Poll: Fallout 3 vs Vegas/ Fallout 4

BrotherRool

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Huh, that's interesting. This thread has been 60/40 in favour of New Vegas almost every time it's existed. Now the other games have been added in, the New Vegas percentage has remained almost the same but the Fo3 vote has disappeared. Maybe the things people like about Fo3 are also done in the earlier games, or maybe Fo3 fans are more likely to be fans of Fo1.
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Anyway my vote as always if Fallout: New Vegas. My opinion of the game is only going up with time, there's so much to explore and enjoy on every playthrough and so many different ways to play the game. I think Fallout: New Vegas is really challenging for my best game ever now. The only thing that holds it back for me is the Fallout setting. My biggest dream is seeing Obsidian do a Fallout style game but in another setting, somewhere green and beautiful. Can you imagine if Obsidian did Skyrim 2?

The F:NV world is just so incredibly rich and well put together and the way it lets you interact with it is amazing. More than any other game Fallout New Vegas feels like you're living in a world that's not all about you, it actually hangs together. The conflict between the NCR and the Legion feels real. I love the way you can constantly see little skirmishes happening all over the game world. The way people think and talk about Vegas is so perfect.

All the game mechanics just make sense too on a level which feels like it's inviting you to explore it. It's not just the Legion and the NCR are actively fighting battles around you, but they're fighting in places that make sense geographically. They're not spawning randomly everywhere, they're fighting along well drawn lines between two camps on a war front.

At one point in the game, there's a camp of Rangers in a place in a crucial throughway. When you return to it, it's been raided by the Legions and destroyed. But before it's raided, if you explore the surrounding area you can find tons of Legion scouts around the area spying out the encampment.

The factions have their politics, their settlements, their fields of crops, their power sources, hopes dreams aspirations. Fallout New Vegas is the truest sandbox ever made
 

SmallHatLogan

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Jandau said:
SmallHatLogan said:
Vandenberg1 said:
So us retro lovers could brag about the plot to Fallout 1
Xyebane said:
I still think fallout 1 had the best story
Was Fallout 1's story really that good? It's been a while since I've played it but I didn't think there was much to it. All I remember is
find water chip, learn about super mutants/FEV, kill Master, the end. And not much happening between those events.
Apart from the reused assets I thought Fallout 2 was an improvement in every conceivable way, including story.
So oversimplification is a valid argument now?
I wasn't making an argument, I was genuinely asking a question about Fallout 1's story because what I wrote in that spoiler tag is literally all I can remember.
 

Xyebane

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As to the plot of FO vs FO2 vs FO3, fallout's plot is internally logical, well thought out with clear motivations and a clear sense of urgency. Almost none of these exist in conventional video games. The plot of fallout assumes you will act in a rational way and plays out those consequences, assuming that you as a player will think about those consequences when you make the decision. This is in stark contrast to most games which tell you the consequence before you make the decision (think good/bad moral systems).

The water ticking clock is a perfect example of this. Not only is this a ticking clock that drives the urgency of the plot but the game gives you the option of sending water supplies to the vault to help extend the clock. Now this has a very serious consequence. If you send water to your vault that is hidden in the mountains, it isn't going to stay hidden so long and there is an army of super mutants that happen to be searching the wasteland for sealed vaults containing non-irradiated humans for the FEV. Hence, the super mutants will find your vault much faster if you send water to them. Completely makes sense but the game does not give an explicit warning, you have to actually think about the choice you make.

The plot for FO2 is basically just a rush excuse to re-play FO in slightly different locations with better mechanics and new social themes to explore.

