Fallout 3 not a 'proper' Fallout game?

[octafish]

Fallout 3 is the same thing as Tactics to me. It is a good Fallout Game, but it doesnt deserve to be a direct relative of 1 and 2. Or in short, it did not deserve its Number.

Its a good Game, and a well done Fallout as well, but its so different from the originals in pretty much everything that i do not consider it as being entirely Canon. New Vegas for me is the proper "Fallout 3" since it was much closer, even if not entirely there, with the old classics ;P

Yeah that is how I feel about it too, a good game, maybe even a great game, but not a very good Fallout game, just like Tactics. What killed it for me was the binary nature of the choices in quests, (with the notable exception of Tenpenny Tower) and the lack of role playing depth (different dialogue for characters of low intelligence was very much missed). The story sucked but the random wandering was pretty good. New Vegas was a large step in the right direction even if the sense of an open world was lacking compared to 3.

 

[EGtodd09]

I've played both Fallout 3 and New Vegas and I didn't find either of them very funny at all. I prefer Fallout 3 because of the setting, the intro and the increased focus on vaults and story. Fallout New Vegas payed little attention to the vaults which I really enjoyed in Fallout 3. Also, the Enclave were so cool in Fallout 3 and then non-existent in Fallout New Vegas, wtf? New Vegas had a pretty lack luster story with blatant good/evil choices where being evil didn't even yield any benefits. Then I found the Witcher 2 and my life was complete.

 

[ChupathingyX]

I've played both Fallout 3 and New Vegas and I didn't find either of them very funny at all. I prefer Fallout 3 because of the setting, the intro and the increased focus on vaults and story. Fallout New Vegas payed little attention to the vaults which I really enjoyed in Fallout 3. Also, the Enclave were so cool in Fallout 3 and then non-existent in Fallout New Vegas, wtf? New Vegas had a pretty lack luster story with blatant good/evil choices where being evil didn't even yield any benefits. Then I found the Witcher 2 and my life was complete.

Obviously the Enclave wouldn't appear in New Vegas, they've been blown up more than 3 times; in Fallout 2 their base was nuked from the inside, in Fallout 3 Raven Rock blew up, then they got massacred at Project Purity, then they got massacred at the Radio Station and then their Mobile Walker base got blown up. Oh and they weren't non-existent, they have just because remnants after being blown up and defeated so many times.

New Vegas had a lackluster story and less focus? Are you kidding me, it had way more story telling than 3 ever did, just litsen to all the things Raul, Chief Hanlon, Caesar, Veronica, Marcus and bunch of other characters have to say.

Blatant good/evil? Fallout 3 had way more black/white morality than New Vegas, are you sure you properly understand the difference between black/white and grey morality?

In Fallout 3 the BoS are seen as the knights in shining armour and the Enclave are evil baby eaters.
Blow up or save Megaton, that's an extremely black/white choice.
Save or poison the Purifier, once again another black/white choice.
Save or doom Vault 101, black/white.
Enslave people, or save them.

Fallout 3 was full of black/white morality, New Vegas was much more grey.

 

[A-D.]

Blatant good/evil? Fallout 3 had way more black/white morality than New Vegas, are you sure you properly understand the difference between black/white and grey morality?

In Fallout 3 the BoS are seen as the knights in shining armour and the Enclave are evil baby eaters.
Blow up or save Megaton, that's an extremely black/white choice.
Save or poison the Purifier, once again another black/white choice.
Save or doom Vault 101, black/white.
Enslave people, or save them.

Fallout 3 was full of black/white morality, New Vegas was much more grey.

Well im just going to point this out, but Fallout 3 had a type of Grey Morality, or inverted Moral Choices in The Pitt DLC. As the Good choice is morally the bad thing and the Evil choice is morally seen the grey option, there being no "white" choice ;P

Sadly however, one DLC does not make up for the shortcomings of the base game, or the shortcomings of the other 3 DLCs. I mean really, Anchorage? Thats 10 Bucks for a bunch of Weapons and thats it! Only The Pitt and Point Lookout were actually good.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Well im just going to point this out, but Fallout 3 had a type of Grey Morality, or inverted Moral Choices in The Pitt DLC. As the Good choice is morally the bad thing and the Evil choice is morally seen the grey option, there being no "white" choice ;P

Sadly however, one DLC does not make up for the shortcomings of the base game, or the shortcomings of the other 3 DLCs. I mean really, Anchorage? Thats 10 Bucks for a bunch of Weapons and thats it! Only The Pitt and Point Lookout were actually good.

I found the Pitt confusing, not in a good way like "I'm torn between these two options!", but more like "wait, what's the difference?".

