A massive bulkhead door slumbers open; it creaks, it groans and it gapes to expose a tunnel. There is light at the end of it. You begin walking through; a shrivelled corpse is curled up at the side. One of the many, they probably clawed at the vault doors for entrance, looking for solace in a world burnt asunder. The walk continues up the passageway, no turning back now, and you come upon a weathered door to the outside world.

A stark white light shines on fresh eyes and the journey of Fallout 3 begins. As a vault dweller, born to a 1950’s style happy-go-lucky underground existence, you have never before seen the true daylight. Nor the ravages of the apocalyptic war that had you stuck in there in the first place.

Much like your blank slate of a character, this is a game of new beginnings, an untried path. Developer Bethesda has intrepidly stripped the franchise of its primordial isometric view, opting for a first-person camera and real-time action. But at its heart, this is still undoubtedly Fallout.

Once your vision adjusts to the strange luminescence of the outside world, the battered landscape of Washington D.C. comes into full scope. The land stretches for miles; a vast city shorn of its order and prominence, but something rugged and beautiful has been born from the chaos. There is an unsettling calm in this seemingly derelict wasteland.

Starting off with a little exploring, it becomes apparent that every inch of Fallout 3’s world tells a story. Ghostly remnants of roads, even neighbourhoods, and the hollow skeletons of old architecture all incite reflections of the past. It’s a pretty grim tale, save for the tongue in cheek remnants of 50’s demeanour that reflect happier, if blissfully ignorant, times.

Into the vast expanse of the wasteland, you’ll encounter plenty of deranged ghoulish enemies; some with firearms and some running at you with rabid radiation induced ferocity. Fallout 3 can be played like a straight shooter and it works surprisingly well as one. But the strategic style with the VATS system will please more traditional Fallout players. An acronym for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting, or some similar drivel, it can pause the action mid-battle and queue up attacks, picking out individual body parts that each has different odds for a hit. The interface is intuitive and the combat is appropriately brutal, heads exploding and all, no matter the way it’s played. Though with VATS, combat is too forgiving, essentially built for strategy but ultimately used as a gore tool. It’s something that can be tweaked before release, and could already have a more robust function further into the game.

Continuing along scattered paths, an old rusty sign points you in the way of Megaton, a town built around the crater of an undetonated atom bomb. Walk into the settlement you’ll be greeted with a first bit of dialogue, and moral choices of course. In usual Fallout form, the way to approach any aspect of the game is entirely subject to your whim – though there is a Karma level that looms behind your every move, morphing your final fate in multiple ways. But Karma be damned; in a conversation with Megaton’s sheriff you can come across as a candid asshole. And this overt nastiness can be continued through stealing plenty of items around town, in front of passive aggressive citizens no less.

But those are small fish to fry, compared to a quest that comes by way of a shadowy associate with a particular “interest” in doing away with Megaton through nuclear means. The shabby citizenry praise the bomb not as a remnant of a bygone era, but as something of a holy symbol; a relic of their creation. Now, are these pitiful unhinged minds simply filth, worthy of purging? Or are they the acceptable fabric of a new post-apocalyptic world. Leave them be, or obliterate their existence in a fiery inferno. Walk the land with apathy, walk it with caring, or walk it as a force of chaos; it’s ultimately up to you.

The world presented in Fallout 3 is a new one, its history in a primeval stage, and you’re a force who will shape it, inexorably. Though what was played was a mere fraction of the game, it’s a tantalizing hint at swaying morality and your immense weight on decayed humankind. And when asked if the post-apocalyptic world could be explored further, after the final credits roll, Bethesda was firm that when it’s over, it really is over. So know your Dharma and stick with it, because there’s no turning back. The only way for this one is forward.