What Made Fallout 3 One Hell of a Game?

Bethesda's post-apocalyptic RPG remains an unabashed classic, more than a decade and a half on from its launch.

[ZeekQuattro]

For me its the fact that I could put hundreds of hours into it and still find areas I missed in my earlier runs. It was also my first FO and despite what I had to put up with at times such as overall crashs and killing my orginal PS3 with the YLOD it's still my favorite entry to this day.

[-Foxtrot]

Tons of reasons

But my silly little one…hunting for unique weapons and armour

Something Fallout 4 just didn’t really have as much because they replaced most of it with randomly generated customised weapons. Even Elder Scrolla doesn't do it as well.

[Yui_Suzumiya]

I remember during my first playthrough of Fallout 4 back in 2015 I somehow got an automatic combat rifle that shot explosive rounds by defeating a legendary creature. Unfortunately that was the only playthrough I ever got that weapon. It's a shame because it was absolutely epic!

[Vits]

Sense of exploration. That was why older Bethesda games were so good. They might have had glitches, broken mechanics, meh visuals, etc., but they were some of the best around when it came down to the sense of exploration. You could go wherever you wanted and you would find something cool; it might have been a faction, a weapon, an enemy and much more. And that is what they are lacking now. Skyrim still had a lot of that, but Fallout 4 dropped it by focusing on an interconnected world and more randomly generated rewards. Fallout 76 just kept that trend and added multiplayer, and Starfield went even further in killing it by creating a whole universe with parts completely isolated from each other.

[EazyC]

I think the retrospective of Fallout: New Vegas' existence has somewhat diminished the view of Fallout 3 in the eyes of many, but it getting out of the vault in Fallout 3 was, for me, the most remarkable experience I've had in a videogame.

I was 12 when it came out, and I remember I just saw the score it got in Gamemaster magazine (remember those!? 😅), and I just went to the shop and bought it with my pocket money.

Not knowing anything about the game, I thought the whole thing was going to be about growing up in a vault, especially given that I'd spent about 2 hours in it....I literally could.not.believe it when you got out and it was just this wasteland on every direction. Amazing.

[RNTody]

Probably because these Bethesda games were hand crafted so that exploration meant something. Unlike Starfield where this sense of exploration is replaced with the illusion of scope and procedurally generated worlds. A player can always appreciate when they wonder into an unforgettable new encounter by accident or stumble across a new questline that becomes their favourite. Just like a player can always tell when they're ploughing through filler on auto pilot, that they'll forget the moment some resource numbers go up and nothing worth remembering occurred.

I mean, in Fallout 3 you could nuke an entire town as a SIDE QUEST. In The Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim, the Dark Brotherhood questlines were my favourite in any RPGs and you could completely avoid them if you didn't care for them. In The Witcher 3 side quests take you on ridiculously dark and mysterious storylines that are some of the best I've played in RPG history. There's a reason why people still talk about KOTOR to this day. Difference between a developer creating something or just padding a game world with stuff.

[Fist4achin]

There were some side quests that could yld have been developed into an entirely separate game. Some great writing there.

[jznrpg]

No lame settlement base building, actual unique weapons and not hoping to get a good random weapon which I never did. Mostly I got lame weapons in Fallout 4. I used a semiauto .45 rifle almost the entire game because I didn’t get anything better. New Vegas is my favorite between the 2 games but the bugs were worse and 3 had it’s fair share. Better games all around compared to 4

[shinoff2183]

Agreed. Fallout 4 is legit dumbed down.

[mastershredder]

A player base that was dependent on 3d fpp.

People start to expose their entry into fallout right about here. All of the lore, material was already there. 1 and 2 trounce 3 story-wise, but the FPP gameplay is a totally different dynamic and way to experience fallout. FPP made New Vegas a much bette mr way to experience the classic western fallout experience. Also, New Vegas destroys 3 as a survival game, ethics, action consequence simulator. 3 is a goody-goody boyscout simulator in comparison.

[chicken_in_the_corn]

I liked 4, didn't like New Vegas. Would I like this?

[blacktiger]

Wasn't own by Microsoft

[shinoff2183]

F3 and assassins creed 1 came out pretty close together. Bought them at the sane time. I tried ac first and after 3 4 hours nah let me try fallout 3. After 10 minutes I knew what I liked. Even though I'm of the opinion the ogs were better I still like the new fallouts.