Well, I’ve had my hands on the game for a day now, and have played a good 4-5 hours. In a nutshell: So far, so good. Very good infact, though not without some flaws.
The first hour or so of the game – in the Vault – is excellently realised. Dialogue from both the characters, and your own options to reply are excellent. Immediate detractions are the pretty shoddy animations, but I quickly stopped caring. The rest is just so generally strong.
Leaving the Vault, you’re given an impression of the sheer scale of the game. The Capital Wasteland is huge. In the horizon, you’re given a panorama of the decaying ruins of DC, while the immediate surroundings perfectly capture the desolation you’d expect from the post-nuclear world of Fallout. To the left in the distance is a demolished suburban town, to the right is the shanty town of Megaton. They’re clearly the two areas the game wants you to go first, but I decided to hell with it, and turned around, went up the hill, and into the unknown.
Quickly, I ran into a gang of raiders, giving me my first taste of combat outside the relatively easy going time in the vault. And quite simply, it confirmed to me that the combat would be just as interesting as anything in Fallout 1/2. Armed as you are, with a limited amount of ammo, and a pistol, you’ve seriously got to pick your shots. You cannot simply sit back in first person mode blasting away – you’re going to have to use VATS, which is no bad thing, since it’s a joy to use, brilliantly harking back to the aiming system of the originals. You have to think on your feet – no sitting back waiting for death to come when you’re out of action points, you’ve got to keep moving between cover or try to hit back in real time. I recommend you find cover.
As the raiders came up the hill, I tried real time shooting – with my low stats, that just wasn’t an option. Instead, using the nearby road buffer as cover, I got close enough to use VATS with high enough chances of hitting, I decided my best bet was to try slowing them down or removing their weapons. I managed to shoot the weapon out of the hands of the first raider – just in time as he was armed with a flamethrower and getting scarily close. I had enough points for one more shot and aimed at the next’s leg. With no luck, only scoring a glancing hit. Back to running and finding cover then. And that’s how you’ll find the combat really – a combination of tactically choosing shots, and trying to lessen your numerically superior enemies ability to harm you, and it’s excellent. I love the combat.
On an aesthetic level, it’s generally brilliant. First thing I noticed is that anyone who was scared Bethesda would shirk from the violence of the originals is sorely wrong. Enemies exploding into glorious displays of claret, while environments are littered with dismembered bodies in chains and the like. The shanty town of Megaton comes off as being the wild west made of corrugated iron, and is no less for it. And yes. Prostitutes are in, and yes. You can sleep with them. Rejoice.
But it’s perhaps not all good. My first real disappointment was how quickly you find yourself fighting off supermutants. I fought my first at an abandoned outdoor cinema, and the next appeared during the second story quest. Maybe it was just the Brotherhood of Steel troops near by – who also really appeared sooner than I’d like – that made it too easy, but I didn’t really feel that they were a true testament to their place in the canon. The Brotherhood of Steel didn’t really get a decent introduction to be honest. In the first game they are introduced as a distant, reclusive, almost mysterious faction somewhere in the wastes. In this one they appear very quickly, patrolling DC. They’re also a little more gung-ho than the sombre men and women of the first game. This all said, I’m very early in the game really. I don’t really know how either the BoS or Supermutant threat will develop. Despite the paragraph of dismay, I still enjoyed the encounters greatly, and seeing the BoS, power armour and all in all their 3D glory was a genuine thrill. I’ll note, while you can loot the armour of dead BoS, you can’t wear it, and it’s worth nothing yet. Good move there I think.
So there are my first impressions. To emphasise anything above all. I really do feel that it’s an excellent successor to the series. It’s not quite the same on some levels, but I can say without a doubt so far that it’s blown me away.
