Fallout 3

Fallout 3, from the creators of the award-winning Oblivion, delivers one of the most realized game worlds ever created. Create any kind of character you want and explore the open wastes of post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. Survival is a constant struggle as you face Super Mutants, Ghouls, Raiders, and other dangers of the Wasteland. Prepare for the future. The third game in the Fallout series, Fallout 3 is a single-player action role-playing game (RPG) set in post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. It blends the horrific insanity of Cold War-era mutually assured destruction gone terribly wrong with the kitschy naivety of 1950s American nuclear propaganda, appealing both to fans of the first two games and to newcomers to the franchise.

The opening introduces the player’s father, James, a doctor and scientist living in Vault 101. He often speaks about the player character’s late mother, Catherine, and her favorite Bible verse, Revelation 21:6, which references “the waters of life.” The main story begins when James leaves Vault 101, throwing the vault into chaos. The paranoid Overseer orders security to hunt the player, forcing them to escape. The search for James leads across the Capital Wasteland: first to Megaton, a settlement built around an undetonated atomic bomb, then to Galaxy News Radio, where the energetic DJ Three Dog brands the player “The Lone Wanderer.” The trail continues to Rivet City, a fortified human community inside a derelict aircraft carrier. There, the Lone Wanderer meets Doctor Li, a scientist who once worked with James. She explains Project Purity, a plan created by Catherine and James to cleanse the water in the Tidal Basin—and eventually the entire Potomac River—using a massive purifier in the Jefferson Memorial. Delays and Catherine’s death in childbirth halted the project, after which James took the newborn player to Vault 101 for safety. After investigating the Jefferson Memorial, the Lone Wanderer tracks James to Vault 112 and rescues him from a virtual reality program controlled by the vault’s sadistic Overseer, Dr. Braun. Back in Rivet City, James reveals he sought Braun’s knowledge of the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.), a device containing the components needed to activate Project Purity. James and Doctor Li lead a team to restart the purifier, but the Jefferson Memorial is seized by the Enclave, a powerful military force descended from remnants of the pre-War U.S. government. To prevent Enclave commander Colonel Augustus Autumn from taking control, James floods the control room with radiation, killing himself (Autumn survives). His final words urge his child to run. The Lone Wanderer and Dr. Li escape to the Citadel, the Brotherhood of Steel’s base in the ruins of the Pentagon. With Project Purity still unusable even under Enclave occupation, the player heads to Vault 87 to find a G.E.C.K. and finish James’s work. Vault 87 is revealed as an FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) testing site—and the source of the Capital Wasteland’s Super Mutants. After securing the G.E.C.K., the Lone Wanderer is ambushed and captured by the Enclave. At Raven Rock, the Enclave’s base, the player is unexpectedly freed by Enclave leader President John Henry Eden, who requests a private meeting. On the way, Colonel Autumn defies Eden, takes command of the Enclave military, and orders the player’s execution. After fighting through the facility, the player learns Eden is actually a sentient ZAX-series supercomputer that assumed control after the Enclave’s defeat in Fallout 2 on the West Coast thirty years earlier. Eden plans to use Project Purity to spread a modified strain of FEV through the water, making it lethal to mutated life. This would wipe out most wasteland life, including humans, while the Enclave—claiming genetic “purity” from isolation—would be immune and positioned to seize control. Given a sample of the new F.E.V., the Lone Wanderer can leave peacefully or convince Eden to self-destruct Raven Rock, then escapes and returns to the Citadel. With the G.E.C.K. and the ability to activate Project Purity, the Brotherhood of Steel launches an assault on the Jefferson Memorial, led by the giant robot Liberty Prime. In the purifier’s control room, the player confronts Colonel Autumn and can either persuade him to stand down or kill him. Dr. Li says the purifier is ready, but its activation code must be entered manually—and the control room is saturated with deadly radiation. The Lone Wanderer must choose between sending Brotherhood member Sarah Lyons into the irradiated chamber or entering themselves. Whoever goes in inputs the code foreshadowed throughout the game—21:6—and dies in a fatal radiation surge.