It’s pretty safe to say at this juncture that Bethesda doesn’t ‘get’ Fallout, or rather- that they don’t care to get it. They bought the rights so they’ll just keep moulding it into the same dungeon delver that the Elder Scrolls series embodies, another crown jewel of shining Bethesdaland: World of broken, hollow toys.

I’m sorry to those No Mutants Allowed forumposters that I dismissed as embittered nerds all those years ago. You were right, and if Fallout 3 is the first volley of nukes that destroyed this series, then the never-ending barrage of missiles that has repeatedly scorched not just this franchise, but all of the IPs we’ve held so dearly for the past 20+ years is our fault, and it started in places just like this game. Still, I do like Fallout 3. Part of it being my first Fallout venture, I suppose.

The green-tinted aesthetic of the Capital Wasteland may have looked bog standard when surrounded by the brown and grey games of the previous next gen, but I can’t help but find it strangely charming now. DC may not have the depth of storytelling that New Vegas so proudly carries, (before it was all retconned out, obviously) but their toybox is a fun place to explore, every nook and cranny has a little something to ogle at, in true Bethesdaland fashion. It does, ultimately, just work. We’re getting increasingly diminishing returns in this day and age, but it does work.

I can’t redeem its stupidly cinematic narrative or its bizarre rewrites of returning factions. Fallout 2’s critique of big government through the Enclave, only for them to become The Empire in 3 being especially egregious, but Fallout 3 has a way with all the little stories littering the wasteland, complete with all the environmental storytelling skeletons and ruined vistas. It fails utterly even at telling its own larger stories, like whatever they thought Big Town was, but there’s a little glimmer of hope where there isn’t now.

The writing in the wall was there (and it spelled out ‘FUCK YOU’) and I never truly saw it until it was too late. Now it's TV shows for redditors and slot machine games for addicts, and I helped make it happen. It’s all over but the crying, and nobody’s crying but me.

about a week ago i wrote a long multiple paragraph essay on why i disliked Fallout 3. backloggd then proceeded to go down and delete the whole thing. i don't feel like writing it all again so here is the jist:

i really, really disliked my time with Fallout 3, but that's because i spent my time playing it the way i played and enjoyed Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas: i did the main quest.

3's main quest is pretty much universally panned, and while i was aware of some criticisms, i deliberately avoided learning about them so i could experience the game blind. so i went for the main story, doing a bit some exploring and adventuring along the way, but not much. and unfortunately, that means i missed out on most of the genuinely fun and interesting parts of Fallout 3.

perhaps one day i will revisit this game with the wisdom i have attained since playing it. but for now, it goes down as one of my biggest gaming disappointments.

Decided to go back through the Fallout series after watching the TV series, as I’m sure many have.. I’m glad that I did - after playing this years ago on my 360, it’s lost none of its charm.

I was dubious at first with it being streaming only but encountered no issues of frame rates or disconnection. My only gripe was that I couldn’t access the DLC content - that would have been the cherry on the cake.

The music is as always iconic, though I thought there were much more songs then there is. The storyline is great - along with the side missions and stories, I enjoyed it as if it was the first time playing.

It suffered the usual Bethesda style issues - creatures clipping through textures etc. but nothing game breaking at all. The graphics are still good considering the age of the game - I was quite surprised.

Sometimes the movement and gun switching were a bit laggy or janky, but it wasn’t anything too frustrating - just something small I noticed.

Next stop - Vegas!

History has not been kind to this game. Mid and that's probably generous. Shooting galleries full of dumb enemies that satisfyingly explode everywhere sometimes. One of the worst main quests I've played in a game in a while. "Where's my father" you shriek at every NPC in sight as you walk 10km between pitstops to bellow at the next NPC on the checklist. Zero depth, zero nuisance. Choices consist of being the nicest person alive or someone telling you to committ mass genocide for a laugh. Hope you like god awful combat it's here in spades.

Crashed at least 10 times while playing it and had the audacity to dip into the 30fps at times. An experience so mid I couldn't be bothered playing any of the DLC.

The demented child in the series that walked so New Vegas could run. Never again.

For some reason, no matter how hard I try, I can never finish a Bethesda title (I mostly mean 'The Elder Scrolls', I guess).
It's a pattern; I like one at first, I'm pretty immersed, but then the gameplay grows old as the game goes on and I find myself losing interest before the end which before this one had already been the case with Morrowind and Oblivion, and later, years after, with Skyrim + with a standalone mod 'Enderal' that I swear I put like 60-70 hours into and never finished. Something about Fallout 3 made me nearly 100% it though.

After nearly a decade, I decided to revisit Fallout 3 after watching the show, and discovered that the game holds up quite well, with excellent side quests and interesting lore and locations that make up for lackluster combat and some jank (Disclaimer: I did use a light set of mods for QoL / some extra quests).

Just like its sequels, Fallout 3 excels in creating a fantastic gameplay loop - exploring, going to new locations to complete quests, killing everything, and moving on to the next spot. In my opinion, the main quest has a good story, with solid voice acting and good twists (Tranquility Lane and Raven Rock as highlights). The side quests are where the game really shines, with interesting twists, a good spread of moral (or immoral) decisions, and great variety. Although I play as a "good guy," I appreciate the effort to make sure you can be very bad instead. The dialogue is full of opportunities to apply skills to resolve situations, and I like the old-school skill system, though more narrow then perks in later games. My only complaint with quests would be the poor writing at the end of the main quest, which is largely a non-issue with the Broken Steel DLC.