The GECK is just a new waterchip, which of course doesn't really make sense in the grand scheme of things. If vault 13 had a jesus box why didn't they use that when their waterchip broke the first time? The enclave is just a new supermutant army. The little sub themes in the various towns are interesting it's true such as with vault city, but the over all plot is fluff and since FO2 was made in little over a year when FO had no clear structure for a sequel and was a surprise hit it isn't hard to understand why FO2's plot is so weak. It makes up for a weak plot with strong writing. Compare this further with the trainwreck that is FO3's plot. Your dad leaves the vault to turn on a different jesus box, leaving you to be tortured at best and murdered and worst and you have to chase after him because reasons? and when you find him the issue of him abandoning you doesn't even get resolved! Why does anyone do anything they do in this game? Why would the protagonist follow after their dead-beat father? Why does the father decide suddenly now is the best time to abandon his only remaining family? Why does the brotherhood of steel have a massive robot that kills everything but they only use it once for cover? Why would the enclave not want clean water to be readily available? Not to mention it completely rewrites the Brotherhood from being introverted self interested technofreaks (which seems completely reasonable in a post-apoc world) who don't give a damn about you and send you on a suicide mission when you ask to join to the archetypical 'good' guys who want to save everyone because they are the good guys. The Enclave is just as bad, they go from a morally ambiguous antagonist who actually represent the former government who think the only way to bring back the old world is by cleansing it of all the mutant freaks that have sprung up. Evil: probably, Extreme: definitely, Logical: sure. Now they are just the bad guys cause they are controlled by a robot?

Anyways, for me FO > all other in terms of PLOT because: A) Logical, B)Believable Motivations.

Not to mention the ending was just a work of art.
 

Enamour

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Fallout 3 is not a part of the Fallout franchise in my mind. If they changed the names and didn't call it Fallout 3 it would have been called Wasteland Survivor, 6.5/10.

Why isn't 3 a part of the franchise? It was a decent game made by people who stayed true to the Fallout aesthetic. The aesthetic is simply the look and accompanying feel of the world. This is what I believe Fallout 3 fans keep referring to, what I never see Fallout 3 fans talk about is the humor, the cleverness of the game's symbolic construction or the deeper philosophical intimations of your actions.

Why was it different? Different people worked on it. Fallout 1 and 2 had a dark humor about how things unfolded. For example Fallout 1 starts you off searching for a water chip to save a vault; a shipping error before the war caused your vault to be under-stocked. In Fallout 2 you find the other vault that actually received the shipment; there's like a hundred water chips in one container and you think "Wow, if only I had had these in Fallout 1!". If you had played Fallout 1 you would sit there and feel almost angry at the developers. Tom Cruz and Nicole Kidman manned a thinly veiled post apocalyptic Scientology center in 2.

I remember a million clever little details about Fallout 1 and 2 that were missing in Fallout Tactics (Tactics used the engine but wasn't made by the same people.)

All I remember about Fallout 3 is some tripe about finding your daddy in the wasteland and everything simply being bleak, grainy or whatever. There were few high notes in Fallout 3 apart from how densely the content was packed as opposed to New Vegas' more sparse, cleverer approach.

For New Vegas they got the original people back. I remember every little detail about New Vegas, if you actually pay attention to the game and don't just run around completing quests because you have them, then you notice the same dark humor, the quirky ironies, the genius way in which current day symbols are twisted and distorted in a post apocalyptic world.

Discussing the Fallout franchise purely in terms of gameplay(Tactics) or "story"(Fallout 2) is ridiculous. The difference is attention to detail and authentic content; it's as much about the writing as it is about clever world building and mechanics. It's about how well the content evokes a response in the player, and that's what long time Fallout fans remember; a million little interesting stories, forever ingrained on their memories.
 

mortalsatsuma

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New vegas for me. Took me a while to decide between new vegas and fallout 3 but i much prefer new vegas. imo, the story is much better and just a lot more interesting, all the factions come across as morally grey over black and white, good and bad and this better suits the aesthetic of the wasteland. Granted there's still a morality system but it comes across as more are you a survivor who goes out of there way to help others or are you just trying to survive no matter the cost. Hardcore mode was a nice inclusion as it gave the feeling that although your character was maybe uber powerful in the late game and ate deathclaws for lunch, you're still human and can die from sleep exhaustion or dehydration or starvation if you don't look after yourself.

