Alhazred said:
I've played through both games two times now, and I still can't decide which is better.
Fallout 3 is a typical Besthesda game; they prioritise making an expansive, atmospheric world for the player to explore, but they don't put as much effort into the NPCs. Conversely, New Vegas has an uglier, more plain world, but fills it with interesting characters.
I will argue that Fallout 3 had the better soundtrack though.
I would argue the soundtrack point, mainly due to the fact that Fallout 3's soundtrack sounded nearly identical to Oblivion's at times, where new vegas had a sound track that sounded like a higher quality revamped version of Fallout 2's soundtrack, though the soundtrack in Fallout 3 was pretty awesome, it just didn't feel Fallout-y, leading me to say if Fallout 3 was a completely separate series but also post apocalyptically set, the soundtrack wouldn't have felt out of place.
Now, for my personal thoughts on which one was a better game overall.
I would vote New Vegas, mainly because it had a less irritating storyline, and a ton more characters with actual personality, Sure the world was smaller, and it was a desert, but I also prefered it that way, as fallout 3 was far less... alive, I mean sure there was tons of wildlife out there, but the landscape which should have had at least some life in it outside of oasis, was completely grey, in other fallout games in similarily nuked to desolation areas there were forrests, and the dirt looked like dirt, not like crumbled asphalt. Fallout 3 also did not have a good variety of weapons without dlc, it had a crafting system which let's face it, was really just shoehorned in to add content, when most of the weapons you could craft were less useful than guns that were EVERYWHERE, also the sniper rifle degraded at a rate that made me suspicious that someone had made it out of soap flakes, same with the .44 scoped revolver, they practically fell apart with light use, these are guns, they are made of metal, they are built to be fired, why would such a thing break so easily, being used for it's designated purpose?
Fallout 3 also lacked weapon upgrades, which I know some people might tell me were introduced in vegas, but those people never played Fallout 2, which had a variety of upgrades for a variety of guns, also the super mutants were a completely different variety(somehow) not the same in nature as the ones produced by the master, y'know, with the FEV, which was being locally produced, on the other coast of the country in a military base, that got exploded. The mutants who were traveling across the continent were intelligent ones(Fallout Tactics anyone?) who were trying to find a cure for their sterility(yes super mutants were rendered sterile by the FEV, and cannot reproduce, this makes them a limited quantity creature, and even then the only way to make them is to dip humans, and we all know what the apocalypse did to our numbers eh?) so in that regard they essencially took the whole concept of super mutants, bent it over a table and FUCKED IT, not to mention harold... HOW THE HELL did an already aging and falling apart ghoul, walk across the continent, past the seemingly impassable formation of mountains known the rockies, all the way there. Which also dissapointed me, as the only callback to the rest of the franchise that bethesda aquired, was a character that they KILLED OFF, who would be highly unlikely to make it to where he was in the first place, he was kinda in charge of a ghoul settlement called gecko, there's no explanation as to why he would leave his people in the first place.
Fallout New Vegas on the other hand was a pretty direct continuation of the events in Fallout 2, albeit some time later, but still, it shows that civilization is coming back, in fact has come back, and is now expanding, there are many characters who harken back to events, characters, and places, from Fallout 2, the weapon variety is back, and so are the modifications, the story rather than having you run willy nilly across a dead landscape sparsely populated by anything more interesting than mole rats, dogs and super mutants, has a relatively straight forward path, with interactions with including the aquisition of interesting missions from a variety of characters who are memorable, and have exposable backstory to at least some decent extent.
The game mechanics in Fallout New Vegas were far superior to Fallout 3, including the adition of iron sights, and the flow of movement in combat in general being smoother and overall better, whereas Fallout 3's combat always felt rather ill paced and crappy, mighta just been the weapon selection being so crappy though, but I doubt I'm immagining things, as I've beaten both multiple times playing with the use of vats and playing completely without using it, vegas felt better on both terms.
Overall, Fallout 3 was fine as it's own game, it had it's moments, and the atmosphere was generally pretty immersive, but it was ill fitting the Fallout namesake, most of the DLC was rubbish, and until you got to the stuff in broken steel, the "storyline" was at the best of times ok, and at all other times boring, irritating, and unnessecarily drawn out, without any of the important characters(you father for instance) being fleshed out AT ALL.
Due to world immersion being good, and due to some of the environmental stuff, like messages on some of the terminals being funny, and whatnot.
Taking all of their flaws and strongpoints into account:
Fallout 3: 2.5/5
Fallout: New Vegas: 3.5/5 (only reason it's not a 4/5 is due to some of the bugs that even to this day plague it, the crashing when trying to quick travel in old world blues for instance)
as Fallout games I would rate them:
Fallout 3: 1.5/5 (doesn't feel like a fallout game, breaks cannon in so many ways it's insane, and feels like the team developing it didn't really experience the games they were building a sequel to, and no it's not about the change from isometric top down to first person, cuz I found that to be pretty cool)
Fallout: New Vegas 4.5/5 (The world felt like the world from the isometric era games, but first person, the humour was more "Fallout-y" and they didn't visciously rape cannon in any discernable way, hell even the whole Ceasar's legion thing, with the burned man, and the lonely road stuff, they were all taken from the original story for the Fallout 3 that never was, and though they were altered a bunch, it was so that they fit better, and it worked.)
So yeah, I know my text wall is a rather hodgepodge amalgamation of a review and a badly edited opnion piece, but there ya have it, if you wanna read it go for it.
my appologies for text walling.
