Fallout 3 PAX Preview

[GameBanshee News]

Shacknews has some updated impressions for Fallout 3, as well as scans of the Strategy Guide handed out at PAX.

After dispatching the mutants, I noticed a tied-up human in the church they were guarding. I wasn't given this quest--this was simply a building I found out in the middle of nowhere. After choosing to untie the poor sap, he thanked me, then offered me his supplies. I had the choice of taking them, or acknowledging that he needed them more. I took them. Screw being nice.

Later on, heading way out into the wasteland, I encountered a slaver town called Paradise Falls. I got a little angry with the town guard after being denied entry. He said I didn't seem enough like a slaver. I called him an *******, and then called him out to fight. He said that sounded more like a slaver, and gave me a quest to enslave a few notable people from other towns to earn my entrance.

But I wasn't interested in getting bogged down in quests. I wanted to see as much of the landscape as possible--to get a feel for the world of Fallout 3, and how much was really there.

I headed north, past endless crops of bombed-out buildings. At night, the mood of Fallout 3 turns dark. In the daytime you feel alone in a giant desert--but when the sun goes down, you're alone on another planet. The atmosphere is spot on, with an appropriately sparse placement of enemies and notable features. STALKER-esque, for sure.