Be Excellent To Each Other

You need Explosives 25 to interact with the bomb, mind. I think a dose of Mentats will help you out.

Is anyone else considering the level cap? I'm not going to be able to get even half the skills I would like to high levels. I could really see me replaying this as a talker character... and a dumb brawler... and an evil character... I'd love to see how some of the quests play out if the 10-25% speech chances that keep coming up actually succeed.

Hah. Y'know how the board puts "edit" and "quote" next to each other? Well now I'm a mod I get Edit on all posts, so I just managed to edit The Egg's post instead of replying to him. Sorry 'bout that!

Yep - that's why I'm making sure I take the '+3 skill points per level' perks instead of the '+10 experience' perks

I'd just like to point out that I never did that.*




* Maybe once.

and I've just commented on that on the the last page!

break out your broom and tidy up your mess spaz fingers!

I used to do that loads. On one memorable occasion I did it to an actually quite funny joke of Mr Chris', then had to reconstruct it from memory after editing it to pieces, ruining it in the process

Hah! I did tidy up the mess but our edits must have crossed in the POST.

You're right, that would have been memorable. Practically a red letter day in fact.

I've taken a number of "+5 to This and That" type perks, and Bloody Mess. I considered the one that doubles skill points from skill books too, but not sure how many of those you're going to see.

I had one of them, she met the Ripper.

I'm enjoying it, though there are a few niggles:

1) VATS giving you 95% chance of hitting, except when it fires, it hits a corner/low wall/rubble whatever. Wasting precious ammunition. Especially annoying when the enemy has an area effect weapon, such as those annoying fire ants.

2) Items used to repair other items are a bit specific. It would be nice to allow you to repair a sniper rifle with a hunting rifle at less efficiency.

Oh, and apparently there are 25 skill books for eack skill.

I'm between level 5 & 6 I think - I didn't play that much yesterday so I think I probably only did about 6-7 hours in total. Enjoying it lots, but seem to spend an inordinate amount of time just wandering around. I did find

I have about three open quests in play and I'm slowly learning the ropes with the RPG mechanics - it's been ages since I've played anything with this potential depth so feel a little unsure about what character traits I'll enjoy having most. I have noticed that switching outfits can have positive effects on your various abilities so I keep a few different ones handy for repairs, lockpicking etc.

Still don't have a house in Megaton yet, still haven't done the rad quest with moira and still haven't bloody finished blood ties.

I am making a mental note of some of the stuff on here and don't mind the spoilers as it doesn't feel that story driven to me. Overall, I'm enjoying it a lot now I've got a bit of experience under my belt - I'm looking forward to playing this this evening again, as HC has said she's having an early night and I'm on the wagon so should be able to get a few hours in before midnight.

I'm not sure how many of those you're going to see without Dimrill-esque OCDish searching. I've found half a dozen so far, maybe as many as ten.

Where's the permutation of skills and perks database at then, folks. Some anorak must have written one by now I can keep loaded on my iPhone?

Wikia has what looks like a reasonable collection of info but it's highly spoileriffic of course.

Something I meant to ask (spoilers to end of Following In His Footsteps)

The rad quest is pretty much the easiest quest in the game, whereas Blood Ties is really quite long, all told.

theres also them bobblehead collectibles that add 10 points to a certain skill. So really when you get to level 20 you would all your skills on 65 each before using any magazines or bobbleheads, well if you wanted to be OCD to the core.

Plus skill boosts as quest rewards, I imagine.

100 points was never a top limit in previous fallouts though, even if it was in Oblivion.

1st warning.

One more and you're MEGA-BANZORED, The Internet's Famous The Richard Gaywood-ness or not.

I am so wanting to try my ban-hammer out. Snigger.

The Wikia pages already have a full list of all 20 bobbleheads, at least.

I'm back in megaton where I saved last night after stupidly not having my light on on my Pipboy while doing the blood ties quest in the So I will do the radquest next and then defuse the bomb then go and do the rest of Blood Ties.

Blood Ties is awesome, favourite mish so far.

Protip, just go drink the water in the pool in Megaton until you've done it.

All this talking about Fallout is making me want to play Fallout.

I've just reorganised the storage in my hut in Megaton.

The locker next to the door is for stuff I want to keep, but don't want to lug around all day. The locker in front of you when you walk in is full of stuff to sell as soon as the traders get enough caps. And the fridge is for stuff that has specialist buyers, bloodpacks, sugar bombs, scrap metal, nuka cola quantum and pre-war books. Hoarding those until I've got enough to make a worthwhile trip out.

Has anyone bought any of the add-ons yet? Are the themes cool?

The Love-nest one (or whatever it's called) was pretty groovy. Big heart-shaped bed in the main room, and a coloured lights in the shape of two people shagging hanging from the roof.

I've bought the lab, infirmary and workbench so far. Can't see the point of wasting caps on the nuka cola machine or the jukebox.

I'm quite liking this now I've put a bit more time into it. Though I'm still scratching at the surface.

I keep picking fights with things I can't really handle, though, which lead me to circle-strafing and unloading every last bit of ammo into packs of really durable monsters until they fall over. I need to learn to gauge the levels of these things: is there a way? I should probably read the manual.

