Capital Wasteland : Saved

I finished Fallout 3 last night. The ending sneaked up on me a bit but once things really start happening it's relatively obvious. It's a little disappointing that you can't continue to play after the main story has been completed, but it makes sense in the context of the story.

For anyone not familiar with this sort of game, you might ask why I'd want to keep playing after the "end". To put it simply, the thing is huge. I had reached level 20 (the max) with my character after only experiencing maybe one-third of the content in the game. The wasteland is so massive and so packed with things to discover that it really begs to be played through multiple times. I'm not just talking about the odd unexplored tunnel or wrecked building here and there. There are still a ton of achievements I have yet to unlock that are each tied to a quest, and each quest generally involves multiple locations in the world.

Completionism aside, there's the added bonus that the way you build your character and the way you deal with the people and situations you encounter is also up to you. A great part of Bethesda Sofworks' outstanding pedigree of titles are those that give you a world and allow you to decide what kind of character you want to play in earnest, beyond just the decision between good and evil. I played through this time as kind of an egghead with guns -- I concentrated mainly on technical scientific abilities and talked my way out of trouble whenever possible. I'm looking forward to starting again and playing a sneaky, close-combat oriented ass-kicker.