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

[Daniel Ferguson]

Right in the thick of it, the concept of 3 is "Firing laser guns in a cold and calculating manner at super mutant things in the ruins of DC while blasting old-timey music" - that thing just writes itself!

New Vegas is a much more sober affair. It might have crafting and stuff, and it might be more tactical, and the Legion are a pretty cool enemy I've gotta say. But I think the situation is just more crazy-fun in the former.

 

[Seanfall]

Could you give an example please? I'm not saying you're wrong. I just haven't played 3 in a long time, and I just happened to really like what they did with New Vegas in that regard.

Ok....

If you go up to a food seller, such as Jenny Stahl in Megaton, you will see her inventory consist of food items such as
-Squirrel on a stick, Squirrel stew, Crispy squirrel bits
-Iguana-on-a-stick, iguana bits
-Mirelurk Cakes
-Brahmin Steaks
-Both kinds of Mutfruit
-Punga(if Point Lookout is installed)
So we know they eat all of those animals, and those plants, and we can visibly see Brahmin in every settlement except Tenpenny tower, and Rivet City.

Across the Capital wasteland one will find various generic hunter NPCs, who carry and sell mirelurk meat, yao guai meat, and mole rat meat. Supporting what we see in the food sellers inventories, and dialog from various NPCs about eating molerats. Grandma Sparkle in Wilheims Warf also mentions her kids hunting mirelurks.

You will also find many unnamed scavengers across the wasteland. Collecting every other type of thing people could want.

These hunters and scavengers trade with cities, for shelter/"services", who then trade what they don't need to the caravan merchants, who trade items between cities where they are needed most. Cities also trade scrap metal to Rivet City, in exchange for the fresh food grown in their science lab, such as carrots, apples, etc. etc.

All the resource gathering/movement is there in-game, you just have to pay attention and look for it.

But are those items in enough abundance to feed the large settlements? And Even then for how long? We are to take it that many of those settlements have been there for years subsisting on hunting and scavenging alone. That might work if you kept moving to follow the food. But as it is they would exhaust local food supplies before long. And again they don't set this up in game we never hear of people going out to hunt and gather (as far as I can remember I haven't played it in like 2-3 years.) And even if they did tell us that would break the rule of 'show don't tell'. Almost all of that food you mentioned is irradiated in the game.

I'm not saying FO3 is bad because of this mind you, but Bethesda just didn't care as much as Obsidian did and it shows. I've replayed NV far more times than I have FO3.

 

[teebeeohh]

well east coast supermutants are boring. west coast mutants are interesting because they basically are just big stompy people but the east coast mutants are basically just monsters with no brain cells to rub together.
and it really felt like a game that was supposed to happen at around the same time as fallout 1 or maybe even earlier and then they decided to add factions and character that have business being there.
except maybe the enclave and they could have been handled better by making the east coast ones not be total dicks. They fucked around with every other faction, why not with them?

 

[Kingjackl]

What Fallout 3 really trumps New Vegas in is the level design. While NV has the stronger and more ambitious writing, Fallout 3 takes the 'open-world RPG concept' and delivers in a way New Vegas simply doesn't. The interior spaces in New Vegas are mazes, the overworld is bland and has a nasty habit of doing what TV Tropes calls 'Beef-Gating'.

 

[Not Matt]

i kind of have to agree. it is much more impressive and you could see it as an actual place where people live. they payed more attention to detail and while i miss all the destroyed civilization bits it is cool to see that people tried to rebuild it. i really don't belive that more people don't inhabit more places in the capital waste

 

[white_wolf]

I like FO3 because the plot makes more sense then FO4 I can fallow a girl who looking for her dad but not a guy or girl who just got shot in the head and lost all good sense and decided to go get the guy who shot them because they wanted their crappy chip back for no reason other then to look at it. I also hated the music in 4 I spent the whole game wishing for three dog and felt the game wasn't nearly as fun, Vegas was disappointing.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

The only thing I liked about Fallout 3 compared to New Vegas was how, like FO 1 and 2, it basically followed a storyline where it was realistic that you stepped out into the wasteland and literally had no idea how anything worked or what the world at large was like (since you were a Vault Dweller in FO 1 and a Tribal in FO 2), and thus it was a journey of discovery more than anything else. In New Vegas, it's sort of established that your character had already spent time on the surface world, and thus it felt unrealistic that they were starting from scratch and had to ask people about everything to learn what was going on in the world.

But, on pretty much everything else, I liked New Vegas better. It brought back reputations, it pushed the Enclave to the backburner (I think we'd had enough games with them), to me it felt wackier than FO 3 (Fallout is, ultimately, supposed to be kind of funny), it gave you iron sights aiming and way more (and better) weapons, it brought back the morally ambiguous Brotherhood of Steel, had way more quests and side activities, and to me captured the world of Fallout better. The original Fallout games had tiny towns struggling to survive combined with shockingly advanced and established cities (ie. New Reno), and I think New Vegas captured that better.

