Most PC gamers probably remember the first two Fallout games, released back in the mid-to-late 1990’s. The games were RPGs, set in a post-apocalyptic world filled with radiation hazards, mutants, and multiple endings based on your actions and the time you took to complete them.

Well, despite the original studio going under, the series is continuing (and coming to Playstation 3 as well as PC and Xbox 360 in Fall 2008) thanks to Bethesda Softworks, the same studio that brought the critically acclaimed Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to the gaming scene back in 2006.

Bethesda is going all out to make Fallout 3 the “truest” Role Playing Game ever made. In fact, the game starts out when your character is born, and you learn the basics through 18 years in “The Vault”, a Bomb Shelter which people have never set foot out of since the two-hour-war 200 years earlier.

Upon your character’s birth, you are shown a character adjustment screen by your masked father, the degree of adjustment and realism is said by Bethesda to be much higher than in Oblivion. After creating what your character will look like at age 19, your father pulls off his mask and looks similar, although not exactly like your design. He then gives you a notepad that says “You’re Special” and you choose your general traits.

Be careful what you choose though, as unlike Oblivion, you cannot be a jack-of-all-trades, and choosing certain main skills can close off entire questlines for you in the later portions of the game.

At about the age of 2, you learn to walk, then at 10 you recieve your first gun and computer wristwatch, to learn the basics of combat and the game’s menu system. At the age of 16, you take an aptitude test which gives bonuses to attributes you seem best fit for and recommends a class for you. Then, at age 19, you venture out of The Vault to find your father who has mysteriously vanished.

Once you walk outside, you see how much destruction was caused by all the nuclear weapons used by the war in 2077 in the parallel universe (which was pretty much destroyed during the equivalent of the real world’s 1950s). Broken-down cars, the skeletal remains of buildings, irradiated litter, and whatever else dismal remains can be in a former warzone.

You can then play the game in either first-person, or a third-person view that is similar to Resident Evil 4’s system. Don’t worry much though, as you can freely switch between the two like in Oblivion. The game will end up having plenty of weapons for you to use, ranging from rifles to lead pipes. That’s not to say that this is a first-person-shooter, though.

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