Fallout 3

[Martini_Enfield]

I finally finished the game today and thought it was the greatest game I’ve played in many, many years.

Right up until the ending.

[spoiler]After talking Colonel Autumn into surrendering, I volunteered to start up the Purifier on the theory that I had Power Armour and vast quantities of Rad-X and RadAway on me, so no matter what the radiation was like I should still be able to get in, activate the Purifier, and get out without any trouble.

Wrong. As soon as I punched in the code my character keeled over and died from the Radiation and I got the end credits with the whole “Noble Sacrifice” thing.

I reloaded an earlier save and asked Fawkes to do it and he said “Nope. This is your moment. You’re on your own.” This made me very unhappy as it’s clearly the developers thinking up a band-aid solution to avoid a “Happy Ending”. So I got Sarah Lyons to activate the Purifier instead, and she died from the radiation, and I got a “You let someone else be the Hero” ending and then the credits rolled. Seeing as I’d only explored about 40% of the Game World at this time I was very annoyed, since Fallout 2 and Oblivion gave you the option to keep playing after you’d finished the Main Quest.

Also, I was surprised to see that there were no individual endings for each location, as in the previous Fallout games. I felt that kind of made my acheivements in the Wasteland seem a bit… empty, in many ways. I’d been playing on the assumption that I’d get to find out what happened to the various places I’d visited after the game was over.[/spoiler]

Also, the Humour from the first two games didn’t seem to be there- the closest thing I found was probably Moira in Megaton, with her plans for a Wasteland Survival Guide and your assistance thereof.

Still, I’m going to play through again in a fortnight or so after I’ve finished my current project at work, and explore more of the Wasteland before carrying on with the Main Quest.

I’ll be interested to see what sort of Expansions and Mods we see for Fallout 3 in the future, too…

[Skywatcher]

@Hoopy_Frood

You can dump a follower by hiring another one. From what I’ve heard, there are six normal followers, two for each karma alignment (good, neutral, evil). Cross is okay, but there’s a super-mutant named Fawkes who is good-aligned as well and is much better.

The other two followers are Dogmeat and Charon. Charon will follow any alignment, and is apparently one of the best followers out there. Dogmeat will follow any alignment as well, and doesn’t count against your follower count. (So you can have two if Dogmeat is one of them.)

I hear one of the neutral followers is Butch. He will take up residence in Rivet City after 101 is opened for good.

[Headrush042]

Apparently, you can play through the entire game as a 1-year-old.

You don’t get VATS or pipboy or anything until you talk to Simms in Megaton, though. Not sure if your crawl speed ever changes, either.

[Gukumatz]

@Headrush042

Apparently, you can play through the entire game as a 1-year-old.

You don’t get VATS or pipboy or anything until you talk to Simms in Megaton, though. Not sure if your crawl speed ever changes, either.

Your search routes to “Unique Landscapes.”

Were you by any chance reading the Oblivion Mod thread earlier?

[Headrush042]

Woops!

Fallout 3 Escape the vault as a baby.

That should be the right link.

[Hoopy_Frood]

@FinnAgain

To Rivet City? To be honest, just don’t go into any secondary buildings along your way there if you’re really dedicated to getting to RC at the beginning of the game. However, you will almost definitely run into a barricade (or two) and you’ll have to deal with heavily armed Super Mutants and Centaurs, at the very least. Swimming might actually be a good way to get across, but you’d absorb a lot o’ rads. You might want to time a run to Rivet City to coincide with the radiation portion of the Wasteland Survival Guide quest.

Actually, this is exactly what I did. I swam the Potamac all the way to Rivet City and back. I only had two points where I came under attack by super mutants. One was while I was in the water, and I dove under the water and swam by (taking a bit of fire). And the other was after I left the water to get to Rivet city. A patrolling mutie was aiming for me, but he was far away and missed (both times). So I got the bobblehead and was pushing 500 some on the radiation exposure level. A couple swallows of the Potomac got me both fully healed of HP damage and over 600 on the Radiation scale to complete the quest. And I didn’t encounter any other quests.

