Guides, walkthroughs, and FAQs are all tools which have helped gamers across generations of consoles overcome obstacles in their gaming experience. These can be applied to almost any type of game for any purpose, but their intent is to provide the reader complete transparency into a games’ world. Normally, I will try to avoid the use of these tools, because in some ways, I feel it can ruin my experience. For every rule there is an exception; however, and Bethesda Games Studios (makers of the Elder Scrolls series and Fallout 3) have become that exception.
When I first picked up Oblivion, I couldn’t handle it. There was just too much to do and see. So after the first week, I ran out to my local gaming store and picked up the guide. I used it religiously and before 100 hours had past, the guide was tattered and had served its purpose. Going into Fallout 3, I was sure the guide was going to be a necessity and bought it day one. For me, it has become one of my favorite non-video game purchases I have ever made. Remember how the Oblivion guide was trashed? Well this led me to buy the Hard Cover Fallout 3 guide, because I knew what would happen. This thing is the first guide I have ever read front to back. Don’t be fooled, it is a 496 page text book! The format worked extremely well for completing side quests, developing your character, and finding all those pesky bobble heads. They even have flow charts at the start of each quest, so you can see the results of your decisions and try to plan the best course of action for your story or character. Just looking at the table of contents, you can imagine how complex this game was.
I am spoiling some of the surprises for myself, but experiencing those events is much more important to me. For example, finding the Deathclaw Sanctuary or the crashed Alien Spaceship would probably not have happened, save the chance I happened to be running through the wasteland one day and came across them. This is the justification for using a guide in my case: limited time. I have very little time to play games these days and when I do play, I don’t want to spend 30 minutes running through the desert hoping to find something cool. I go into a game session expecting to see something cool and to make some progress. If that means every once and a while I need to pull up a guide, I am ok with that. Plus, I have this sweet Fallout 3 textbook for my coffee table.
