The first time I went to GenCon, back in 2003, I went to a presentation by a game designer from Interplay who talked about how to break into the game design industry and what he did; during the question and answer period, he was bombarded by questions about Van Buren, the not-so-secret codename for Fallout 3 in development at the time. He couldn't talk much about it (even though you could tell he sort of wanted to), but it was easy to see the enthusiasm in the room.
Not long after, Interplay abandoned development of Van Buren and sold the rights to Bethesda. For a lot of people, including me, this was followed by a sense of dread; Bethesda's games, to that point, had a reputation for being very wide open, but pretty shallow in many parts. Now they were taking over what was one of the most beloved franchises in computer RPGs, something with a reputation not only for having a huge world, but one with an incredible amount of depth. Trying to fill the late, lamented Black Isle's shoes would have been a tough job for anyone, but Bethesda's games had been very different -- first-person instead of isometric, focused on world-building instead of depth of writing.
Still, as the years wore on, things began to leak out that gave me some hope -- the first panoramas of the crumbling Capitol Building and the aircraft carrier that is Rivet City, the first trailers, Prepare For The Future, and other bits that made me think "hey...these guys might just get it." I allowed myself to be cautiously optimistic. I wanted to see what they finally made.
The game came out shortly before I left for Iceland, and so I had to sit through my brother and friends talking about it on IRC while I was busy elsewhere. Knowing that the game was sitting on my kitchen table did not help relieve the anticipation. When I finally got home, I didn't waste any time installing the game and jumping into it. And for the last two weeks, I have poured dozens of hours into the game. In short, the game is nearly everything I had hoped it would be. It is not perfect, and the ending falls incredibly flat, but up until that last minute or two, the game fires on all cylinders and it is just that good. I'm going to take a look at the nonspoiler pros and cons here; I will put spoilers for the plotline behind the cut, so if you want to be surprised by some of the story's twists and turns, just read this front part.
What stands out as good?
For all its flaws, Fallout 3 is probably one of the best games I have played this year -- it is an impressive feat of world-building and its plot, while it may not be the best ever, is strong enough to carry the weight of the expectations that have been placed on this title. You will feel like you have been dropped in a post-apocalyptic wasteland when you play and leave the real world behind -- it's one of those titles where you will look up at the clock and wonder where the time went. And really, that is all you can ask for from a game like this. Just do yourself a favor and don't rush through the main plot; take your time and explore, as the game is meant to be played; once you enter Vault 87, you sort of hit the point of no return -- so keep that in mind.
My spoiler-inclusive review of the plot is behind the cut, so if you want to know more about that, keep reading.
Not long after, Interplay abandoned development of Van Buren and sold the rights to Bethesda. For a lot of people, including me, this was followed by a sense of dread; Bethesda's games, to that point, had a reputation for being very wide open, but pretty shallow in many parts. Now they were taking over what was one of the most beloved franchises in computer RPGs, something with a reputation not only for having a huge world, but one with an incredible amount of depth. Trying to fill the late, lamented Black Isle's shoes would have been a tough job for anyone, but Bethesda's games had been very different -- first-person instead of isometric, focused on world-building instead of depth of writing.
Still, as the years wore on, things began to leak out that gave me some hope -- the first panoramas of the crumbling Capitol Building and the aircraft carrier that is Rivet City, the first trailers, Prepare For The Future, and other bits that made me think "hey...these guys might just get it." I allowed myself to be cautiously optimistic. I wanted to see what they finally made.
The game came out shortly before I left for Iceland, and so I had to sit through my brother and friends talking about it on IRC while I was busy elsewhere. Knowing that the game was sitting on my kitchen table did not help relieve the anticipation. When I finally got home, I didn't waste any time installing the game and jumping into it. And for the last two weeks, I have poured dozens of hours into the game. In short, the game is nearly everything I had hoped it would be. It is not perfect, and the ending falls incredibly flat, but up until that last minute or two, the game fires on all cylinders and it is just that good. I'm going to take a look at the nonspoiler pros and cons here; I will put spoilers for the plotline behind the cut, so if you want to be surprised by some of the story's twists and turns, just read this front part.
What stands out as good?
