Fast forward to the past two years, where we saw the release of Mass Effect (November 2007) and Fallout 3 (October 2008). When I’d bought my Xbox 360 in January of 2008, Mass Effect was one of the titles I’d purchased with my console, based mostly on what I’d read over at Ars Technica about it. A few weeks later (making for 24 hours of playing time altogether), I’d finished the game. Mass Effect now ranks as one of my favourite titles in my collection.

I specifically mentioned Fallout in the opening paragraph, since the Fallout games are probably my most favourite games of all time. So it was with great anticipation that I awaited the grand arrival of the next installment in that cherished universe; but also with great trepidation. See, I was also guilty of the fear that Fallout 3 would be “Oblivion with guns”, as our friend The Internet so eloquently put it.

The Elder Scrolls games are, in my opinion, wonderful achievements in video gaming… for a while. Then you begin to realise that, apart from the main plot, the game is a vast expanse of repetitiveness and empty interactions with hollow, cardboard characters. Morrowind was later more or less a vessel for compulsively mapping away every last shred of the war fog from the overhead map and determining how to best maximise gain of statistics: hearkening back to the “lawnmowing” of the Might & Magic games where one would systematically walk through the overland map to visit each and every map square, and the metagaming approach cursed by “serious” tabletop game masters everywhere. It becomes less an immersive role-playing experience than a system to be gamed (oh, a pun!) and fully mapped.

If this was what was to become of Fallout 3… utter not the words!

The sad thing is that I haven’t even bothered finishing Fallout 3 since I purchased it in November/December of last year. Maybe I’d walked into the game with expectations that were far too high. In some ways, this may well be true. For example, I’d expected that Fallout 3 would be rid of some of the absolutely mind-bogglingly stupid bugs in the Gamebryo engine, such as the excessively annoying “stuck in a rock” bug; a bug which I have encountered in each game from Morrowind right up to Fallout 3, often costing me a reload into the distant past.

Not that Mass Effect wasn’t without its share of issues. A notable bug I ran across was when you have to race from Kora’s Den to the alleyway in the Wards where the Quarian, Tali’Zorah, is to be killed by a group of assassins. When I arrived at the door to the alleyway and passed through, the cutscene played right on cue, and when I regained control… the alleyway was empty. Somehow, the game had glitched, and had removed an integral plot piece: the Quarian and her would-be assassins. Luckily, I’d saved right before entering the alleyway, and, after reloading from that save point, things proceeded as one would have expected it to.

Away from this meandering tone, then!, and on to business. If one examines the playing styles of Mass Effect and Fallout 3, both games tend to drift towards the action RPG end of the spectrum. Mass Effect is solidly an ARPG, but drifts somewhat more to the classical RPG elements between plot points, effectively giving your character free rein on what to do in the galaxy. Fallout 3 is ostensibly a classic RPG, but is, in actual fact, an ARPG. I think that, to a large degree, this is what ticked me off about FO3, but endeared me to Mass Effect. Fallout 3 should be an RPG: plain and simple. As it is, it’s a twitch-trigger blast-fest with some conversation trees thrown in for good measure and to keep the plot moving (I exaggerate, of course, but it drives the point home, methinks). I never really resonated with any of the characters: they were just text trees with voice acting added to the mix. Another thing which really annoys me in games is the “filler” NPC. They have no agenda, no personality, no goals: nothing, save for the same inane chatter that breaks any semblance of immersion, since you will later know all of their limited one-liners off by heart. The saddest thing? Even though FO1/FO2 also had fillers, their floating text actually had me giggling out loud at times. Fallout 3’s fillers had me cursing out loud at them to shut the hell up already.

Mass Effect, on the other hand, makes it clear from the word “go” that it is a squad-based action RPG. You’re riding it on some cinematic rails, and you’d better be strapped in for one hell of a ride. This is the same approach that Gears of Wars utilised to excessive success, albeit being a purely tactical action title rather than alluding to any semblance of an RPG. If you can talk to an NPC, it’s because they will actually contribute to the storyline (be it the main plot or a side mission). Bioware opted to have filler NPCs be animated furniture: there’s no option to have them spout the same handful of lines at you over and over again, a decision I much prefer to the cookie-cutter responses that invariably get really old really quickly. For a highly plot-driven game, Mass Effect pleasantly surprises with the amount of freedom that you’re given once you finish the introductory portion of the game, when you are inducted into the ranks of the Spectres and are given free rein to roam the galaxy as you wish. This time around, I intend on completing all the side quests (and thus levelling my character up: since I’m now playing on Hardcore difficulty, I anticipate that the boss battles will be utterly sadistic at best) before proceeding with the plot points. The reason for this is that I think the main plot will be experienced so much the better when played through as a cohesive whole, since the pace rapidly picks up in the latter stages of the plot: something you don’t want to break by grinding on a few side quests while the rest of the galaxy waits in baited breath for its imminent extermination.

