So time for the final part of this blog series; environment.
So we've talked about planning, art, story and characters so what else is needed to complete a game? Environments. Games would be pretty dull if you were just running around a black background for the whole thing. Whatever genre of game you're playing, there will be an environment and a different type depending on what game it is you're playing.
Lets take a look at how the genre of the game can affect an environment. In first person shooters such as Call of Duty there's a very realistic environment created, mostly battlefields. This is because games like CoD are meant to feel 'real', like you're actually in a war thus the realistic environments are created.
First person shooting in CoD, a typical village warzone
The Ratchet and Clank games are adventure platformer games and their environments are completely different. They are more magical, filled with things that aren't real like floating platforms and mystical creatures and this fits in with the genre of the game they are set in, the environment helps to convey the idea of more of an adventure and not a fight for survival like that of CoD.
The futuristic Metropolis of Ratchet and Clank
Environments are so important because they really set the mood for a game. Imagine playing Call of Duty in Ratchet and Clank's environment and vice versa? It would completely change everything about the game and the characters obviously wouldn't fit into the environment at all. This is why it's so important to make sure you make the right environment when you make a game because it can disrupt gameplay if it isn't right and the emotion of the game might fade.
Because of general fps being very realistic though this doesn't mean that some fps have switched it up and made a new environment for their game for example, Halo. Halo is an fps war game but it's set in space so there's anti gravity, shuttlepads for space ships and a more fantasy feel to environment yet it's still an fps game. This is because the game is written differently, it has different characters and a different story so the environment has to fit in with this, despite it being an fps. See, we can clearly see now that planning, characters, story, art and environment all tie into each other in order to make a successful game.
The more futuristic environments of Halo
So how do level designers construct and decorate the environment to assist navigation through the level? Well picking a suitable genre is one thing but staying true to the story and character is the main thing, there's no point in trying to put characters in an environment that clearly isn't made for them as the game won't flow properly, people won't be able to connect to the characters and they will feel out of place thus making the game clunky and unenjoyable, environment plays such a huge role in the experience of a game that it has to be done right. The environment will influence the atmosphere of the game again by creating a world that the characters fit into, a good experience will be where everything links together and makes sense that those characters are in that environment. There is a balance between realism and stylisation supporting the player's beliefs in the game world but as I keep saying it will depend on the game itself and the characters, if the characters fit into their world then the player will enjoy them more.
A game I really liked with a brilliant environment was the Batman game Arkham City which was set in a massive city prison in Arkham that Batman is trapped in. It is huge and surrounded by freezing water, patrolled by thugs and Batman's most well known enemies and filled with iconic places such as Penguin's Iceberg Lounge and Poison Ivy's poisonous plants. This is what makes it so much fun to play in; it's exactly where you'd expect Batman to be.
The eeriness of Arkham City
The game took a dark turn, much like some of the darker Batman comics and the environment felt so cold and cruel, it just fitted in so perfectly with the whole storyline of the game, Batman tracking down Joker before he killed everyone on the island along with the ongoing feud between his and Penguin's factions, and Hugo Strange's cruel and calculating words to Batman:
"How does it feel Wayne, to stand on the very stones that ran with your parents blood? Do you feel sad? Full of rage? Or does that outfit help bury your feelings? Hiding your true self, you're a truly extraordinary specimen I look forward to breaking you."
This being a recording left by Strange over the spot where Bruce's parents were shot dead in crime alley whilst Bruce mourns for their lost over a single rose.
Strange's words at Crime Alley
The darkness of the story fits in so well with the decrepit environment Batman is placed in and all the characters play into the story perfectly, everything is mapped out so well, Riddler's trophies scattered around the most grotesque parts of Arkham City and Mr Freeze trapped in the iciest ruins of it, it all weaves together so well and makes for a brilliant game, all down to how well the characters fitted into their environment.
So all in all a great game will come down to environment but also how well it will intertwine with the story, art style and characters, you need all of them working together in order to create an enjoyable, believable game.
I realised I'd accidentally skipped out on part two of this 4-parter blog series. Whoops. I must have been excited to cry over the story and characters of Mass Effect a little too much.
Anyway lets back track a bit so we can cover the second part of this series; art direction for games.
Art direction is incredibly important when it comes to creating an original game, the style in which we play a game can really make something original and interesting to play. If an art style is overused for example, the same style used in a lot of first person shooters then games will often look a lot like each other and will fail to have a 'wow' factor when it comes to art direction but a game like Borderlands where cellshading was used for all the game makes everything look original and interesting, something new and exciting to experience as well as making it easy to differentiate between different kinds of games.
Borderland's iconic cell shading style
This is all down to art direction. The art director has an incredibly difficult job of pretty much deciding what a game will look like as a whole and they can make it as unoriginal or original as they see fit to. So when the art director of Borderlands created the art style they made it original. Borderlands is another first person shooter but it's art style makes it very easy to tell what game it is unlike a lot of other first person shooters such as Call of Duty and Battlefield, if you were shown screenshots from these three games then it'd be very easy to tell which one was Borderlands but much more difficult to decide which was Call of Duty and which was Battlefield unless you were a hardcore fan of the two. Borderlands' art style is what makes it stand out.