- Character creation. Character creation is done in a way that is a bit like an evolved version of the questionaire you fill out in Jagged Alliance 2 -- in other words, it's integrated into the actual tutorial and gameplay. You start out designing how you look, as a "DNA projection," and then move on through time to being an infant, where you pick your attributes, then you have your 10th birthday party where you get your Pip-Boy, then your 16th birthday, where you take a very JA2-like test to determine your tag skills. During each of these stages, you also interact with the other inhabitants of Vault 101, and the way in which you do so can impact events much further into the game. Then the game fast forwards to when you are 19, and the game really begins. However, just before you leave the Vault, you have the option to go back and change everything but your appearance, just in case you changed your mind about something. The game also autosaves at this point, so if you want to start over, you don't have to go through the entire character creation process (unless you want handle some of the stuff in Vault 101 differently).
- The art direction. Fallout 3 feels like a Fallout game. The Capital Wasteland feels like a barren wasteland. Yes, it's mostly brown and dirty colors, but that's how Fallout has been from the start. Irradiated craters are scattered about the wastes, and crumbling buildings (including a battered Washington Monument) are everywhere, many with the retrofuturistic art deco style that is a hallmark of the Fallout franchise. The ads you run into in the game, for everything from Nuka-Cola, to Vault-Tec, to Captain Cosmos serials, evoke that style perfectly as well. And Washington DC locations, while they might not be placed quite right (the world is somewhat compressed), for the most part look like their real-life analogues, down to the ceiling tiles in the Metro stations. It's not really a surprise, I suppose, when you remember that Bethesda is based, well, in Bethesda, so most of these locations aren't more than 20-30 miles away from their offices -- but it is still good to see.
- The music and sound design. The ambient music for the game is very similar to the music used in the earlier Fallout games (a bit less guitar than in Fallout 2, though), and the noises for the monsters and other inhabitants of the wastes are good as well (the ant noise is particularly memorable, for some reason), when you can hear them (a bit more on that later). The in-game radio stations, including the two "big" stations, Enclave Radio and Galaxy News Radio, and the various other beacons and minor stations, are well-done and era-appropriate (GNR, for instance, includes a variety of 40s and 50s tunes, such as The Ink Spots). The only complaint I can register about them is that they do get a bit repetitive after a while -- even the "news" that GNR talks about, which gives you feedback on how your reputation is going and plot hooks, repeats a bit much after you've been playing the game for hours and hours (but it hardly seems fair to criticize them for not providing dozens of hours of radio content).
- World-building. Fallout 3's Capital Wasteland feels like a living, breathing world. It's not just the art and sound design, but the open form of the game world that makes this a strength. In the previous Fallout games, the world was subdivided into zones; you traveled between them using a separate interface, and if you ran into something along the way, it was basically a random chance and spawned a special randomly-selected "zone" that was basically there for a one-time event (with a few exceptions, where the event would remain there in the game world). In Fallout 3, the whole game world is continuous, so there's much less of a feeling that everything is on hold until you arrived there. People come and go during the day and night, and you can watch them through their daily routine. Trade caravans move between towns on routes that you can wait on and have them run into you (or follow, if you'd like). People have their own (albeit short and generally shallow) conversations that you can overhear when you're near. When you run across a super mutant fighting a radscorpion, it doesn't feel like a randomly generated encounter -- it feels like you happened to run into two independent entities that also chanced into each other. There are tons of little scenes that tell a story, even though it's just a collection of objects. A wrecked Nuka-Cola truck, overturned outside a town. A long-abandoned relief camp outside a decrepit police station. A bathtub with a skeleton and a toaster. Each one tells you something about what once happened, even if there's no written record (and when you do find written records, it's often heartbreaking to read). They all feel unique, for the most part -- it doesn't feel like someone said "okay, we have to put something here -- let's spin the wheel and throw down a random shack." It's very well done, and gives you tons of stuff to explore that has absolutely nothing to do with the main storyline.
- VATS. When I found out Fallout 3 was going to be first-person, I was very apprehensive. My previous foray into first-person RPGs (Deus Ex) succeeded in frustrating me immensely because it felt like the RPG skills element was making me much worse at the shooter elements than I was used to. Fallout 3 strikes a much better balance; in non-VATS mode, I don't feel completely ineffective, and my FPS skills seem to translate fairly well, while in VATS mode, my characters skills are an advantage, rather than a detriment. I never felt like I'd be better off not using VATS. The things it lets you do -- snipe, destroy weapons, cripple limbs -- are very cool to watch yourself pull off (blowing the grenade up in someone's hand is especially fun). It's a perfect way to integrate the original Fallout aimed shot system into shooter-style combat.