If you leave the baby with Ashur then he intends to find a cure.
If you steal the baby and give her to Werhner he then intends to find a cure.

They're exactly the same, the only thing you're deciding is whether you want to be a douche and destroy a man's attempts at restoring society (one of the very few in Fallout 3), or leave it as it is and get rid of a bunch of stupid slaves who don't see the error of their ways. It just didn't seem black/white or grey, it was just...weird. The only thing I really liked about the Pitt was Pittsburgh itself, I thought it was designed quite well.

Now compare that to the choice you're given at the end of Honest Hearts, that's a grey option, whichever of the two endings you choose it makes a certain group of people happy and the others are either affected badly or end up dead. Of course that's excluding the third option to kill everyone.

However, I agree that the other DLCs were rubbish, Point Lookout was the only worthwhile one, the others were pointless loot factories and canon-breakers (I'm looking at you Mothership Zeta).

 

[Chibz]

canon-breakers (I'm looking at you Mothership Zeta).

How are the presence of aliens necessarily canon breaking? There's alien skeletons in the first two games, and rather explicitly-declared alien technology.

As for the hate fallout 3 gets? It's just butthurt fans who wanted (prior to even playing it) to hate the game. Haters gonna hate.

 

[ChupathingyX]

How are the presence of aliens necessarily canon breaking? There's alien skeletons in the first two games, and rather explicitly-declared alien technology.

The aliens in the first two games were stated to not be non-canon along with almost every other random encounter. Otherwise Star Trek and the old man from scene 24 would be part of the Fallout universe.

As for the hate fallout 3 gets? It's just butthurt fans who wanted (prior to even playing it) to hate the game. Haters gonna hate.

Aren't you the person who created a hate thread about Morrowind?

 

[Chibz]

Otherwise Star Trek and the old man from scene 24 would be part of the Fallout universe.

Aren't you the person who created a hate thread about Morrowind?

To be honest, I'd see... very little wrong with that. There's so little of the fallout canon worth taking seriously (let alone nearly worshiping) that one-of jokes like that are fine.

Yes, but my dislike of morrowind changes little. However, if you feel so inclined as to try to tell me I'm an idiot for disliking a game that has game mechanics I find loathsome, the thread's over there.

 

[ChupathingyX]

To be honest, I'd see... very little wrong with that. There's so little of the fallout canon worth taking seriously (let alone nearly worshiping) that one-of jokes like that are fine.

Yes, but my dislike of morrowind changes little. However, if you feel so inclined as to try to tell me I'm an idiot for disliking a game that has game mechanics I find loathsome, the thread's over there.

This has nothing to do with why you didn't like Morrowind or Morrowind in general, just the fact that you call a bunch of people haters when you yourself have created a hate thread.

It doesn't matter if Bethesda made a little alien joke like the crash site, but then they had to go and blow it out of proportion and make an entire DLC based around it and claim that aliens were behind the Great War and the events of the Fallout universe? Not to mention that the actual DLC itself was crap and was just another loot quest with boring characters that were meant to make us laugh and had absolutely nothing to do with Fallout, it was like a completely different game, and a bad one at that, one that was endless corridor shooting and role-playing? Forget role-playing.

Luckily in New Vegas Obsidian added the Wild Wasteland trait which kinda retconned the whole Alien incident.

 

[Chibz]

This has nothing to do with why you didn't like Morrowind or Morrowind in general, just the fact that you call a bunch of people haters when you yourself have created a hate thread.

Yeah, but unlike most of them I actually raise valid complaints & issues with gameplay mechanics that are awful. I brought up why a game that is mechanically a turd is... a turd. That and I went into it hoping to enjoy it. I really did. It just sucked.

Sorry for getting a little defensive, I'm just sick of morrowind fanboy #451 getting ultra-angry over the fact that I dare criticize their beloved morrowind!

OT: I always saw Fallout as a more... silly game. I mean look at Fallout 1. The big villain is called "The Master" and holy crap is he a silly villain.

I always viewed the wildwasteland trait as the ideal way to play New Vegas.

 

[Theron Julius]

What's with all the terrible writing comments? It wasn't that bad. I've played Fallout 2, which I enjoyed, and the dialogue didn't seem drastically better. Personally, I thought Fallout 3 successfully brought the series back into the spotlight, since it had been doing nothing but stagnating after Black Isle's departure from the series after Fallout 2.

 

[ChupathingyX]

This has nothing to do with why you didn't like Morrowind or Morrowind in general, just the fact that you call a bunch of people haters when you yourself have created a hate thread.

