Eurogamer has new article looking back at games that defined this generation, and Fallout 3 was one of them.
More information.For many years the Fallout community was a strange place to lurk. An airtight vault, where denizens in musty blue uniforms would desperately bang on the inside of its thick metal door for attention. Day in. Day out.
They dreamt of a shared isometric past and the brown tint of forgotten wastelands. In truth, however, the prospect of the Van Buren project - a true Black Isle Fallout 3 - had died with the studio that created it.
Hope faded, and the water chip malfunctioned: the countdown to oblivion was well underway.
Their salvation was unexpected. Bethesda descended from upon high, and vowed to recreate Fallout in its own image. Underdog-rooters everywhere high-fived, Vault Boy gave a cheeky thumbs-up and there was much rejoicing.
The old guard Fallout faithful, however, feared 'Oblivion with Guns'. As it would turn out, perhaps, rightly so. The Bethesda takeover was like watching wads of foreign cash being injected into your favoured ailing football team - suddenly expected to play in front of bigger crowds, display fancier footwork and dispense with a long-maintained little-league mentality.
Fallout 3 however (alongside the likes of X-Com) came from the right place - a design team energised and invigorated by the approval of their teenage selves. It used the past as an intelligent stepping stone towards modern mass-appeal roleplay and, arguably, eased the passage of kickstarted re-apocalypses like Wasteland 2.
Today, even a half-thought dedicated to a post-Skyrim Fallout 4, running on the next generation consoles and modern PCs, can lead to a permanent and debilitating state of arousal.
Ron Perlman makes a habit of stating "War, war never changes" - it's his opening gambit at dinner parties. He must know, however, that it isn't true. War had to change, and Fallout had to change with it if it were ever going to survive outside the vault. The fans it left behind, the hardcore who thought it tainted by exposure to the outside world and cast it out, were saddened. That can't be denied. The way Fallout 3 strode out, blinked beneath an unfamiliar sun and went on to thrive, however, genuinely made it one of the greatest experiences of this generation.