- Set pieces. There are a few action sequences (not cinematics) that I really liked. I'll give more info in the spoiler section of the review, but there are two sequences (probably largely scripted, I'm sure) where you really feel like you're in an epic action movie.
- Kitbashed items. The weapons that you can build in the game, like the Rock-It Launcher and Railway Rifle, are pretty cool contraptions that are a lot of fun to make and use. Assembling them out of the junk you find on the road seems very fitting for a post-apocalyptic game where people are just scraping by, and I hope that in the upcoming downloadable content they add more things you can build to the game.
- Well, by far the most disappointing part is the ending -- even more than the ending of KotOR2, it feels like it was tacked on and railroady in the extreme. It's only the last two minutes of the game at most, and the sequence up until that point is hilariously awesome -- but the end of the game makes it very hard to really feel happy with how things turned out. You also don't get the ability, as in previous Fallout games, to keep playing and further explore the world, and the hallmark of the Fallout ending sequence, Ron Perlman's voiceovers telling you what happened in the various locales of the game, is only there in a vague and somewhat unsatisfying form. However, the fact that there is downloadable content being released which apparently continues the story makes me wonder if that is going to be changed. We'll see, I guess. The ending also comes up very quickly; I finished the game without really realizing I was that close. Vault 87 marks the beginning of the end, and you don't get much of a chance to deviate from the main plot after that point.
- The game seems to need some work in balancing the pace of advancement. The level cap is easily attainable well before getting close to the end, assuming you do even the smallest bit of exploring. It seems like it would have been better to adjust this so that you don't hit the level cap unless you do more exploring; that would encourage people to have a look around the world a little more, instead of going headlong down the main quest and missing most of the rich world that they've developed, like some people seem to have done (and then complained about how short the game is).
- If you're playing a good karma character, it's rather difficult to get a companion until quite late in the game. There's one character you can get towards the middle (at a hefty price), but after that there's no way to get one until the last third of the game. This is in contrast to evil characters, who can pick up an ally in the very first town you visit. It'd be nice if there was a bit more parity -- after all, in the first two games it was fairly easy to pick up a friend early on, and it's very nice to have one watching your back, though at times they can run off to engage an enemy upstairs or somewhere "close" but not easily accessible. This can result in them being trapped and killed while you hunt frantically for them.
- I'm not sure I liked the escalation of equipment in the game. In Fallout 1 and 2, you had to suffer with your 10mm pistol or a double-barrelled shotgun for a while in the game, and getting better armor took even longer. In Fallout 3, I managed to get a hunting rifle or an assault rifle pretty early on, and didn't have to wait too long to upgrade to combat armor either (thanks to the mercenaries coming after me). It almost seemed a bit too easy, and once you are running into super mutants you rarely have trouble keeping your weapons in good shape. Ammunition can be tight -- assuming you don't do much exploring. Once you find a couple bandit camps or hidden stashes, you won't have too much trouble finding ammo for small guns (assuming you have a couple different kinds on hand, just in case). I would have liked to feel like I was in trouble a bit more, stuck with pistols and sawed-off shotguns instead of assault rifles and combat shotguns.
- Some of the quests can get a little bugged if you do them out of sequence; for instance, early on you are told about Rivet City, which is in the downtown DC area. However, if you go there before completing part of the main quest in the middle, you end up breaking one of the set-pieces, forcing you to fight a super-mutant horde all by yourself, among other things! You can also pick up some quest items before actually getting said quest, and then get dialogue options to ask characters about the quest even before you know to ask them about it, which is a little weird. These are a relatively minor issue, but can be annoying; my advice would be to not delve into downtown DC until the main quest actually sends you somewhere in there, since that is where most of the problematic quests come up. There's plenty to explore outside the city anyway. The worst part about this problem is that you can end up missing out on a ton of good content without even knowing! I suspect for some people who've played the game and thought it was too short or unfulfilling, this may be their problem.
- Some of the extra dialogue options you get from having high attributes or skills don't seem to make much sense, and while it's nice that you're rewarded for having a high Speech skill in many places, the fact that you can bypass entire parts of the game simply from making a Speech check or having certain perks is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you can progress along the quest faster -- on the other hand, you're missing out on some pretty fun game content that way. This could use a little work later -- Speech checks should give you an advantage, or a new way to finish the quest (a la the final showdown with The Master in Fallout 1), but I don't know how I feel about it basically cutting out an hour of the game.
