Okay i just bought Fallout 3 a week ago and finished the main story line yesterday. And I must say that it could of easily been Game Of The Year... up till the last 30 minutes of the game... then frankly it goes right down the shi**er.

For one thing there isn't even a Boss battle... at the end you simply follow a ridiculous huge, overpowered eye laser slinging nuke tossing super robot by the name of "Liberty Prime"... This thing destroys pretty much everything in your path with no effort and your basically lucky to get a few shots off at the Enclave soldiers before they are pretty much incinerated by the lasers/nukes of the towering robot... the only thing I even found remotely entertaining about this particular segment were the witty taunts Liberty Prime makes in correlation with his previous task of liberating Alaska from the Chinese Communists in 2077... Quotes such as: "DEATH IS PREFERABLE TO COMMUNISM. COMMUNISM EQUALS FAIL. COMMUNISM IS DOWN BY 10%." I felt that this last... i cant even call it a "battle", seems to strip you off of all control in the situation... the only thing you need to do is say a little back and dodge a few missiles and you get to to the purifier with generally not a scratch.

Now... the ending was... ABSOLUTELY horrendous and generally made me sick and i could barely bare with it. Not only is the main super villain generally cliche... he can literally be taken down with two well placed plasma rifle shots to the head... and even his Tesla Armor, Flamer/Chain Laser Gun toting henchmen don't even prove to be a problem to essentially obliterate. Now once you have "delt" with these two, you go up to the purifier and find out someone must go into the radiation drenched room and use the code to activate it to keep it from uh... yeah you guessed it, exploding. Well, its assured that you will die... or your little Brotherhood Of Steel friend, hey you can even let it explode... all in all it doesn't matter because they all lead to a generally equally BAD ending... and bad is being generous. One of the things that annoys me the most is the fact that at the Enclave base you get a super-mutant ally... you know the big o'l lovable fiend Fawkes... well you know what... he refuses to go into the room... the radiation resistant ally REFUSES to go into the room, even thought he essentially owes you a favor still... And then Once I watched the ending after entering the purifier, I immediately thought to myself... hmm... this ending seems very familiar... and I realized that you could literally take the equally horrible ending from I Am Legend and replace it with the Fallout 3 ending and in the end it would generally say the EXACT SAME THING. They sum all of what you have done in such a simple disgusting matter its practically laughable... it makes it essentially seem as if the majority of what you have done was useless... It sums the story up with basically: Vault 101 resident leaves vault in search for father, Resident suffers the lures of the wastes such as greed or follows fathers virtues (wether your good or bad), resident saves wastes/destroys wastes and then its summed up with something along the lines of and thus the tale of this venturer from Vault 101 ends... it was so pathetic... such a great game ended in such a horrible way.

And then... arguably the most notable problem with the game is that... once the main story ends... the entire game ends... and when I said ends... IT ENDS. Its over, you cant do anything anymore... no you can't finish your side quests, no you cant level up your character, no you cant rape and pillage numerous villages, kill the women and men and then send their children off to slavers for money.... Its over... it ends... and this particularly pissed me off the most. Luckily I saved before entering the purifier because most likely if I didn't I would of screamed at my TV in a uncontrollable rage and then go to my bathroom and throw up in disgust.

The game in general is great... but literally... the last 30 minutes of the game just absolutely ruined the entire experience for me... I'm going to try and go back and play some side quests and do my best to ignore what ive seen... this amazing game turned to essential crap in the matter of minutes.

All in all, great game ! with a fatal ending... Comments ?

I wasn't planning on buying it anyway. Sounds like a rental, assuming the story lasts 8 hours like it did in Oblvion.

Agree 100% with you on that. Has a weak final battle where you do absolutely nothing but follow a giant robot from point a to point b and once you do get to the boss and his bodyguards its like 3-4 shots and its over. lol

With all that.. im still playing through the game a 2nd time (this time as a good guy). Its just so addictive. All the side quests are so fun and i haven't come across even 1 repetitive quest yet.

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP and had the exact same gripes with the (typically Bethesda) ending. But I also have major issues with other points of the game, I'm thinking of writing a review (PC version) to shed some light on the dark sides of this title that has recieved nothing but praise.
Surely, Bethesda can't get away with such half-assed work?

I loved the game, I didn't expect any boss battle to be honest, I was also fully decked out in energy weapons for me to even think it would last longer than say 15 seconds. The only thing that made me sad is the fact that it ended, but that just means I won't get to do everything on one char. Now I can exlore those ouher thousands of combinations of events with another one.

 The game automatically saves after liberty prime is done his rampage but this was on 360. The J man was still able to continue with his character

Ok, everything you say is acceptable but may I ask you something...
How the hell could the game go on since one of the endings is that you die?
And one other question. WHO THE HELL nowadays hasn't at least 6 or 5 saves for such a big game??? You have to be really amateur to depend only on the Autosave. Unless you're too confident and play it on Normal or below. Try Hard or Very Hard and come back.
And someone explain. Since I am level 20 and maximized all my attributes etc, and became a "monster" why the hell should I have a problem with a crazy bastard that stands in my way? I agree that the final concept could be harder, but since that was it, it would be ridiculous to be harder that it already is.

@Mummelmann
You know what dude? That's the problem. Too many critics nowadays and too many reviews. Where the hell did you all come from? God!...
Yeah, I strongly believe that the big gamer audience is looking forward to reading your review and shed some light on the ...dark sides of the game. I apologize for being so ignorant and not waiting for an enlightening review from you or any other Game Evangelist before I actually play the goddamn game... Gimme a break...

i think it big flaw was being a WRPG to begin with.

come on a robot with lasers and no epic fight? >_

YEAH I KNO RITE ?!?!

I did make a save, the biggest problem i had was with the overall quality of the ending... it was literally quite horrendous... like i said... for a "Finale" it was remarkably easy to do and overall made you feel that the majority of what you have done is pointless as I have stated prior... it just seems as though Bethesda at the end said "screw it" got lazy and they threw in a few cliché's and a half a**ed mediocre ending.