Fallout 3 Collector's Edition

This review is solely on the extra items included in the Fallout 3 Collector's Edition.

In addition to the Fallout 3 game, this box set includes the following:

(1) The Art of Fallout 3: Conceptual Imagery, Volumes iii-xiii
(2) Vault-Tec Lunchbox
(3) Vault-Tec Bobblehead
(4) VDSG Holotape: Making of Fallout 3, Historical Series (Volume I)

Let's go into each of these items in more detail.

The Art of Fallout 3 - This is a 95-page hardcover booklet with conceptual drawings and artwork that cover several aspects of the game, with artist's notes included.

Pages 4-12: Pre-Production - Includes sketches of cities such as D.C., Rivet City, Project Purity, Wasteland, and Paradise Falls.
Pages 14-16: Pip-Boy - This section shows several concept sketches of the Pip-Boy device.
Pages 17-32: Costume Design - Here we see designs for wastelanders, raiders, slavers, merchants, Vault suits, and more - see how 50's brand clothing gets a post-holocaust treatment.
Pages 33-44: Creatures - Brahmin cows? Bloat flies? Deathclaws? They're all here, in their irradiated glory.
Pages 45-52: Robots - From the Protectron to Liberty Prime, every robot and their arsenal make an appearance.
Pages 53-60: Weapons - This section shows the more exotic and homemade weaponry of Fallout 3 with intricate detail.
Pages 61-70: Hardware - Everything from fission-powered automobiles to stainless steel bomb-protected buildings gets a sketch in this section.
Pages 71-90: The World - Several of the key locations, environments and structures are reviewed here.
Pages 91-95: Storyboards - Here, we see the storyboard sequence for the intro movie and a small battle segment.

The Vault-Tec Lunchbox - There's no shortage of artwork here. The top has the Vault-Tec mascot leading an exodus into a mountainside vault, the sides have S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute pictures, and the bottom shows an idyllic family picnic with the mascot reminding everyone to "Prepare for the Future".

The Vault-Tec Bobblehead - I must confess; I was a little disappointed at first. While the bobblehead was cute, the base had come off during delivery, but it was nothing a little super-glue couldn't fix.

Finally, the Making of Fallout 3 video.

The main video is 39 minutes long, made up of 4 sections:

(1) Fallout 101
(2) Retro-Futurism
(3) Duck & Cover
(4) The Art of Noise

Throughout the video, we get to hear from the following people, who offer a deeper and richer understanding of the time and effort that went into making Fallout 3:

Todd Howard - Game Director
Emil Pagliarulo - Lead Tester & Writer
Gavin Carter - Lead Producer
Steve Meister - Lead Programmer
Joel Burgess - Lead Level Designer
Istvan Pely - Lead Artist
Adam Adamowicz - Concept Artist
Pete Hines - Project Manager
Ashley Cheng - Production Designer
Grant Struthers - Special Effects & Gore (oh yes, that's his official department!)
Mark E. Lampert - Audio Director
Liam Neeson - "Dad"
Malcom McDowell - "President Eden"

The Special Features Menu offers the following choices:

(1) Official Fallout 3 Trailer
(2) Teaser Trailer for Fallout 3
(3) Poster Art - includes 8 pictures
(4) Concept Art - includes 35 pictures from the Art of Fallout 3.

For the hearing impaired, there are 5 language choices for the subtitles.

And what's the icing on the cake? When you use the Pop-Up Menu option on your Blu-Ray player, it opens in a Pip-Boy window!

There's a lot to love with this edition. If you like the game and want to know as much as you can about the creation, development and production process, you'll be in hog heaven with the Making of Fallout 3 DVD. For the aspiring artist, the Art of Fallout 3 is simply amazing to look at and offers a unique glimpse into the process of taking retro-50's concepts and projecting them 200 years into the future. The other extras are purely for the collectors - but if you'd like to be the envy of your classmates with a Vault-Tec lunchbox, or decorate your cubicle with a Vault-Tec bobblehead, go for it!

Now, the only difference between this edition and the Fallout 3: Amazon.com Exclusive Survival Edition is the Pip-Boy clock. I would NOT recommend buying that package because there are numerous reports of the Pip-Boy clock malfunctioning. I personally haven't had any trouble, but several people have noted the low battery life.

Dial 888-4VAULT-TEC to reserve a spot for your family: operators are standing by!

I just beat Fallout 3 (PS3) in around 20 hours. I did not mean to.

With Oblivion, I could give a damn less about the story. The game was decent enough, but the story was blah blah blah to my ears.

Fallout 3, the story is actually engaging enough that I ended up only wanting to complete the story missions. And in the end, I think I only completed maybe 3 side quests. And as I said, I beat it in roughly 20 hours. Too short, in my humble opinion.

But, that's just the main quest. And I was an evil bastard the entire way. It was fun, but now I'm going to go through and be different, and once I'm out of the vault, I'm putting the main quest on the backburner and doing nothing but side quests. Looking at the strategy guide (after I beat the game), there seem to be just as many if not twice as many side quests as there are main quests.

I finished the game the first time halfway through level 15. I didn't even have all the perks unlocked, and never did find any ammo for a Fat Man, or fight a Super Mutant Behemoth after that initial encounter with the Lyon's.

I don't know why they offer 3rd person perspective: It sucks. The animation is horrible and the over the shoulder type view just did not work for me. Luckily, 1st person view works just fine.

The felt very immersed in the world of post-nuclear war Washington DC.

The graphics, the gore, the sound effects, the story, the gameplay, were all done very well. Though nothing is perfect: there were occasionally NPCs sinking through floors and as I said, the animation is sometimes just stupid and stiff.

Plenty of guns, not a ton of but a good amount of various enemy types, a myriad of quests and character builds will have me playing for months to come.

It's just fun.

Enjoyed it from beginning to end, and beyond. I didn't realize the main storyline was as short as it was, so I was surprised when I finished the game (high karma ending). I've since gone back to an old save and am taking my time exploring the world. I've easily doubled, maybe tripled my play-time by doing more of the side-quests and uncovering new bits of the map.

The environments are bleak, sometimes oppressively so. The world is designed to be a nuclear wasteland, after all. Traversing the landscape feels lonely and dangerous. The world feels huge and it's amazing to see something off in the distance and just be able to walk to it.

This isn't going to be fun for people expecting a precision FPS, but it does scratch some of the shooter itch. Feels a lot like Mass Effect to me, in that regard.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 27 reviews  4.6 out of 5 stars