone probably even sammy calling the waste of anything impure presumably then colonel autumn isn't on board with that plan thanks to the aforementioned coup and it really seems unfortunate that he and his dad just didn't see eye to eye because of something so rather than agreeing to help the president basically kill everything in the wasteland sammy starts using his technical knowledge he'd picked up in the wasteland and manages to instill a logic error that causes a computer to basically think itself to death causing the self-destruction of the bunker sami gets the hell out of dodge making it out just in time to watch the fireworks and catch up with fox who'd follow the vertibirds that had abducted sammy fox figures it's now their turn to rescue sammy and the two of them rushed back to the citadel to tell elder lions all that has happened the other figures it's time to stop teasing everyone with the robot and let it loose on the enclave forces holding the purifier sami tells the elder all he knows from his brief stay at the vault 87 in and raven rock resort and lions doesn't seem really all that interested that sammy managed to learn more in a few days than the brotherhood has managed in like 20 years lyons wants to unleash the bot and so that's what they are going to do lions junior sammy and fox slow walk with the robot as it shoots things and gives everyone tinnitus all the way to the purifier then they storm the memorial kill the remaining few enclave and colonel autumn a second time and get ready to activate the purifier certain equipment damage means that anyone activating the purifier will get a heavy dose of radiation but fortunately they got a kind super mutant who can punch in the code so fox goes into the control room where james had sacrificed himself for some reason earlier and saves the day sammy then wakes up two weeks later in the citadel alongside lions's unclothed daughter and gets congratulated the energy pulse put them both in a coma but it worked and the purifier is now purifying the water in the tidal basin everything is going great well sort of there's still a ton of enclave that need to be hunted down and eliminated and the logistics of purifying and distributing water are giving the brotherhood new sets of headaches but now that sami is awake maybe he can help with that after enjoying a nice two-week nap sami is primed and ready for action again so he links up with a major offensive brotherhood force and liberty prime to go assault a known enclave facility but things go sideways when the enclave nuked the bot from orbit and the brotherhood find out the enclave has a major base tucked away at adams air force base so sammy heads to the remains of the white house using the presidential metro system to gain access to the base and then using the brotherhood as a distraction slips in fighting his way to the giant crawler the enclave uses as a mobile base to launch missiles and [ __ ] from using the same remote nuke facility that they use to hit liberty prime sammy targets the crawler he's then picked up by lyons jr who is also awake now and get to watch as the enclave got obliterated once and for all with the destruction of that one final enclave stronghold in the dc area the brotherhood finally have complete control of the wastes and can continue to carry out elder lines as aims to help the people of the wastes and make sure everyone gets some of that nice clean water i really got a lot of things i can criticize the main story for but i think the tone of the summary did it best so i'll just braid it for a few more minutes and get back to the good bits of fallout 3. really my biggest part with the story is that it just doesn't complement what this game does well it just sort of exists because it's expected and even with broken steel making it so that the game doesn't end when activating the purifier which was the original ending of the game before the expansion came around i just don't get why the story exists in its current state it feels almost like they were going for something completely different originally but remember this is a fallout game and they had to work in some fallout factions into it the brotherhood of steel the enclave the fev the geck all these things feel like they were forced into the story as opposed to the story being built around them and rather than relying on all the immersive storytelling techniques that they use so well in this game they just made a ton of scripted segments boring info dumping characters and just stuck the player on some rails and forced them to look and react exactly how they wanted to my favorite part of the main quest is all the optional [ __ ] that you can skip if you know james is stuck in tranquility lane and just go there and get him out meeting the people of megaton getting to gnr working for three dog to get him his new radio dish these are a lot more open than anything else in the main story and they revolve around learning about people of the wastes and helping them with things that are important to them you know what's funny at no point during the main story do we meet normal people in the wastelands bitching about water like none at all but the whole story is built around that aspect why wasn't there just a quest that involved helping a settlement with their water troubles you know so we can actually care about the water situation sure in our wanderings we will meet plenty of people who do have problems with water but not during the main quest when they could have really built something special and memorable to further that end the whole thing is just a disjointed mess dr lee goes from info dumping to insufferable and then ghosts everyone once the purifier is started elder lions never really comes down from his ivory tower james acts like a total disconnected