The game is also a lot more political that fallout 3. I had to think long and hard about who to side with and liked how for the most part, you can't have everything and keep everyone happy. It added a lot of weight to each decision and even factions such as the NCR who seem to be the token good guys have a dark side and nasty agendas if you delve deep.

Finally, I like how the game makes you feel like a pawn in a game larger than yourself, rather than the faultless hero of fallout 3. You have total control over how you want to play your part and how invested you want to become. Do you want to help mould and decide the fate of New Vegas and by extention the Mojave or do you just want to drift and left things take their course, for bad or worse.

For me, new vegas all the way.
 

Epidemiix

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For me, it has to be Fallout 3. However, this is coming from someone who has not played 1 or 2, just 3 and New Vegas.

New Vegas was cool. Had some interesting ideas about the world being built back up from the ashes, and all the different factions of people trying to fight for it. But there is something about the emptiness (and the grim dark feel it had sometimes) about 3 that really got me. It just really, really clicked and I got into it.

(Though sometimes it gets annoying that in 3 the bombs feel almost 200 years ago, yet the world, people, etc. seem to be more plausible if it was 50-100 years after the war. New Vegas had a better feel when keeping in mind the 200 years ago thing)


Also Malcolm McDowell helped.
Shout-out to Three Dog.
 

beastro

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Ne Vegas for me.

The only problem the game really had for me was it was Fallout 4 made without Van Buren to tie in a lot of shit and flesh out Nevada/Colorado where the original FO3&4 were taking place.

Instead of a huge build up to Caesar invading from across the Texas wastelands between Van Buren and FO4 we get dumped in the middle of him already fighting the NCR over Hoover Dam and get nothing about what took place in Denver and shit.

It was a compromise to get the series back on track and away from the Washington DC derailment. I appreciate it and enjoyed it, but it was a compromise and felt like one through and through.
 

j4c0b1

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New vegas

Although I really enjoyed fallout 3, new vegas was better in pretty much all aspects, it had a better characters, better story, better world, and a better terrain, the wasteland actually feels desolate and empty, where as in fallout 3 i couldnt walk 10 steps without coming across a military installation.
 

michael87cn

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Y'know, I just don't get the point of 'Iron Sight' aiming. The game provides you with a crosshair whether you aim or not. Personally, I don't get a sense of immersion from the mechanic, and I dislike obscuring the entire screen. I guess if you're roleplaying though...

Really though, it was just a cheap way to add a CoD mechanic, let's be honest. It drew a couple of CoD players into the Fallout games, that was the purpose.

Also, New Vegas' story was worse for me, because it was so uninteresting to me.

I played the old games, and Fallout 3 brought some of the feel of those back. If New Vegas had been the first new fallout game, I would have been so disappointed. It hardly feels like a Fallout game. It plays more like a western. I don't really care about lore though, I don't see how New Vegas really took on after Fallout 2 other than that it has NCR in it. I mean, most of the story is brand new, and deals with a computer chip.

Maybe people just reeeeeeally love Tandi? I dunno. In Fallout 2, the NCR were kinda bad guys. Everyone was bad actually. New Vegas kind of paints a radically different picture.

I'll add on to say that I think this debate is endless, and that by majority I think that most people like New Vegas. The idea that "the old fallout ppl maed it!!11" wins a lot of people over, even though this doesn't really change whether a game is good or bad. I can see how it wins over dedication and fanfare. But I don't judge games based on that. I've been arguing in forums over this game since New Vegas came out, and I always see the same thing. The newer game is more popular, even though people absolutely loved and adored Fallout 3 when it came out. It's kind of sad that people are so quick to dismiss what FO3 gave us. It used to be a dead series with little to no hope of returning, but Bethesda was willing to change that, and for that I'm thankful.
 

