Obsession’s Fallout

I realize I haven’t posted in awhile, and I do apologize. Indeed, my excuse is pretty lame.  Essentially, I’ve just been trying to relax and enjoy the holiday season, and I’ve wanted to play Fallout 3. Work has been extremely stressful as of late, so my first desire hasn’t gone so well so far, but I sure as hell have been playing a hell of a lot of Fallout 3 lately anyway.

It’s hard to describe exactly the kind of hold that Fallout 3 has on me because it hasn’t really happened with a game in a really long time, or at least not nearly as powerfully and lengthy.  The closest it comes is to something like World of Warcraft, which I certainly sank quite a bit of time into (for about 6 months), but I’m not sure I found it nearly as enjoyable when I played and it’s also probably not the best example.

(On the other hand, even now I sometimes think about starting to play World of Warcraft again to take advantage of the past few years of improvements and expansions, so maybe there was something to that game too.  Incidentally, this sort of sounds like an addiction, though strangely I quit the game somewhat abruptly and didn’t really feel like I had lost all that much… so this slight urge to play again is probably due more to my normal gamer curiosity of checking out what’s new rather than an actual addict’s relapse… at least, that’s what I keep telling myself… in any case, a topic for another post.)

Back to the topic at hand, Fallout 3 is, for some reason, completely mesmerizing for me.  I find myself setting “hard stops” for the game that I end up blowing 2-3 hours past without even realizing it.  I have an ever-expanding stack of games from the past few months that have, for the most part, gone unplayed and unfinished through no fault of their own (I’ll get back to you soon, I swear, Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, Mirror’s Edge, and Little Big Planet… not to mention some multiplayer Gears of War 2, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: WT, and the soon to arrive Prince of Persia).

If I’m not working, eating, or sleeping, it’s probably a safe bet that I’m playing Fallout 3, or watching Megan play her own Fallout 3 game (yes, she’s also obsessed).  Both of us have logged over 30 hours into our games, if I’m not mistaken, and we really didn’t start playing it until after I finished the Gears of War 2 campaign around mid-November.  There aren’t too many single-player games that I’ve sunk that much time into such a relatively short amount of time.  My World Map still has tons of unexplored locations I’ve been told about, and a ton of ground I know I just haven’t covered yet.  I haven’t looked at any walkthroughs so I have no idea how far along the main quest we are, but I don’t get the impression that either of us are really closing in on the end either even though we’re am only a few levels from the cap.  My guess is that I’ll end up logging at least 50 hours into the game before completing it (though it could end up being even more depending on just how long it is), and I’ve already been thinking about my plans for another character (though I probably will revisit my “stack” before embarking on that).  That, my friends, is an obsession.

What exactly is it about the game that makes it so damn addictive?  After all, it’s still very buggy, often has strange inconsistencies in its dialogue, and the gameplay seems like it should get repetitive fairly quickly (after all, aren’t you basically just running around switching between VATs and real-time FPS-like gameplay wherever you go?)  Here are some of my thoughts:

• Exploring!  The Wasteland is extremely vast and has lots of interesting locations to visit, including some real-world locations (though I don’t think they’re necessarily accurately depicted, which is probably for the best.)  It also looks extremely nice, even if the color palette isn’t all that beautiful, which brings me to…
• Atmosphere!  It seems like some recent games such as Fallout 3 and Dead Space have actually learned a thing or two from Bioshock in how to actually envelope the player in an environment.  Fallout 3 actually shares a bit with Bioshock in some stylistic senses as well (though the “Fallout” brand has been around for a lot longer), but it’s certainly not just these similar styles that aid the game.  It’s the dust-devils that kick up while wandering the wasteland while the wind whips past you, or the eerie creakiness of the houses you enter, or even the strangely disquieting staticness of the metro stations.  Wherever you go the atmosphere drips all around you.
• Combat!  The VATs system works really well (at least functionally, if not always aesthetically) and adds an element of strategy and a nice counter to the FPS gameplay.  Also like Bioshock, you have lots of options of how you want take out your enemies.  Want to sneak up on them and get an automatic critical attack?  Need to thin out a group with a few grenades or missiles before taking them on one on one?  Place a few mines and then trick them into running over them?  Use VATs to target body parts to slow them down or make them drop their weapons?  Grab a “perk” that will sometimes randomly pop a Magnum-equipped “Mysterious Stranger” during a VATs attack?  Run in guns blazing with just your minigun or flamethrower?  Toss out a mini-nuke and just blow everything up?  While the basics of combat stay the same througout the game, there’s a lot of ways to approach it.  I’ve found myself tweaking and modifying my strategies through the course of the game.
• Freedom! The amount of stuff that you can pick up and do in the game is massive.  Feel like stealing from everyone in town?  Go right ahead.  Lockpick, hack, lie, and kill your way into whatever you want.  Sure, there may be some consequences, but you’re just trying to survive, right?  Tons of items in the game are available for you to pickup and interact with.  Sometimes you can use that stuff to create new weapons and such at a work bench, but even the junk that has no use can still be used as a weapon if you really want!  The game definitely gives you a good sense of giving you lots of freedom to make the choices you want to make.
• Leveling! To be honest, I actually often find myself surprised that I’ve gained a level.  It isn’t something that I keep very close tabs on, and isn’t even something that I try and work towards in a typical session (which is, in my opinion, a huge difference from WoW).  Still, when you do level it’s hard not to be excited about the new abilities and “perks” that you’re allowed to pick from.  As in many games, the sense of becoming more powerful as you progress through the game is a potent feedback loop.  Bethesda even worked on a somewhat complicated system that keeps areas that you’ve already visited at lower levels at that same level even if you return much later in the game so that you can actually test your power.  Even when I go to new areas now with much tougher enemies I feel a lot more powerful than I did earlier in the game, able to hit enemies from further away with more powerful weapons while hiding, for instance.

There’s obviously other a lot of other things that go into it, such as mostly smoothly running gorgeous graphics with a good draw-distance that reinforces the “go anywhere!” mentality, but I think these are probably the most powerful aspects of the game.

What do others think?  Are Megan and I crazy?  Is our obsession going to come to an end soon?  For the sake of all those poor other games, I hope so, but I’m loving every minute of it while it lasts.