Mind-Blown: Fallout 3 - warlord5531 Blog - www.GameInformer.com
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Mind-Blown: Fallout 3

       Hello, bloggers and gamers of Game Informer!  This week's post is about one of my favorite games ever, Fallout 3.  This week, I had two main choices: Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.  I adored both of them when I played them, going so far as to discover every location in both games.  But, like always, I couldn't pinpoint what exactly blew my mind about it.  What was the one quality in both games that blew me away.  And again, I have to say that it is the atmosphere.  And since I played Fallout 3 first, there was my blog topic.

       Pointless explanation out of the way, this quality is big for me.  I love the 1950's rock-and-roll, greaser, organized crime, "Forget about it...", Elvis, Soviet Union, Cold War (now I'm just babbling) themes.  It seemed like a strange mix to me to put this era a few hundred years into a post-apocalyptic future, but it worked.  And I love it!

       It's so much more than the game's era, though.  I explained last week my reasoning behind my love for Bioshock: Infinite's atmosphere (still love that pun).  The atmosphere is a compilation of every quality in a video game, and Fallout 3 does this very well.  I'll describe this in detail in the next paragraphs.

       Sticking with my reasons for Bioshock: Infinite, Fallout 3 does great at making the player feel different emotions, mostly terror (Deathclaw) or happiness (when playing the game).  There's also confusion (wondering why anyone would throw a ton of plungers onto a wall) and sadness (realizing that someone important (wink wink) has just died).  And don't forget laughter (some crazy glitch has just thrown a dead guy across the room).  There's also a frantic feeling sometimes (realizing that you're about to die of radiation at the same time that Raiders and the Enclave are attacking).  And, rarely, regret (realizing that you missed some amazing item just because you cared about your good karma).  Fallout 3 does a great job at giving you plenty of emotion to accompany your adventures.

       The era plays a huge part in Fallout 3's atmosphere by giving Fallout a...how do I put it...a personality.  A very distinctive personality.  Bethesda clearly put tons of work into making everything look and feel fifties.  No other series is like Fallout, and Fallout isn't like any other series.  Not only that, but I felt a light-hearted joy when I played Fallout 3.  I always felt like a little child (not Dora) that was eager to explore and enjoy the novelty in everything.  That kept me playing and exploring for a long time, and I've never felt that in any other game.  The game sometimes gave me a crazy urge to destroy everything around me and laugh while doing it, too, but Grand Theft Auto does that to everyone.

       This last reason is similar to the Skyrim's atmosphere.  In Fallout 3, I really felt like an adventurer, someone who goes where he pleases in a land without hope or safety, a hero (or villain) born to do something great.  That's important to a person who's only once been out of his home state and who cares to sit here and type to the community.

       Despite the gameplay, V.A.T.S., story, game world, characters, and a few other qualities, I chose the atmosphere.  It even seems strange to me that I chose the atmosphere of Fallout 3, but with some thought, I've realized that the atmosphere was one of the main reasons I still adore the game so much.  Irradiated or not, the atmosphere of Fallout 3 blew my mind.

       So, that's it for this week.  I hope you liked it.  Share your opinions, comment on anything, or recommend other games or series that I could write about via that little comment box down there.  Read my other "Mind-Blown" posts if you liked this one.  And as always, thanks for reading!