I'm surprised New Vegas more than doubles FO3 in votes, but both games are equally pro'd and con'd in the posts.
Poll: Do I get Fallout 3 or New Vegas?
- Thread starter Johnny Novgorod
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One important thing to remember is that both start with an unskipable, linear opening section which exists before you can go out there into the world and explore, but their length is different. For Fallout 3, it's about half an hour. For New Vegas, it's 9 hours. People talk about how NV has a lot more freedom, but that's only after you've reached the city of New Vegas using the longest possible route. The main quest in NV is better, the map is bigger (but also a LOT more empty, I honestly can not for the life of me figure out which has marginally more content) but Fallout 3 sure feels more like a fallout game while NV feels more like a Western with a bit of nuclear punk mixed in. If I hadn't been told it was in the Fallout universe, I sure wouldn't have assumed it was by playing it.
I think it might be down to a combination of New Vegas being newer (and thus more fresh in people's memories) coupled with Fallout 3 being the shock absorber for fanboy grievance with the fact that Van Buren never got made and that Bethesda bought the IP (even though Brotherhood of Steel 2 was in production and they saved us from that nightmare).Johnny Novgorod said:
Both games are good, both are as open ended once you get to a certain point in the game, both have about as much content, so it gets right down to weather you want your nuclear-punk game to be in the ruins of a city or the ruins of a desert.
Yeah I know, but I find it pretty likely that eventually the OP going to get the other one anyway, so I responded as such.Thunderous Cacophony said:
...what are you on about? In FO3 you are *literally* trapped inside the Vault for the first hour or so of the game. In New Vegas you get turned out into the wild pretty quickly, and there's nothing that says you *have* to go to Vegas straight away. Sure, you have a quest, but you can ignore it a la Skyrim to your heart's content.Zontar said:
They use the same engine and look the same.Johnny Novgorod said:
Fallout 3.
Fallout New Vegas.
It honestly depends on whether you prefer a bigger, worse written, more immediate post-apocalypse about everything still being fucked with noble goodies and evil mustache-twirling villains over a more compact, well-written, more ambiguous "everyone's an asshole" atmosphere where humanity is working their way back up to civilisation and all of the problems that comes with it.
Probably the easiest answer is this; would you rather play a game where you have to side with the "good guys" and think it's "cool" to fight alongside some ludicrously overpowered
OR
would you rather play a game where you get to the end and hate everyone, because every faction is full of assholes, so you say "fuck it" and don't side with anyone. (The bad guys are still mustache twirlers though, sadly).
I'll vote for Fallout 3, because when I was three hours into New Vegas, the game just froze completely and then the laptop I was playing it on (which ran Fallout 3 just fine) just broke. Maybe it was because it was getting old and had seen its share of hardships, but still, I do wonder from time to time.... Anyways, I can at least say Fallout 3 is a great game. It's got a good sense of humour with ridiculous action and memorable characters, solid gameplay and quests that are really fun and sometimes manage to dabble into rather serious themes and issues, that it handles surprisingly well and even with a bit of subtlety here and there, emphasis on sometimes. It manages to be interesting when it really wants to, but it mostly sticks to a kind of goofy camp that contrasts the dreary depressing landscape you're in (but somehow doesn't feel out of place). Overall story is ok I guess, but it's the side-quests and setting that are what will keep you playing for hours. The Capital Wasteland is very well realised, with tons of memorable locations that really capture the feel of a world gone to shit. Graphically, it isn't as advanced as others, but the strong art direction carries it through. Bethesda sure knows how to do environmental storytelling. So much about the place is told through the environment, either with logs made by others or through the architecture and personal touches made to it. In other words, I really like this game.
EDIT: After reading through a lot of these comments and other comments in general, I find it kind of funny how there seems to be barely any consensus about these two games, other than that they are really good games.
EDIT: After reading through a lot of these comments and other comments in general, I find it kind of funny how there seems to be barely any consensus about these two games, other than that they are really good games.
I was talking about the fact that the very long, indirect path to New Vegas basically being what the game is built around, as deviating from the path tends to often lead you to an area with mobs which are hostile, numerous and too high level to handle. The starting area is particularly bad, having only one path which is viable to go.rgrekejin said:
From another thread:
Do you want to explore a beautifully made but depressing post apocalypse city, or do you want to get involved in the political manoeuvring in some sort of weird sci-fi wild west frontier?
I feel 3 has more initial "wow" factor, the first playthrough is great but a second doesn't seem to work for me, whereas NV took longer to hook me in but had a bit more staying power, there was a reason to be there beyond exploring, which was good, because exploring was not particularly fun.Zykon TheLich said:
Do you want to explore a beautifully made but depressing post apocalypse city, or do you want to get involved in the political manoeuvring in some sort of weird sci-fi wild west frontier?
I would have to recommend New Vegas. Both are fantastic games, and each has a distinct feel to them: Fallout 3 better captures the feel of a major urban center after a devastating nuclear war. New Vegas, on the other hand, is more about how life has begun to truly rebuild after the war. Likewise, Fallout 3 is more linear, but also more fundamentally quirky. New Vegas has a lot more freedom to it, while at some points being more grounded than 3. The option of Wild Wasteland, though, can easily make it much more quirky.
What New Vegas has over Fallout 3, though, is the fact that it's simply beefier: More quests overall, more variety in the weapons and armor, the addition of weapon mods, the addition of a Hardcore mode if you want to focus on a more survivalist playthrough, as well as a larger sense of scale. So, I'd have to go with New Vegas: Some would say it's a glorified expansion to Fallout 3, and I wouldn't say they're wrong. It's still a wonderful standalone game too, because even though it refines quite a bit from Fallout 3, it can stand on it's own.
