As I am bored at work, excited about F3 (it was a big reason for upgrading my rig for me) and curious what you guys are going to play as...what are your plans? A brawler? A brainiac? A silver-tongued hottie? A stealthmeister? Anything else?

I'm going with a rerun of my Oblivion custom class "Crack junkie" Given Fallout's relatively large amount of drugs it will probably turn out a little bit better than Oblivion which had next to no serious dope

So...being proficient at dope usage, resistan to radiation and the likes all come to mind. Probably some science and/or barter to produce dope or to raise funds for buying more dope (by bartering) would be useful too. Oh and he'll be freakin' ugly. Gonna turn his face into a true freak of nature (to the extent it's possible). [EDIT: no barter - it depends on charisma and my character is supposed to be a freak]

So...primary stats will probably look something like this:

Strength: 5
Perception: 5
Endurance: 7
Charisma: 2
Intelligence: 10
Agility: 4
Luck:7

And as tag skills:

Science
Medicine
Melee (hey, I'm a rabid junkie...I cut ya face with a kitchen knife yo!)


Perks will depend...many of them have changed so can't really say too much about them right now. Wish it was Thursday already. Or that I was in the states tomorrow.

Is there some site that explains what all are options? I'm new to the universe, so it's all Greek to me. I don't really know what kind of options we have for character development, so I dunno.

Sure, SPECIAL is actually pretty straightforward and in many ways brilliant in its simplicity. It has changed a bit compared to Fallout 1 & 2 for F3 though, so i'll only relate it to the last installment here.

Basically you start with 6 stats (the ones I mentioned above) at 5 (out of a max of 10) and an extra 5 points you can distribute freely. You can subtract from other stats to a minimum of 1 or add to a max of 10 at character creation. So in all you can dispense 40 points over all 6 stats.

Apart from stats there are skills: they deal with specific or general activities and are governed by the main stats. Skills range from barter to science to speech to small guns etc.

At character creation you pick 3 tag skills. These skills will not only gain a small starting bonus but will be easier to raise during your character's development (basically, they get a X2 modifier for every skillpint you add).

Lastly, during the game you pick a perk every time you level. These are little extras that can boost a skill, give you a specific advantage in certain areas or over certain enemies, extra speech options, increased resistance...anything really. Perks can be really diverse, as witnessed by the famous "Bloody mess" perk which makes everyone die in brutal fashion.

You can sometimes gain perks by doing things in the game world. In Fallout 2 you could gain a perk like "Prizefighter" after becoming a boxing champion (if you were good at unarmed, or if you cheated ) and people would recognize you and have a better reaction to you. If your character had a lot of sex in-game you could become "sexpert" and could get a lot of things done that way if you were a complete ho. Just giving you an example of how much variation there is. F3 will be a lot "nicer" tho.

Anyway, you can find more here:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_SPECIAL

An outline on major stats and on the skills and perks. I don't think they have them all yet, but I'm not sure.

Something with a sniper rifle. Maybe sneak and melee too, not sure how melee comes into play now, it might suck horribly.

Well...I got it, and played for a few hours yesterday. First impressions are pretty darn good. I went through the 'growing up in the Vault' process and then escaped into the wasteland. And man, it looks awesome. The scope is truly enormous, I wandered around in the ruined buildings and across the plains and spent some 30 minutes scavenging and just running left and right. Found a lot of old stuff, some things that I could use (like drugs and booze!) and even stumbled into an inhabited home.

The person hiding there was a retired junkie prostitute who wanted me to tell her former pimp in nearby Megaton that she was gone so she could get out from under her debts with him, but I refused and decided I wanted her cash instead. Well, ok, maybe I threatened her. Then she got all crazy and pulled a gun on me...had to clobber her with a baseball bat. Nice start Ox. But hey, I got the money AND some of her dope.

After that I wandered around some more and got into fights with a molerat, a group of 4 raiders and 3 mirelurks (mutated crabs, tough bastages). I could see the remnants of a huge city in the distance but I decided it was probably best to stop by Megaton first and did so. Spent some time at the local bar, met some people, stole some shit, sold some junk. I took the quest to blow up Megaton BUT I'm not sure I will do it. I mean...I'm a crackhead and shit, but not really wantonly EVAL. I do shit for money and dope, and while the quest pays well I'm not sure my current persona is quite that much of a morally questionable type.

We'll see. I stopped playing there. But I can't wait to play some more, it's really fun so far and the world looks great. My character is FUGLY though. I'll post a pic of him soon...his face is misshapen, he's crosseyed, has 1 charisma and his hair is all messed up and bright red. Oh and he's super pale. Really ugly. Funny thing is, your father's face in the game's beginning is changed according to your choice in facial features. So he was ugly too. Anyway, my character is running through the wastes hopped up on a mix of jet, psycho and whiskey. Wahey.


So far though:

Pro's

-World looks amazing. The scope is enormous and the amount of work that must have gone into creating it must be insane. All the design I've seen so far is top-notch to say the least.
-The tutorial in the vault is probably one of the best I've ever seen, seamlessly runs in with the game world and story.
-I know I have a good rig, but in terms of performance the game ran incredibly smooth at ultra high detail with full AA on. Loading times are short.
-dialogue is spicy and fun. Lots of profanity, and people don't take shit in the wastelands
-Even though the game is unmistakingly an RPG, combat doesn't seem as random as Oblivion...the use of guns is probably the main reason. More variation etc.
-VATS has its quirks but looks like a definite addition to gaming.
-hacking and lockpicking involves a good mix of stat-based arbitrariness and mini-games
-characters somehow warrant more sympathy than in Oblivion. Maybe it's the improved facial features?
-it's Fallout!


Cons

-So far, no negatives related to the game itself really...which is saying something. After playing FC2 the graphics aren't THAT slick but well, that's like comparing a ferrari to a BMW.


-the big BUT!!!

Crashes. Not to desktop, but locking up and manual rebooting. Always after playing for a while, like 30 min or so...it's probably a memory leak. I did some research on the forums and i'm definitely not the only one experiencing this. Seems like a Vista problem, too (it's not a DX10 game). I wouldn't mind as much of it was just a CTD, but locking up is a no-no. Let's hope they fix it soon. But if you're on XP you might not even have the problem.

Don't want to crush your hopes, but i've read somewhere (i think on CAD)that enemies are levelling with you. Yeah, just like in Oblivion. I hope that's only partially true or so.

I thought they admitted that monsters levelling with you in Oblivion was a bad design choice. Why repeat it?

Yes, some do, but its limited, unlike in oblivion. As far as i understood it was the critical characters and some others. And even then it should not be 1 to 1.

Had any problem with installing Ox? I read that F3 has Securom happiness.
I'm glad I rarely game anymore. If you're a nice customer you must be a masochist.

Install went flawless for me (but I know some people had issues with it). Hey, at least they don't have you "phone home" every once in a while and limit your installs. That's something.

But it seems like the PC version has a lot of stability issues...I personally suffer from the pc locking up after a while, which is killer. If this game weren't so much fun while playing i'd just give up and wait for a patch.

There are some workarounds though, some are here:

http://www.gamingnewslink.com/2008/10/2 ... on-errors/

it's your typical poor PC optimalization shit with these multiplatform releases. Bad QA. On the bright side, bethesda has a good reputation for patches...I'm expecting one very soon.