Survival in a post-apocalyptic world is one of the staples of modern science-fiction. While the majority of role-playing games (RPGs) grew out of the burgeoning fantasy genre ignited by Tolkien’s rich mythology, only one game series memorably and creatively exploited the potential of an Earth devastated by nuclear war. Fallout originally appeared in 1997 – regarded by fans as inspired by the 1988 game Wasteland – and rapidly gained a huge following which appreciated its novelty, its grimly realised environment, and its hallmark dark humour. Now, after four years in development, comes its third incarnation.

The basic premise of the Fallout series is that a worldwide nuclear war occurred on 23 October 2077, laying waste to cities and the infrastructure of modern civilisation. The stories actually take place two centuries later (influenced by classic SF stories such as Harlan Ellison’s 'A Boy and His Dog'), while the art direction takes off from the ephemera of the post-World War II nuclear paranoia of the 1950s.

Unlike the previous games – which were set on the Eastern coast of the USA – the current story takes place in the ‘Capitol Wasteland’ in and around Washington, DC, some 30 years after the events in Fallout 2. The landscape is huge and lovingly detailed in drab greys and browns, as befits a wasteland of ruined highways and derelict towns, with some of Washington’s famous landmarks (the Capitol, the Jefferson Monument) just recognisable enough to hint at familiarity.

Your quests are moderated by the necessity of scavenging and trading for food and weapons in a world dominated by gangs of mutants, raiders, slavers, rangers, and rival private militias. And just to make your ruined world more interesting you also have to contend with a vampire cult, rampaging infestations of ghouls, mutated wildlife and the ever-present likelihood of stumbling into radioactive parts of the environment. The characters you meet are well delineated and driven by their own motives and schedules whether they live in the many sequestered bunker-vault communities, the travelling trader caravans, the junk town of Megaton (built in a crater around an unexploded H-bomb), the mutant refuge in the Museum of History, or in the science-city inside a beached aircraft-carrier.

Despite the fears of diehard fans that their old favourite would be bastardised, Bethesda has honoured the Fallout heritage (improving the skills and perks system of character development, and including the Pip-Boy wrist computer). I’d say Fallout 3 has exceeded expectations in all criteria. It innovates, for example, a dynamic target assisting system (you are presented with various targets on the enemy’s body and your percentage of success estimated). The game’s opening chapter is also a novel departure from the usual trainer formula; you witness your own birth and look in on key moments in your early life, your choices shaping your player character. This sequence comes to a crucial close in which you fight your way out of the closed underground refuge in which you have been raised and emerge into the daylight for the first time, coming face to face with the panorama of desolation laid out in all its terrible grandeur.

That this character-forming sequence is fully integrated into the gameplay and forms an essential motivation for the main story-arc shows the level of attention to detail. Similarly, the liberating exit into the game proper has been compared to the similar moment in Oblivion (Bethesda’s earlier successful fantasy RPG) when you burst from the sewers of the Imperial Prison to freedom. Both games eschew the traditional linear plotting for an open-ended, sprawling series of adventures and quests which can be attempted in random order. That said, the main story line – a search for a method of producing non-polluted water – can only be advanced whenever you come across the next piece of the jigsaw. These episodic adventures are also beautifully crafted and unexpectedly varied; for example, suddenly finding yourself trapped in a virtual world (to tell you more would be to spoil things).

This is one of the best RPGs I’ve played in years. Among my good memories are its vast, beautifully-realised landscape; the fact that you can use intelligence instead of resorting to violence in many situations (if your speech skill is high enough); facing some difficult moral choices; more than 50 hours of gameplay thanks to the many side quests; hundreds of variant endings so that yours seems like a very personal success (incorporating screenshots of your journey); and, of course, the dark post-apocalyptic paranoid humour. Fallout 3 is a perfectly crafted game that sets new standards of involving gameplay. It’s sure to become a classic in the RPG genre.