 

[Rastrelly]

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

Then Fallout 3 should be set somewhere around Fallout 1 or earlier times. It's simple: my immersion in F3 was generally destroyed due to setting inconsistency. In F2 we were shown the civilization rebuilding itself - new states and new societies are forming, and humanity is starting to fight Wasteland instead of hiding away from it. In F3, which is set after F2, we see none of this progress. Even moreso, there are no signs of any population being able to exist at all! Those people have nothing to eat, lots of establishments had to be robbed completely hundreds of years ago, etc. It's impossible to immerse into such a flawed from logical standpoint universe.

 

[Jandau]

Yep, down to the atmosphere. New Vegas felt like it was trying too hard to cram as much of FO1&2 into itself and ended up cluttered. The game world didn't feel like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, it felt like a slightly run down section of today's world. It just felt... silly, and not in a good way. Fallout 3 had the atmosphere and the feel down to a T.

I understand why some people feel like NV was truer to the old Fallout games than FO3, but I wouldn't necessarily agree. NV was truer to FO2 - with all the silly nonsense and the wild west theme and people rebuilding. However, I'd argue that FO3 was truer to FO1. With the feeling of desolation, of treading on the bones of a dead civilization, searching through rubble and the ghosts of the past. And I always did like FO1 more than FO2, so I suppose that's why I like FO3 more than NV...

 

[Guy from the 80's]

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

The same as you. Pretty much everything in 3 is better. New Vegas is empty space with some cut and paste building scattered around but with some interesting people here and there.

ninja edit : Some of the locations in New vegas just looks utterly silly. I mean common, did they hire a baboon to do the level design?

 

[Aesir23]

I have to agree as well. Although NV was the better game in many ways it's the atmosphere that makes Fallout 3 the one I prefer between the two of them. I really liked the feeling of a truly post-apocalyptic world, especially since at the time I'd played it there weren't many post-apocalyptic games outside of the Fallout series that weren't zombie related.

 

[Sansha]

Exactly. I like Fallout 3 for being such a hellish nightmare, full of bandits and desperate survivors. I'd rather handle a problem regarding vandals for a group of settlers living in shacks on an overpass than deal with some city-folk problems.

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.

I like that. I like how it was a big disconnect from the previous Fallout games, mainly because I don't think they're the holy grail of RPG gaming that people claim, and didn't need to be stuck to. There are people calling for the writers to retcon Fallout 3's story, for fuck's sake.

I think New Vegas was a huge disappointment, and I think it's because the developers listened to the older fans who said the games needed to continue what I'm calling 'West Coast Lore'. Nostalgia goggles ruin games; it's why Cataclysm for WoW was so terrible and why the Mario, Sonic, and Zelda games continue to stagnate.

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

Then Fallout 3 should be set somewhere around Fallout 1 or earlier times. It's simple: my immersion in F3 was generally destroyed due to setting inconsistency. In F2 we were shown the civilization rebuilding itself - new states and new societies are forming, and humanity is starting to fight Wasteland instead of hiding away from it. In F3, which is set after F2, we see none of this progress. Even moreso, there are no signs of any population being able to exist at all! Those people have nothing to eat, lots of establishments had to be robbed completely hundreds of years ago, etc. It's impossible to immerse into such a flawed from logical standpoint universe.

They're completely opposite sides of the United States. And I argue that the East Coast would have been bombed a lot harder for the capital city and denser population. In fact, I think I recall them stating that in the game.

 

[Talvrae]

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.

^^Pretty much this for me it really sum it up for me, i was a long time fan of the franchise and for me Fallout / was a uge disapointement... And let's not talk about the false advertising about it... there was that big talk of decision matters, and they give the exemple of megaton... the problem is... it's one of the rare event of that kind, and it didnt matter that much... rivet city habitant barelly react to that

 

[Anget Colslaw]

The main reason I got farther in FO3 is because the player character can end up so stupidly powerful that I was able to look past the terrible combat present in both games (don't even think about telling me to just use VATS) and let me explore the Capital Wasteland by myself. That and I preferred exploring a ruined city to the empty desert.

 

[Trunkage]

I found traipsing through destroyed monuments (even the metro) fascinating
I never wanted to go back to the town New Vegas. There was nothing there that ever interested me
None of the other towns every interested me in New Vegas, where I looked up the small towns on our maps in FO3.
Until you got to New Vegas, the game was incredibly linear. I felt trapped and unable to do what I wanted.
I found Fallout 1 to be great, I had trouble making it through more than 10 hours of fallout 2. It had lost something that drew me to the original. Maybe the same, were you see the ruins of past lives, and create a new world out of it. Fallout 2 for somehow didn't catch that feeling (even though they did have sites around California)
But Old World Blues was incredible - it made up for three lacklustre DLCs.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

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.

