Following the main story quests you'll be on the trail of your Father, his motivations for leaving the Vault become clear over time and many secrets will be revealed along the way to your own heritage, its an interesting and compelling story to follow and one that will take you to many locations. There are emotional highs and lows to be had and the game will constantly surprise you with it's revelations about events you thought to be true. Eventually you'll encounter the self proclaimed protectors of the Wasteland, The Brotherhood of Steel. These are a bunch who've set themselves the tax of righting the wrongs of the world and actively Police the Wasteland, more commonly their fight is against the Super Mutants and you quite often wander into some of their skirmishes. Once you've found The Brotherhood of Steel's main base of operations you'll be given the opportunity to learn how their Power Armour works, this, like the weapons and medical supplies, can also be picked up at various points and will add greatly to the ability to defend yourself. In fact there's a whole bunch of stuff going on in and around the game, you'll often stumble onto a brilliantly played out set piece and you'll be getting yourself involved in all manner of things before you even know it. This is what this kind of game does best, you'll be convinced you need to complete the mission you're on and then half way to one place you'll find something else that might seem just that little bit more important and you'll forget all about your original quest till you choose to continue it later, thankfully none of the quests have a time limit attached to them, although some do require time to play themselves out such as a village full of people moving from one camp to another. Here you have the choice of leaving them to it to make there own way to the destination or you can follow them and protect them as they travel through the wastelands, be warned though this can take up to three days of game time and can become quite tedious.
The graphics in the game are mostly a mixture of dull textures of a scorched Earth or a decrepit building, it's what it is, a bleak baron wasteland and they serve there job well. Areas of the game map can show variation but you can never be 100% sure where you are without some kind of landmark to head towards or a glimpse at your map. Other areas of the game can just be down right confusing, the subways for instance which you are sent down at various different times are all to easy to become lost in, the repetitive nature of these can have you wandering in and out of some rather large tunnels, many of which are dead ends if you lose your bearings even slightly. The game characters you encounter are well animated if not somewhat lacking in variety when it comes to characters like the Raiders but again you can't really hold that against the game, with a world so vast you almost expect to run into this kind of thing.
The in game music is provided by means of a Pirate Radio Station (one of your story quests involve you fixing the transmitter to this station where you will then be able to pick it up all over the wasteland, before that it's transmission is limited) and it might seem a little odd to suggest that the music is taken from the 1940's era but it seems to work well adding an almost surreal element to the game as you battle Super Mutants to the strain of The Ink Spots "I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire" or Billie Holidays "Crazy He Calls Me"... Bizarre at times, but you get used to it. The incidental sound effects are also well up to scratch, again adding more atmosphere to an already atmospheric game, the guns sound as they should, the dogs bark as they would all top notch stuff.
You're character never actually talks but there is plenty of background noise should you trundle into a village, the characters almost always have some kind of random comment to offer you. The main characters voices are performed well by the likes of Liam Neeson who provides the voice of your Father, or Malclom McDowell who provides the voice of self proclaimed president John Henry Eden. All voices are acted out well, something else that piles on the atmosphere of the game.
So, going back to the original question of whether Bethseda could pull this off, the answer is a most definite "Yes" – The game is thick with atmosphere and not a game you're going to be able to walk through once and see everything that there is to see, you can be on your third play through and still manage to stumble across something you've not before and it's always a delight when you do.
There has been some criticism levelled at Bethseda for leaving the humour of the original games out of there version, some things have made it over though, for instance you're likely to meet Dogmeat who'll become your companion and hunt ammo down for you and the like. Dogmeat was brought over from the previous two games, likewise the naming of certain objects is also brought over, but if you've not played the earlier Fallout games you're hardly likely to notice and it shouldn't be an issue. If you have played the first two games then you're not actually losing a great deal and there's still plenty for you to recognise from the original games.
It's certainly not a game for everyone; it can take a while before you begin to truly appreciate the world you are occupying and its slow start can and does put people off getting into the main game and discovering the delights and wonders of the Wasteland. The game can take over 40 hours to complete, and bare in mind that you probably won't see all the game has to offer in that time as well, if you took the time to look into every nook and cranny you're looking at well over 100 hours and I would bet even then there would be something you'd missed. If you give the game enough time then you're sure to fall in love with it, it's a great story and it's told well and with the sheer size of the game it's truly value for money.
