Two weeks ago, Fallout 3 was named the best game of the 2008 E3 Media & Business Summit by the Game Critics Awards. Apparently Bethesda Softworks’ long-in-the-making revamp of Interplay’s classic postapocalyptic role-playing game series impressed the judges. Amongst its biggest draws were cutting-edge graphics, irreverent humor, and the ultraviolent VATS system, which blends turn-based and real-time combat.

Although the GCA trophy helped generate enthusiasm for Fallout 3, there has been much frustration about the game’s vague "fall" release date. Today, though, Bethesda dispelled any clouds of uncertainty by announcing that the game will arrive on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 on October 28 in North America. In Europe and Australia, the game will ship on Halloween (October 31).

Set two centuries after a nuclear war leveled the United States, Fallout 3 begins with players growing up in a bunker deep in the ground outside Washington, D.C. After some brief childhood sequences, the game time-warps to adulthood, when players are tasked with leaving the vault to track down their father, voiced by Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Star Wars Episode I). Once outside, they must survive among radioactive ruins populated by mutants, ghouls, and merciless, heavily armed human factions.

By Tor Thorsen