Gob, be FREE!

Okay, after far too much belating, I'm going to go ahead and write about what my first post was supposed to be; Fallout 3.

Now, I love this game. I can't really think of any other way to explain it ... it gripped me right from the beginning with it's "gritty, apocalyptic realism meets optimistic futurism" style, as well as it's cool storyline and it's humourous tidbits. Put simply, it's got Gatling lasers, techno-knights, and a talking tree called Harold.

Anyway, I have one gripe with this game, and I think it's pretty representative of free-roam games across the board: Depth.
For me to enjoy a game I have to be involved, I have to like the hero, like/dislike the bad guy, and want to find out what happens. Games, like movies, have to make you care, but in free-roam games, because there's just so much stuff going on, minor characters and sub-plots can seem flimsy, so much so that, sadly, I just don't care.

Allow me to give you a for-instance. Of course ... I really didn't have to ask, considering it's my blog and I can do whatever I want ... but ... anyway.

In the first town the player encounters, Megaton, there is a bar called Moriarty's, owned by Colin Moriarty, a rather shifty criminal type. Now, the barman is a Ghoul (Radioactive zombie!) by the name of Gob, who is basically a slave who is regularly abused and beaten by Moriarty and his customers. He longs to be free, many of the people in town feel sorry for him, and the general consensus is that Gob not being there would be a good thing ... so, can you do anything about it? No. Not a thing.
You could kill Moriarty ... but ... really, that doesn't change anything ... the Bar's name changes, but, a lot of people still talk about him in the present tense, and Gob remains in Megaton.

It's not a big deal, and Fallout's still a good game, but there are many places where things feel incomplete ... Vampires go unpunished, Aliens go unexplained and lonely Goth-girls never get their man (or woman, as the case may be)
Free roam games such as Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls series are good fun, but it'd be nice if the freedom they provide extended to the characters, rather than just the game-world, and whether-or-not you're going to bother with the main plot.

On a totally unrelated note; I hope Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen doesn't suck.
This has been Rude, shouting at deaf ears.