- Your situational awareness at times is not the best. While your Perception stat determines how far away enemies (and locations) will pop up on your radar, if they aren't in front of you, you won't see them. Some of creatures don't seem to make any noise until they are right on top of you (notably Yao-Guai, Giant Radscorpions, and Deathclaws, some of the most dangerous creatures in the game). This means that you can be charged from behind and not know it until you're getting battered across the ground by giant paws. At times, I ended up sneaking everywhere, because at least then you get a "[CAUTION]" or "[DANGER]" warning when someone is shooting or coming after you, even if you can't see them. It'd be nice if you could hear the 700 pound mutant bear running through the grass behind you. This is one of the reasons I liked having a companion, because Dogmeat will growl or your other friends will say they hear something when there's hostiles near, giving you a chance to look around.
For all its flaws, Fallout 3 is probably one of the best games I have played this year -- it is an impressive feat of world-building and its plot, while it may not be the best ever, is strong enough to carry the weight of the expectations that have been placed on this title. You will feel like you have been dropped in a post-apocalyptic wasteland when you play and leave the real world behind -- it's one of those titles where you will look up at the clock and wonder where the time went. And really, that is all you can ask for from a game like this. Just do yourself a favor and don't rush through the main plot; take your time and explore, as the game is meant to be played; once you enter Vault 87, you sort of hit the point of no return -- so keep that in mind.
My spoiler-inclusive review of the plot is behind the cut, so if you want to know more about that, keep reading.
SPOILERS BEGIN HERE
Fallout 3's plot revolves around your father and his work before you were born; this is ultimately what makes him leave the Vault and in turn what drives you to follow after him. Project Purity, in a bit of a nod to the original Fallout, is a plan to clean the entire Tidal Basin, giving people fresh clean water instead of the irradiated sludge that now makes up the Potomac. The plot of the game follows the second attempt at making this work; it is a suitably epic plot for Fallout, where saving the West Coast from super mutants and the genocidal plans of the Enclave have been the goals of the previous two releases.
Speaking of the Enclave, they are back, and in fine form. One of the first signals you pick up on your Pip-Boy is the Enclave propaganda station, where the soothing voice of John Henry Eden, President of the Enclave (President of America....president of your heart) tells you about how great everything will be when the Enclave rules the world. Their eyebots can be spotted in various places in the wasteland from the beginning of the game, getting more prevalent as the plot goes on. Malcolm McDowell, who provides the voice, does a great job giving the character folksy charm, and I couldn't help but find the president to be disturbingly friendly (knowing what I know about the Enclave).
The next stop on the main quest is Galaxy News Radio, where your father went after Megaton; it's not particularly clear why, since what he needs is in Rivet City, but this does give you the first real set piece of the game, and it was incredibly fun for me. When you arrive at the Metro station nearest the radio station, you run into a group of super mutants fighting a detachment of Brotherhood of Steel soldiers; after they "save you," they tell you that they are trying to get the GNR as well, where the super mutants are laying siege to the Brotherhood's outpost there, and offer to let you tag along if you want. What follows is a running gun battle through the ruins of DC, culminating in a showdown between the Brotherhood and a giant super mutant behemoth. Watching the Brotherhood soldiers move and cover each other as you make your way to GNR Plaza, and helping to take out the behemoth with a Fat Man man-portable tacnuke launcher is great fun, and really draws you in, especially with the radio chatter between the Brotherhood soldiers. I'm sure that most of the sequence was scripted, but it didn't really feel like it.
After GNR, you go to Rivet City, which is a city built on/in a moored aircraft carrier, which leads you to the defunct Project Purity base in the Jefferson Memorial, and then points you to Vault 112. Vault 112 is totally different from the rest of the Vaults in the game (or in any of the previous games), in that the people there are in cryostasis and trapped in a Matrix-like simulation controlled by the former Overseer, a sadistic Vault-Tec scientist. Dr. Braun has turned the simulation into a creepy testbed for playing psychological games with the Vault residents. Your father is also trapped in the simulation, having come here to try and get information about the GECK he needs to finish Project Purity. In order to free him, you have to go in as well, putting you in a strange, 1950s black and white world run by Betty, a little girl that is Braun's avatar in the simulation.