A little more difficult to tell which is which, right?
An art director is described as 'the captain of the ship' because they pretty much decide what a game will look like, a very difficult job indeed taking up a lot of hours. The art director decides what goes into a game, the style, the characters, the assets, everything is decided by them and art is what makes the game quite honestly, it's how the player will see it and ultimately how it is advertised. Games with brilliant art direction, stunning views during gameplay and really amazing character designs that are all memorable are down to the art director so we really have to thank art directors out there for making our favourite games possible.
Art directors have many people working under them, the 'game artists', yes what I'm aspiring to be who will help to create the art director's visions. There's also 'gurus' who are like art directors but don't manage people, instead they mentor and tutor them. It's down to all these people working together that we can have aesthetically pleasing games like the ones we play today.
So what it really comes down to is creating an original art style for your game. I've talked about Borderlands, how about some other iconic art styles? Well there's the post-apocalyptic era of the Fallout series, art direction mostly comes down to the weird and wonderful assets we see in the game, Iguana on a stick anyone? Wanna wash that down with some Nuka Cola Quantum? See, these are such memorable items from the series and are so iconic to Fallout as a whole so thank you art director of Fallout, you're the reason I have five jars of bottlecaps in my room. Yes I'm being serious.
Some tasty Nuka Cola Quantum
Pokemon is another one with a very clear anime style. Ok so actually there's a lot of games with the 'anime' art style but Pokemon is so original probably because of the battle system which has been the same in almost all main Pokemon games. It's so iconic 'fight, bag, Pokemon and run' are just something you'll expect to always see when you play a Pokemon game now.
The iconic Pokemon battle system
I'll pick one more to talk about, how about a little twist? I'm a huge fan of the Youtubers 'Smosh' and recently they created a game called 'Super Head Esploder x'. While I have yet to play this game (due to having no iPod, iPad or iPhone) you'll be able to tell it's a Smosh game in a heart beat. Anthony Padilla from Smosh did most of the coding for the game and we all know he's really big on designing as well, he's designed a variety of websites. So what makes Super Head Esploder X so original? Well it's done in an 8-bit style to commemorate the era of gaming the boys grew up with as well as featuring a number of characters iconic to the Smosh videos, you even play as Billy, one of Ian Hecox's characters. So it's very easy to spot that this is a Smosh game because of the art style it's done in and the iconic characters.
Iconic Smosh characters
So to wrap it up, I believe that being an art director is a creative role, they have to manage people and map out what they think a game should look like, they can choose whether or not to make it original or generic and typical like many previous games, it's up to them. If I was to become an art director in the future I'd really need to get my creative juices flowing a lot more than they are now, I'd need to delve into the depths of imagination, creating an art style that is original and can put a game in the best perspective possible, I think this is why games like Borderlands is so big to this day, it's art style.
So the importance of characters is something gaming companies are beginning to think about more and more these days because the market of shooting games with gorgeous graphics but no story isn't going to attract all people quite frankly.
This is right up my street.
I am so hardcore about characters I really couldn't care about the graphics and effects of games.
Ok so that's not entirely true, of course having good graphics, sound and effects will make a game aesthetically pleasing and beautiful to play, where you will stand around for 10 minutes just panning the camera around the character and admiring the view, I'm pretty sure we're all guilty of this but if a game is beautiful but has no characters to fall in love with or a story to rip you apart then is it really worth playing?
After being emotionally attached to Ezio for three games you witness his death
I actually don't think so, this is why I never really invested in the Call of Duty series, they care about the multiplayer more than anything so the actual campaign storylines are incredibly short, I remember my dad finished it in a couple of days, and my dad's the kind of person who has been trying to finish the main storyline of Fallout 3 for three years now. People have said that Call of Duty has been the same game since the first Modern Warefare but with better graphics, this is why I never played it properly. When I spend £40 on a game I want one that will give me at least 40 hours of gameplay with an emotional story and characters who I can truly fall in love with. This is why I am emotionally attached to Fallout, Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed, even Uncharted, which isn't that long but has such an emotional story and gorgeous characters that it's 100% worth it.
Where's the real story CoD?
So what is it about these games that I love and why I am emotionally invested in them? Well take a movie for example, how about Star Wars (the original three of course)? Three movies of the same characters and you'll eventually grow attached to them, you'll feel such sadness when Luke finds out Darth Vader is his father (spoiler alert! Wait..) and when Vader aids Luke against the the Emperor, losing his own life I'm sure many people have cried over it. It's exactly the same in games, if you find a game that will make you cry because you just love the characters so much then you're doing characters and story right. Go to Tumblr and you'll find thousands of blogs crying over fictional characters (including mine..). So Mass Effect has to be one of the most emotionally draining series I've ever played. Spoilers ahead for a few games by the way.
