Fallout 3

Fallout 3 will have over 200 endings.

The Fallout series is something i had missed out on, due to my age, but i certainly understand the excitement that is following this game.

It's being developed by Bethesda, the guys who brought us the extremely solid Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Now i say solid in the sense that for the sheer scale of the game, everything worked bug free. We are talking about a game with 200+ dungeons, 150+ quests, 121 plant types randomly generated in the wilderness areas, 21 secondary character attributes (i.e., skills), 8 primary character attributes, 9 major cities, all fit into 40 square miles of wilderness. This game has no ending.

The problem with Oblivion is that eventually all of this stuff started looking the same. The game only had so many voice actors, so all of the NPCs start sounding exactly the same. Also, in my opinion, the only quest line that was actually worth playing was the Dark Brotherhood quest line.

Imagine my surprise when i found out that the dude who created the Dark Brotherhood quest line is now in charge of all of Fallout 3s quests and story lines.

You start the game witnessing, in first person, you birth. You are born into a Vault (a colony living in a radiation shelter left over from the nuclear war, no one enters or leaves the vault), and for about the first 2 hours of the game this section teaches you the basics of the game. You learn movement by crawling around in your crib, you learn how the dialog system works from your 10th birthday, you learn to fire guns in the vaults target range, you learn everything about the world in this vault.

Even more interesting is that when creating your future selfs appearance, this also alters your fathers appearance to resemble you. One day you wake up to find that your father has left the vault mysteriously, so you set out to find him.

The game gives you the opportunity to befriend a feisty dog named Dogmeat. Not only will Dogmeat help you out in combat, but he will also explore the ruins in search of items. You wont just give him a order to find items and have him disappear for a few minutes only to come back with some random item in his mouth, no he will actually find items that exist in the world, items that you yourself can pick up.

The Fallout series is about choices, so unlike oblivion the game does have a ending, it is said that the game will clock in at 70 hours. Whether this is just the main quest or whether it includes all the side quest is still up in the air. I'd imagine the main storyline would be about 35 or so hours, while the rest of the game would be dedicated to side quests.

The developers promise that the choices will have that shade of grey that many games seem to forget about. A preview from Gamespot explains it best:
"The example that Bethesda gave of this involves Megaton, a shantytown built around the worship of an unexploded nuclear bomb. When you arrive at Megaton, you'll eventually have two choices. A stranger will reward you if you rearm the bomb, as he represents a developer that would like to wipe Megaton from the map to make room for a nice postnuclear suburb. Or you can inform the town sheriff of the plot and save the town. If you choose to go along with the stranger, Megaton will be wiped out of existence in a glorious nuclear blast; thus, all the quests and adventures associated with it are gone. However, by blowing up Megaton, you'll open up a new area in the game that you would not otherwise have access to, Tenpenny Towers. But if you decide to save Megaton, you won't experience the quests and adventures associated with Tenpenny Towers. Talk about a tough call."

Of all the games coming out this year, this is the one that remains at the top of my list.