sociopath to pursue his pipe dream and then kills himself for seemingly no reason these are the people and plot threads that are meant to hook us the everyday people are left in the rear view mirror after the first hour of the story and that's the biggest problem i have with the main story it abandons the sincere themes or intentionally silly tones it goes for everywhere else in the game just to deliver a half-baked spectacle still got plenty of water the brahmin is loaded with it what you gave us won't last more than a few days hey it isn't my call i just take the water where the brotherhood tells me don't shoot the messenger you know look they're giving the water away what do you care whether you leave it all here or somewhere else i don't really care i mean you'll have to take it up with those boys you're not leaving here with that water we need it we're taking it we just need the water all of it sorry pal but you already got your food our orders are to take the rest of this to big time all right let's move on come on joe help me get the water resistance even with fresh water now being available in the wastes things just aren't as ideal as james is perhaps hoping for the logistics of getting that water to the remote areas of the waste is turning out to be a much more daunting process than anyone had thought this is confirmed by scribe bigsley who is now in charge of the water purifier following the departure of dr lee he's quite overwhelmed but despite his constant complaining sami offers to help him out with a couple of issues that he's been tormented by the first problem involves the border of megaton for whatever reason they keep requesting for shipments even though bixley has sent one out to them already he wants sami to go out there and figure out what is going on so he hustles on over there to find that some cult has been accepting the deliveries on behalf of megaton and intentionally irradiating the water because they worship radiation and think it's going to help them ascend or something along those lines sammy convinces them to you know stop poisoning people and hopefully that should help megaton get their water then it's over to rivet city where some of the water caravans are being dispatched from the lady handling all the traffic over there informs sammy that securing all those caravans in the waste is next to impossible and they've been dealing with constant coordinated attacks from raiders in the area recently she just dispatched a caravan and if he can catch up with them he should be able to escort them and see who's attacking and where they are coming from sami does just that catching up with the caravan as it's getting nuked by a band of raiders and upon searching the bodies he finds where they are originating from so he heads over there and shuts down their operations solving the water problem in the area then it's back to big sleek who while still stressing does reward sami and sends him on his way by this point sammy has kind of just had enough of the problems that people constantly make for themselves in the wastes and decides it's time to go off the beaten path some and explore more of the abandoned ruins that litter the region in doing this he uncovers a few interesting places that have long been forgotten and stories of people who have long since died during his time roaming he managed to collect several holotapes belonging to the keller family a family that had been separated as the bombs fell before most of them could make it to the underground bomb shelter one of their brothers managed to secure for his family sami eventually collects all the tapes which gives him the code to access the bunker at the old national guard depot after fighting through an army of security robots and navigating the crumbling remains of the depot he gains access to its fault in the secure bunker where the remains of the keller family resides he then comes across an unassuming office building down to the southwest upon listening to some of the tapes left behind by a man looking for his father a very relatable situation sammy must admit he realizes something is off about the place the dark remains of the large office are full of feral ghouls and it's just all around a very creepy and unsettling area all the while he continues to find tapes from the man searching for his dad who is lugging around some ominous book that creeped the hell out of a lot of people the man eventually found his dad who turned into a ghoul and unfortunately for that man he himself would soon turn into one and his last couple of tapes are just this sharp knife sharp knife to send him to deep temple play and say my words abdul comes again on the feast of the weaker feast uh for the deep temple born again here sammy makes it to the basement where he meets the man on the tapes and a pack of vicious ghouls all surrounding and defending some evil [ __ ] obelisk that sounds like it's breathing or something sammy wastes no time getting the hell out of that building trying to forget whatever was going on in there he then comes across a lone elderly woman who operates a radio station for the caravaneers of the wastes she has a homemade violin she enjoys playing and this is what she uses to get goods from the traders she asks sami for his help though because she knows where she can get possibly the last violin in the world one of her distant relatives lived in a vault nearby that was meant for musicians and that relative brought her ultra rare violin with her that she kept in a special case that could have potentially protected it from the war sammy knows the location of the vault in question and agrees to go check it out for her once he's there though he finds out all about the twisted experiments that were going on down there the overseer had been experimenting