Just figured out why I like Fallout 3 more than New Vegas

[Saviordd1]

AH GOD, RUN FOR COVER; IT'S A NEW VEGAS v. FALLOUT 3 THREAD!

Wait, no, stop; it's not!
...
Don't give me that look.
...
I PROMISE this isn't a New Vegas v. Fallout 3 thread.
...
Well be that way.
Dick.

ANYWAY
For a while now I've tried to figure out exactly why I like Fallout 3 better. I mean New Vegas has more guns, more in common with the original Fallouts, more characters, mostly better characters, etc. Yet Fallout 3 was my Fallout port of call, not New Vegas; why?

Blaming the bugs was to easy, especially since several hundred patches and user made patches has fixed most of the problems.

And "Fuck Obsidian" is a bad argument.

So what is it?

Well today while roaming the New York State Museum (Which is a nice place to go for anyone who lives around Albany BTW.) it hit me rather suddenly.

It's the atmosphere. I don't mean atmosphere as in the greenish lighting of 3 versus the organgish of New Vegas. I mean how the game really feels to wander in.

Fallout 3 makes you feel like you're truly treading through a destroyed civilization. Like the hundreds of dead civilizations before it this one died suddenly and left its remains behind. You walk amongst the ashes of a true super power whose history is quickly being lost to all but a bare few people.

Compare to New Vegas, who shows civilization on the rise. Empires are being built, lines drawn, old world comforts returning, etc.

Fallout 3 is post Sherman Atlanta and New Vegas is Reconstruction.
Fallout 3 is walking through a radioactive Pompeii and New Vegas is the wild west.


And obviously some people prefer the wild west, I can't begrudge them that; especially with better gameplay systems in New Vegas.

But for me, I can't help but like the utterly destroyed civilization feeling of 3.

But that's my opinion, what do you think?

[HEADING=3]TL;DR[/HEADING]

Spoiler

 

[Legendairy314]

The problem with that was that Fallout is set after the apocalypse, not during. In essence, it's how people are trying to live once the vaults have opened and a new, much stranger society has emerged. Sure there's destruction and it'd be pretty much impossible to rebuild DC but there was a definite disconnect between Fallout 3, the prior games, and New Vegas.

That said, Fallout 3 was an excellent post-apocalyptic game but I almost feel like the actual Fallout elements were a little out of place.

 

[Saregon]

I also prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas, though I really like both. It's a bit of an odd duck, as it's set 200 years after the war, and it's still as primitive as it is. Also ,some of the settlements make little sense (Little Lamplight), but it feels a lot more desolate, that life in the Capital Wasteland is more of a struggle for survival. New Vegas makes more sense in that society is actually rebuilding, but for a so-called wasteland, it's a bit too.. vibrant. I simply prefer how FO3 feels, the atmosphere resonates better with me. I also prefer Three-Dog over Mr. New Vegas, and I even like listening to President John Henry Eden drone on and on. And my favorite follower is Fawkes. Still though, I like both, and I'm very much looking forward to the next one.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that FO3 has my favorite settlement in any of the Fallout games: The Republic of Dave.

 

[TheIceQueen]

Fallout 3 was a great post-apocalyptic game, but a poor Fallout game. Fallout had always been about rebuilding after a war-torn age in a new age that was fraught with terror. It wasn't about surviving as its main theme, it was about picking up the pieces of the past and moving forward.

That said, I will say that I can agree with Fallout 3 being a bit more atmospheric than New Vegas, but barely better for me. I loved the zany wild west that the Mojave had to offer. Fallout 3 may have been more atmospheric, but New Vegas had a better overall feel to it. I will thank Fallout 3 for providing a cool alternate 1950's look to build up on. That was pretty neat.

Overall, New Vegas is vastly superior in every aspect, in my book. Fallout 3, whilst atmospheric, still had a boring, bland world filled with boring, bland characters and boring, bland locations. New Vegas had great characters with great environments and a wild west feel that I never thought I'd like in a game, along with having the epitome of what DLC should be like. I loved New Vegas' DLC, even if I'm such a scaredy cat that I had to take long breaks from playing Dead Money. That DLC turned my grin into a frown.

Also, I love me some Mr. New Vegas. I'd have his babies, yes I would.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

That's probably why I like New Vegas better. I like the idea of Fallout world getting back on it's feet. I'd like to see more of that in the next Fallout, to be honest.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

New Vegas' world was just boring compared to Fallout 3's. It was an empty desert that completely lacked any interesting places to explore. Also there were too many invisible walls everywhere and half the map was completely unused. And it may have had more quests but almost everyone of them was just a basic fetch quest and lacked the interesting premise that most Fallout 3 quests had.

In short I liked Fallout 3 much better.

 

[Vern5]

I'm of the opinion that Bethesda originally start working on Fallout 3's plot and setting as if it took place only a few decades after the bombs. In this way, Fallout 3 would have been a sort of parallel story to Fallout 1. While the Vault Dweller was dealing with the Master on the West Coast, the Lone Wanderer would have been reactivating the Purifier on the East Coast.

Unfortunately, some idiot at Bethesda thought it would be better to bring in more of the original Fallouts factions and characters rather than just utilize their knowledge of the setting to come up with their own. To this end, we had the Brotherhood of Steel and Harold showing up on the East Coast, which would only make sense if the game was set later in the Fallout timeline.