In this world, Braun tries to get you to do various things of escalating horror; make a boy cry, break up a marriage, kill someone, all the way up to terrorizing the entire neighborhood. You can either go along with Braun's sadistic games, or try to find another way out -- an option that is possible, but not obvious at the outset (and is therefore pretty rewarding to find). If you can find it, you can destroy the simulation (killing everyone but you, your dad, and Braun) and free yourself. After this, your dad runs back to Rivet City and then Project Purity, where you try to start it up again, only to be interrupted when the Enclave comes to take control of the facility. Your father's death scene is railroaded but poignant, and then results in a desperate escape through sewer tunnels. The only problem I had with this sequence was that evidently your father is killed by the radiation in the chamber, but the Enclave officer, (not wearing powered armor) is just fine, showing up later as an antagonist.
The Citadel, home to the Brotherhood of Steel (and formerly known as the Pentagon), is another beautifully rendered location. A mix of crumbling concrete and newly-installed wood and metal fortifications, it really gives you the feel of a majestic building turned into a fortress, and really fits the Brotherhood. When you can finally get into the building, after Project Purity is attacked by the Enclave, it has a much different feeling from previous Brotherhood strongholds like Lost Hills. Much less shiny and clean, much more commandeered military headquarters in the battle zone. It gives the Brotherhood here a very different theme from their West Coast cousins, which, considering the fact that these Brotherhood soldiers have taken on a new mission, protecting DC from the mutant threat instead of preserving technology, is really appropriate. The centerpiece of the Citadel is Liberty Prime, a giant combat robot developed during the Great War to fight the Chinese, now being restored by the Brotherhood; it plays a critical part in the jaw-dropping lead up to the end of the game, when it goes on a rampage, spouting jingoistic war cries ("Death is a preferable alternative to communism!"), firing lasers and launching tacnukes as it clears the path to Project Purity. It is an amazingly fun action sequence to play through, with Enclave soldiers and Vertibirds challenging Liberty Prime and your Brotherhood compatriots as you make your way across the Potomac and down to the Jefferson Memorial (it also answered the question of "can you shoot down Vertibirds?" for me; the answer is yes).
It's after this really fun sequence that the endgame starts to break down. After fighting your way into the Jefferson Memorial, you get to the end of the game, you are presented with a dilemma. The fighting has caused so much damage that someone needs to go in and activate Project Purity, or the power systems will overload and destroy the whole thing. The problem is that doing so will irradiate the control room and kill whoever puts in the code. You're given the choice of sending in one of the Brotherhood troops that has come with you, or going yourself. Make the noble sacrifice, you die, but your legend lives on as the person that sacrifices themself for their father's dream. Send the Brotherhood Paladin, and you are lambasted as a coward, regardless of what you'd done beforehand.
The problem is, there's the distinct possibility that you have one of two allies, a friendly super mutant or a ghoul, who are completely impervious to radiation. If you ask them to take care of it for you, they say that they can't -- it's your destiny. It is a huge cop out, and seems pretty ingrateful from someone who you saved from spending the rest of their long lives in slavery or locked in a cell. "Gee, I saved your life, but you can't go in and punch in a couple numbers to save the entire wasteland and keep me from dying, even though it wouldn't really inconvenience you in the least." It's really the most frustrating and horrible part of the game, and doesn't make any sense -- why end the game like that, especially when the "good" ending kills you off and ends any possibility of you exploring the game afterward (not to mention seemingly putting the kibosh on extra content for after the game, though that is apparently happening anyway)? While I think the rest of the game Bethesda did a pretty good job with, this is the one place where it falls on its face and really doesn't stand up to the Fallout legacy (even the rather mediocre Fallout 2 ending was less railroady than this). I hope that this is fixed later, either by Bethesda or by someone else with the SDK.
The other problem with the end of the game is that it basically starts when you go to Vault 87; when you finish Vault 87, you get hijacked by a cinematic where you're captured by the Enclave, with no way to stop them. This is another kind of cop-out, but I can forgive it -- it doesn't end the game for you, it just moves you on to a new part (it's very similar to the part of Halflife where you are captured by soldiers and dropped into a dumpster). Then you get thrown into a sequence where you fight through the Enclave's headquarters at Raven Rock, eventually coming face to face with President John Henry Eden himself. This is really where you get the confrontation that is like the meeting between you and the Master in Fallout; there's fewer real options, but you do get a fairly interesting conversation with several possible outcomes. Once you leave Raven Rock though, you are basically shepherded toward the endgame; while you can go wander around the wasteland again, the situation seems more urgent and your options for companions are very limited. This would not be nearly as big a deal if the ending were not as final as it is, but since this basically ends anymore exploration or gameplay, it's really frustrating to be railroaded towards the ending like this with no real warning that this is happening.
