Fallout 3

Attributes
The Pip-Boy 3000, shown displaying the player's current skill ratings.The game begins with the main character as a newborn, whereupon the player determines the race, the gender, and the general appearance of their character. As a one year-old baby, the infant reads a child's book titled You're SPECIAL, where the player can set the character's starting S.P.E.C.I.A.L. primary attributes: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. The character gains a set of Skills with base levels determined by these attributes. At age 16, the player takes the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test (G.O.A.T.) to determine the three Skills they wish the character to focus on.[10]

As the character progresses through the game, experience points are earned that are used to achieve levels of accomplishment. Upon achieving a new level, the player receives a set of skill points that can be assigned to improve any of the Skill percentages. For instance, increasing the lock pick skill grants the player the ability to pick harder locks to unlock doors and supply crates. A Perk is granted at each level, which offers advantages of varying quality and form. Many Perks have a set of prerequisites that must be satisfied, and new Perks are unlocked every two levels.[10]

An important statistic tracked in the game is karma. Each character has an aggregate amount of karma that can be affected by the decisions and actions made in the game. Positive karmic actions include freeing captives and helping others. Negative karmic actions include killing good characters and stealing. Beyond acting as flavor for the game's events, karma can have tangible effects to the player, primarily affecting the game's ending. Other effects include altered dialogue with non-player characters (NPCs), or unique reactions from other characters. Actions vary in the level of karma change they cause; thus, pickpocketing produces less negative karma than the killing of a good character. However, the player's relationships with the game's factions are distinct, so any two groups or settlements may view the player in contrasting ways, depending on the player's conduct. Some Perks require specific karma levels.[11]

Health and weapons
Health is separated into two types: general and limb. General health is the primary damage bar, and the player will die if it is depleted. Limb health is specific to each portion of the body, namely the arms, legs, head, and torso. Non-human enemies will sometimes have additional appendages. When a limb's health bar is depleted, that limb is rendered "crippled" and induces a negative status effect, such as blurred vision from a crippled head or reduced movement speed from a crippled leg. Health is diminished when damage is taken from being attacked, falling from great distances, and/or accidental self injury. General health can be replenished by sleeping, using medical equipment (stimpaks), eating food, or drinking water. Limbs can be healed directly by injecting them with stimpaks, by sleeping, or by being healed by a doctor.[12] Along with the health, there are 20 bobbleheads that can be found throughout the game that will give the player bonuses to attributes and skills. Each bobblehead is an iconic Vault-Tec Boy figurine with a different pose. Three of them have to be found in different time periods in the gameplay; otherwise they will be lost.[13]

There are secondary health factors that can affect performance. Chief among these is radiation poisoning: most food is irradiated to a small degree, and parts of the world have varying levels of background radiation. As the player is exposed to radiation, it builds up, causing negative effects and eventually death if left untreated. Radiation sickness must be healed by special medicine or a doctor. The player can become addicted to drugs and alcohol, and then go through withdrawal symptoms if denied those substances. Both afflictions can blur the player's vision for a few seconds and have a negative effect on SPECIAL attributes until the problem is corrected.[14]

Items can become degraded and become less effective. Firearms do less damage and may jam during reloading, and apparel becomes gradually less protective.[15] This will eventually result in the item breaking altogether. Items can be repaired for a price from special vendors, or, when the player has two of the same item (or a comparable item), one can be repaired using salvage parts from the other. Players have the option to create their own weaponry using various scavenged items found in the wasteland. These items can only be created at workbenches, and only if the player possesses the necessary schematics or Perk. These weapons usually possess significant advantages over other weapons of their type. Each schematic has three copies that can be found. Each copy improves the condition (or number) of items produced at the workbench. A higher repair skill will result in a better starting condition for the related weapon. Weapon schematics can be found lying in certain locations, bought from vendors, or received as quest rewards.[16]

V.A.T.S.
V.A.T.S. shown being used. Real-time action is stopped and the player can see the probability of hitting each enemy body part through percentage ratio.The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or V.A.T.S., plays an important part in combat. While using V.A.T.S., real-time combat is paused, and action is played out from varying camera angles in a computer graphics version of "bullet time", creating a combat system that the Bethesda developers have described as a hybrid between turn-based and real-time combat. Various actions cost action points, limiting the actions of each combatant during a turn, and the player can target specific body areas for attacks to inflict specific injuries; head shots can be used for quick kills or blinding, legs can be targeted to slow enemies' movements, opponents can be disarmed by shooting at their weapons, and players can drive certain enemies into a berserker rage by shooting out things like antennae on various overgrown insects and combat inhibitors on armored robots. However, the use of V.A.T.S. also eliminates most of the first-person shooter elements of the game; aiming is taken over by the computer, and the player is unable to move as a means of avoiding attacks. Each body part has a percentage of hit chance, and generally the closer the player character is to an enemy the higher that percentage. The higher level the character using V.A.T.S is, the more likely that character will hit their enemy.[17]

Companions
The player can have a maximum party of three, consisting of the player's character, a dog named Dogmeat, and a single non-player character. Dogmeat can be killed during the game if the player misuses him or places him in a severely dangerous situation and he cannot be replaced (this was changed with the introduction of Broken Steel: the level 22 "Puppies!" perk allows the player to gain a puppy follower if Dogmeat dies);[18] [19] it is possible to not encounter Dogmeat at all depending on how the game is played.[20] One other NPC can travel with the player at any time, and in order to get another NPC to travel, the first one must be dismissed (either voluntarily by the player or as a consequence of other events) or die in combat.

