If any game company knows the true meaning of the word “epic,” it’s Bethesda. The team that brought us the massive Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion has been hard at work on Fallout 3, the console debut and much-watched sequel to one of the PC’s most beloved franchises. We got an all-too-brief thirty minutes with the game at E3 this year, and Bethesda has proven that the series continues to shine in their exceptionally capable hands.

The demo began just as our protagonist emerged from Vault 101 for the first time. For those unfamiliar, the story starts out with you in search of your father who has disappeared without explanation. The only lead you have is that he was recently spotted in the nearby town of “Megaton,” so you set out on your journey to figure out who he really is and why he’s suddenly gone missing.

Of course, this being a Bethesda game, there’s no rush to get into the story. Just like Oblivion, you can freely roam the land with little to no regard for the main story, venturing out on side-missions and raids for quite a long time before you even touch the main quest. Indeed, the developers seem to be inviting you to do just that, directing you through a bombed-out city and past a dilapidated elementary school before you ever even sniff Megaton. Truthfully, if you ignore these distractions and plow ahead straight to your objectives then you’ll likely miss out on a lot of the fun Fallout 3 has to offer. There are no wrong ways to play this game, but some approaches are definitely more fun than others.

Of course, no game like this is any fun without a fight, so we first ventured off to see what kind of trouble we could get into. Thankfully, a mutated rat happened by (think Rodents Of Unusual Size), and we began happily blasting away. The game allows you to play it like a first-person shooter, simply aiming and firing, and those looking for that sort of experience will no doubt be pleased. For the more tactical crowd, the title features the Vault Assisted Targeting System (VATS for short), which will allow you to pause the action and aim at specific parts of your foe.

For rats and other small creatures, we aimed at the head, but the developers promised that there would be certain situations where enemies would be carrying some pretty heavy firepower, or possibly helmeted, and it may behoove you to try and take out their arms or legs so they either drop the weapon or lose some mobility before you go for the noggin. The VAT System is an interesting mechanic, and by making it a choice, you effectively give the player the ability to play the game how they want, something too few games do now-a-days.