Fallout 3 Environment Annoyances

My first ,and arguably the biggest, problem with Fallout 3 relating to the weapons isn’t even a problem with the weapons themselves. It’s actually a massive problem with the environment its self! The Basic Principle: armed combat is based on line of sight. In order to shoot someone you need to have an unobstructed line of sight between your eye and weapon and any part of them. To avoid being shot, you have to use some kind of cover to break their line of sight on you. The Big Problem: Many objects in the Fallout 3 environment from rocks and trees to piles of rubble have incredibly poorly defined edges! Meaning that where you see the edge of the object, isn’t necessarily where the edge of the object is. The tree might look like it ends here, but it actually ends 3 more inches to the right. Poorly defined edges in any game where ranged weapons and armed combat are a staple of the gameplay are tremedously detremental.

Imagine taking cover behind a tree, perhaps with limited ammunition, or facing numerous enemies, or trying to maintain stealth up until the moment of attack, or some other factor that requires you to make every (or at least the first) shot count. You peak around the edge of that tree, and see your target clearly, you take aim, you fire and instead of the bullet (laser, arrow, uber plasma blast, whatever) traveling through the air and striking your target: you hear a ricochete, see a burst of dust, sparks and debris appear out of thin air inches in front of the character you’re playing, and when the dust clears there’s an image of a bullet hole in some wood hanging in mid air. The bullet hit the tree, where there appeared to be no “the tree” for it to hit. Now maybe you’ve wasted your last bullet, alerted a large number of enemies to your presence without the payoff of an important kill, lost a “sneak attack critical” damage bonus on an enemy where you really needed a damage bonus, or whatever, and now you have to deal with the consequences. All because the creators of Fallout didn’t realize that it’s kina important for the edges of things to appear where they actually are.

If I could remember and count all the times I completely blew what would have been a perfect ambush, or got shot to death, or wasted ammo in this game because of a poorly defined edge: I would be a hell of a lot more annoyed than I am now. But I’m still really annoyed, and this has been the first, biggest Fallout Fail.