Basically, someone at Bethesda wanted to please the original fans by bringing in familiar characters. I don't think many of the fans were pleased by this decision. I was definitely not impressed.

Here's a funny thought. Fallout 3 would probably be a superior game to Fallout New Vegas if it were not a Fallout game. Hell, Fallout 3 seems to have a lot more nods to Mad Max than Fallout.

 

[deleted139124]

DELETED

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

New Vegas' world was just boring compared to Fallout 3's. It was an empty desert that completely lacked any interesting places to explore. Also there were too many invisible walls everywhere and half the map was completely unused.

Fallout 3 has huge sections of map cut off by debris (in and around the city) or by hills and mountains. Most of the buildings aren't even explorable. If you're going by terrain alone, New Vegas has substantially more area to explore than F3.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

New Vegas' world was just boring compared to Fallout 3's. It was an empty desert that completely lacked any interesting places to explore. Also there were too many invisible walls everywhere and half the map was completely unused.

Fallout 3 has huge sections of map cut off by debris (in and around the city) or by hills and mountains. Most of the buildings aren't even explorable. If you're going by terrain alone, New Vegas has substantially more area to explore than F3.

What huge sections are these? The city is broken up into various segments sure (Still it's much bigger than New Vegas itself). But the wasteland is entirely explorable. Fallout New Vegas has half the map that can't even be accessed and every time you climb three feet up a hill you hit an invisible wall.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

"But getting to it... that's not the hard part. It's letting go."

That line from Dead Money represents the difference between Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Chasing after memories of the old world only leads to suffering, hence why Washington remains a radioactive crater 200 years later. They never let go.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

Some take their preference for the atmosphere from Fallout 3 and use it to argue that it's the superior game but you're not one of them so it isn't really a typical "NV vs F3" thread.

I wish that the stagnancy of the east coast as opposed to the west was actually explained more than just "it got bombed worse".

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

New Vegas' world was just boring compared to Fallout 3's. It was an empty desert that completely lacked any interesting places to explore. Also there were too many invisible walls everywhere and half the map was completely unused.

Fallout 3 has huge sections of map cut off by debris (in and around the city) or by hills and mountains. Most of the buildings aren't even explorable. If you're going by terrain alone, New Vegas has substantially more area to explore than F3.

What huge sections are these? The city is broken up into various segments sure (Still it's much bigger than New Vegas itself). But the wasteland is entirely explorable. Fallout New Vegas has half the map that can't even be accessed and every time you climb three feet up a hill you hit an invisible wall.

Washington in F3 is broken into segments because Bethesda couldn't be bothered to map out a fully explorable area. Not only is it cut into sections by large piles of debris, but I'd say fully nine out of ten buildings can't be accessed -- both of those comprise the "huge sections" I was referring to. The city is even designed around choke points which force the player to move around its border (a border made up almost entirely of dummy buildings) in order to find the few access points that exist.

Washington may be bigger than New Vegas, but it's a clear case of lazy design on the part of the devs. New Vegas proper isn't a shining example of design either, but at least it doesn't fool the player into thinking it's larger than it actually is. The same goes for F3's wasteland regions -- there are plenty of areas on the map that can't be explored due to artificial blocks like cliffs, hills, fences and dummy architecture.

Claiming that NV has more invisible walls and less explorable map space than F3 is just outright false.

 

[Abomination]

I liked Fallout: Tactics so that's why I liked New Vegas more.

Fallout III felt like someone just bought the 'rites and cranked out a game with a borrowed engine.

New Vegas was made by a company that understood the setting and dived in head-first.

Fallout III is a better game for folks who didn't play I & II.

New Vegas is the real Fallout III. Fallout III should have been called Fallout: DC.

 

[Fanta Grape]

I preferred Fallout 3 and I think one of the main problems was the gunplay was worse. Since both games are very vat heavy, it's more suited to mid to close range combat, since it's stat based. Sniping and using rifles aren't very practical the games for trying to hit something very far away, and yet, New Vegas had much larger distances to shoot, more open area for less cover, less close ranged strategy and more focus on survival. Since F3 has much more enclosed areas, it's much more fitting for the sort of shooting they had.

 

[Darren716]

First, nice to see the New York State museum get some love, I live about an hour away from Albany and I used to love going there when I was younger I probably should go back there sometime. Any ways I feel this is the reason I prefer New Vegas, it shows how the human species is resilient and will try to come back from whatever disaster befalls it compared to 3 where everything just seemed so hopeless so no matter what you did it didn't feel like you were actually going to help anyone. Also what section of the museum were you in that made you come to this conclusion?

 

[chainer1216]

ya know, i've been wondering for years why i like Fallout 3 more than New Vegas, NV had better mechanic/game play, better storytelling and characters, but i have never been able to finish a play through of NV, i always get close to the end, and stop. but with Fallout 3 i racked up 4 complete play throughs and well over 600hrs of play time, to make things even more confusing for me, i love the wild west and all things cowboy, New Vegas should be one of my all time favorite games, and i think you may have answered this for me.

in Fallout 3 there were people trying to rebuild, but all were failing to really start up, it was YOU who ended up doing all the things because YOU wanted to, in New Vegas you were always working for somebody else, you were always an underling, even if the choices you made were the ones that changed everything.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Also, because this is essentially a FO3 vs New Vegas thread, I can't help but post this:

That picture is frankly terrible because of how many quests in it are repeats and/or quests whose each individual objective was made its own quest.