I could go on for quite a while about all the other smaller parts of the game you can find -- the brawl at the Capitol, the crater of the White House, the caged behemoth of Evergreen Mills, the Slavers and abolitionists of the Lincoln Memorial and Temple of the Union -- but I'd be writing for days more, and there's no reason to spoil the whole game to highlight its good and bad points. For as annoying as the flaws in the game are, it is still an amazing piece of work, and I highly recommend picking it up. I'm looking forward to seeing what people can do with the SDK and what Bethesda is going to include in their upcoming downloadable content.
Fallout 3's plot revolves around your father and his work before you were born; this is ultimately what makes him leave the Vault and in turn what drives you to follow after him. Project Purity, in a bit of a nod to the original Fallout, is a plan to clean the entire Tidal Basin, giving people fresh clean water instead of the irradiated sludge that now makes up the Potomac. The plot of the game follows the second attempt at making this work; it is a suitably epic plot for Fallout, where saving the West Coast from super mutants and the genocidal plans of the Enclave have been the goals of the previous two releases.
Speaking of the Enclave, they are back, and in fine form. One of the first signals you pick up on your Pip-Boy is the Enclave propaganda station, where the soothing voice of John Henry Eden, President of the Enclave (President of America....president of your heart) tells you about how great everything will be when the Enclave rules the world. Their eyebots can be spotted in various places in the wasteland from the beginning of the game, getting more prevalent as the plot goes on. Malcolm McDowell, who provides the voice, does a great job giving the character folksy charm, and I couldn't help but find the president to be disturbingly friendly (knowing what I know about the Enclave).
The next stop on the main quest is Galaxy News Radio, where your father went after Megaton; it's not particularly clear why, since what he needs is in Rivet City, but this does give you the first real set piece of the game, and it was incredibly fun for me. When you arrive at the Metro station nearest the radio station, you run into a group of super mutants fighting a detachment of Brotherhood of Steel soldiers; after they "save you," they tell you that they are trying to get the GNR as well, where the super mutants are laying siege to the Brotherhood's outpost there, and offer to let you tag along if you want. What follows is a running gun battle through the ruins of DC, culminating in a showdown between the Brotherhood and a giant super mutant behemoth. Watching the Brotherhood soldiers move and cover each other as you make your way to GNR Plaza, and helping to take out the behemoth with a Fat Man man-portable tacnuke launcher is great fun, and really draws you in, especially with the radio chatter between the Brotherhood soldiers. I'm sure that most of the sequence was scripted, but it didn't really feel like it.
After GNR, you go to Rivet City, which is a city built on/in a moored aircraft carrier, which leads you to the defunct Project Purity base in the Jefferson Memorial, and then points you to Vault 112. Vault 112 is totally different from the rest of the Vaults in the game (or in any of the previous games), in that the people there are in cryostasis and trapped in a Matrix-like simulation controlled by the former Overseer, a sadistic Vault-Tec scientist. Dr. Braun has turned the simulation into a creepy testbed for playing psychological games with the Vault residents. Your father is also trapped in the simulation, having come here to try and get information about the GECK he needs to finish Project Purity. In order to free him, you have to go in as well, putting you in a strange, 1950s black and white world run by Betty, a little girl that is Braun's avatar in the simulation.
In this world, Braun tries to get you to do various things of escalating horror; make a boy cry, break up a marriage, kill someone, all the way up to terrorizing the entire neighborhood. You can either go along with Braun's sadistic games, or try to find another way out -- an option that is possible, but not obvious at the outset (and is therefore pretty rewarding to find). If you can find it, you can destroy the simulation (killing everyone but you, your dad, and Braun) and free yourself. After this, your dad runs back to Rivet City and then Project Purity, where you try to start it up again, only to be interrupted when the Enclave comes to take control of the facility. Your father's death scene is railroaded but poignant, and then results in a desperate escape through sewer tunnels. The only problem I had with this sequence was that evidently your father is killed by the radiation in the chamber, but the Enclave officer, (not wearing powered armor) is just fine, showing up later as an antagonist.