This make anyone tear up?
Mass Effect is a trilogy and you play as your own Commander Shepard for all three games. In Mass Effect 1, about 15 minutes into it your Turian friend Nihlus is shot dead by the main antagonist of the game, Saren. This is just a big kick in the head for all of the deaths that you will face for the rest of the Mass Effect series, and God did some of those death's kill me. You'll build friendships, close bonds, even romantic relationships with some characters and if they don't die then rest assured Shepard will die instead at the end of Mass Effect 3. Oh yes the 150+ hours you've invested in this trilogy all for Shepard to die. Nice. But as I was saying, the way you will grow emotionally attached to these fictional characters is remarkable, I remember having to play a bunch of side quests which took me hours just because I wanted enough paragon points so that Tali wouldn't die during her quest in Mass Effect 3, that's how much I loved the characters, I would go out of my way to ensure they survived for as long as they could. Apart from Miranda. Because I accidentally didn't warn her about Kai Leng. And I'd been dragging my Mass Effect 3 playthrough for way too long at this point. Sorry Miranda, I'll make sure you survive in my new playthrough, I have more respect for you now that I've seen you die.
"Had to be me, someone else might have gotten it wrong"
Mass Effect is just one game, the same type of emotions will apply to Fallout when you watch dad die after sacrificing his own life for you, in Assassin's Creed where you play as Ezio Auditore from his birth, witnessing the death of his brothers and father all the way till his death after he retired as an assassin through three games and Uncharted where you watch your rival Eddy die at the hands of the descendent monsters. If I can fall in love with a game's story and it's characters then you can tell I will be invested in the series for a long time. So yes, story and characters is so important to me, it's what makes me love the games I love.
"Run."
So this is down to a few things, acting and writing of the characters. If an actor can give life to a wonderful script full of emotion then you will have some wonderful characters that people will instantly fall in love with. If the characters look awesome then even better, I'm sure people have fallen for Garrus Vakarian solely because of the scars on his face.
"The scars have started to fade, I know they drove you wild."
For me I find emotional stories irresistible. If I can fall in love with characters and begin to feel physically sad about the story of a fictional game then I will play it. Haha. All in all if I can fall in love with a game I will never let go of the characters and story, I don't know if this is a mental problem haha but if it is I don't care, because games are my getaway.
So from what I've been blogging about previously, we know that games have been around for a long time now but how have they changed? Better yet, have they even changed at all? Many people will argue that Pacman isn't playing the same game as Super Smash Brothers Brawl but honestly, are the games we play today any different to the first ones? Aside from the graphics and visuals of today's games the idea behind them is the same. There's always a goal you have to reach at the end of a game, levels you have to get to, collecting items, beating your enemies and telling a story, most games have this so what's so different about them all? Design documents play a big part in the creation of games. Yes, all games have the same sense of direction as I described before but all games ARE different, there will be different things that go into a game to make it, and a design document is the first place to start. The design document lists the initial ideas, maps out characters, designs and story and the people creating the game can act upon this to create something as original or unoriginal as possible. If game artists didn't have a design document then games would be much more 'clunky' and rushed. This is what really makes games different, it depends on how a game is mapped out and created that will make it different and exceptional to other games. If you think about Pacman it has some simple steps; you act as a character that has to avoid being attacked by enemies and you can pick up items to aid you. Ok so we have the main gameplay here so how is this different to other games? Lets have a look. In Spyro the Dragon you are on a quest to defeat Gnasty Gnorc but whilst doing this you have to collect gems and dragon eggs as well as defeating enemies. Sounds like a very similar gameplay style to Pacman actually. But the way the game was made, the different art style, playing full on instead of side scrolling, this is what made Spyro so different and what makes other games so different. The gameplay style may be the same but story applies.
Is Spyro really that different to Pacman?
"The player is paramount" is something all game designers must take into account. When creating a game you must do what the player wants, something they will actually want to play, creativity is key and creating a game that is beautiful visually and emotionally is what really makes a game stand out to everything else, gameplay can be the same but having an emotional story, loveable characters and gorgeous surroundings is what will make something worth playing. Pacman is such an iconic game because of how retro it is, but something like Bodycount has beautiful colours and interesting levels, Fallout 3 is beautiful in it's own way, destroyed and deteriorated as it's theme and you will grow to adore the surroundings and the snow of Assassin's Creed III gives it the edge to a beautiful level.
The beauty of snow in Assassin's Creed III
Randy Pitchford, the president and director of Gearbox states his job is to “worry about a little bit of everything, mainly business and our relationship with our business partners, along with the quality of our games”. This proves that quality is what makes a game special as well as listening to your audience. If you are creating a game then you need to listen to your fans, if you want something that will be appreciated then it's best to listen to your fans. "Video games probably represent an emerging new media, a new design field, and possibly a new art form. All of these are worthy of study." Games are something within themselves, they are loved by this generation because we grew up with them and the way games have developed has been an inspiring journey for us all, something to aspire to because of how far we have come and how fast it has happened, different genres of games emerging, different art styles, different games and a different story each time, but the gameplay pretty much remains the same, I think we like this so much because it is what we have grown up with, people don't normally like change but having all these new games but with the same goal is something people love. The games themselves don't particularly change but different ways to play it, styles and characters are what differentiates them all.
