Late one evening, several months back, after fending off a batch of super mutants (or were they ghouls?) in the fenced in area around the former Germantown Police Headquarters I stumbled across a set of log entries. The idea that many players miss this womenвЂ™s story makes that story feel all the more powerful. The optional nature of these discoveries makes them all the more fascinating. Many of these moments have no role in the games over-arching narrative. So much so, that they invested a substantial amount of time and energy rounding out these parts of the game. (Really, who cares about my idiosyncrasies?) What matters is that developers at Bethesda thought enough people wanted to play the game this way. What is interesting here is how I like to play the game. Instead, I was enthralled with playing the game as a kind of future archeologist, excavating our present through traces left on these terminals and strewn about the physical landscape. For that matter, I didnвЂ™t really care much about any of the characters in the game. After nearly 70 hrs of game play I never really cared about my character. Playing the game is reconstructing itвЂ™s fictional pastДЄs the fan wiki definition suggests, the fictitious history of this world is of critical importance to the player community. Before the Great War were the Resource Wars, during which the United Nations disbanded, a plague rendered the United States paranoid, and Canada was annexed.

The Great War was a conventional and nuclear war that occurred on Octoand lasted less than two hours despite causing immense damage and destruction. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic, r etro-futurist Washington, DC following the Great War between the US, China and other countries.

Computers that have apparently been running since before the nuclear holocaust.ДЇor those unfamiliar with the Fallout universe the description, and links, from the fallout wiki offer a bit of context.

Most of the in-game moments that have stuck with me involve interactions with, Apple II-ish green-screened in-game terminals. In hindsight though, the most memorable moments from my game play are not slow-motion replays of exploding super mutant heads.

Fallout 3 map compared to real life