Oblivion was an open world game, but in practice it amounted to a few linear storylines arranged in separate piles. The Thieves Guild was one pile, the Dark Brotherhood was another, the main storyline another still. You could alternate between them or stop one completely when bored, but there was no significant connection or overlap between them. Fallout 3′s biggest advance on Oblivion is that it does away with guilds and instead scatters its missions liberally across the landscape, allowing you to form a storyline made of modular parts that can be plugged together in a huge number of ways.

The best examples are the quests surrounding Big Town, Little Lamplight and Paradise Falls. Spoilers to follow. My first mission was to deliver a letter and, wandering across the Wasteland, I stumbled in to Big Town. It had been raided by Super Mutants repeatedly and those left explained that some of the residents had been dragged off. After telling the remaining guard I planned to murder everyone in town, and sprinting away when he took me seriously, I set off towards an abandoned police station to rescue two of the captured people. I do the quest and return victorious, having saved a female doctor called Red, and some other person I can’t recall.

Hours later while exploring the South-West corner of the map, I stumble across a town called Girdershade. Here, through methods I also can’t recall, I find information about a nearby town called Little Lamplight. It’s a society of children, from which people are exiled upon reaching a certain age. Where do they go? Big Town. Red is one of the exiled grown-ups from Little Lamplight. While I’ve already discovered Big Town, it’s possible to come across Little Lamplight first and, from there, gain a quest that leads you to Big Town and, in turn, that aforementioned quest to save Red.

Still more hours later, I hear of a slaver town named Paradise Falls.  I’m told  that to[/column]get inside I need to capture one person from a list of VIPs. Who is on the list? Red, of course. If I hadn’t already saved her, I’d have to go do that now. As it is, I can just head straight there and put a collar around her neck. Which I do. Once inside the slavers camp, I balance my karma by helping free a bunch of child slaves who, though I can’t quite remember, I’m pretty sure head off for Little Lamplight. It all links.

While I was playing through this, I knew that Tom had found Little Lamplight first, and it’s from there he found his way to Big Town and then Red. He came to these quests from a different angle and our stories and experiences are distinct.

The game ultimately aims to thread everyone through the same needle – we both eventually ended up in Big Town – but the way the game leads you to these events feels natural. None of what I just described was consecutive or necessary.

In Oblivion, you’d reach these moments of existential crisis where you’d have nothing to do and no motivation to go anywhere. The world wasn’t interesting enough to make pure exploration worthwhile, as the dungeons you’d find were too often generic and unremarkable. Having the quests in Fallout 3 form a lattice makes sure people constantly have a route toward the next cool thing, and the next thing is always cool.

The main storyline is the exception. It not only stands off in a corner, alone and disconnected as ever, but it prevents you from continuing with the rest of the game after its completion. Bethesda need to work out how to weave a compelling central plot through their game in a manner as inventive as all their side quests. Maybe by removing the idea of a “main storyline” altogether, and establishing that the game’s plot is whatever the hell your character chooses to do during his or her existence in whatever interesting world they’ve created.