Garrus Vakarian, loved by most Mass Effect fans
So all in all what is meant by gameplay? Gameplay is what is played in the game and how you play it, there's different types of gameplay, from rpgs and mmos to simulations but they all have a goal at the end of them, this is what makes them games. Different design principles are needed for different game genres art-wise but the goal will stay the same and the leading companies, Ubisoft, Naughty Dog Inc, Bethesda and the rest all know that listening to their audiences and giving them something they are used to, whether it be the VATS system of Fallout or the charm of playing as Nathan Drake in Uncharted, this is what their players look for in their games. It is not down to a single person but the whole team who develop the game as well as the audience that play their games and tell them what they want. What's important to me in a game? For me personally it's the story, if I can grow emotionally attached to the characters then you'll know I have enjoyed a game. Beautiful graphics and fun gameplay will help but I will always love the story of gaming more than anything. Sources used: http://www.paranoidproductions.com/gamedesign/excerpts.html http://www.randomterrain.com/game-design.html http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2675/into_the_transmission_randy_.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2156/game_design_theory__practice_.php http://www.theoryoffun.com/excerpt.shtml
So I'm half way into the second term now, and I feel I am improving and doing a lot better than I was last term at least.
Visual Art:
Starting life drawing has been wonderful for me as I absolutely love it, it was most likely what got me onto this course in the first place so doing it again has been a joy. I've started using charcoal and chalk for the first time properly, which I've hated in the past but think I am finally getting used to now and I have a fun time using it to shade.
Charcoal and chalk on mid-tone paper
Quick pencil sketches
Charcoal on white paper
Using a rubber on white paper covered with charcoal
Charcoal drawings
We also did some contour drawings, first of still life, which I did of people I saw whilst in Costa.
A few of the contour drawings from Costa
The week after that we did some contour drawings of street scenes around Leicester and then did an ink wash of them using Indian Ink. I think these were both a lot of fun, I've never done ink washes before but it was pretty simple to pick up and really brought life to my contour drawings!
One of my ink wash pictures in the Leicester market
After that we started on a vehicle design project. This really intimidated me at first since I have so much trouble drawing vehicles and the first vehicle I designed The Albatross, a battleship based off birds I didn't much like.
My first vehicle, The Albatross
So I went back and did a new design of a futuristic flying suit for two people connected through breather tubes on their masks and I liked this design a lot more.
My second vehicle, the Dragon Fly-Suit
We then had to make presentation boards to sell the vehicle, I did a detailed one describing how the suit worked and a more propaganda styled one as it is meant to be used by the military.
The detailed presentation board
The propaganda presentation board
Finally, the last thing we had to do was make a model of our vehicle so I bought a Barbie doll from the £1 store and modeled my suit over it using Fimo Clay. It took longer than I expected because I had to do a lot of waiting for the clay, paint and glue to dry but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, the only thing I don't like is the felt on the wings since I couldn't get it to stick in the style it's meant to be and also I ran out of felt so just had to make do with what I had.
My model of the Dragon Fly-Suit
3D Game Production
We've only had one project handed in thus far in this term and that was to model a Ford Transit van. I found this quite boring as vans aren't very interesting and the modelling took me way longer than I had wanted it to as I had a lot of trouble with the front of the van but Ilearnt a lot of new skills to use in 3DS Max during this project which have made me understand everything better for example, I learnt that by creating planes and then holding shift and dragging them allowed you to create new planes coming off the original plane, a brilliant feature that without it I wouldn't have been able to model my van as well as I managed to and also by hitting the enter key with the selected faces you want to unwrap during the unwrapping process maps out everything for you smoothly, something that would have helped me greatly because of my terrible unwrapping last term. So even though the project was boring, I'm glad we did it because I learnt these new skills.
Final renders of the transit van
We are now currently almost 2 weeks into out month-long second project of the term which is our first character project! We have to model a gladiator which should be interesting, I'm almost finished with the model of mine, I just want to add some more clothes to him and give him a weapon. We also have to use pelt mapping to unwrap these which we have yet to learn so that should be interesting. This was my first attempt at my gladiator's face, something which scared me greatly as well as scaring a number of other people so enjoy it!
