Fallout 3 is an action role-playing game released by Bethesda Game Studios, and is the third major game in the Fallout series. The game was released in North America on October 28, 2008, in Europe and Australia on October 30, 2008, and in the United Kingdom and Ireland on October 31, 2008.Fallout 3 Has Gone Gold The video game is available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles as well as the Windows operating system.

Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2277, 36 years after the setting of Fallout 2 and 200 years after the nuclear war that devastated the game's world in an alternate post-World War II timeline. The game places the player in the role of an inhabitant of Vault 101, a survival shelter designed to protect a small number of humans from the nuclear fallout. When the player's father disappears under mysterious circumstances, the player is forced to escape from the Vault and journey into the ruins of Washington D.C. to track him down. Along the way the player is assisted by a number of other human survivors and must battle myriad enemies that now inhabit the wasteland. The game has an attribute and combat system typical of an action role-playing game but also incorporates elements of first-person shooter and survival horror games.

Following its release, Fallout 3 has received very positive responses from critics who praised in particular the game's open-ended gameplay and flexible character-levelling system. The NPD Group estimated that Fallout 3 sold over 610,000 units during its initial month of release in October 2008, outselling Bethesda Softworks' previous game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which sold nearly 500,000 units in its first month.

Attributes and karma

Main character creation occurs in the character's childhood. The character reads a book titled "You're SPECIAL," where upon reading the player can set the character's seven primary attributes or "Special Stats," (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck). Skills and Perks are similar to those in previous games: Skills can be gradually assigned up to 100 points and give players increasing degrees of ability, for instance increasing the Lockpick Skill grants the player access to harder doors to unlock. The maximum level the player can achieve is level 20 with the exception of the Broken Steel downloadable content addition, where the limit is raised to 30; every level up, a new Perk can be selected, each offering advantages of varying quality and form, and new Perks are made available at every other level (i.e. levels 2, 4, 6, etc.).