Setting
Main article: Fallout (series)Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2277, 200 years after a war over resources that ended in nuclear holocaust in 2077. The setting is a post-apocalyptic, retro-future, covering a region that includes Washington, D.C., northeast Virginia and parts of Maryland.[21] The game's landscape includes war-ravaged variants of numerous real-life landmarks such as the White House, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, Arlington National Cemetery and the Washington Monument. The area that the game is set in, known in-game as the Capital Wasteland, holds a number of small settlements of the descendants of survivors from the Great War. Many inhabitants were killed during the nuclear holocaust and the Wasteland is now little more than a barren land nearly devoid of healthy water, food, plant and animal life due to the extreme radiation levels. However, there is a small settlement in the north part of the Capital Wasteland where plant life is abundant.[22]

The player begins the game inside Vault 101, where s/he believes s/he is originally born, before venturing out into the Capital Wasteland and facing its many dangers. The Capital Wasteland is home to a number of mutated species of creatures such as two-headed cattle called Brahmin, radscorpions, molerats, and mirelurks. Many of these creatures are generally hostile to the player and will attack on sight. The Wasteland and the city proper is home to several hostile groups, including super mutants, feral ghouls, raiders, slavers, mercenaries, and robots. Of note are the various Vaults—underground structures designed as shelters to protect inhabitants from the dangers of nuclear war (and also for more sinister purposes). In the Washington, D.C. area, many of the roads are blocked off with giant piles of rubble. The player can navigate around the city using a system of underground metro tunnels that connect with other locations (loosely based on the real-life Washington Metro).[23]

Because the game takes place following a nuclear war, cultural advancements have stagnated and, as a result, the game contains a 1950s utopian theme as evidenced in-game through posters and billboards with music from the time period.[24]

Story
The introductory sequence introduces the player to their character's father James, a doctor and scientist in Vault 101. James frequently makes comments about the player character's deceased mother Catherine, and her favorite Bible passage, Revelation 21:6, which speaks of "the waters of life".

The main quest begins after the player is forced to flee Vault 101 when James leaves the vault, throwing it into anarchy and causing the paranoid Overseer to send his police force after the player. The search for James takes the character on a journey through the Wasteland, first to the nearby town of Megaton, named for the undetonated atomic bomb at its center, then the Galaxy News Radio station, whose enthusiastic DJ, Three Dog, gives the player the moniker of "The Lone Wanderer". The player travels to Rivet City, a derelict aircraft carrier now serving as a fortified human settlement. Here the player meets Doctor Li, a scientist who worked alongside the player's father. Doctor Li informs the player of Project Purity, a plan conceived by Catherine and James to purify all the water in the Tidal Basin and eventually the entire Potomac River with a giant water purifier built in the Jefferson Memorial. However, continued delays and Catherine's death during childbirth put an end to the project, and James took the player's character as a newborn to raise them in the safety of Vault 101.

After investigating the Jefferson Memorial, the Lone Wanderer tracks James to Vault 112, and frees him from a virtual reality program being run by the Vault's sadistic Overseer, Dr. Braun. James and the player return to Rivet City, and James reveals he sought out Braun for information on the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.), an invention of Braun's that contains the components needed to finally activate Project Purity. James and Doctor Li lead a team of Rivet City scientists to the memorial with intent to restart the project, but the memorial is invaded by the Enclave, a powerful military organization formed from the remnants of the pre-War United States government. James floods the project's control room with radiation to stop the Enclave military leader, Colonel Augustus Autumn, from taking control of it, killing himself, his last words urging his child to run. The Lone Wanderer and Dr. Li flee to the ruins of the Pentagon, now a base for the Brotherhood of Steel and now known as the Citadel. With Project Purity still inoperational even with the Enclave occupying the site, the player travels to Vault 87 to find a G.E.C.K. and finish James's work. The player finds the Vault to be a testing site for the FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus), and the source of the Super Mutants in the Capital Wasteland. After the player acquires the G.E.C.K., the Wanderer is ambushed by the Enclave and captured.

At the Enclave base at Raven Rock, the player is freed from their cell by the Enclave leader, President John Henry Eden, who requests a private audience with them. En route to his office however, Colonel Autumn defies Eden's orders and takes command of the Enclave military, ordering them to kill the player. Fighting their way to Eden's office, the player discovers he is actually a sentient supercomputer who took control of the Enclave after their defeat in Fallout 2 on the West Coast thirty years ago. Eden wishes to repeat the plan of then-President Dick Richardson using Project Purity, infecting the water with a modified strain of FEV that will make it toxic to any mutated life. This plan will kill most life in the wasteland including humans, but the Enclave, due to their genetic "purity" as a result of their isolation, will be immune and free to take control of the area. Eden gives the The Wanderer a sample of the new F.E.V. and is allowed to leave or convince Eden to self-destruct the entire base. The Lone Wanderer escapes Raven Rock and returns to the Citadel.

With the knowledge they possess the G.E.C.K. and the means to activate Project Purity, the Brotherhood assault the Jefferson Memorial, spearheaded by a giant robot named Liberty Prime. In the control room of Project Purity the player confronts Colonel Autumn, and has the choice to persuade him to give up or kill him. Dr. Li informs the player that the purifier is ready to be activated, but the activation code must be input manually, and also that the control room is flooded with lethal amounts of radiation. The Lone Wanderer is forced to choose between sending Sarah Lyons of the Broherhood inside the extremely irradiated purifier or entering there himself. Whoever enters into the chamber inputs the code hinted at through the game, that being 21:6, and immediately dies from a radiation spike. If the "Broken Steel" DLC is installed, the player survives if he activates it himself, but he also has the option of sending one of his radiation-immune companions to enter the code and start the purifier with no casualties. The player also has the possibility to enter the F.E.V. sample into the water prior to activation, having adverse effects on the games side quests post-ending.

Gallery
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