Some scary face modelling
Critical Studies
So far critical studies this term has all been about presentations, which is why I've been so quiet on my blog! We had to write a review on a game of our choice and then make a presentation and present it to the rest of our groups. I chose Fallout 3 and did a very long review on it (because I love it so much!) so when it came to condensing it into a powerpoint I had a lot of trouble. The first time I presented I'll admit that I didn't practice it at all and it was pretty much thrown together at the last minute (sorry Mike!) I didn't pass the first presentation as I ran over the five minute time, had way too much text and not enough images, sat down instead of standing up and didn't look at my audience. I couldn't afford to fail the second time we redid this presentation so I fixed mine up, taking out all of the text and putting in just images, having around 40 slides of images and then set up a five minute timer and practiced what I was going to say and keeping it under five minutes for hours for around a week before we redid the presentation. When it came to presenting it I think I did a ton better, I haven't had my feedback yet but I stood up this time, looked at my audience and pointed at what I was talking about a lot of the time, knew exactly what I was saying, made my audience laugh a couple of times and pretty much was exactly five minutes. I truly hope I pass this time because I put a lot of practice into the redo! I also was told I talk about hot characters in games a lot. Heh.
So so far this term has been incredibly challenging, I really don't do much more than work, on my days off I normally get up and start working straight away and work into the late hours, it's rare for me to have a day where I'm not working for most of it, the only exceptions I can think of so far have been when I went back home for a weekend and took my sister to see Wreck it Ralph (a brilliant film by the way, go and watch it!) and the celebratory drinkup me and my friends had at the Speekeasy game bar in town after handing our Transit Vans in, other than that I more or less work solidly for most of the day, I'm looking forward to the end of this term and handing in all of the hard work I've done really, I truly hope the hours will pay off!
“What are you playing?” I sat downstairs in
the living room watching my dad play yet another cheap game he’d picked up off
one of his friends. What I could see on the screen was a first person shooter,
my dad was facing off against some guy that looked like a half naked thug at
the top of a half-destroyed building. It was sunset, this is what I can remember
most about this. Every so often the game would pause and my dad would zoom in
and target certain parts of the ‘raider’s’ body and the game would revert into
slow-mo as he shot the raider.
“Fallout 3.” My dad responds.
“Your health is really low.” I mention to
him.
“I know, but if I eat anything I’ll get
radiation poisoning and I can’t fast travel because I can see the enemy.”
WHAT?! Not gonna lie, this game actually
scared me after watching this. It looked so lonely and very difficult to
survive. Once I saw him face off against a bunch of feral ghouls in an
abandoned metro station I said I was never gonna play this game myself, it
scared me too much for me to actually give it a go.
-
-
-
About a year later my friend was bragging
about how many PS3 trophies he had acquired. The amount of trophies I had
looked pretty poor compared to his but I had no new games to play that would
give me any new trophies. Apart from one. At the beginning of PS3’s run not all
games had trophies in them, but I knew Fallout 3 did. I had so much doubt about
getting anywhere in this game when I put it into my PS3, I almost had to laugh
at myself for even trying but God was I wrong.
Fallout 3 is such a glorious game, I can’t
even begin to express how much I love it, but I’ll give it a go.
The first level you play is you being born.
Haha yeah seriously. You’re born to a scientist, James played by Liam Neeson,
because when Bethesda get voice actors they go all out and get some goddamn
good ones. Your mother, Catherine is never shown but you can hear her voice and
she’s ecstatic that you’re finally born. This level is all about your character
creation, you choose a name. I remember replaying Fallout 3 recently when me
and my best friend Siti had a gaming day (as you can probably guess, a day of
us just playing games, and eating cheese and crackers because we always do
this) and the default name for your character (known as the Lone Wanderer) is
Player Name.
“We’ve been thinking about your name, what
do you think of…” Dad starts.
“What do you think of Player Name?” Siti
laughs.
Me and her find the stupidest things the funniest, so I played the game
as a Lone Wanderer called Player Name. But that wasn’t the first time I played
Fallout 3, the first time I played it I was called ‘Gina’ because I’m one of
those sad people who likes to pretend they’re actually in the game. After being
named you have a character creation screen to see ‘what you’ll look like when
you’re all grown up.’ Ok as much as I love Fallout the character creation is
simply awful. No really REALLY awful. It’s like they didn’t even try, and in
Fallout New Vegas, the game that came out a few years after 3 the character
creation was exactly the same. You didn’t even try Bethesda. But anyway, the
reason the character creation is so awful is because whatever you do your
character will probably still look ugly anyway, especially female characters
because the hairstyles are all terrible. In the end I went for the only decent
female hairstyle ‘Wendy the Welder’ which is pretty much a messy ponytail and
chose a Caucasian skin tone (there’s very limited skin tones as well, kind of
like in The Sims). Now as if this isn’t bad enough, you spend all this time
trying to make your character look decent and then you spend almost the whole
game in first person mode, and wearing power armor which means you can’t even
see your character's face for more or less the entire game. So the awful
character creation pretty much leads to a waste of time. As if this wasn’t bad
enough your mum dies after you’re born, a lovely start to the game. I can see
where this is going already.
