Fallout 3 (2008)
Fallout 3 is a 2008 shooter video game made by Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks.
The bombs fell in 2077, and the survivors built a crooked new world in the ruins of the American capital. You leave Vault 101 to find your father, and the irradiated Capital Wasteland opens in every direction: collapsed Metro tunnels, the shattered National Mall, the raider dens of the D.C. suburbs. Bethesda pairs a first-person open world with the series' 1950s atomic kitsch, dark humor, and the slow-motion VATS targeting system. Every settlement, from the bomb-worshipping Megaton to the aircraft-carrier city of Rivet City, bends to the choices you make. Super Mutants, Ghouls, and worse fill the gaps between them.
Quick answers
What is Fallout 3 about?
The bombs fell in 2077, and the survivors built a crooked new world in the ruins of the American capital. You leave Vault 101 to find your father, and the irradiated Capital Wasteland opens in every direction: collapsed Metro tunnels, the shattered National Mall, the raider dens of the D.C. suburbs. Bethesda pairs a first-person open world with the series' 1950s atomic kitsch, dark humor, and the slow-motion VATS targeting system. Every settlement, from the bomb-worshipping Megaton to the aircraft-carrier city of Rivet City, bends to the choices you make. Super Mutants, Ghouls, and worse fill the gaps between them.
When was Fallout 3 released?
Fallout 3 was released on 28 October 2008.
Who made Fallout 3?
Fallout 3 was made by Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks.
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Fallout 3 in our writing
- Companion guide: Bethesda Game Studios: The Elder Scrolls, Fallout and the Art of Getting Lost
- Companion guide: Nuclear War & Fallout
- Companion guide: Post-Apocalyptic RPGs: From Wasteland to Fallout and Every Ruin Between
A few thoughts on Fallout 3
The obvious next stop is the Fallout series on Prime, which mines the same vault-and-wasteland world for pitch-black comedy. A Boy and His Dog, the 1975 film, is where much of this attitude began, and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior set the wasteland template. For another irradiated open world to get lost in, the STALKER games trade atomic kitsch for Chernobyl dread.
Scavenging a ruined world after everything ends
Fallout 3 drops you out of Vault 101 into a Capital Wasteland running on scavenged parts and old grudges. The Fallout TV series returns to that same ruined America, A Boy and His Dog helped invent the wasteland-loner story decades earlier, and The Last of Us and Half-Life 2 turn scavenging and quiet dread into genre benchmarks of their own.
Retro-futuristic sounds for a wasteland road trip
Fallout 3's Capital Wasteland runs on a very specific joke: chirpy 1950s optimism playing over radioactive ruins. These records chase that same clash of shiny future and total collapse. Repo! The Genetic Opera stages a dystopian biotech nightmare as a rock opera, Deltron 3030 raps a satirical sci-fi war from centuries ahead, Vangelis's Blade Runner score defined dystopian synth, and Muse's Simulation Theory leans hard into retro arcade dread.
Coming-of-age stories in a broken, controlling world
Fallout 3 lets you decide what code survives the collapse, from cutthroat raiders to the rigid rules of Vault life. The Scorch Trials and the Shatter Me and Ignite Me novels send their young leads through a similarly engineered, crumbling order, testing how much of themselves survives a system built to control them. Lord of the Flies strips away the rules of childhood and watches what fills the gap.