168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 3 was the first Western RPG I fell in love with. While I dabbled somewhat with my brother’s copy of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion on Xbox 360, it wasn’t until a co♋py of Fallout 3 landed in my lap that I came to realise how magical ♉the genre could really be. Brought up with a steady diet of Final Fantasy and Cardcaptor Sakura, I’d always shied away from the Western depictions of fantasy worlds and characters because I feared them too mundane.
They failed to capture my imagination in the same way, and even decades later it takes a special game like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3 to unseat this malaise and make me question my ignorance. The world of Fallout has always been different however, and the third instalment was built for mainstream audiences who wanted a dark, bloody, post-apocalyptic world to explore that wasn’t afraid to make the player bask in the consequences of their own actions. As we’re 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:leaving Vault 101 for the first time, Bethesda is eager to drop us into countless situations which aren’t afraid 🌞to teach us harsh lessons, and nowhere is this more true than Megaton.
Unless you head right for the high school further down the road, chances are Megaton will be the first major settlement you stumble across in Fallout 3. It’s hard to miss with its bulky design and obnoxiously loud gates, alongside a friendly protectron standing outside ready to greet any and all potential visitors. For a town existing﷽ centuries after the bombs fell, it’s a surprisingly prosperous little hamlet. But there’s a catch - it’s built around an atomic bomb.
The bomb itself acts as a compelling moral dilemma for the player to deal with. While it is deactivated for the 💧time being, it only takes a sm⛎all amount of tinkering to get the nuclear warhead working again, and there also happen to be nefarious forces in a nearby saloon who would happily pay a wandering adventurer to wrap their hands around Megaton’s neck.
During my first playthrough I couldn’t bring myself to kill dozens of people for a healthy sack of bottle caps and the approval of Tenpennܫy Tower, and so I spoke to the local sheriff before agreeing to disarm the bomb myself. A mysterious figure known as Mister Burke in the pub I mentioned earlier would stop through, and so I gunned him down in justifiable blood before informing the authorities that he wasn’t welcome in Megaton. I saved the day be🐽cause it was the right thing to do, earning the respect of the townspeople, albeit with no monetary reward.
The bomb is also worshiped by a makeshift religion known as the Children of the Atom. Its members stand alongside the bomb, wading in a puddle of radioactive water as they scream sermons that make no sense, but in this broken world it gives them a flicker of hope to cling onto. I can respect their world view or call them maniacs before laughing in their faces that I𝓰 am not only going to destroy their place of worship, but everyone foolish enough to try and stick around.
It’s a barbaric decision, but one that in the opening hours sets you on an evil path from which there is no turning back. Arm𓂃ing the bomb without a word before waltzing over to Tenpenny Tower is a statement of intent that you don’t care about those who call the Capital Wasteland home, and will kill hundreds if it means making money and cementing an aura of authority.
Fallout 3 is also happy to make clear how blatantly evil you are. Once the bomb goes off you can return to Megaton, but there’s nothing to see but a💃n irradiated husk. Nothing but rubble stands in its place. Moira Brown is still alive and well, albeit a fres🧔hly made ghoul who is still eager to get on with her experiments and forgive your penchant for nuclear genocide.
A town which should act as a bastion of resources to return to again and again is no more, as are the quests and character♓s once housed within. All the men, women, and children are dead, and it’s your doing, a major settlement gone forever thanks t🍌o a moral choice leaving a lasting impact.
Like a lot of the games of its generation, Fallout 3 asks you to either be good or evil, and a decision to strike a balance between the two of🐼ten eliminates more interesting choices and set pieces from major quests. So it made more sense to go hard in either direction, meaning the majority of players either saved Megaton or saw it greeted by nuclear a🥂nnihilation and then embarked on a longer adventure where murder and betrayal became par for the course.
Its rare games can make me feel guilty of acts I’ve committed, but destroying Megaton still lingers on my mind after all🅰 these years. You saw and fel♍t the consequences forever once the deed was done.