This is the kind of character creation you have to deal with
Anyway the next level is when you’re a
toddler. Dad teaches you your mum’s favourite bible quote Revelation 21:6 ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and
the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of
life freely.’ This bible quote plays such an important part in the game. It’s
mum’s favourite quote and it’s about water, giving water to everyone for no
charge, for free. Now you were born into the year 2277, 200 years after the
apocalyptic nuclear war of 2077 where the world was destroyed. You were from
one of the many families that fled to the many underground vaults when the
bombs hit. Vault 101. For 200 years the vault has never been opened, or so
you’re led to believe for most of the game. No one ever enters or leaves the
vault, this is what the Vault Overseer Alphonse tells everyone. Outside the
vault is full of savages, raiders that will kill on-sight, experimented humans
infected by the FEV virus and are now mindless killing-machine supermutants,
mutated animals and insects, ghouls who are people mutated from radiation, some
civilised and the feral ones that have lost all sense of humanity, as well as
the regular human survivors who have tried to make a home in the wasteland. Now
this is where the water plays a big role, everything in the Wasteland is
irradiated, including the water. Dad wants to purify it all, this is his dream,
as is your mothers’.
Pretty much Dad's life motto
Anyway
in this toddler level you read a book called ‘You’re SPECIAL’ which is when you
level up your SPECIAL points; Strength, perception, endurance, charisma,
intelligence, agility and luck. You have a point system that you can assign
points to throughout the game to balance your character out, the amount of
points you put onto each SPECIAL attribute will later help with your skills;barter, big guns, energy weapons, explosives,
lockpick, medicine, melee weapons, repair, science, small guns, sneak, speech
and unarmed. Good God there’s a lot of point-system based things in this game,
as you can see this is a very heavy RPG game. Your skills can be upgraded every
time you level up in the game as you get skill points to assign to your skill
levels. The skill levels help you with obvious things out in the wasteland,
you’ll need certain skill points to do particular things in the game, such as a
high lockpick skill to pick the harder locks in the game. There’s still more to
the point system, you’ll get to pick three TAG skills, which just means you’ll
pick your three favourite skills and it’ll add extra skill points to them. My
favourite skills to choose were speech, lockpick andsmall guns. I try and talk my way out of a
lot of things in Fallout 3 so I always have to choose a high charisma and
speech. The skills I never cared much about were sneak, explosives, unarmed and
melee weapons because I’m not very stealthy and I love to shoot things. Now the
final part of the point-system (seriously? Sometimes I wonder how I got my head
around all of this) is the perks. Each time you level up you get to choose a
perk. Perks will all be different and will help your character in different
ways, there’s so many perks so I’m not going to list them all but for example,
the Strong Back perk lets you carry 50+ more equipment and the Cannibal perk
allows you to eat the flesh of dead enemies to regain health. So yeah, the
perks are extremely varied. I think the only thing I didn't like about the point-system was the level cap. You'd stop levelling up when you reached level 30 (35 if you had the Broken Steel dlc) which I didn't think was a high enough level because the game was so large, you could have done so much more to your skills.
The book where you choose your SPECIAL points
Anyway
back to the actual game. The next level is nine years later and you open your
eyes to your tenth birthday party organised by your best friend and the
Overseer’s daughter Amata (Who’s a little bitch and will kick you out of the
Vault later on in a side-quest if you allow her to become Overseer). The Overseer
gives you a Pipboy 3000 which is a device you wear on your arm and you use to
keep track of your items, heal yourself with either food or medicine, take
drugs and alcohol (yeah you can do this, it’ll help your skills in a fight, but
don’t overdo it, you can start to suffer from withdrawal!) and keep track of
your current level, skills and perks. I love this thing, it’s awesome, I wish I
had one in real life. Anyway this is a short level, you meet some other people
in the vault here, a little whiny brat called Butch DeLoria who bullies you and
tries to steal your sweet roll that Old Lady Palmer gave you for your birthday.
Now there’s one other thing here, you’ll have a karma level, doing good things
will raise your karma and doing bad things will lower your karma (obviously).
Karma will effect how people will perceive you in the game. I personally like
to keep a good karma and to avoid a fight with Butch you give him your sweet
roll. Except I think the first time I played Fallout 3 I started a fight with
him because he pissed me off.After this
Dad will take you downstairs to his lab where his friend and lab assistant
Jonas give you a BB gun and you learn to use the Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting
System (VATS, the GREATEST part of Fallout, especially if paired with the
Bloody Mess Perk) which is what I saw my dad doing when I first watched him
play Fallout where you’d target certain parts of an enemies body to shoot them.
It’s an awesome feature and so much fun to watch people explode when you
headshot them.
What VATS looks like in-game
So
the next time lapse is six years later and at the age of sixteen you go to the
classroom to take your Generalised Occupational Aptitude Test, or GOAT to find
out what job you’ll get in the vault, and alto to choose your Tag skills. Now
before you enter the classroom you see three boys crowded around a sixteen year
old Amata, harassing her. The boys all don the regular vault outfits but they
are also wearing leather jackets with snakes on the back. Wait a minute, is
that, is that Butch? GOD DAMN HE’S HOT! Hell Butch is quite possibly the
hottest character in the game, and there he is with his gang the ‘Tunnel
Snakes’.
The hottest game character? Yes I think so.
