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 human survivors and must battle a myriad of 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. Fallout 3 was also chosen as The 2008 Game of the Year by IGN.
Fallout 3 takes place in a post-apocalyptic, retro-futurist Washington D.C. and parts of Maryland and Virginia in the year 2277 after a world war over resources which ended in nuclear holocaust in 2077. The player character (PC) lives, with their widower father James (voiced by Liam Neeson), in Vault 101, a fallout shelter situated close to the ruins of Washington, D.C. Until, one day, the PC wakes up to find that James has left the Vault and ventured into the Capital Wasteland - as the area around D.C. is now known - for unknown reasons. The Vault Overseer becomes suspicious and orders his men to kill the PC, forcing them to go out into the Capital Wasteland where they must follow their father's trail and learn why he left. Along the way, the player will encounter various factions, including the Brotherhood of Steel, a group of technology-coveting survivors from the American west coast; the Outcasts, a group of Brotherhood of Steel exiles; and the Enclave, the elitist and genocidal last remnants of the U.S. government