Unfortunately, this is where Mass Effect falls flat once more. Fallout 3 is an example of a gargantuan undertaking in level design and modelling: every scrap of rusted metal and broken concrete is placed uniquely in the game world, so you’ll never see the same set of features twice. In the sense of conveying an authentic sense of being in a ravaged wasteland, Fallout 3 delivers twice its weight in gold. Mass Effect, on the other hand, suffers from the same problem that the earlier Elder Scrolls games suffered from: after a while you get to know all the scenery building blocks like the back of your hand. While plot points are beautifully mapped out down to the details and contain a vibrant host of characters to interact with, side quests are invariably either situated within identically-shaped and laid out ships/bases/lairs, or on uninhabited, barren, mountainous worlds littered with a few salvageable debris sites, mineral deposits, and thresher maws, which causes the side quest section of the game to become somewhat of an experience point grind. Every now and then you’ll receive a side mission on one of these planets that actually involve speaking to a minor NPC. Unfortunately, these dialog options merely allow you to resolve the side quest in such a fashion so as to alter Mass Effect’s version of an alignment/morality slider the way you want to. Not much immersion value, that is.

Fallout 3 had an enormous amount of potential, but one gets the feeling that in attempting to create such a rich setting, the developers spread themselves a bit thin in the creation process thereof. Had it been smaller and more detailed, though, it would have lost the sense of wandering a desolate wasteland, populated only thinly, and then only in dense concentrations for survival. I do miss the delightfully detailed conversations from the first two games, though…

All in all, I’m happy I bought both games, though. I enjoyed Mass Effect immensely, clocking 24 hours of playing time the first time I saw the main plot through to completion, even with the bugs and sometimes annoying interface elements present in the game. Fallout 3 was also a game I played more or less non-stop for quite some time, something which is only possible for an established fan if they enter the game with a definite mindset of not expecting the earlier games. It’s a completely different beast. The criticisms I’ve raised above are merely my meandering thoughts on the fall of role-playing games as we knew it, but it doesn’t stop it from being a highly enjoyable game. At several points in the game I’d stopped and just thought to myself, “Wow, that’s quite something.”

Apparently a new Fallout is now going to be developed, set in Las Vegas, something that’ll bear closer inspection once the time comes. As for Mass Effect 2: oh my. I can hardly wait!

And that’s that for this monstrosity of a post. We will now resume with our normal programming consisting of F-bombs and tangential trains of thought.

A lot of people on the Tubes are complaining bitterly about Fallout 3: my guess is that it’s partly due to (a) the “hardcore” Fallout fans who will deride any sequel that isn’t exactly like Fallout 1 and 2, and (b) the fact that Bethesda made it, instantly fixating it as Morrowind/Oblivion With Guns in most people’s minds.

(As an aside, there was a particularly humorous Fallout 3 screenshot floating around a while ago, consisting of the starting cell of Oblivion with the Fallout 1/2 status bar tacked onto the bottom.)

I’ve been playing FO3 quite regularly the past few weeks, and while it has its problems, the game is really quite enjoyable. The quests don’t feel quite too Fed-Exy the way Morrowind and Oblivion’s were, and there’s plenty of interesting things to see in the Wasteland (wait, what?).

One problem I ran into which I cannot fathom is a throw-back from Oblivion, which entailed me falling into the inside of a boulder, forcing me to load from an earlier save. This has only happened once, fortunately. Why Bethesda didn’t bother fixing this problem is beyond me, though.

The hyped-up V.A.T.S. system isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either. I perform head-shots more consistently shooting at single pixels than bothering to aim with V.A.T.S. Mostly I use V.A.T.S. in conjunction with my scoped .44 Magnum or sniper rifle to figure out exactly what the hell that little blob moving in the distance is.

Mostly, though, I’m ignoring the bulk of the more long-winded quests, including the main quest, settling for wandering the Wasteland, searching for Interesting Things To Look At and Fun Things To Shoot At.

Yeah, that’s about it for now.

Wait, what?

So yeah, while I did enjoy the game, the ending left me feeling a bit of a “okay, what’s next?” vibe.

Oh well, now to carry on with Fallout 3.

All in all, Gears of War 2 is definitely a nice improvement on the first game, although some of the sections halfway through the game are a bit annoying, especially the Centaur driving section, which caused me a quite a bit of cussin’. Besides that, I’ll definitely have more memorable moments from this installment of Gears than the first game. Co-op mode is also a really cool way of playing the game, since you don’t have to deal with the sometimes idiotic computer player behaviour in your squad!

I still have to properly get into Fallout 3, since I’ve mostly been fucking around not really doing too much except exploring the Wasteland. I’m probably going to reload an earlier save and Do Things Properly.

Fable 2 screenshot

The same applies for Fable 2, but in that game it’s actually a selling point that you can fuck around all you want! Such as murdering an entire village and feeling a warm, evil glow of satisfaction as your character’s appearance becomes oh so wonderfully demonic.

The Hero of Bowerstone? I prefer the title the Demon of Bowerstone, thank you very much!