Simply The GECK

Hip-hip-hooray. Fallout 3's official mod tool is out, and I'm celebrating by badly quoting Tina Turner songs. I'm far too stupid to use the construction kit myself, but I'm dead excited to see what Fallout 3's community (both those who love and those who want to see Bethesda strung up by the nipples for it) comes up with. Oblivion was massively enhanced by its mods, but Fallout 3's wilder, weirder world means there's room for all manner of madness.

Specifically, I want to see cities. Not small, vaguely irritating hamlets like Megaton or unpopulated ruins like DC, but proper (decaying) urban sprawl, filled with life and quests. I want a city I can get lost in, a city offering quests that don't involve leaving, walking halfway across the world and shooting a couple of super-mutants, a city full of people and secrets and stuff to steal. A tall order for sure, but those infamously passionate Fallout 1 and 2 fans are bound to be thinking something similar. Someone's bound to have a crack at it. The thing with Fallout 3 is it feels like it's got the underlying structure it should, but not always the content: the GECK + a few dedicated fans means that's almost certainly going to change.

Bets, then, on how long before we see Fallout 1 and 2 remade in Fallout 3? Oh, and grab the 8Mb of GECKy goodness from here. There's also a nascent wiki if you're thinking of building a mod yourself.