I pretty much agree with you on this. The fact that I remember Fallout 3 more fondly than New Vegas may also be due to the fact that I'm not an old-school Fallout fan. I've noticed that those who have played the older Fallout games usually (but not always) like New Vegas better since it's more in line with the lore and whatnot.

But yeah, I loved the atmosphere in Fallout 3. I just wish Bethesda had better writers.

Im an old school Fallout fan and i prefer Fallout 3 far more than New Vegas. I remember Fallout 2 breaking at almost every town, large swathes of the quests falling apart, random npcs attacking for no reason...Fallout 2, whilst an amazing idea and story, is a very badly damaged game built by incompetant game designers. Fallout 3 was more fun for me to explore, had rewards of varying degrees in almost every location you find and didn't force feed me story...it presented it as an optional aside, there for me to peruse at my pleasure. Then the incompetant bastards return with NV and the game becomes far more story driven, less balanced and more empty and far more prone to crashing.

Fallout 3 all the way for me. Infact, thinking about this has dropped Fallout 2 off my top 5 of all time list and has been replaced by Fallout 3.

 

[FriedPi]

This is largely what I've been saying for a while now. New Vegas was fun, and I liked it, but Fallout 3 was just... desolate. In a good way. .....It was the small, quiet moments that impressed me the most.

Spot on. F3 captured the essence of a post-A world so perfectly for me. the solitude, atmosphere, setting and tone were just perfection. And the gameplay just sucked you in. Scrounging for food, bullets, and health items, while never knowing who or what was around the corner was incredibly intense. So many other things done great as well, like pipboy, vats, and being able to save at any time.

I can't hate on New Vegas, it was fun and had some good moments, but felt a bit shallow. The strip was a letdown, and silly things like Mr. House and the Elvis gang kept it from being superior to F3 for me.

That said, I know we're all looking forward to the next Fallout. This is one game that I hope they won't change too much.

 

[Rastrelly]

I get what you mean, OP. I do prefer especially the inner DC ruins of Fallout 3 to New Vegas. Many more ruined buildings to explore, streets, blocks. Heck, even the subways, repetitive as they may be, are awesome in terms of atmosphere.
All that said, I still prefer New Vegas for gameplay reasons (quests, perks, interactions etc.). Not to mention I like its DLCs better, which are a huge part of the respective games to me.
Considering how much closer we are to the West Coast in New Vegas, it kind of makes sense that the feel would be more similar to the old games, heh.

Sorry... Engine building?! I understand assets and models... But engine building? You must be joking.

 

[Jazoni89]

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

Looking at the Fallout 3 quest list, compared to the NV quest list, I would have to say there is far less to Fallout 3, than I originally thought.

Getting to the whole, large expansive ocean with the depth of a paddling pool territory, that Bethesda games are known for. Even something with a little more variety in quests like Skyrim is guilty of this in most cases.

Casting my mind back, there's literally no quests in Fallout 3 that stick out well in my mind, except for Trouble at the Homefront, which was a great quest that saw the chaos of the aftermath of you're character leaving the vault. Oasis, which was a peaceful haven in the wasteland, and a different contrast to all the other quests, and a few of the quests on the main quest line especially the one where you had to do the vault simulation.

Other than that, all the rest were kill this, kill that, or glorified fetch quests like the Nuka Cola Challenge, and the incredibly annoying Wasteland Survival quest, which seemed to go on forever.

Admittedly there are a lot of filler quest in New Vegas, but it all comes together in the grand scheme of things, and you end up investing much more in it's world. Helping the Ghouls take to space, Getting the Enclave back together, it all just made for some fun, and well fleshed out quests.

Not to mention the quests in the DLC's, and the most amazing quest in a fallout game ever, Beyond the Beef. I read through my New Vegas strategy guide, and no joke, there's around half a dozen ways to do that quest, and each one has a slightly different, or radically different outcome. Now that is Role-Playing in it's purest form, and not a straight linear path with no consequences for your actions like Fallout 3.

Also, One thing of note in Fallout 3, that some don't touch upon is the Vaults were just there, and some didn't even have a reason to be there, except for game padding. They were simply just there, and didn't have the backstory and sheer difference compared to each of them. One was "oh, here's a copy-paste vault with a bunch of clones here saying "Gary" just cause, it wasn't like "oh this vault went to shit", or "these raiders have made this Vault their home". There were quests tied in to nearly every one of them in New Vegas, which i really appreciated, because i think the vaults are a important aspect of the Fallout series and shouldn't be classes as a afterthought.

 

[Araksardet]

Personally I enjoyed the characters, story and quests of New Vegas more, but I enjoyed the atmosphere of Fallout 3 way more. The rebuilding civilization thing is pretty cool in my book, but the Mojave was a little too bland. New Vegas had somewhat better gameplay though, so on balance I'd say I enjoyed New Vegas more, though they were both great.

However, Three Dog > Mr. New Vegas. Seriously.