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Baby's First Fallout

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Sam Marchello
Staff Editorialist

As I confessed in a previous editorial, I am terrible at Western RPGs. I admitted to my lack of experience and vowed that I would attempt to give them another shot. Clearly, I've been missing out on some impressive efforts.

This year, I'm determined to complete one Western RPG, and I selected Fallout 3. Although I have put in roughly three hours into the game, I found myself looking at the genre with fresh eyes and realized that I had been missing out on what the West had been developing. I have to say: it's different. Vast environments, the ability to control your fate without being constrained by linearity – it's invigorating. I felt as though I was wielding extraordinary power, that I could control my fate and reshape the Wastelands in whatever way I wanted. I could protect the innocent, or murder them with the slap of a police baton.

I recognize that I have been a slave to linear gameplay. In a way, perhaps Japanese RPGs babied me by constantly holding my hand and guiding me to where I needed to go and how I was to get there. In my stubbornness, I avoid games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 because I feared the vast worlds where I was given free rein. It terrified me that I could drastically transform the story even with a simple action. I was used to RPGs that functioned like a novel, because I couldn't get past the idea of vastness. I feel as though by playing Fallout 3 that I am learning a lesson I should have known years ago.

And yet, the ability to drastically transform the world still scares me. I felt a tinge of guilt as I accidentally allowed Butch's mother to be killed by roaches. I felt engaged by these random NPCs telling me about how they survive the Wastelands, whether they are cult leaders, mechanics, sheriffs, or just ordinary peasants. I have the power of choice – I could save these people, or I could allow them to perish without even a second thought. The freedom and the power to control the outcome of this world, it's an intoxicating idea.

Perhaps this is a sign that the training wheels needed to come off so that I could discover a world beyond the land of linearity.