Okay, Bethesda's limitations are becoming more clear to me now... I decided to be a real bastard in Megaton, but the game restricted how big of a cock I could be right off the bat.

First, I was unsure what I wanted to do in the town. Then I talked to Moriarty and he wanted 300 caps for telling me where my father went. At that point, the town's fate was sealed. Moriarty would have the blood of the entire town on his hands for trying to be a dick to me. As a bonus, he would get vaporized along with the rest of the residents. But, just blowing up the town wasn't good enough. I went to Burke and took the detonator. To add some spice, I told the sheriff about it so I could watch him get shot in the back. Then Burke started trash-talking me and I decided he needed to go, too. So I killed him - and the rest of the bar because I was bored. Then I tried to blow up the town - after killing a few more random citizens for shits and giggles - but... Bethesda doesn't give you back the detonator from the sheriff's body so you can't piss off both sides and then kill everyone in Megaton with the big boomer. WWEEEEEEEAAAAAAAKKKKKK. LAAAAMMMMMMEEEEE.

So, I had to restart and play the town more conventionally. Even though I would have lost out on a great bonus by attempting what I did - a house, namely, the spirit of Fallout was lost the moment I wasn't allowed to go completely nihilistic in the game.

Boo on you, Bethesda. Now I need to see what happens if I go all Charlie Bronson on the entirety of Tenpenny Tower. I don't like having neighbors. I need my privacy. But first, I'll get rid of some ghouls to make them think I'm a nice, caring person.

@rocketpig

Well the thing is, how would you have known that the sheriff would get killed by Burke? If you wanted to go completely bad, you wouldnt have told the sheriff about Burke because you would have thought the sheriff will lock him up.

However you have a point if you play the game from a neutral standpoint. If you start killing NPCs from both bad and good, then there are no neutral NPCs to give you what you missed out I suppose.

But I cant say that for sure, maybe you get a house still but a bit later.

I heard someone mention that part a few days ago. I knew he was going to die if I did what I did, which is why I thought it would be funny to mess with things like that.

Anyway, you're missing the point. My point isn't to play the "good guy" or "bad guy", it's to cause havoc. Whether that guy died at someone else's hands or not is irrelevant. I was going to kill him in the end anyway.

In Fallout, there should be no "good" or "bad" restricting actions... Just Rocketpig's crazy little female Asian nihilist with a shaved head. Death to the establishment, yo.

Agreed.

But it's could have / would have, not could of / would of.

Well, I'm quite a bit further in the game now.

This game is EASY. I'm playing it on a controller on hard difficulty and I think it's easy. VATS is way too easy to manipulate to your advantage. I find myself waiting for the perfect range, pulling up VATS, killing one or two targets, switching to an alternate weapon, and then free-shooting the rest. If there are two or less enemies, I rarely get hit. If there are three or more, I use cover to regen my AP and repeat the process. I can only imagine how ridiculously easy this is on a PC.

A few problems with VATS:
- It appears you can't get hit while in it. Lame. That gives you far too much time to turn the battle to your favor.
- Switching weapons doesn't take any AP. That means you never have to reload if you're smart about things.
- AP regens FAST.
- The percentage meter makes things too easy. Don't like your percentages? Pull down VATS for a moment, get closer, and do it again. There are no penalties for playing this way and it reduces the difficulty WAY down.

I love the idea of VATS. Bethesda, like they usually do, just chickened out on how they implemented it and now the game is accessible to an epileptic Down's child.

I'll post more about the rest of the game in a bit. Bitching about VATS is only about 1/4 of my problems with the game.

It's way better than Oblivion, I'll give it that.

Rocketpig, play as a non-combat character (e.g. Mr. Charisma) if you want a combat challenge.

The sad thing is that my character is far from being 100% combat. I've dumped a load of points into sneak, lockpicking, and a few other traits. My strength and endurance are pretty pathetic.

This game should be harder than it is. If you're even somewhat competent at shooters, you can walk through 95% of the game without much difficulty. I'm seeing this turn even more that way as my small guns skill starts getting higher and higher.

Simply put, they made VATS too easy to manipulate to your advantage if you've played a video game before and have an IQ over 40.

Have you tried going on the hardest difficulty (above Hard)? When I first booted the game, it had the hardest mode as default and I changed it down to Normal.

Second, this game lacks the heart of Fallout. As a friend put it, it lacks the "apathetic reaction" to situations that was so endearing about the originals. If you don't do anything in Fallout 3, nothing happens. Bethesda doesn't seem to understand that the Fallout world keeps happening no matter if you're there or not, whether you do anything or not. Everything is triggered by the player. It's sad. Part of the fun of the older games was just sitting back, grabbing popcorn, and watching an event unfold without lifting a finger. Then, if you felt like being a real bastard, you'd clean up the remainder. Plus, this game doesn't focus on natural allies/enemies. If I randomly kill ghouls outside Tenpenny, the ghouls inside the museum don't give a shit and they're still cool with me - until I kill one of them.

Your past actions have virtually no consequence on your present, so long as you don't go back to that one spot where you mass murdered some people. I haven't tried this with the Brotherhood yet - and it's probably different in their case - but that's not enough. Fallout is about real consequence; if I act like an asshole early in the game - and trust me, I did - I want that to affect me down the road. Where was my penalty for nuking Megaton? That was a supremely dick move and all I get from it is some sass talk from that prick DJ (whose time on Earth is limited in my eyes). Even that clueless research lady is still cool with me, even though I turned her into a fucking ghoul. No one outside the people who gave me a reward for the quest seem to care that I obliterated an entire town just for shits and giggles.

There is something missing from this game... I haven't put my finger on it 100% yet but there is some underlying theme from the earlier games that just isn't present in Fallout 3.

That is based off your 360 default setting. My default difficulty was normal.