Sifting through the fallout...

I mentioned in previous posts how I'd been trying to finish Xenosaga 2 with great difficulty given how horrible the narrative in the game is. Now that I am done with it I can say that it is a sad example of what a game looks like when developers try to cram too much plot into too little game. It felt like a synopsis of the game Monolith intended it to be. Soon enough I will plumb the depths of the third and final episode in the saga, but not for another month, at the least. Some detox is in order.

I have started my first journey through the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3. The game sets a very good mood as the rich tapestry that is the post-apocalyptic ruin of Washington DC makes for a very enthralling setting. I love the little details one finds when exploring derelict houses: the bare skeletons of a couple embracing each other in bed made me wonder if they perhaps took some pills to die together before the nuke hit; another such skeleton in a bathtub, likely the product of slit wrists; the remains of a child lain for the last time in his bunk bed; a small bombshelter beneath an overpass with a medical room full of plungers and bloodstains, a lonely ghouls its sole inhabitant.

There are bizarre scenes, one such that made me wonder if it was intended that way by the developers or - the most likely scenario - the product of a glitch which served to heighten the utter creepiness of the dystopian game world. This one instance in the police station in Germantown where Super Mutants disembowel humans or ship them elsewhere - this mystery I have yet to unravel!. Here on a wall, entrenched, as if the wall itself had been built with it inserted, was a skeleton twitching uncontrollably in a Brothers-Quay-like manner; a veritable haunting by a hapless victim of some gruesome fate, the owner of the remains. A hand coming out of the floor and spinning on its own axis as if in performance of the danse macabre. I stepped across these and was damaged slightly by them. I saved on the spot so that I may revisit this and show it to friends visiting me whenever possible. I think this has been the most unnervingly impressive moment I have encountered in Fallout 3.

The Wasteland is veritably alive, the twisted fauna of it setting the barren sands acrawl with hostile aberrations. The sparse flora a stark reminder of what once was before the bomb. My experience, 20-odd hours of exploration, has been riveting. The hours go by entirely too quickly and I am finding the little free time I have sorely lacking in volume. Bethesda has done well with my beloved Fallout Universe. More impressions to come in the near future.