From what I can tell, the enemies do seem to somewhat scale to you as you level up, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was in Oblivion (where I’d still routinely get killed by rats 30+ hours into the game). I just passed hour 20 and hit Level 10, but I’ve been doing so much exploring that I’m only at the part in the story where you fix the transmitter in the Washington Monument - and still, I wasn’t able to plow through guys and I don’t feel overpowered for all of my leveling and buffing up. There’s still that tension and I still need to hide and pop out to VATS guys most of the time. Looks like they really fixed it on this one.
Granted, but F3’s maps tell you the names of doors that lead to other map areas, and you can set waypoints.
Huh? Read the what? I’m sorry I do not understand this word… M AAA NUU AL. Nope, doesn’t ring a bell. It’s Spanish for something, isn’t it?
Glad I’m not the only one.
OK, it’s time for the inevitable question. I’m loving Fallout 3. Never played an RPG before, didn’t think I liked them, turns out I do. Or at least, I like this one.
So what else should I buy for the 360? The only other RPG I’m familiar with on it is Mass Effect. Any other good ideas? I generally don’t like the fantasy genre, so Oblivion may not be the best, but if people tell me a game is really excellent, I’m sure I’ll get over my irrational prejudices against certain settings.
Didn’t get to play much Fallout this weekend, and now I can’t wait to get home from work tonight. It’s funny how I can find more time to play Monday-Thurs than I can Fri-Sun. Stupid social life.
I read the manual cover-to-cover and somehow I still missed that the Pip-Boy was a flashlight until someone on the official forums mentioned it.
I hope someone brings the Darker Nights and Darker Dungeons mods to FO3 to give the game that really creepy feel Oblivion had.
DarN (who made DarNified UI) has already started modding the UI to make the fonts smaller for conversation and inventory. I only just installed the mod; haven’t tried it out yet.
Apparently you missed it in the tutorial as well. 
I caught it, and then promptly forgot.
I spent many hours playing with no indoor flashlight!
I also didn’t use the VATS for a while, as it turns out it does make life easier (and more satisfying!)
VATS sometimes responds very slowly, it will take a second or two to highlight a specific body part or switch enemies. Does anybody else get that? I don’t think it’s a hardware problem, because everything runs nicely outside of VATS.
If it’s anything like Oblivion, you can kill anything at any level by just running backwards and shooting it.
Has anyone figured out the optimum character build yet? The manual gives you the requirements for perks and what they do so it seems easy but time consuming. I don’t have any time to play until Wednesday, never mind break the game.
Seems like your characters stats have no impact on the beginning of the game, which is lame. You’re an uncool nerd regardless of strength, intelligence or charisma. No special 1-intelligence dialogue options either.
Yeah, I’m getting the same thing. Not only does it take a second or two to respond sometimes, but the FPS drop significantly as well. Not always, but often enough to be annoying. And the fps is rock solid 60+ anywhere else, so it’s not a hardware issue. That and the sound (specifically the radio and music) skipping some times are the only technical difficulties I’ve encountered so far, with the exception of 1 crash when leaving Megaton the first time I played.
I’m going to try and use Alchemy on Fallout 3 for the sound issue, I’ve heard that’s worked for some people.
I can see why they had to do that. When the decision was made to have every NPC speak their lines, they would have had to lowered the number of lines in the dialogue.
I’d say you’d need to get lucky…VERY lucky. I’ve had several things whack me in the game so far and I’m level 4 with a small guns specialization, a decent gun in good shape (hunting rifle) and plenty of ammo. Whatever the hell that werewolf thingy is certainly managed to kill me despite backpedaling, shooting, tossing a grenade at it, and using VATs for all it’s worth.
-XT
The automap is bad, but it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen. The worst was the map for Daggerfall. Also, coincidentally, a Bethesda game.
Some things I like.