“Ew.”
Siti states. She hates Butch with a passion. And we dispute. A lot. Because I
love him so damn much. But anyway, enough about Butch, you take the GOAT,
choose your Tag skills and that’s that done.
Just gonna put this here for Siti:
Now
the final time lapse is two years later. Amata wakes you up to tell you Dad has
escaped the vault. WHAT?! I thought no one ever enters or leaves the vault.
Alphonse you liar. Anyway this is a fight for survival now to get out of the
vault and find dad. Amata will help you but more or less the entire vault is
hostile towards you now. Goddamn, 18 years of my life spent here and now
they’re all trying to kill you. Well you battle your way through the hostile
soldiers and radroaches let in from when Dad left, severely piss Alphonse off,
save Butch’s mother from being killed by Radroaches because I love him so much
and he gives me his Tunnel Snakes jacket to thank me (gsjhkdfgnk) and I finally
reach the end of the vault, bid Amata goodbye and step out into the Capital
Wasteland. This is where the real game starts.
Honestly I think the Capital Wasteland looks beautiful
Right,
tutorial mode off, I’ve pretty much spent 2000 words of this explaining about
how you play the game, time for some real awesome gameplay!
The
entire map of Fallout 3 is HUGE, one of the largest game maps I’ve ever seen,
they pretty much tried to map out an apocalyptic version of Washington. You can
see this already being a huge challenge. So because of the massive map, it’ll
take you HOURS to play the game and explore every single inch of the map,
especially since most new places will be filled with side quests. I have over
100 hours on my first Fallout 3 playthrough and am still nowhere near finished
exploring the entire map. This is what’s so great about Fallout 3, it’s 100%
worth the money because you will get so much playtime out of it it’s
ridiculous! The graphics are decent, it is a 2007 game anyway but I absolutely
loved how desolate everything looked, all the destroyed buildings, it was
really awesome I thought! I’d never liked anything remotely apocalypse-related
before but Fallout 3 has made me change my mind.
Look how huge this thing is!
As
I already mentioned before there are a bunch of side-quests but the main quest
is long as well, so even if you only do the main quest then the game is a
decent amount of playtime. (but you’ll be missing out if you don’t do the side
quests!) The main quest is mostly spent tracking down Dad, you’ll talk to a
bunch of people, free some slaves, make friends with some kids, meet the Galaxy
News Radio reporter Three Dog (one of the most brilliant characters in the
game who plays an array of 50's music on Galaxy News Radio!) and loads of other stuff before you finally find Dad. He’s in another
vault, Vault 112, trapped in a vault simulation along with the other vault
residents there. Now this is one of my favourite quests of Fallout 3;
Tranquility Lane. You also enter the simulation into a black and white world.
You’re a ten year old child again and everything is set in the 50’s, all the
people are wearing 50’s style clothing and the neighbourhood is a cul-de-sac.
In the middle is another ten year old girl with a dog next to her. Upon talking
to her you find out her name is Betty and she seems friendly until she asks you
to make young Timmy cry. This is a bit suspicious but I wanna find dad so I
comply. If you do what she says then you can ask her questions, the more you do
as she says the more you can ask her. Later you find out she isn’t actually a
ten year old girl at all but really Stanislaus Braun, the Vault 112 Overseer
who has created Tranquility Lane (one of his many simulations) in order to
torture the vault dwellers living there as he can kill them as many times as he
likes and then bring them back to life to do it again. What a sick man. You
also find out that the dog next to Betty/Braun is Dad. Yep, she turned him into
a dog. Now is a very massive karma moment; you can either comply with what
Betty/Braun wants, eventually donning the ‘Pint-Sized Slasher’ mask and knifing
every single resident in Tranquility Lane to death for Betty/Braun’s enjoyment,
or you can talk to Old Lady Dithers who has figured out that this is all a
simulation and Braun is actually controlling everyone. She will tell you about
an old abandoned house and that there is a failsafe somewhere inside. You can
listen to a tune that Betty whistles now and again and this will give you the
tune you need to play in the abandoned house, revealing the failsafe and
allowing you to initiate the Chinese Soldiers simulation which will bring a
bunch of Chinese soldiers into Tranquility Lane who kill all the vault
residents. For good. What? Both of these sound like awful outcomes! Actually,
killing all the residents with the failsafe is the good karma ending to this
quest as Braun can no longer torment the residents and is stuck in Tranquility
Lane alone, forever. Doing as Betty says and killing the residents for
amusement will give you bad karma. Both endings will allow you and dad to leave
Tranquility Lane and return to the Capital Wasteland.
Insane Braun as his Betty persona
“This
is so fucked up.” Siti stated when I showed her the level as she still has yet
to finish Fallout 3.
“I
know.” I grinned because I fucking love this level. Sorry if that sounds messed
up but I do. I don’t like horror movies or anything but when you’re the one doing
the killing it’s different. And yes I went for the evil karma option in this
even though I play for good karma, partly because I didn’t realise about the
failsafe the first time I played it and partly because it’s fun.