Yeah, but unlike most of them I actually raise valid complaints & issues with gameplay mechanics that are awful. I brought up why a game that is mechanically a turd is... a turd. That and I went into it hoping to enjoy it. I really did. It just sucked.

Sorry for getting a little defensive, I'm just sick of morrowind fanboy #451 getting ultra-angry over the fact that I dare criticize their beloved morrowind!

OT: I always saw Fallout as a more... silly game. I mean look at Fallout 1. The big villain is called "The Master" and holy crap is he a silly villain.

I always viewed the wildwasteland trait as the ideal way to play New Vegas.

I'm not a Morrowind fanboy, I'm just saying that it seemed strange that you would say something about haters when you created a thread solely to tell people that you didn't like Morrowind.

The Master is actually an interesting antagonist, he is given a backstory and detailed telling of his journey through mutation and how he wants to right the wrongs of humanity.

The Fallout series has a lot of silly dark humour jokes on the surface, but the core of the series is suppossed to be a lampoon of human nature. Fallout 2 took it a bit too far with all the crazy random encounters (which were never meant to be taken seriously or as canon), however, Bethesda didn't seem to realise this so they decided to make an entire game that was full of horrible jokes and...Little Lamplight.

Thus when it came to creating New Vegas, the Wild Wasteland trait was born.

 

[Chibz]

I'm not a Morrowind fanboy, I'm just saying that it seemed strange that you would say something about haters when you created a thread solely to tell people that you didn't like Morrowind.

The Master is actually an interesting antagonist, he is given a backstory and detailed telling of his journey through mutation and how he wants to right the wrongs of humanity.

Thus when it came to creating New Vegas, the Wild Wasteland trait was born.

I did apologize for getting ultra defensive over such a statement, but surely you can understand why I might be tired of being called an idiot repeatedly. Oh yeah.

Spoiler: This is obligatory now

I never said that the master wasn't interesting. I merely said that his name & design is overtly silly, which it is.

Spoiler

.ereh llits m'I

 

[amnesiac85]

I love Fallout 3 immensely. A lot of this has to do with it being one of the first huge open games I played (I didn't play Oblivion until after FO3). I will admit, the main story was a bit lacking, but I was not really playing for the main story. I was playing for the exploration, the sidequests, and the myriad of ways that one could interact with the world.

That being said, I never played previous FO games, so I'm unsure how it compares. I did find some dark humor in FO3, and even with its faults, it is one of my favorite games of this gen.

 

[ChupathingyX]

I did apologize for getting ultra defensive over such a statement, but surely you can understand why I might be tired of being called an idiot repeatedly. Oh yeah.

Spoiler: This is obligatory now

I never said that the master wasn't interesting. I merely said that his name & design is overtly silly, which it is.

Oh no you discovered my weakness...Flying High!

Now it's impossible for me to disagree with you.

Now I can't tell you how much I hate your guts.

 

[Chibz]

Oh no you discovered my weakness...Flying High!

Now it's impossible for me to disagree with you.

Now I can't tell you how much I hate your guts.

I'm sorry that I ... made you hate me then?

But this all ties into how Fallout as a series never took itself overtly seriously and this is what made it great! It had epic narrative that explored the human experience, while having a bit of a humour about it.

Oh wait. I think I see what you did there...

 

[kingcom]

I'm not a Morrowind fanboy, I'm just saying that it seemed strange that you would say something about haters when you created a thread solely to tell people that you didn't like Morrowind.

The Master is actually an interesting antagonist, he is given a backstory and detailed telling of his journey through mutation and how he wants to right the wrongs of humanity.

Thus when it came to creating New Vegas, the Wild Wasteland trait was born.

I did apologize for getting ultra defensive over such a statement, but surely you can understand why I might be tired of being called an idiot repeatedly. Oh yeah.

Spoiler: This is obligatory now

I never said that the master wasn't interesting. I merely said that his name & design is overtly silly, which it is.

Spoiler

.ereh llits m'I

So yea, Im super torn, on one side you dislike Morrowind AND use a Flying High gif but on the otherhand you talk about any 'hate' against Fallout 3 being butthurt fans who wanted (prior to even playing it) to hate the game. This seems more than a little ignorant of issues people raise over the game. Care to follow this up as to why it is simply butthurt? As Im someone who quite enjoyed the first 2 games and thought Fallout 3 was pretty bad.

 

[Hamish Durie]

Fallout 3 was a big mistake because it was Bethesda taking a loved series and turning it into whatever the hell they wanted. The original Fallout games were about humanity rebuilding civilisation after they destroyed it because they got greedy and couldn't get along. The Fallout games delved into human nature and how we would react to living in a life where civilisation was gone and now a new one was going to be born out of the ashes of the old world.