Phrozenflame500

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Fallout 3 was a bog-standard "we're trying really hard to make an RPG but we can't write for shit" Bethesda game. Oblivion actually can write and it really shows in nearly every aspect of New Vegas, particularly the main plot which has a lot of greyer main factions as well as the morality system which is more faction-based then good and evil. It also helps they recognized the flaws in Fallout 3's gameplay and fixed them in advance.
 

SinisterGehe

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I have to say Fallout 3. It lacked a lot of things that I liked about in F:NV.
But the environment was just way more interesting, the desolated urban environment that you could explore, the maintenance tunnels, traffic tunnels, the streets. It felt like a place where time stopped because of the bombs. And Broken steel allowed continue the story gives a nice change to continue after the story ends. Point look out is most likely still one of my favorite DLCs of any game, ever.

F:NV was just desert with occasional shack here and there. With Deathclaws and those fucking bees pouring from every nook and cranny. It was so boring even if the game play was way superior. I also didn't like the ending of the story or the whole idea of "You decide what happens to this plot of land". I enjoyed the Dead Money, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road DLCs WAY more than the game itself. By way more I mean I play the game just to play those DLCs.

F2 I love really only because of the fact I used to play it with my brother when I was a kid. F1 I respect for what it is. Tactics is just... I don't know what it is but I liked it as a kid.

But F3 was the first fallout that I owned for myself. And it will forever hold a special place in my heart. I would love it more if I wouldn't have to fight to get it running and working, because of the ended support and no updates.
 

carnex

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NCR was kinda OK in Fallout 2. Still a police state like in New Vegas only much less powerful and much less greedy and corrupt. In New Vegas they are better than Cesar's Legion but only in social structure and means. They both have same goal, to assimilate Mohave without mercy. There is no good side there. Brotherhood is forced into lul or even they would be equal asshats just like everyone else.
 

Trunkage

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SmallHatLogan said:
Fallout 3 got me into the series and I loved it the first time I played it but subsequent attempts at playing it I just find myself really bored. Things I like more about New Vegas that I would like to see return in Fallout 4: the open endedness and various factions, great companions, weapon and ammo variety. A big one is character building options. Fallout 3 has very few perks tailored for specific builds as well as a lot of useless perks, and you have so many skill points to throw around you inevitably end up as an overpowered jack of all trades by the time you hit the level cap. In New Vegas when planning a character I sometimes agonise over which perks I have to leave out, in Fallout 3 you pick the twenty or so good perks then fill the rest with whatever seems novel. I also hope they keep damage threshold over damage resistance, or do a combination of the two like in the first two games.

The DLC in New Vegas often felt like a chore but I did like that all of them are somehow connected to the Courier and/or the events in the main game, and sometimes even connected to each other.

As a personal preference I prefer the Fallout 1/2/NV style wasteland where people have already kind of picked up the pieces and are back to the usual routine as opposed to the bleak depressing post apocalypse of the Capital Wasteland.

I'd also like to see some of the humour of Fallout 2 return. We kind of got that in NV with Wild Wasteland but unfortunately is uses up one of your trait spots.
I would have said that Fallout 1 and 3 were similar as they are just starting to pick up the pieces. Fallout 2 advances dramatically (except you of course), just as the society of New Vegas compares to Capital Wasteland.

The best part of Fallout 3 was seeing the monuments, signature areas and little towns around the area that try to match "50s" DC. I don't care now or ever about anything is Las or New Vegas.

As for humour - That's what the Big Empty is for.

Edit: I should add I never finished Fallout 2. It was so boring compared to 1.
 

hermes

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Personally, I liked 3 a lot more.

The early game in Vegas is unusually lineal and restrictive, which is a cardinal sin for a Fallout game.
 

