Fallout 3 Collector's Edition

The lunchbox. If you know, you know. The Fallout 3 Collector's Edition for PlayStation 3 arrives in a fully customized Vault-Tec metal lunchbox that's become one of the most recognizable collector's edition packages of the entire seventh console generation.

Bethesda understood the assignment. Inside that lunchbox sits a Vault Boy Bobble Head direct from Vault-Tec (their words, and we're not arguing), a hardcover Art of Fallout 3 book with nearly 100 pages of never-before-seen concept art and commentary from Bethesda Game Studios artists, and a Making of Fallout 3 DVD offering an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the studio and the team who rebuilt the wasteland from the ground up.

Every piece in this edition connects to the game's identity. The bobblehead mirrors the in-game collectibles that sent players scouring every corner of the Capital Wasteland. The art book documents the visual evolution of a franchise jumping from isometric to first-person. The making-of DVD captures a studio at a creative peak, transitioning from Oblivion's fantasy to Fallout's retro-futuristic apocalypse. And the lunchbox itself is pure Vault-Tec, a piece of in-universe merchandise that feels like it was pulled straight from a pre-war shelf.

The metal lunchbox has taken on a life of its own in collecting circles. People display them, repurpose them, and hunt for them specifically, sometimes caring more about the box than anything inside it. That's the mark of packaging that transcends its original purpose.

This is the Fallout 3 edition that collectors reference when they talk about how collector's editions should be done. The PS3 version carries the same weight as its counterparts, and that lunchbox looks just as good on a shelf today as it did in 2008.