Anyway
you’ll finally be reunited with Dad and he’ll tell you he came here in search
of the Garden of Eden Creation Kit or the GECK and he’ll tell you his ultimate
plan, that him and your mother were scientists trying to purify the wasteland’s
water but once your mother died he begged Alphonse to let him and you into
Vault 101 in order to protect you. He didn’t expect you to follow him when he
escaped the vault but explains he is again trying to make his dream of pure
water happen again, for your mother. (Revelation 21:6, remember?)
An old photograph of Dad and Mum as scientists
You
have one of two options in this game; to follow in Dad’s footsteps and help him
and the Brotherhood of Steel purify the water, or turn against Dad and join the
Enclave and President Eden in poisoning the water to try and purify the
Wasteland from Eden’s point of view; kill off all imperfect humans. I chose to
follow Dad obviously (how can you go against Liam Neeson?) but what bothers me
is if you do follow Eden’s path (and I have played an evil karma playthrough as
well) then the endings really don’t differ very much, there wasn’t very much
variety in the ending, it’ll still be the same thing, you end up in the water
purification chamber and then you die. There’s some different things said in
the ending speech but there isn’t a hell of a lot of benefit from which side
you take, even with the Broken Steel dlc that allowed you to instead of die,
wake up from a coma two weeks later, the water is still irradiated.
But
I helped Dad and the scientists of Rivet City and the Brotherhood of Steel.
Eventually the Enclave will tear down everything and take over Project Purity,
killing Dad (I can’t even, I want to cry so much when Dad dies, it’s so sad).
You then meet the Brotherhood of Steel who ask you to retrieve the GECK from
another vault and after a long battle through supermutants, you’ll finally have
it, only to be ambushed by the Enclave and have it stolen off you. Here you
meet President Eden, who is actually just a computer and he tells you HIS
master plan of poisoning the water. He’ll give you a modified FEV virus and ask
you to poison the water. You can either comply with him, tell him to fuck off
or get him to self-destruct (if your science is high enough) but either way you
can’t leave Raven Rock until you take the virus.
Who President John Henry Eden REALLY is
Onto
the last part of the game, You fight alongside the Brotherhood against the
Enclave to take Project Purity back. When you finally get in you need to kill
Eden’s right hand man and the man who killed your dad, Colonel Autumn and you
and Sarah Lyons, a Brotherhood leader will have to activate Project Purity. You
have many options here, you can get Sarah to sacrifice her own life, you can sacrifice
your own life and activate it yourself or you can infect Project Purity (again
you’d still be sacrificing your own life). I chose to sacrifice my own life and
follow in Dad’s footsteps, activating the project with the passcode ‘2-1-6’
(see! Look mum!) and you’ll die a hero. (Unless you have Broken Steel where you
go into a coma instead) A touching ending sequence will be played explaining
what you did in the wasteland, it will change depending on how you played the
game and the final part of the speech will show a photo of you and Dad that was
taken at your tenth birthday. God just writing that made me tear up. It’s a
beautiful lie the ending really, no matter what you do you’ll feel like crying
because Dad was just so damn awesome. Me and Siti literally flailed around
almost in tears when we watched it.
If you're trying to make me cry, it's working.
So
that’s mainly what Fallout 3 is about, it has it’s pros and cons, the only
other important thing I haven’t really mentioned is that you can have ‘followers’
to aid you in your quest. You can choose from eight different characters and
can have one human and one creature companion at a time. Some of the followers
are brilliant, I always took the supermutant who had gained intelligence named
Fawkes with a Gatling laser gun and Dogmeat, the bi-colour eyed Australian Cattle Dog
because they are both fucking tanks. Guess who else is a companion? Butch. Hell
yeah, you have one side quest where you can open up Vault 101 and Butch will
leave and go to Rivet City, you can eventually recruit him as your companion
but he’s kinda useless. I remember the first time I recruited him he was my
follower for about 5 minutes before he got shot by a fucking missle launcher
and died. I didn’t save that of course.
The awesome followers of Fallout 3
Another final thing worth mentioning was the amazing radio. The main two channels were Galaxy News Radio, hosted by Three Dog who played a variety of really old-time music from amazing people such as The Ink Spots and Billie Holiday. The other main channel, Enclave Radio featured American propaganda tunes as well as Eden doing a copy of Roosevelt's Fireside Chats. I think this was awesome and really effective.
The awesomeness that is Three Dog
But
yes I think it’s about time to wrap this up. All in all Fallout 3 is an
excellent game, there’s so much to do, the story is powerful and the characters
lovable, there’s even five dlcs that will extend the story even further! The
only bad things about it was the ugly character creation, the lack of variety
in the ending and also the shit-ton of glitches! God, I know this is a massive
game but it’s like you walk into a rock and you’ll get stuck in it! Some of the
glitches are incredibly stupid but what the hey, it’s still a worthwhile game
to play and if you haven’t already played it then go and do it now. Come on, I’m
waiting!
