I'm kinda glad I never played the originals.

I love this game. Reading someone hate on it is like hearing about someone picking on your younger brother. Makes me wanna cry :(

 Yep - but I believe there are 2 harder difficulties above Normal, and was wondering if you tried the Hardest mode since you said it was easy. I wonder if thats where you will find the biggest gap to cater for the 'hardcore' and the more 'casual' player.

Not everything is triggered by the player. Have you gone to Big Town yet?

Better yet, have you gone to the Capitol Building? If not, you really have no idea what your talking about.

The game does have natural allies & enemies. Feel free to pop off a few Outcast or Brotherhood members at some point. As you progess, your going to see far more Enclave Vertibirds & Talon Company members attack you.

The problem is that Bethesda took an absolutely ingenious idea and turned the franchise into your basic, run-of-the-mill WRPG.

The original series had elements that were way ahead of their time. The first two games were basically free-for-alls that allowed you to do whatever you wanted. Shit, I don't think I ever beat either game. It wasn't important. I was busy doing other, more fun, things instead. That was the charm of the series. Now Bethesda has turned it into Mass Effect crossed with Oblivion; the only problem is that they don't have the skill to make a Bioware game. Fallout 3 is lacking things that even KOTOR had, such as character change... Why on Earth doesn't my character change at all in this game depending on my actions and whether I find it funny to jump into a radiation pool when I get bored? Why don't I turn into a ghoul when I hang out in the wrong areas for too long?

And this game should not be first person. It should be third person, a la Mass Effect. A good part of an RPGs enjoyment comes from seeing your character evolve through physical change, clothing changes, and weapon upgrades. This isn't about immersion, this is about your character's travels through a world. If you can't see that character and his/her changes, something is missing.

I mentioned that I'm sure capping a Brotherhood agent will impact the game. i haven't done it yet because I haven't decided if I want their power armor or not.

What about the rest of the game? Where are my penalties for running willy-nilly over the rest of the world? So far, no one cares about all the horrible shit I've done. One or two moments in the game isn't going to change that the first half of the game is basically penalty-free.

It's good to hear that events trigger automatically later in the game but after playing the original two games, one or two of those moments in Fallout 3 isn't enough.

How often are you running into Talon Company members?

After betraying Burke for Lucas, I got swarmed with TC members every so often. When that happened, it led for some incredible shootouts between TC members and Super Mutants inside DC. There were at least 10 shootouts I can think of that allowed you to become neutral - of course, the Capitol Shootout is the biggest one, since it involves far more than simple small arms.

Oh, and of course the ending shootout is even more massive.

You really think so? I'm not big on the FPS genre, I'll admit. I'm finding that while I can manipulate VATS and constantly strafe to dodge bullets, I still go through 20 stimpaks per field trip. That's not easy in my book. I'm playing non-combat, but I'm not 9s and 1s. I don't die, if that's what you mean by easy, but it's a case of managing my resources. The trip to Rivet City took like 5 attempts with me progressively clearing a path there, then returning to Megaton and selling loot to buy more stimpaks.

Also, I find VATS in Fallout 3 to be less broken than the system for Fallout 2, for instance. If you had a large amount of AP in Fallout 2, you could just run up, punch/kick/shoot, and run away during each turn to drastically reduce your % to hit from enemies. Rinse, repeat and breeze through combat for the game.

Ah, so there is a trigger there. If you read my first post, one of my biggest beefs with the early part of the game is the Burke/Lucas situation. A proper Fallout game would have let me kill both of them and blow up the town. Instead, I was forced to choose sides I didn't want to choose.

Since I'm a sucker for massive explosions, I had to go with Burke on that one. Still, it would have been better if I was given the opportunity to blow the town up lonewolf style.

 Probably because they don't want to get all those negative reactions like they had with the Vampire thing in Oblivion. Anyway I am kind of mutated though but you don't see that from the outside;

Fallout 2 had its own combat problems, that's for sure. Running away - you or the enemy - was an annoying tactic for sure.

I've used quite a few stimpacks but nothing extraordinary. I use maybe 4-5 in an hour of play. I'm a little low right now but I'm pretty sure there are two or three places I can pick them up if I really want to.