When using the VATS system, the enemy health reflects the damage that can be done by each shot. Targeting the torso shows that less damage will be done than by shooting the head. Presumably due to armor adjustments.
The gadgets you build use materials that you would reasonably expect to use to build it. Flame thrower? No problem. Go find a gas tank to start with.
Having the option to fast travel to sites or walk it and explore is really nice.
Being able to step somewhere and getting stuck adds realism. Walking through an old rotting house or up in the rocks I should have to watch where I’m putting my feet.
Some things I don’t like.
Nothing human, or nearly so, is going to take a three round burst from an assault rifle to the face and still be interested in fighting.
I could, if I were so inclined, stuff 30 baseball bats into a standard mailbox and still be able to close the door. How about some realism?
Walking into the middle of a quest. In their defense, setting up dialogs for every possible contingency is impractical at best. It still tends to take you out of the game.
When in towns, every non-quest building you can get into is an exact replica of every other building in that town.
My question.
Will I ever be able to get back into Vault 101 without restarting the game? I left my blankie and I really miss it. Yes or no is enough answer.
Yes, so I understand. With the right side quest.
Finn’s Fundamental Findings:
Start with 10 points in intelligence. The extra skill points really come in handy. Take a point off of strength, charisma, luck and endurance. Put them all into agility. You can find an agility bobblehead to get you to 10, and that should be one of the very first things you do.
Tag small guns, lockpick and speech , repair or science. I prefer speech.
Personally, I like to level up lockpick to 90 and get its bobblehead asap. After that, small guns and then repair. Science can be put to about 50 and you won’t miss much. I haven’t found anything that needed higher than 75, and even those computers are very rare. Lockpick is much, much, much more useful in most cases, IMHO. But you should always hack computers, just for the extra HP. Having a high repair skill (or at least a moderate one) allows you to make caps hand over first in the beginning as you can take Rader style crappy armor and repair it until it’s worth quite a bit. I actually encountered a ‘cap bottleneck’ at the beginning of the game as all the merchants ran out of caps before I ran out of loot to sell to them.
Once you hit level 12 or so, you can start putting points into energy weapons. I wouldn’t waste them on big guns. Sneak is okay, but not a priority. Medicine is nice. Explosives should be put to about 35 and then ignored.
The perks you should get: you should bring perception up to 9 (10 with bobblehead) for your eventual use of energy weapons, and bring luck and endurance back up to five. Maybe endurance to six. Sniper, commando and action boy are all required. Bloody mess is fun and the extra 5% damage can mean the difference between killing a foe and almost killing him. Toughness is nice, but not essential and if you’re going to be relying all that much on it in the first place, you’re probably already dead. You should also take the perk that gives you extra skill points to spend each level (I forget its name). Lawbringer is a nice perk to give your character some flavor and earn some extra caps, but it’s a luxury, not a necessity. Obviously take the grim reaper perk without a second thought. Finesse seems to make up for having your luck at only 5. Cyborg is a nifty enough perk. Strong back is great if you’re going to be lugging lots of stuff around. I’ve never taken the better criticals perk, but it might be worth it if you find yourself getting enough critical hits in combat.
Hrm, what else… make sure you store extra copies of weapons in your house so you can easily repair the ones you use. Also make it a habit to collect and store junk. When you start getting schematics, you’ll need all those paint guns, surgical tubes, motorcycle gas tanks, etc… At the very least, check out what you might like to build and make sure you get lots of its components as you go along.
Make finding bobbleheads one of your very first goals, before almost anything else. At least in a few key skills.
Um… oh, and, when you get the Nuka Cola Clear forumla and trade it to the hockey player guy, kill him right afterward. His mask gives you something like 20 or 25 extra action points.
Coincidentally or inexorably?
Just “finished” it, the good-est ending, I think.
Hell fire! What an ending! Liberty Prime! Rar!
How long did it take you, Kobayashi?
You know, I was thinking about this, but didn’t Fallout 2 also have all dialogue spoken?