a lot of that can be agreed on, but
1) a lot of it can be fixed by mods (the gameplay mechanics, levelling etc), though that is of course not to bethesda's credit
2)a lot of stuff is not that bad if you are not native english speaker (for example dialogues were mostly ok - there were some cringe worthy lines even for me, but most of it was not immersion breaking, even if it was noticeably poorer than in FO1 and 2)
3) some cosmetic stuff, while bad, does not really detract that much from the experience (like bad animations..)
4) the world building and atmosphere is where beth are good, Fallout 3 was very immersive and atmospheric game. Quests were mostly fun too, a lot of them had more than 1 resolution possible, which is very much an improvement from, say, Oblivion
Some of the lore was frakked up by Bethesda, totally agree, and it sucks.

Zeta was easily the worst DLC by far (Point Lookout was great though), I just ignore its existance. Aliens did not cause GW no matter what Zeta says :P

That's really offensive. It wasn't mankind that screwed up, it was the evil aliens! That's the kind of worldview that people like Alex Jones and his ilk have.
Let's hope this isn't built upon by later games by Bethesda.

I haven't played Fallout 3 yet but I find that there are many things that I like about it. The visions of post nuclear cities look very beautiful and interesting. Bethesda are very talented with graphics, and when I say that I'm not talking about polygons and resolutions.
My guess is that is best played as a rpg game set in the Fallout universe or a rpg game inspired by Fallout and Fallout 2 rather than a true Fallout successor.

The really great thing about Fallout 3 is that it has revived the interest in Fallout and managed to introduce the setting to a multitude of new players. This in turn has made it more likely for others to make their games in the Fallout setting as seen with Obsidian's Fallout: New vegas. Especially since Bethesda allows other studios to develop in the setting.

The post-apocalyptic future looks bright indeed!

I dunno, I think they've taken a nasty hit to their artistic direction since Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Still, if I was to complain about anything(and I did, above, and the list goes on), I would have to put this near the bottom as a very minor "this could be improved a bit" mention. It's best played as a particularly bad shooter that happens to have a "pause" feature and random ascending numbers that affect nothing, but sort of give off the impression that this is an RPG if you aren't paying attention. I will say this: Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout Online show promise. I really am interested in what they have to offer, though not as interested as I would be pre-Fallout 3.

But I really don't care if "the masses" are introduced to Fallout, because people are dumb. Most won't go back and play the originals, and most won't see the "3" as an indication of anything but "there are two other games in this series with a lower polygon count, so I should go with the bigger number". Much the same with film, people are stupid and shallow and you can't teach them anything by any means.

Yes but if many people are interested there is profit to be made and if there is profit to be made there is funding for a game. If New Vegas turns out as we hope it will, it may also give many of the players that has just played Fallout 3 a taste for real RPG gameplay and thus more games with such can be made.

A game shouldnt need 10+ mods from the community to play ok, like in the case with Fallout 3 and Oblivion before it. Yes, bethesda did put a lot of effort into creating this wasteland to go around, but that's as far as they could go for Fallout. It mostly plays like their previous game. As RatherDashing mentions, most people who now know Fallout from Fallout 3 won't go and play the first two games.

I played through Oblivion and Fallout 3 without mods many times and enjoyed them. Of course Fallout 3 isn't going to be liked very much by people that really enjoyed the 2D turn-based Fallout 1&2. I'd love to see new games with current graphics like that, but it seems true turn-based RPGs are completely dead. Mainly because the 3D games have to put a tremendous amount of their game budget into the real-time 3D graphics, and wind up having less to spend on the other aspects of the game.

Hell, at least Bethesda tries to make a half decent RPG, whereas practically nobody else does anymore. The RPGers lambaste them for making a game that isn't roleplaying enough, while the action gamers bitch and moan because it's not difficult enough for hardcore FPS fans... And no matter which they try to appease, it just causes the other side to scream louder.

Unfortunately I don't see it changing any time soon. If anything the RPG aspects of games will get more and more watered down until everything is just a fancy Doom clone... I just hope that at least Bethesda still tries to make RPGs that at least hold on to a hint of what they used to be.

Fallout 3 is a game that I spent hundreds of hours playing (largely thanks to mods and DLC), so I am very familiar with it. I'll say it straight that Fallout 3 is a disgrace of a Fallout game. It has so little in common to the original series once you've removed words like "Brotherhood of Steel" and "Pip-boy" that it'd might as well just be Post-Nuclear Fun Park 3 instead. It's extremely obvious that Bethesda have little understanding or care for the Fallout series beyond simple aesthetics.

Now, Fallout 3 isn't a downright bad game. As an open-world lite-RPG/shooter it offers up a lot things to do, places to see, people to talk to, things to find and explore, etc. As far as attention to detail goes, Bethesda have some excellent artists and designers. I think that to some degree they did a good job in capturing the feel of Fallout, visually, and there are some pretty cool and creative environments (though lots of boring ones as well). There's something new or interesting to see in Fallout 3 at nearly every turn, and I think Bethesda deserve a lot of praise in creating such a large game without it becoming totally boring or uninteresting over time.