Llil

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GundamSentinel said:
Jandau said:
New Vegas did polish out the gameplay mechanics and add some nice stuff, but the game world in Fallout 3 is vastly superior and more interesting.
For me this is a very important point. I don't play the Fallout games (or the Elder Scrolls games, for that matter) for story and characters. That's just not their strength. I play them to explore an interesting world. And the Capitol Wastelands were just a lot more interesting than the Mojave. What's special about a post-apocalyptic setting in what was already a desert?
I really think the story and especially the characters are the strong point of the Fallout series, with the exception of Fallout 3. You seem to be putting the Fallout games in the same category as The Elder Scrolls games, and I don't think that's entirely fair when only one game in the series is like that.

Of course, Fallout 3 is basically "Oblivion with guns", so I can see where you're coming from if you were introduced to the series by 3. But if you're expecting the same from the other Fallouts, you're playing for the wrong reasons, I think.

Basically, Fallout 3 is a good game but a bad Fallout sequel. New Vegas is a good game, and also a pretty good Fallout sequel.
 

Spaceman Spiff

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Fallout 3 was my first Fallout, I sunk a ton of hours into it and had a blast.

Then I played New Vegas and was blown away. Pretty much everything was improved upon from Fallout 3: the story, the setting, NPCs, game mechanics (repair, speech, iron sights, DT instead of DR), weapon/armor/clothing variety, and the DLCs were amazing.

Obsidian did a fantastic job with New Vegas.
 

BrotherRool

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It can be easy to get caught up in Factionalism, so I will say that Fo3 is probably the best written game Bethesda has ever made. The main plot was still nonsense, but the sidequests were so much more involved and dynamic than the things you get in Skyrim. And the physical geography was really good (although if you remove the orange filter, I think there's a lot to really enjoy in F:NV's, especially if you mix up walking around in the day/night. The strip at night is particularly great). But whilst the physically geography of Fo3 was good, it stopped making sense if you began to think about it and it didn't create a sense of human geography and world-building to the extent that F:NV did.

To be fair these are things that most games don't do and it's not necessary at all to making an amazing game. It's just that F:NV is the rare unicorn where you can look past the surface and find things don't fall apart.
 

GamerAddict7796

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Played all the Fallouts (apart from Brotherhood of Steel but no-one counts that) and Fallout 3 is still the best.

New Vegas was good there's no denying but Fallout 3 draws me in every time and the apocalyptic feeling is better. The whole rebuilding civilisation is good but I want to explore a desolate wasteland. The quests in 3 were better with only a few stand out quests in New Vegas, like the slavers in Westside. Background characters in 3 were better but companions in New Vegas are amazing. If Bethesda made the world and quests while Obsidian made the companions then we'd have the perfect Fallout game.
 

Ingjald

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Absolutely loved F2, but out of the modern versions, I'd have to go with New Vegas: the crafting system made more sense and was interesting, the world was fantastic and bleak, the characters were interesting and the item variety was much, much greater. Not to mention the inherent freedom of the Mojave Desert compared to the endless subway tunnels of Washington DC. Also, hardcore mode upped the ante a little bit when you were getting bored, even if few ailments cant be cured with black coffee and a brahmin steak.

F3 had too many things that made no sense to me, especially equipment-whise; why does the tiny revolver use the same ammo as the hunting rifle, and why is said revolver weak as piss? I love the mauser pistol design, but why is it only half as powerful as a same-ish tier gun that, again, uses the same ammo? Why does the poison dart weapon cripple legs, when "poisoned" has been a status effect in every fallout game before and since?

That being said, I have high hopes for Fallout 4. :D
 

Mylinkay Asdara

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I was introduced to the Wastelands in Fallout 3 (no PC with gaming growing up) - they're a tie for me. As many have said - strengths on both sides but in different areas. If I had to pick, like I had to have only one of the two exist for me, I'd have to go with NV just for the quality of the DLC - FO3's DLC beyond Brotherhood of Steel fell a little flat for me overall and the Daddy Daddy Daddy issue was compelling the first time and second time around, but lost some flavor for me on subsequent plays due to the minor role the "main" story takes if you're going for a full exploration lone wolf kind of play through.