The Citadel, home to the Brotherhood of Steel (and formerly known as the Pentagon), is another beautifully rendered location. A mix of crumbling concrete and newly-installed wood and metal fortifications, it really gives you the feel of a majestic building turned into a fortress, and really fits the Brotherhood. When you can finally get into the building, after Project Purity is attacked by the Enclave, it has a much different feeling from previous Brotherhood strongholds like Lost Hills. Much less shiny and clean, much more commandeered military headquarters in the battle zone. It gives the Brotherhood here a very different theme from their West Coast cousins, which, considering the fact that these Brotherhood soldiers have taken on a new mission, protecting DC from the mutant threat instead of preserving technology, is really appropriate. The centerpiece of the Citadel is Liberty Prime, a giant combat robot developed during the Great War to fight the Chinese, now being restored by the Brotherhood; it plays a critical part in the jaw-dropping lead up to the end of the game, when it goes on a rampage, spouting jingoistic war cries ("Death is a preferable alternative to communism!"), firing lasers and launching tacnukes as it clears the path to Project Purity. It is an amazingly fun action sequence to play through, with Enclave soldiers and Vertibirds challenging Liberty Prime and your Brotherhood compatriots as you make your way across the Potomac and down to the Jefferson Memorial (it also answered the question of "can you shoot down Vertibirds?" for me; the answer is yes).
It's after this really fun sequence that the endgame starts to break down. After fighting your way into the Jefferson Memorial, you get to the end of the game, you are presented with a dilemma. The fighting has caused so much damage that someone needs to go in and activate Project Purity, or the power systems will overload and destroy the whole thing. The problem is that doing so will irradiate the control room and kill whoever puts in the code. You're given the choice of sending in one of the Brotherhood troops that has come with you, or going yourself. Make the noble sacrifice, you die, but your legend lives on as the person that sacrifices themself for their father's dream. Send the Brotherhood Paladin, and you are lambasted as a coward, regardless of what you'd done beforehand.
The problem is, there's the distinct possibility that you have one of two allies, a friendly super mutant or a ghoul, who are completely impervious to radiation. If you ask them to take care of it for you, they say that they can't -- it's your destiny. It is a huge cop out, and seems pretty ingrateful from someone who you saved from spending the rest of their long lives in slavery or locked in a cell. "Gee, I saved your life, but you can't go in and punch in a couple numbers to save the entire wasteland and keep me from dying, even though it wouldn't really inconvenience you in the least." It's really the most frustrating and horrible part of the game, and doesn't make any sense -- why end the game like that, especially when the "good" ending kills you off and ends any possibility of you exploring the game afterward (not to mention seemingly putting the kibosh on extra content for after the game, though that is apparently happening anyway)? While I think the rest of the game Bethesda did a pretty good job with, this is the one place where it falls on its face and really doesn't stand up to the Fallout legacy (even the rather mediocre Fallout 2 ending was less railroady than this). I hope that this is fixed later, either by Bethesda or by someone else with the SDK.
The other problem with the end of the game is that it basically starts when you go to Vault 87; when you finish Vault 87, you get hijacked by a cinematic where you're captured by the Enclave, with no way to stop them. This is another kind of cop-out, but I can forgive it -- it doesn't end the game for you, it just moves you on to a new part (it's very similar to the part of Halflife where you are captured by soldiers and dropped into a dumpster). Then you get thrown into a sequence where you fight through the Enclave's headquarters at Raven Rock, eventually coming face to face with President John Henry Eden himself. This is really where you get the confrontation that is like the meeting between you and the Master in Fallout; there's fewer real options, but you do get a fairly interesting conversation with several possible outcomes. Once you leave Raven Rock though, you are basically shepherded toward the endgame; while you can go wander around the wasteland again, the situation seems more urgent and your options for companions are very limited. This would not be nearly as big a deal if the ending were not as final as it is, but since this basically ends anymore exploration or gameplay, it's really frustrating to be railroaded towards the ending like this with no real warning that this is happening.
I could go on for quite a while about all the other smaller parts of the game you can find -- the brawl at the Capitol, the crater of the White House, the caged behemoth of Evergreen Mills, the Slavers and abolitionists of the Lincoln Memorial and Temple of the Union -- but I'd be writing for days more, and there's no reason to spoil the whole game to highlight its good and bad points. For as annoying as the flaws in the game are, it is still an amazing piece of work, and I highly recommend picking it up. I'm looking forward to seeing what people can do with the SDK and what Bethesda is going to include in their upcoming downloadable content.
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