Elements of game design, part four: environment

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.


Sources:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4413/action_adventure_level_design_.ph
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6147/the_bleeding_edge_cevat_yerli_on

Elements of game design, part two: art direction for games

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.


Sources:
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/159200430X/ch11lev1sec2?portal=oreilly
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3115/common_methodologies_for_lead_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2402/day_in_the_life_phillip_bossant_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2960/keeping_up_with_the_sims_managing_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2352/advancing_your_game_industry_.php

Elements of game design, part three: character

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.


Sources:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3115/common_methodologies_for_lead_.php
http://gamasutra.com/features/20060324/cifaldi_01.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10216#.UTAOJOsjX6k
http://www.designersnotebook.com/Workshop/CharacterWorkshop/characterworkshop.htm

Elements of game design, part one: from Pong to next-gen…

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

This Term thus far

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 I learnt 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!

War, War Never Changes - An NGJ Review of Fallout 3!

“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 and  small 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!

Pictures from:

http://fallout3.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/normal_standby.jpg?w=468

http://develion.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Tutorial-CustomiseFace.jpg

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110404205341/fallout/images/d/de/Revelation216.jpg 

http://gaygamer.net/images/Fallout3b.jpg 

http://blog.al.com/techcetera/2008/11/fallout3vats.JPG 
http://images.wikia.com/fallout/images/d/df/Butch_FI.jpg 
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/videogames/detail-page/fallout3_1_lg.jpg 
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110718214744/fallout/images/thumb/0/03/Wasteland_Map_1.0.png/650px-Wasteland_Map_1.0.png 
http://mediang.gameswelt.net/public/images/200811/05a84e5c16c24cd7c768bad1f7e93f4d.jpg 
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnmkht1IQE1qg2fbko1_250.png 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzpgMzP9pIg 
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090531125258/fallout/images/1/12/Followers.jpg 
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101221201426/fallout/images/7/7e/Three_Dog.jpg 
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/videogames/detail-page/fallout3_3_lg.jpg