Fallout 1 and 2 (to a much lesser extent) both included these aspects. In Fallout 1 the Master was aware that people had caused their own downfall and that as humans we could not properly take care of ourselves, therefore he saw Super Mutants, which he could create, as the next step in human evolution. He wanted to create an army of mutants that would unify the human race and make all of their goals the same so we could live together and be more equal. However, there were many flaws such as people who had been living in the wasteland were not fit for transformation nad became dumb and brutish, whereas more "cleaner" humans became intelligent and strong beings. More imprtantly all female Super Mutants are sterile, which means that eventually the Super Mutant race will no longer be able to continue and they will die out.

Basically, Fallout 1 dealt with getting rid of human?s problems by getting rid of humans themselves.

Now let?s skip to Fallout 3, what was that about? Oh yeah some whiny kid whose Dad goes missing and now he wants to go find him. Then said dad wants to purify the water (which should've mostly cleared by now anyway) to give all the people of the East Coast fresh water, because apparently they don't know how to make wells or filter water like those of the West Coast.

Fallout 3 just didn't have the political or societal messages of the original Fallouts and instead sacrificed that for stupid quests that you only take part in to see what cool loot you will receive. Fallout 3 was filled with stupidity and nonsensical things, such as the Experimental MIRV and Mothership Zeta. Bethesda did away with rebuilding civilisation and decided they would focus more on petty survivors trying hard to create communities where they can survive the harshness of the apocalypse, 200 years after it has happened, made even more pathetic by the existence of the NCR in the West who by that time had made a large republic of more than 300,000 people with a fully working government and military.

Fallout: New Vegas thankfully went back to original messages of Fallout and continued civilisations rebirth with the NCR and Caesar's Legion, a force dedicated to fixing the mistakes of the old world by taking one of the most successful empires in history and getting rid of the negatives of it, mainly the senate and democracy.

Would an empire led by one man's ideals work in the long run? Most likely not.

Would the NCR, who can barely hold onto Hoover Dam and Vegas be able to continue to spread? Not at all if they continue to be lead by inept commanders.

Can Mr House control all of Vegas by himself, or will he eventually turn into the real life Howard Hughes and become obsessed with himself and eventually become cut off from the real? Of course, because it has already happened.


________________

Just my two cents.

while i agree with you that fallout 3 would've went over better had it been named something else, i would also like to add my 2 cents

my theory is that bethesda wanted to make a much more immersive game and in the preivious fallouts. i never really felt like i was in a world scarred by war and radiation where survival by any means is the only way to live.
Fallout 1 had a great setup you have this long to find a chip that may or may not even still work while trudging through the decaying ruins of the old world while defending yourself agaisnt things that have adapted to live in this new world.

personnaly i didn't like the second and third half of fallout 1 because it sacrificed it's living hell-wasteland for a place where people have carved out a living.

geuss the fault is mine

 

[Chibz]

So yea, Im super torn, on one side you dislike Morrowind AND use a Flying High gif but on the otherhand you talk about any 'hate' against Fallout 3 being butthurt fans who wanted (prior to even playing it) to hate the game. This seems more than a little ignorant of issues people raise over the game. Care to follow this up as to why it is simply butthurt? As someone who quite enjoyed the first 2 games and thought Fallout 3 was pretty bad.

Well, most of the hate seems to be based on the genre change. A lot of the seeming inconsistencies (such as the absolutely mentally handicapped super mutants) are explained in game. The main story is... more or less lacking, but fortunately it's not the main attraction.

The setting's still (mostly) there. It's still video game narrative, which is hard to take seriously. And the core game play is solid.

As for people who go into the game wanting to hate it? If you want to hate a game, you'll hate it. Even if the reasons FOR hating it are flimsy and sometimes silly, you'll hate it. Which is why your opinion (usually) shouldn't be taken seriously. I'm the only person I know who can be won over by a game I expected to hate outright. Because I'm awesome.

 

[ChupathingyX]

I'm sorry that I ... made you hate me then?

But this all ties into how Fallout as a series never took itself overtly seriously and this is what made it great! It had epic narrative that explored the human experience, while having a bit of a humour about it.

Oh wait. I think I see what you did there...

Yeah that's pretty much it, the Fallout series delves into human nature and rebuilding civilisation with a little dark humour on the side. Fallout 2 might have taken it a bit too far, Fallout 3 took it way too far, New Vegas gave us the option of taking it more far.

Plus the Old World Blues DLC is coming out soon and judging from the trailer and from what J. E. Sawyer has said it is going to be a lot more focused on dark humour.