[cckerberos]

@FinnAgain

For those wondering, Dogmeat:

can only be found in the Scrapyard, and then, only on your first visit. If you visit the Scrapyard (or simply discover it) and then continue to wander on, the game seems to be glitched and Dogmeat will wander away, never to be found again.

Are you sure? That doesn’t match up with my experience.

I first found Dogmeat inside Regulator HQ. I definitely did not meet up with him in the Scrapyard.

[Tabby_Cat]

I must say that it’s grown on me, even though I hadn’t expected it to. VATS takes just enough of the FPS out of it that I don’t mind, and while I like the isometric view more in general (first person view lets you see too little when in enclosed areas) first person view can give gorgeous landscapes, and does well in giving you a sense of space, which wasn’t really there in the original fallouts.

The dialogue is way, way, way worse, though. The humor is almost totally gone. And I hate that the little “town blurbs” aren’t shown in text. No random encounters also takes some of the spice out of travelling… I don’t think twice about popping back to Megaton to stash stuff, which makes a lot of the wasteland… kinda pointless.

[FinnAgain]

@cckerberos

Are you sure? That doesn’t match up with my experience.

I read that it’d been confirmed, but maybe those reports were wrong.
By any chance did you fast travel to the Regulators or did you walk the way and pass by/through the scrapyard on your way?

[cckerberos]

@Kinthalis

Another question for those of you who finished the game already. again, how long did it take you, and how many side quests did you tackle, what percentage of the wasteland do you think you explored, how much do you think was left out there for you to do?

55 hours, and I think I did damn near everything (that was meant for Good players.)

[Headrush042]

@Tabby_Cat

No random encounters also takes some of the spice out of travelling… I don’t think twice about popping back to Megaton to stash stuff, which makes a lot of the wasteland… kinda pointless.

There are random encounters, just not while fast traveling. You have to run everywhere for that (or is that what you meant?).

I do miss having my travel interrupted because I found the Tardis, though.

[Hoopy_Frood]

So anybody ever see the suicidal NPC bug?

I’m in Megaton and had just left the lantern walking toward the bomb, when a body fell from the sky landing practicaly at my feet. It was Nathan (the “I love the Enclave” guy.) Apparently he had fallen or jumped off one of the upper platforms. I decided to reload from a previous save rather than risk him being necessary for a quest later or something. He hasn’t done it since, but I did look around online and found I’m not the only one who has encountered this happening.

[Kinthalis]

I had Moriarty disappear on me, but I found no body. Now Nathan’s wife seems to be gone, and again, no body that I’ve found yet.

Yesterday I was traipsing along the wasteland, got to a bridge and was crossing it when something caught my eye. Black silhouettes against the sky. I immediately thought they were birds as you do seem them occasionally, and they are always above Megaton. Except these “birds” came crashing down to the ground. I headed towards the area where they fell and found carnage.

The “birds” turned out to be pieces of some poor raider. They were blackened and covered in gore. I’m guessing he must have stepped on a mine? That was definitely another “wow, I love this game” moment for me

[control-z]

@Hoopy_Frood

So anybody ever see the suicidal NPC bug?

I’m in Megaton and had just left the lantern walking toward the bomb, when a body fell from the sky landing practicaly at my feet. It was Nathan (the “I love the Enclave” guy.) Apparently he had fallen or jumped off one of the upper platforms. I decided to reload from a previous save rather than risk him being necessary for a quest later or something. He hasn’t done it since, but I did look around online and found I’m not the only one who has encountered this happening.

Sort of. I was in the cave with kids and had met the oldest kid, then went off exploring elsewhere. When I found him again he was dead in the eating area and missing a few limbs. All the others were just walking around like nothing happened…

[Skywatcher]

@Hoopy_Frood

So anybody ever see the suicidal NPC bug?

I saw somebody take a dive off Rivet City’s top platform. Didn’t catch a name.

