The year is 2277, two hundred years after humanity was almost eradicated a self-inflicted nuclear apocalypse. Humanity has survived, however, either by hiding away in large, subterranean, self-sufficient fallout shelters called “Vaults” or by cannibalizing the remains of the past to build the future. Your adventure begins in one such Vault, safe and secure from the outside world. This illusion of security is shattered the day your Dad goes missing, and your only option is to follow him outside into the ruins of what used to be the D.C. area, now known as the Capital Wasteland. You’ll have to survive Raiders who seek to survive by preying on others, hideously mutated Super Mutants, who kill and capture any humans they can get their hands on, montrously mutated animals, pre-war robots running amok, latent radiation… even the deluded remnants of the United States government.

Surviving these hazards will be easier if you create a character up to the challenge, so character creation will be the first part of the guide we will cover. In Fallout 3, as in most RPGs, how you build your character can vastly affect the rest of the game, and in this case, the character build presented will be that oh-so-rare “jack of all trades, master of all”. After that, we’ll get to the walkthrough itself. The walkthrough will not just be a collection of quests-in an open-world game like Fallout 3 you’d miss too much of what there is to see if you stick to the beaten path and just beeline to every objective marker. Sometimes we’ll go off on lengthy expeditions into the Wasteland just to score some key loot. Many times we’ll take detours to this effect while enroute to resolving a quest. This guide is for those who want to see and do everything they possibly can in Fallout 3, not for those who want to get through the game quickly.