I would like to add my useless two cents about Fallout 3.
I got it today, this morning, and I've played a lot up until just a few minutes ago to take a break and write this. I am honestly impressed with the game-play, by that I mean that I have fun playing it, quite simply said, that's the important part, I do not regret buying it, I will put hundreds of hours into it and I will certainly make my own modifications for it since I made a few including one I publicized for Oblivion, and it's the same engine and all...
But that's the down side for me. It's the exact same engine. Well yes, of course, there are a couple of visuals-focused enhancements and capabilities when compared to Oblivion, but it's still GameBryo, and I don't know if anyone noticed, but going from Morrowind to Oblivion was a HUGE (well, maybe not "huge" but let's say at least very noticeable) step forward for GameBryo's capabilities and enhancements, but this time around I feel like they only adjusted a few things here and there, that in other words going from Oblivion to Fallout 3 is only meh-worthy in comparison to the previous leap we'd seen.
My biggest complaint about Fallout 3, or I should perhaps say about GameBryo are the NPCs/Monsters animations. They simply look like the ones in Oblivion, if not actually less impressive than it. The legs move in such an awkward manner especially when strafing while going forward or backwards too, it's honestly ugly, simply (and it's not just the legs mind you), at least for me, I really had the feeling to play a 2002'ish game. I'd put my hands on fire that those animations were all hand-made, no motion-capture involved, but if I am wrong then it must have been done with amateurs, sorry, I wouldn't buy that such animations were made by professional animators, no way both in Hell and Heaven. But at least outside of the torrible (yeah I just made that word up, it's a combination of horrible and terrible) animations I honestly have nothing to say negative about Fallout 3 (well yes maybe about the textures being a little too bland even on highest settings, but other than that and the animations really there's not much not to be happy about with that game).
I like the music, which by the way I think (correct me if I'm wrong guys) wasn't composed by Jeremy Soule... dammit. But anyway, it's a fitting score, I like it. I like the overall ambiance, and atmosphere especially when I first stepped outside of Vault 101. And to be frank I must say that the old'ish look in the graphics overall will help me not getting too much depressed in playing in a game with such a desolated environment. I mean S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in comparison (which also tempers with the consequences of mankind's toying with nuclear power and containment technologies) is merely a sand square with kids playing on it, Fallout 3 IS the king of displaying a nuclear fallout with precision in its environment and its story telling, with the remnants of the civilization about, it's very well crafted.
And yes I said the "old'ish" look of the graphics, well yes it's still GameBryo, and isn't THAT much different then what it could do in Oblivion (unless we never saw what GB could really do even in Oblivion, but only the developers know for sure). But the thing is... well guys, let's try to imagine the CryEngine 2 rendering the Fallout 3 environment for a moment? Sure the graphics would be "amazing" in quality, more so than they are perhaps for some people already, but I myself wouldn't feel very enthusiastic in playing in a realistically rendered post-apocalyptic environment. It's full of debris, corpses, bones, of images and scenes of destruction and despair, there's lots of grays and browns, full of deformed and oxidized metals laying around, I mean it's so freakin' desolate, as much as the character himself has to be sorry to walk in there. It's not joyful, of course, and that's the goal of Fallout 3, that's a given. So yeah, having it "not so real-looking" sort of alleviates the weight of the context and its visuals.
It makes me remember about something the developers of the next Red Faction game mentioned concerning depressive environments in the long-term play. The next Red Faction, Guerrilla, takes place on Mars, and the developers clearly mentioned that after some play testing they realized that they had to change many of the originally carved story elements to include terra-formed sectors, where for instance the "bad guys" in the game conducted experiments in turning Mars into a new Earth, but the project is still in a primitive state. So the player will have to pass by those artificial forests and lakes and little paradises/oasis even on Mars simply because doing otherwise would mean to play for as long as the campaign lasts in a landscape filled only by red'ish sands and lifeless flat plains of that same stupid sand and the same colored vegetationless mountain ranges over and over each time the guy goes outside. It would be too boring and maybe depressing in the end, it would turn off players from the main story line and they would really wish they'd see more colors.
I haven't gone much further than the Megaton village in Fallout 3 so far, in fact the only place I went to other than that was in a supermarket and I left it about as fast as I entered it. But from what I've seen on the horizon Fallout 3 does impose only that type of desolated environment upon the player. There will be indoors of course, but the outdoor is very heavy on me at least. I walk around, look at it, and outside of the bland textures I can't help but think that such a scenario, such an environment could certainly be real thanks to our apparent pleasure in tempering with destructive powers that can rival those of mother nature, similarly than the feeling S.T.A.L.K.E.R. imposes, but even more fragrant this time around in Fallout 3. The voice overs are great, the sounds are alright (weapons mostly but others too, outside of the voices at least), nothing spectacular though, but it's certainly passable.
But I think that saying that Fallout 3 is NOT an Oblivion with guns is simply trying to analyze the game beyond what it really is. Because to me Fallout 3 IS indeed an Oblivion with guns in its CONCEPT. The character interaction is the exact same, the engine is too, the exploration despite being more rewarding in Fallout 3 is still done the same way, all of the indoors are still locked outside of the outdoors cells. Each time you enter in an indoor location it has to be loaded separately of the outside game world, you wouldn't for example be entering a supermarket which had its entrance/exit doors blow open many years ago, heh, you know guys, in Fallout 3 there has been nuclear blasts about, if not at least shock waves, and the doors are still holding while just around that same supermarket you can see rubbles of a once flourishing city, of concrete blown apart, it doesn't make much sense outside of the engine limitations, when thinking with reality in mind, but when it comes to realizing that the engine did NOT receive much enchantments over Oblivion we shouldn't suddenly expect much differently when compared to it either, at least in terms of how the game world is being loaded and data generated.
So yeah, anyway, I could mention other things to defend my point. But the thing is that Fallout 3 being an Oblivion with guns is NOT a bad thing at all! Who said it would be so anyway? I say don't listen to the "Oblivion with guns" haters, that school of thought is nothing evil. And no this isn't sarcasm. I always liked Oblivion's concepts and the game itself, its game-play, everything about it was great considering the standards that were set during its development time. I'm simply surprised that Fallout 3 isn't looking nor moving nor acting much differently than Oblivion, I expected something more distinct I'd presume, more unique, but in the end really I wonder why I am surprised since I've known that F3 was being developed on the same engine and all, I think I was perhaps expecting too much. But ya' know, in the end, it's great. I do like Fallout 3, I do welcome an Oblivion with guns, honestly guys, anyone here who liked Oblivion wished to see a similarly done game but set in a futuristic or at least current-day context with guns and all, I know I wanted it to happen. And now that I do have exactly that I would complain about it? No way. Yes, it IS surprising, but it's not at the same time. It's tough to explain clearly but as I said and I will repeat it, I like Fallout 3 just the way it is. And it's stable, not one single crash so far, and I've had two or three by the same time when Oblivion came out.
So far from what I've seen I give a solid 8.0/10 to Fallout 3.