Fallout 3

"What about you? What kind of person are you going to be?"

"Come on over here. I want to show you something. See that? It was your mother's favorite passage. It's from the Bible. Revelation 21:6. "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely." She always loved that."

"When the vault door rolls back and you step into the sun for the first time, the sense of awe and wonder as you gaze across the wasteland that was once the United States' capital is palpable. Life is absent where it isn't hanging on by a thread. Few buildings remain standing, most reduced to piles of rubble. In the distance you can see what was downtown Washington, D.C., a standing but wrecked Washington Monument dominates the skyline as the tallest remaining structure. You can already tell this game is going to be extraordinary. And then your thoughts turn to survival, just as they have for every other human; for every feral dog; for everything."

"The war did more than crumble the United States government and its infrastructure. It left behind a reminder of man's transgressions. The effects of radiation are felt everywhere, none more strongly than in the water. Thirst and desperation are constants in Fallout 3 and you won't know the true definition of either until you drink irradiated water from a toilet to gain a few health points. Water and food can heal you, but almost everything has been poisoned by radiation. You'll have to use medicine to manage the levels of radiation you take in from eating, drinking or wandering into hot zones, creating an unending give and take that underscores the struggle for survival that everyone you meet faces. Such pressure could make even a good man do bad things. For those who are already bad, it provides the excuse to do great evil and take advantage of the weak. You will have to decide where you fit in this world. If you want to be good, there are beggars to give water to and people that need a champion. If you want to be bad, well let's just say that you won't have any problem finding places to ruin lives. If you haven't figured it out yet, this is not a game for kids or anybody with a developing moral compass. Foul language is pervasive and that is often the smallest sin on screen. Fallout 3 shies away from sexual content and giving you the option to kill little kids, but that's about it. The world is filled with twisted people who do nasty things and you yourself are often presented with the option to perform terrible, terrible acts. Several times while playing as an evil character I found the situations so extreme and wholly wicked that I had trouble taking the low road."

"Superficially, the world that Bethesda has created for Fallout 3 seems like Oblivion with a Fallout paint job. It has that same go-anywhere-pick-up-anything freedom, but where Oblivion often felt sparse and desolate, Fallout 3's world is teeming with the sort of mangled life you'd expect from a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Even when roaming the barren wastelands outside major cities, you're never more than a few meters from a burned-out car or a knife-wielding raider. Yes, it's something we should expect from these open-world role-playing titles — yet it's done so well in Fallout 3 that it feels novel and immersive."

"Fallout 3's story seems like a similarly well-crafted re-creation of the classic tales of the first two Fallout games, at first, but after a few hours longtime fans will realize that the whole thing feels a bit off. It took me nearly 15 hours of gameplay to figure out what exactly felt wrong. And then it dawned on me: Nothing in Fallout 3 is funny. Certainly, you'd expect a post-apocalyptic wasteland to be depressingly bleak. But what the first two Fallout titles did so well was to show that even in the darkest of times, the irreverent human spirit remains."

"It's a wasteland, but we want to have enough density, and points of interest, clutter, trash in the destroyed world. So at first glance it's barren, it's empty looking, but pretty soon after exploration you'll find every ruined house has something to poke your nose into, there's a raider camp set up over by this school--there's a lot of density."

"Aesthetically and aurally, Fallout 3 is amazing. The entire world is decrepit and properly nihilistic, the characters you encounter are simultaneously dirty and pretty and every sound -- from gunshots to the barking of attack dogs -- sounds simply fantastic."

"Liam Neeson - James (Dad)"

"Malcolm McDowell - President John Henry Eden"

"Peter Gil - Augustus Autumn"

"Odette Yustman - Amata Almodovar"

"Duncan Hood - Alphonse Almodovar (a.k.a. Vault 101 Overseer)"

"Wes Johnson - Mr. Burke / Fawkes / Protectrons / Sentry Bots"

"Erik Dellums - Three Dog"

"Heather Marie Marsden - Sarah Lyons"

"William Bassett - Owyn Lyons"

"Shari Elliker - Beatrice / Reilly / Star Paladin Cross"

"Craig Sechler - Butch DeLoria / A3-21 (a.k.a. "Harkness") / Talon Company Mercenaries"

"Mike Rosson - Colin Moriarty"

"Dee Bradley Baker - Stanislaus Braun (real voice)"

"Corrieanne Stein - Betty (Braun's fake voice)"

"Stephen Russell - Sergeant RL-3 and all Mr. Gutsy and Mr. Handy robots"

"James Lewis - Mr. Brotch / Eulogy Jones / Jericho / Captain Ishmael Ashur"