"story-as-told-by-place is something that mainstream games are getting increasingly good at" #wymhm

Fallout 3 is exceptionally rich in this kind of storytelling, though it's worth pointing out that environmental storytelling is almost always backstory-telling: it's about what has happened here, not about what is happening or might happen in the future.

That works for Fallout 3 because, in apocalyptic wastelands, most of the present is about the past, so that's all right. And it goes together well with the player-controlled pacing of the main plot, because it means that there is also player-controlled pacing of exposition. It's as though when you had Moby Dick assigned to you in high school, you were allowed to do the chapters on whaling as an interactive diorama sequence, and you got to skip the encyclopedic chapter on ambergris entirely.