[Skywatcher]

@Kinthalis

Yesterday I was traipsing along the wasteland, got to a bridge and was crossing it when something caught my eye. Black silhouettes against the sky. I immediately thought they were birds as you do seem them occasionally, and they are always above Megaton. Except these “birds” came crashing down to the ground. I headed towards the area where they fell and found carnage.

The “birds” turned out to be pieces of some poor raider. They were blackened and covered in gore. I’m guessing he must have stepped on a mine? That was definitely another “wow, I love this game” moment for me

There’s sort of Raider bunker just north of the Citadel. I was headed south, going up the ramp when I decided to chuck some grenades in there. All those explosions must have rattled some object in there because all of a sudden this…thing…started fluttering all over inside that bunker! Whatever it was eventually found a hole and came fluttering toward me. Still have no idea what it was because it wouldn’t stop shaking!

[Tamerlane]

@Hoopy_Frood

So anybody ever see the suicidal NPC bug?

In my first exploration of the game ( I only took that character to six before re-starting ) Walter ended up face down in the soup around the bomb. Why? I have no idea. Possibilities:

1.)Bug

[spoiler]2.) I took too long to get around to the leaky water quest and he tried to fix them himself and took a fall.

3.) It was somehow related to Lucas Simms taking one in the back from Burke. I regard this one as unlikely, but it would be cool if lacking Simms to protect them, leading vital citizens started getting picked off by hostile outside forces.[/spoiler]

The fact that I actually found a body made me think at the time it might have been a pre-programmed outcome for screwing off as per the spoiler above. Which is fine. But if this is a common bug, that’s kinda retarded as it breaks both the above quest and removes the ability to trade scrap metal for no good reason.

So I’m fine with it if it was meant to happen, but not if it wasn’t ;).

[TheFifthYear]

I need help. I’m going to spoiler this because I’m pretty close to the end, but if anyone who has either completed the game or is pretty close could help me, I’d appreciate it.

So, I just completed Vault 87 and got taken away by the Enclave. Unfortunately, by the time I got done with Vault 87, I was hanging on by a thread and had gone through all my stimpacks and other aid sources.

So, I’m at the point where President Eden asks me to come to his office, and then Colonel Whatshisname orders everyone to open fire on me. I basically have enough “life” to take one, maybe two hits before I’m dead. Is there any way to improve my health between the end of Vault 87 and the time the Enclave soldiers open up on me, or am I going to have to try to get to President Eden’s office without getting hit? (or, alternatively, go back to a pre-Vault 87 save and fight my way through there again without taking so much damage)?

Any advice?

[Skywatcher]

@Tamerlane

removes the ability to trade scrap metal for no good reason.

There’s someone else interested in taking scrap metal off your hands.He’s in Underworld.

[Mr.Kobayashi]

@TheFifthYear

I need help. I’m going to spoiler this because I’m pretty close to the end, but if anyone who has either completed the game or is pretty close could help me, I’d appreciate it.

So, I just completed Vault 87 and got taken away by the Enclave. Unfortunately, by the time I got done with Vault 87, I was hanging on by a thread and had gone through all my stimpacks and other aid sources.

So, I’m at the point where President Eden asks me to come to his office, and then Colonel Whatshisname orders everyone to open fire on me. I basically have enough “life” to take one, maybe two hits before I’m dead. Is there any way to improve my health between the end of Vault 87 and the time the Enclave soldiers open up on me, or am I going to have to try to get to President Eden’s office without getting hit? (or, alternatively, go back to a pre-Vault 87 save and fight my way through there again without taking so much damage)?

Any advice?

I was in the same situation as you, but I had about 3 stimpacks left. I think you’re a bit screwed, unless you can find Enclave supplies; they occasionally have odd bits of food on their bodies, and crates sometime have stimpacks, but I remember them all being after you meet the Pres. If you have a stealthboy on you try and go the sneaky sneaky route or for one-shot kills (take as many chems as you need, buffout, med-x, psycho are all good here, if you get addicted you can just pay 50 caps to any doc to get rid of all the addictions), there aren’t too many soldiers between you and where you need to go, although they usually come in pairs.