Did you feel that the ending wasn’t satisfying? Did you find yourself becoming bored at higher levels? Here are your answers.
Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic RPG, Fallout 3, is an amazing game to be sure, garnering near universal praise and game of the year honors from such outlets as Gamasutra and IGN. Just like every other game out there, however, it’s by no means perfect and for fans of the series, Bethesda has a lot of questions to answer. The most common of which being, “What was up with that ending?” MTV’s Patrick Klepek took three of these common grievances and laid them out to Fallout 3 executive producer Todd Howard.
Criticism the first is an odd one, being that when judged as a first-person shooter, Fallout 3 comes up short. Howard’s response is curt and to the point: “Agreed.” I hadn’t heard of this one myself, as comparing Fallout 3 to Halo would be like comparing Grand Theft Auto IV to Gran Turismo. Just because you get to race cars in the two games, it doesn’t mean that they should be held to the same standards.
The second criticism is one that a lot of players feel quite strongly about, which is that the ending isn’t very satisfying and, when compared to previous Fallout titles, it doesn’t quite stack up. “Based on the feedback I’ve seen, most people are pissed off that it ends, not the ‘ending’ itself,” levels Howard. “That’s another thing we’re changing in [“Broken Steel,” the third piece of downloadable content due in March]. We really underestimated how many people would want to keep playing, so that’s probably the last time we’ll do something like that.”
For those unaware, completing Fallout 3 renders your current game essentially useless as you can no longer continuing playing with that character unless you made sure to hold on to a previous save. Reversing this decision via downloadable content opens up a whole other can of worms, specifically for PlayStation 3 owners. While Xbox 360 players have downloadable content to look forward to and PC users can easily modify their game to go around the ending, PlayStation 3 fans are essentially boned with neither option being made available to them. To be fair, its not as though these gamers weren’t given proper warning, as word came as early as July 2008 that Fallout 3 DLC would not be made available for the PlayStation 3 edition of the game.
The final criticism is that V.A.T.S, the auto-targeting system found within the game, is boring once your accuracy rating makes for easy head shots later in the game. Howard responds, “Depends on what you find entertaining. I like to blow people’s heads off, so, well, it never got old for me.”
Agreed.
