Fallout 3: Bad to the Bone

The latest addition to IGN’s Fallout 3 week tells us about playing an unscrupulous character in the RPG sequel, along with another video interview.

The trouble is that it’s sometimes tough to differentiate between good and evil in Fallout 3. Killing bad people like raiders or bounty hunters isn’t considered evil, per se. You’re ridding the world of evil, so you’re doing good. Apparently all human life is not sacred in this world. All that meant to me is that I’d have to step up my shenanigans to match the twisted world I was running around in. If I was going to be evil, I wanted my karma to reflect it.

If you want to bottom out your karma, there are several roads to take. Killing innocent people is a good way. You can also start stealing any of the hundreds and hundreds of items strewn about each city. It’s only a small loss of karma for stealing, so you can still do this from time to time if you’re playing a hero. Steal everything and you’ll be following in my footsteps. The big one is to destroy Megaton, the first city you come across that has an undetonated nuclear bomb at its heart. Blow it up and level the city and your karma will bottom out.

Needless to say, I rigged the bomb to explode in my game. That may be all you need to do in the game to send your character to evil, but it’s small potatoes in the grand scheme of evil. Before leaving for Tenpenny Tower to detonate the nuke, there was business to attend to. I took out my baseball bat and went into the nearest house to see what I could find. A few swings later and I had a new set of clothes and an entire hut to loot. I then went through the rest of the town, systematically murdering everyone and hawking their junk at the local general store. If they’re going to die, I may as well make a profit first, right?

Not exactly the most sophisticated take on “evil” I’ve ever seen, but it gets worse:

Speaking of profit, there’s an ongoing quest in Megaton to help a girl gather info for an encyclopedia. It involved a lot of work, I think. I wasn’t really paying attention to her pleas. I just told her I’d help, walked outside and waited 24 hours, and then came back and lied to her. Being skilled with words is a great asset indeed.

What.