I accidentally somehow managed to turn the Brotherhood of Steel into enemies, 30 minutes' play after my last save. That just wasn't fun. At all.

It's always worth doing the extra bonus objectives for most quests, I've found.



I keep these, because

I peeked at Wikia; the final quest reward is higher if you do the bonus objectives. So far I'm 3-for-3 on those.

Okay, it's definitely improving the more I play it. I finally managed to get to the radio station last night (am I being dense or does the Metro map bear absolutely no relation to the above-ground map at all?), and am teetering on the verge of Level 8.
Combat has improved greatly now that I have some decent weapons and I even managed a one-shot sneak kill on a super mutant with my trusty hunting rifle.
It's still too brown though. Apart from the grey bits.

Is the Chinese Assault Rifle superior to the American one? As I only plan on keeping one...

I'm not too keen on a house in Megaton... I'm not a fan of the place, especially after nearly killing myself falling off one of the ridiculous precarious platforms.

I'll be interested to replay it as a different "themed" character, which is an interesting upshot of the cap. It adds to the replayability.

That being said, I'm hoping that the DLC will remove the cap.

Yes, it is.

The house is useful for me because of all the potential weapons components I've been collecting.

I've actually gone as far as purchasing the guide book from Play for this. Gotta collect em all.

Is the FAQ on GameFAQs any good? It seems intended purely for listing all the collecty stuff, not doing a walkthrough.

Alas, I can't get it to look right on my phone so reading it is unbearable.

I have no idea. I wan pictchures.

The best thing about going for the 3 different (evil, neutral, good) achievements at levels 7, 14 and 20, is the massive gun rampage I go on in Megaton to evilize myself.

Can you kill the kids, like Maggie and Bryan? Because doing so in the first two games resulted in insta-evil.

Yep. I also clear out the rest of the town to be sure.

You crazy computer nerds and your obsession with collectables. I bet your caravans are filled with finely decorated thimbles.

Whilst working through the GNR Radio quest, I've been diverted by exploring the

First three hours play feedback from me, and this is bearing in mind that I thought Oblivion was potentially OK but I never got into it and never saw more than about 5% of the entire game and got bored and dropped it.

Fallout 3 - Absolutely fucking awesome.

This game grabs the throat in a way that Oblivion didn't. It's such a simple concept to get things started in many ways, but those first three 'life phase' levels are not only a very clever way of doing a tutorial (I bought off Steam so don't even have a crappy paper manual, so yes I'm on PC), but they manage to kick in a massive chunk of character development at a phase where ordinarily, you're just trying to work out which key makes you jump.

Then there's a bit of 'too many people saying too many things' but the standard RPG conventions kick in and it's possible to work out pretty clearly what's going on, the VATs system is introduced admirably early and it's obviously ultra-cool, even when shooting insects with a BB gun - and then the madness starts to unfold and after a game start that has already far eclipsed what Oblivion achieved (and making it far more PC friendly too), it's out into the bad-ass real world.

I can't really comment on the graphics in relation to the 360 version, I'm playing on the PC and mine is not exactly a high-end rig (Core Duo, Radeon 4870, 4GB RAM) - but it's kicking out 1920x1200 with everything totally maxed out (inc HDR and all the effects), so it actually looks kind of gorgeous, even this early 'brown world' experience that others have commented on has raw beauty to it.

To put this into context, I'm a pretty hardcore WoWHead, and we're a bunch of addicted freaks at the best of times - but I'd pre-booked out an evening for Fallout 3 'cause I hoped it would be that good, and now that it obviously is, I'll be passing up my WoW duties for the rest of the week as well by the looks of it.

Oohhhh yes, one last thing, it's the first Windows game I've seen that let's me load up my 360 profile and, I'm guessing, carry over achievements and gamerscore and all that stuff as well - certainly it showed the same basic interface and stats as being logged in to LIVE as doing it on my 360 does.

Just coming out og my Megaton shack and the daily village fawner turns up with her gift for me. "I hope this keeps you safe out there" she says as she hands me a squirrel on a stick

That was tedious. Solution and spoilers for getting into the science museum's gun cabinet:

Holy crap this is good.

"You're such a hero and you've been so good to us all! We've all scrimped and saved and got you this from all of us! It's a bottle of dirty water!"

Fuck you, bitch.

Is that what you're doing? Levelling up as good, reloading, killing some folks and levelling up as neutral, then reloading, killing loads of folks, and levelling up as evil? How neutral is neutral then?

Christ. I might be a massive sap (in fact, I'm pretty sure I am) but I genuinely got a slight lump in my throat when I left the vault the first time and found myself wandering into a wrecked playground in Springvale with this vast, blasted wasteland stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction.

"Tell my wife: Hello"
That is exactly what I bin doing, ar. Neutral normally equals 5-6 innocents from my "very good" stance. For evil I wipe the town out. I have now sunk at least 30 hours into this game since Friday. My eyes hurt.

Indeed, there is worse to come, believe me. I keep thinking "the poor sods. the poor sods" over and over again.