However, a lot of the gameplay loop was greatly improved by the games sequels. Companions are uninteresting, with no quests and little dialogue, (except for those added by mods) and are a constant liability. Although individual locations are quite fun to explore, there's not much motivation to go out of your way to remote corners of the map (a benefit of the radiant quests introduced by later games). The excellent side quests are incredibly difficult to find at times without an online guide. The subway system, though atmospheric, is frustrating to navigate. Combat is a mixed bag, ranging from quite fun when headshotting enemies in epic VATS killshots, to frustrating with tanky enemies who are hard to hit. Managing inventory weight is often annoying, as with most Bethesda games.

At the end of the day, the game still holds up well. Graphics, though dreary and green, still convey the atmosphere quite well, and the gameplay ends up being very fun if not as refined as some later Bethesda games. Fallout 3 is still very worth playing.

I am quite biased when it comes to Fallout 3, because it was both my first shooter and first 18+ game. I was probably around 11 years old, and I vividly remember buying a Paysafe card (anyone remember those?) at 7-11 , so I could buy it behind my parents back. My first playthrough of this game is such a fond memory, as I remember being completely immersed in it, and I couldn't think about anything else when I was at school or when going to bed. Everything about it felt so real to me.

Replaying it now was fun, but it felt like more of a slog towards the end. I thought the main story was a lot more boring than what I did as a kid, except for the Tranquility Lane quest. That one's fun.
The exploration is my favorite part of the game. It's really the side-quests that make this game fun, and just walking around discovering random encounters or grisly locations too. This might be my least favorite Fallout game at this point (tied with 4), but damn if the Capital Wasteland and it's weird ass characters aren't just so cool. Also I want to marry Sierra Petrovita.

A very solid experience. This game does a lot right for me in a way I'm not sure I can explain, other than saying it was a vibe. I enjoy pretty much everything about Fallout, and I find that I really enjoy Bethesda's rpgs. They just hit for me. Maybe it's the scrounging up of loot and slight survival aspects, because full survival modes in their rpgs has always appealed to me. In my opinion this game looks pretty solid, especially on the Series X with the fps boost. My issues with this game are pretty minor, I suppose. The lock picking was a bit irritating, you have to be pretty exact and bobby pins break very easily. The weapon durability doesn't bother me, but the way you have to repair weapons does, and I think they lose durability too fast. I also think a level cap of 20 is way too low. I wanted to keep exploring and questing but it just didn't feel the same without seeing those xp popups and feeling that progression, so i just ended up focusing the main quest and finishing the game. Maybe they didn't want people to be to OP or sumn, but I think it was a wack decision. I'm sure a DLC or better yet mods, can raise it, so I definitely plan to replay the GOTY version on PC. Overall a solid experience that I'd recommended to most.

I played this game and literally just wondered. I was like 11 or so, but I was having a blast as I've never played such a rich open world story before. I fell in love with this game literally. Me and my friend at the time, Brucie, would literally work on a Fallout survival guide because we were such big fans of the game lol. I have a very distinct memory of just feeling like a badass clearing out the groccery store raiders. As I got older and started to understand the mechanics more, I embarked on the campaign and the DLC. Never did finish the main quest, but the Pitt DLC was exceptionally well. I love the branching story paths, the diverse way to complete missions, and the sheer vastness to it all. By 2005, High Definition gaming already set a distinct standard apart from the former six gen. Fallout 3 is the game that raises that standard to the roof. It's honestly a huge achievement that Bethesda was able to pack so much content into a mechanically tight and fun game. It's a masterpiece.

As you may imagine, I started to play Fallout because of the Prime Video show. I always wanted to get into fallout, but I thought that I wouldn't like this type of massive RPGs with huge stories and all that... but oh boy, I was very wrong.

Fallout 3 has become one of my favorite games of all time, only being surpassed by Red Dead 2 and TLOU (and maybe Death Stranding?). I want (and will) play all the other main fallout games, I literally fell in love with this series.

But now, let's get into the actual review of the game. Nowadays, I would say that it kinda aged well, new players will probably get lost a bit with this entry of the series but for the most part I say that it's aight, on Windows 11 I had constant crashes, specially when Alt+Tabbing. I was using the Epic Games version of the game, but AFAIK this happens in the steam and gog versions too.
But apart from that (very minor things imo), this game is amazing. It has a personality that cannot be matched by any other game ever, the story of the vaults and its experiments is just incredible, I've watched tons of videos on YouTube about them, it also has amazing music that fits this era very nicely.
It has a great story, but I think that there aren't that many important decisions. I imagine that this will be different in New Vegas or 4 (I imagine because I haven't played those, lol). I never felt that this was a big deal since it's the first 3D fallout and the story was pretty nice, so no complaints, just letting y'all know.
The game also has like a weird green tint, some people hate it, but other like me love it. I think that it build that type of nuclear wasteland, you know what I mean? I've seen some gameplays of Fallout 4 and I always thought that it was too colorful.
The graphics in general are fine, like it doesn't look that bad. But if you're used to the average AAA from the 2020s then it might be kinda of, annoying I guess? Some places defo look more outdated than others.

But most importantly, I would recommend this game to everyone. As I said earlier, if you're not used to this type of RPGs, I would recommend starting with Fallout 4 or 76 (and yes, 76 is actually fun). Don't expect the game of the century because it's pretty bare bones compared to more modern games, but I had a lot of fun playing it, both the base game and all of its expansions.

Played on the Begin Again modlist on wabbajack.

It was a gunplay was fine even with all the glitches but the story was so trash bad because you aren't given a choice with anything except for the project purity poisoning but you can't join factions, most side quests are immediately forgotten once you finish them and half of the map is so shit to walk through with forcing the player to go underground all the time which are the same looking areas over and over again.

The karma system is trash because if you want to be evil like what I tried to do you literally get no benefit and you get locked out of most because this game depends on the player being a goody two shoes to actually play alot of side quest.