Five reasons to love Fallout 3

Beginnings and endings

The way that Fallout 3 has players starting out the game is, well, awesome. Learning the movement controls while you crawl around as a baby in the crib is one example of how Bethesda is approaching character creation and tutorials this time around. Another example of character creation is figuring out your starting skills by taking a test called G.O.A.T. during your schooling years. You don't have to take the test if you don't want to and instead can choose to cheat or talk your way out of it altogether. So basically, there's no one screen where you make your character. What players will be doing is playing the first early point of the game as their character growing up and shaping what they'll be like when they first step out of the Vault. That's something we haven't seen any game pull of yet -- so here's hoping.

And then we have around 500 endings waiting for us at the end of the game. Realistically speaking, the endings are of course going to be mutable, where various choices during your trek throughout the game will tweak the eventual ending. Multiple endings can be a lot of fun when they're done right and so we also hope Bethesda pulls this off as well. If they do, we're not really sure when we'll be able to stop playing Fallout 3.

05/08/08