Where they absolutely fall flat is when it comes to writing, story, canon and game systems. SPECIAL has been pretty much nerfed to hell in their attempt to get the game in-line with modern shooter conventions, the dialogue is cringe-inducing at every turn, the story only works because characters are stupid and the player is constantly railroaded into doing stupid or pointless things, and combat has been reduced to a frantic mess, with VATS being the shit crown on top. Whoever decided that forcing the player to watch slow-motion animation sequences every single god-damn time... well, let's just say I want to put Todd Howard's nuts in a vicegrip.

Fallout 3 gets a lot better with mods, and even becomes a worthwhile Fallout game once you've got enough of them installed (Fallout Wanderer's Edition is a great place to start), but unfortunately mods can only fix so much. A a fan of the original Fallouts, their bleak outlook and wry humour, their strong atmosphere and characters rooted in a logically, internally consistent word, their quality writing and voice-acting, their robust and well-thought out character building systems and tactical combat... knowing that the series is now in the hands of a bunch of people who can be accurately described as "yahoos" is not a good thing.

I'm really hoping that New Vegas will fix a lot of the issues with Fallout 3 - it certainly seems to be headed in that direction. It still looks a bit on the goofy side, but if Obsidian are able to make a game that does not make me feel stupider every minute I play it, then things can only improve.

I love Fallout 3 and anyone who's listened to interviews with the team knows that, for all the things it may or may not have been, it was definitely a bold labor of love.

Fallout 3 sits among my favorite games of all time--but I am a graduate student, so perhaps my intellect is already suspect.

Fallout 3 is then fallout for retards. : P

No.

I absolutely loved FO3 but I have a great reverence and respect for the first two. I just went into it like I did when Fallout came out - ok it's loosely based on a previous game I loved, so let's see it for what it is and not try to make it into something it's not trying to be.

As Fallout came from Wasteland, Fallout 3 came from FO 1/2. Each a spiritual successor, each doing things a lot differently than the game(s) it came from.

If you really hate FO3, you should consider that because it did so well now we will be getting new Fallout games for years to come. Try to be optimistic ;) Also, New Vegas is coming from Obsidian, which has quite a few of the people that used to work at Black Isle/Interplay. It should be as close to a true successor as possible.

Get excited people, Obsidian is finally going to release a new Fallout game! The stars are aligning, the moon is waxing, etc. I know I'm super stoked (happy)

There will only be games that are like Fallout 3, and that is, Oblivion with guns games with the name Fallout on the title. Why they spent so much buying the fallout name from Interplay, instead of just making their own wasteland-like RPG?

Simple answer: people like open-world games, acting like dicks, killing random people, etc. Combine that with guns, explosions and mutants, and you have profit.

Long answer: because Fallout has a strong cult following and is more or less an established brand with its own world and fiction. Bethesda are uncreative when it comes to world-building ever since they decided to get rid of half the people who worked on Morrowind (i.e. the smart and talented people), and likely saw it as an easy property for them to reap the rewards from. Which, surprise surprise, it was. Doesn't matter that the game is largely broken, it's got SLOW MOTION EXPLODING HEADS, BRO

On the one hand, Fallout 3 would have been received much better by the original fanbase if it had been created and marketed as a spin-off of the franchise, or its own franchise altogether. But no, Bethesda explicitly went into the project attempting to make a worthwhile follow-up to the first two Fallout games, and failed miserably. Fallout fans are upset about the poor writing, the change in tone, the raping of the canon, the simplification and neutering of game systems like SPECIAL, and the relatively linear storyline and quest design - the game itself isn't downright terrible, but it tries to follow in the footsteps of the first two and just doesn't even come close, for the reasons people loved Fallout to begin with.

On the other hand, if the game didn't have the Fallout name, I expect it wouldn't have received nearly as much hype from the media, nor would it have received the incredibly high scores from mainstream games "journalism" outlets. I guarantee you that flaws like poor AI, bad combat, half-baked ideas like VATS, and the incredible amount of game-crippling bugs would have not been overlooked. Games which do similar things to Fallout 3, but better (i.e. Borderlands, STALKER) end up getting lower scores solely because of the fact that there is no legacy to revere and no fanbase to offend.

Sums things up pretty well. Okay, maybe not "for retards", but the simple fact is that Fallout 3 features nowhere near the depth or complexity of the first two games. It forgoes consistency and a logical, believable world for the sake of "cool shit", and it downplays the role-playing elements of the game significantly, to the point where statistics do not have a major effect on the way you play (and you can max out your character easily, anyway). And, of course, things like armour types, ammo types, and so forth are all gone, as are the penalties for status effects like radiation, crippled limbs, etc., so combat has been simplified significantly as well. Never mind the lack of options in quests, obvious railroading during the main storyline that prevents your character from doing the most intelligent things in any given situation, and so forth... while Fallout 3 is hardly a game for drooling morons (though it does cater to them rather nicely in some respects), to say it is anything but a dumbed-down version of the original games would be objectively wrong.

Some of you are very good at expressing what is wrong with Fallout 3 as a Fallout game. I think it could be a good idea to write it down and send it to Bethesda, perhaps along with some things that you like about Fallout 3, if there is any. I don't know if they read any mail about Fallout 3 any longer, but if they do any criticism could have an influence on them, especially if it is repeated by many people.

I think (hope) that it will be enough to look at NV..hopefully they will play it and go "wow, why didn't we make it like that!" and then they will start hiring people, like those that made Nehrim.

That would be awesome : )