Well in the end I played and finished my first Bethseda rpg with Fallout 3. Even after spending 30 hours and doing all the quests I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Did I enjoy it? Yes. To what degree? Not sure. At times I felt like the game was a 6/10. At other times I felt like it was a 9/10. I think if I had to give my enjoyment an overall score it'd be an 8/10.
I think the actual experience of playing it was more like a 7.5/10 for me. It just wasn't
that exciting. But after I finished each quest I would read the Fallout 3 wiki (
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Fallout_3) and see all the possible other ways the quest could have been accomplished and I would be in
awe at the depth of choices Bethseda had programmed into each one and that would make me enjoy the experience more after the fact.
Coming from jrpgs and Bioware wrpgs, on one hand Bethseda's rpgs could be called shallow since you pretty much just go to a bunch of samey looking dungeons that could have been randomly generated for all their uniqueness and fight enemies by walking up to them and hitting the left mouse button or right trigger on the X360 controller. You then sell your junk and buy stimpacks or better equipment and go do the next quest which will be more of the same. Repeat for 30 hours.
Otoh, it would be fair to call the amount of choices you have in everything you do as gameplay depth itself. It's just a different kind of depth than battle system depth or sub-system depth. Reading about the You Gotta' Shoot 'em in the Head quest and seeing how you can follow an NPC across the game and through a dungeon and he'll react differently depending on where you interact with him...and that it is all optional...there just are so many ways to approach everything. Usually more than I could ever think of.
Then there is the atmosphere, which is really great and adds so much to the experience. That combined with the freedom to do whatever you want is a good deal of fun. I think I really limited myself by playing as a very good karma person and talking my way out of all fights, not stealing, and not murdering. I can see how playing as the ultimate evil and walking into a city and shooting it all up and looting everything would be a ton of fun. Or pickpocketing keys from people when they aren't looking and breaking into their houses/safes and looting it all. There definitely is fun to be had.
The only real thing that sucks is how boring the NPCs were, how boring a few of the quests were, and how not well done the main story was. The lack of interesting story because of weak writing always limited the game from being something more than a fun videogame. It was never an incredible experience that would stick with me because the writing always detracted from everything. I'm actually going to play Fallout 1 now and I'm very excited to play a Fallout 3 type of game but with actual good writing.
Overall it was an interesting experience, and I'm glad I played it and expanded my horizons of rpg types a little more. Going in I didn't think I'd be a fan of the Bethseda rpg, since I had gotten bored of the 10 hours I put into Oblivion, and at the end of the day I still don't like the Bethseda rpg very much. It's just not in your face exciting enough to be my cup of tea. It's more about the slower choice of freedom immersion experience. But to Fallout 3's credit, I was able to enjoy the game to a certain amount despite that. Who knows, maybe I'll even give Oblivion another shot one day. But first I'd like to try more types of wrpgs from other developers than Bioware/Bethseda so I can see what appeals to me.
