I just can’t win.
I’ve been dying to get finished with Fallout 3 for AGES. At about eighty-five hours in, I finally completed the main storyline, not to mention every single trophy-granting mini-quest. This was going to be the game that finally earned me that elusive Platinum Trophy. But for some reason or another, my “Scientific Pursuits” award never registered. Aggravating, but what the hell, right? Not like this game hasn’t earned another five or so hours of my time. Seemed as if I might as well go ahead and wrap things up, then start a new character for the Achievement.
So I pushed through the final narrative-driving bits, albeit feeling a little frustrated. I was resenting the fact I’d need to start again in order to earn this meaningless recognition that I’d become hopelessly obsessed with. And, once I’d finally completed the game, there was this hollow feeling haunting me. But it didn’t stem from what you might expect. Rather than lamenting my trophygrubbing ways, I’m convinced that I was just bummed to be supposedly “done” with Fallout 3.
Something about the game just screams Continue me!!! The open-ended richness of its world begs to be explored continuously. I’d expected to just burn right through creating a second character and then make a bee-line for the missing trophy, but the allure of being a whole new person with all sorts of fresh and slightly different choices was too much for me, and now I’ve got a new alter ego named Samantha Dean. She’s a Black Widow who’s particularly agile and perceptive. Which is quite the contrast to my previous avatar, who was a Daddy’s Boy and preternaturally intelligent. But the thing I’ve found most astonishing about restarting Fallout 3 is how liberating it is to have already experienced much of what the game has to offer.
Stepping back into the Capital Wasteland feels like coming home again. It’s enough to make me wish I’d been forced to do this much earlier — once you’re familiar with the mechanics, once you’ve lost some of that blessed innocence, there’s suddenly all this freedom because you know what you’re able to get away with. I feel like a second playthrough could be more of an authentic role-playing situation in that I’m not tempted to act all goody two-shoes just so as not to cut off any options.
At any rate, I guess the long and the short of this is that I’m more than happy to never want to “win” Fallout 3. It’s a game wherein victory conditions feel counter to the very core of one’s experience, which should be about living in a crazy, post-apocalyptic USA. Playing is its own reward without end.
Tags: Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Fallout, Fallout 3