What New Vegas has over Fallout 3, though, is the fact that it's simply beefier: More quests overall, more variety in the weapons and armor, the addition of weapon mods, the addition of a Hardcore mode if you want to focus on a more survivalist playthrough, as well as a larger sense of scale. So, I'd have to go with New Vegas: Some would say it's a glorified expansion to Fallout 3, and I wouldn't say they're wrong. It's still a wonderful standalone game too, because even though it refines quite a bit from Fallout 3, it can stand on it's own.
fallout 3.
its got more of the charm than new vegas.
also, trying shooting at a deathclaw while aimed down-sights in new vegas and end up returning the game.
its got more of the charm than new vegas.
also, trying shooting at a deathclaw while aimed down-sights in new vegas and end up returning the game.
Oh, sorry, tried to do in in order but it wasn't clear; Fallout 3 is a large, desolate wasteland full of mutants with a bad story, while New Vegas is focused on humanity rebuilding itself through ordered factions and group tension but is a bit more constricted for the first little while.Johnny Novgorod said:
If you're playing on PC, I found mods like New Vegas Bounties were amazingly well written and fun and enhanced the experience exponentially.
What do you value most in an RPG?
What are you walking backwards everywhere? If it takes you 9 hours to reach New Vegus, even the long way, you're doing something horribly wrong. And anyway wrong regardless New Vegas doesn't have a unskipable opening section. You can skip it trust me I do it all the time. I can get to NV in like 20 min if I want. Just sneak in between the super mutants and the deathclaws it's not hard. Granted a new player won't know this, but it's disingenuous to say it's unskipable.Zontar said:
But if you do go straight to New Vegas, like I did my first time playing, you completely screw yourself and jump ahead in the main quest, leaving you lost and confused on certain plot points. Which sucks because the first thing anyone wants to do in a game like Fallout is go to that big glowing city in the distance.Eddie the head said:
What? What plot points do you miss? You don't get to see the exact rout that Benny took, but I hardly see how that's going to confuses you. You might miss out talking to those khans, but that's like tertiary to the overall story at best. Maybe just "understanding" the setting more, but that just comes with time.WonkyWarmaiden said:
Fallout: New Vegas for sure, I used to prefer Fallout 3 but eventually I realised just how much more to do in New Vegas there is, and you honestly feel like you can make a difference for better or worse, if that's your thing. DLC adds a neat secondary story that flows through them all and is hinted at in the main game as well.
I do miss Three-Dog though.
I do miss Three-Dog though.
you should get both! but i'd start with fallout 3 first because it came first, and also because the world is a lot more impressive. fallout new vegas improves on a lot of game mechanics and has a fantastic story, but the world is pretty bland.
I found New Vegas to be the better overall experience. It cleaned up a lot of the mechanics that I thought needed work from Fallout 3, it reintroduced a lot of the elements of Fallout 1 and 2 that were sort of absent in 3 (notably reputations), I thought it had a much better story, and I liked the overall design better. There's also something just fun and really original about being in a post-apocalyptic wasteland but also being in a Rat-pack inspired Las Vegas.
The biggest thing that killed me with FO3 was that it seemed like it'd be really cool to be able to explore a ruined DC, but 95% of the buildings you can't enter and are basically just roadblocks to get in your way, and you spend way too much time running around a subway system getting lost (at least I did).
The biggest thing that killed me with FO3 was that it seemed like it'd be really cool to be able to explore a ruined DC, but 95% of the buildings you can't enter and are basically just roadblocks to get in your way, and you spend way too much time running around a subway system getting lost (at least I did).
I played Fallout 3 for a long while, so long that I was burned out when New Vegas came out and haven't gotten terribly far in NV. I think Fallout 3 has a better overworld, but New Vegas has a lot of better everything else. Customization, skill uses, factions, notoriety vs. karma, story, XP, arsenal, combat, and the main quest. The roleplaying in New Vegas, with having an ambigious past for your character, not forcing you to side with one faction, hardcore mode, as well as other factors, is super better for vanilla. As far as DLCs go, I've only played Fallout 3, and the DLCs in Fallout 3 are plain okay, square in the center of mediocrity, with special mention to Broken Steel making the game playable after the final mission and adding a ton of bullshit bulletsponge enemies.
I don't know, really. Fallout 3, to me, has much better set pieces and environments. Everyone remembers the Super Duper Mart, Liberty Prime, or the GNR battle. You visit Pittsburg in The Pitt DLC, you can go to the Capitol building because the game's set in DC, two important plot areas are the Jefferson Monument and the Pentagon. Fallout New Vegas may have better everything, but does it really matter if a lot of the game doesn't feel that important, or if the overworld is extremely shallow, flat, empty, and brown?
I have probably hundreds of hours in Fallout 3, but in New Vegas I have 31. I am biased toward Fallout 3, but I have to recognize that New Vegas functions a lot better. So I don't know. People aren't going to get stuffy if you buy one over the other because both are still really good games.
I don't know, really. Fallout 3, to me, has much better set pieces and environments. Everyone remembers the Super Duper Mart, Liberty Prime, or the GNR battle. You visit Pittsburg in The Pitt DLC, you can go to the Capitol building because the game's set in DC, two important plot areas are the Jefferson Monument and the Pentagon. Fallout New Vegas may have better everything, but does it really matter if a lot of the game doesn't feel that important, or if the overworld is extremely shallow, flat, empty, and brown?
I have probably hundreds of hours in Fallout 3, but in New Vegas I have 31. I am biased toward Fallout 3, but I have to recognize that New Vegas functions a lot better. So I don't know. People aren't going to get stuffy if you buy one over the other because both are still really good games.