with mental conditioning through use of white noise signals that would have brainwashed the vault residents into being unstoppable super soldiers or something like that naturally he lost control of the residents though as the side effects kicked in and his improper practices and procedures resulted in a total collapse of society in the vault residents began literally tearing each other apart and the few same survivors barricaded themselves and presumably died by other means the vault is a dilapidated tomb now filled with monsters instead and sammy has to battle through the haunted halls to find the violin still in its case and in perfect condition he's able to deliver to the grateful agatha and she gives him a frequency to listen to her music whenever he's just feeling lonely out there there's so many examples of segments just like these in fallout 3. little stories of people left behind to be found in the old ruins or sometimes stories of events currently happening like the ghoul scientists i found controlling mutated creatures in a lab based out of an old factory in these segments bethesda likes to sprinkle in just enough context and story to paint a picture for the player and then allows the player's imagination to take it from there it's a very effective formula that bethesda are very well versed in using but by this point of the game sammy has become so unstoppable that even his murder machine companion sharon has been outclassed and sometimes it feels more like sami is protecting sharon and the game has turned into one giant escort quest i eventually left him behind in a ghoul controlled 10 penny tower just because he kept getting slain by albino rad scorpions and deathclaws but by the time sammy had reached max level i had only seen about one third of the dc wasteland and the only dlc i'd hit was broken steel i'd also managed to amass a gigantic stockpile of ammo and stimpaks and a whole arsenal of weapons basically making it so that ammo and health would never be a problem again so without any need to level up or collect supplies exploring quickly got stale i grabbed the explorer perkin began trying to paint the map with as many discovered locations as possible but i began to notice a lot of repeating locations every once in a while i'd find something unique but i never realized in all the years i've been playing this game just how repetitive locations could get because i never forced myself to explore i'd explore when i needed a break from the more populated parts of the map or needed supplies and once i was done hitting the main content that i wanted to hit that play through or i'd had enough ammo and meds to survive three more nuclear wars i'd stop exploring whether you're in the top right part of the map or the bottom left aside from a few areas around recognizable landmarks like megaton tenpenny tower big town and of course downtown dc the locales really begin to blend together with no discernible biomes to help distinguish the regions the interiors suffer a similar problem with the main interior themes being abandoned offices abandoned factories power substations metro stations and tunnels shanty towns vault-tec facilities government buildings stores houses and just generic infrastructure like sewers and access tunnels and there isn't a ton of variety between these interior sets either probably because fallout 3 came out during the era of gray and brown video games that was a meme even during the peak of the trend bethesda did their best with what they gave themselves but it can get stale that's not to say this is an ugly uninspiring game i constantly found myself stopping to appreciate the ironically beautiful destruction and desolation it's sobering and thought-provoking a lot of the time and sometimes it just looks cool the visuals and locations really do a lot to sell me on the world bethesda brought to life which is an impressive accomplishment considering this is a blighted wasteland but it's because they relied so heavily on those themes of survival and isolation that they managed to make it interesting they found a perfect balance of seriousness and silliness to keep one mood from ever being overbearing which is another difficult to achieve thing that i think bethesda nailed quite well the main plot was a nonsensical mess for some reason and aside from three dog and moira brown the game lacks any compelling characters but like any bethesda game the joy of the game is derived from wandering the secret loaded world that they had built and that can be enjoyed without even touching the main story sammy is going to finally settle down at his house in megaton and appreciate his bobblehead collection doing his best to help the people of the queen town survive settling disputes and riding wrongs where he can he may have helped complete his father's life work to bring clean water to the people the wasteland is still a harsh unforgiving and lonely place speaking of harsh unforgiving and lonely places if you liked this video please consider subscribing and sharing with others so i can continue justifying syncing all this time into playing these games and making these videos and while you wait for my next monthly release consider checking out some of the other videos anyways thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Private Sessions

Views: 154,490

Keywords: pc, steam, retrospective, in retrospect, story, rpg, role playing, role playing game, rp game, 2k, 1440p, 60 fps, long-form, long-form analysis, analysis, video game analysis, review, game review, bethesda, fallout 3, fallout, fo3, f3, megaton, rivet city, bos, brotherhood of steel, dc, capital wasteland, dc wasteland, dc ruins, three dog, tenpenny tower

Id: Cv_Vn0MLVXE

Length: 70min 2sec (4202 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020