The Fallout Debate

Henrik Persson

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I think the OP is dead wrong. F3 is hated because the story sucks, the ending is atrocious, the dialogue is poor and it lacks the humour of the first two. Those are the things that people loved about the first two, atleast the people I know. Bethesda always fails on these points in all their games and I can't for the life of me understand why they don't hire a professional writer to handle these things for them (or fire the incompetent one they have now).

Fallout 3 has the Wasteland Survival Guide and a few other rare gems, but mostly it was bland. I always read everything in games, but in Fallout 3 I stopped reading all the hacked computers because they were always pointless. It could have been the best game ever, but they failed. There's nothing I hate more than lost potential.
 

Fragged_Templar

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I absolutely adore the Fallout series, so much so that I own Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (for which my soul will burn in eternal hellfire), but anyways here is how I would rank the games in the fallout series

I consider Fallout 2 to be the best game in series by far, even with all the bugs not all of which are a detriment to the game (like the having the wandering luggauge compartment save my life on many occasions) and various patching issues. It has a great story, a certain charm and a dark sense of humour which I have yet to find in any other series, and as such I can't help not loving it.

Fallout 1 takes my second place; in small part because it is the first in the serious but mostly because it has a tight story arc and quest progression, and finally but not least because of The Master ("join. die. join. die." being my all time favourite villian speech ever).

Third place goes to Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, if for no other reason than it introduced the "hawk" power armour and the gauss minigun. It was also the first fallout game that was radically different from Fallout 1 and 2 with its innovative CTB (Continous Turn Based) system.

Fourth place goes to Fallout 3, and my sentiments were pretty much described by
It's just a very bad sequel.
The DLC helps to improve the game but ultimately if you just explore a bit you'll hit the level cap before having completed even a quarter of the game(something which comes as second nature to any fans of the originals). What I found the most lacking however, was the sense of humour present in the other games.

And taking last place is Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, the main reasons being the lack of character creation,
the skill trees ripped directly from the baldurs gate console games(which are almost equally bad), shoddy gameplay, an interesting if rather weak story and last but not least your soul being damned to eternal hellfire for owning it.

I'm very much looking forward to New Vegas and fervently hope it will be good game, worthy of the fallout name.
 

Meggiepants

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Jan 19, 2010
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I loved Fallout 1 & 2 when I got them way back in 2002. I had never played anything but JRPGs. Imagine my surprise when I found out you could literally kill anyone in Fallout. It was a very surreal moment for me.

"Holy shit! I can actually affect the outcome of my game?"

That being said, I still love Fallout 3, even with all it's limitations. It's my favorite Fallout.

I just look at the games as two different styles of design but set in the same world. I like both styles for very different reasons. As much as I like the first two - and they are hard as hell, that is no joke - I'm not able to immerse myself in them as much as the third. Perhaps it's because like the OP says, the third has a more serious, realistic tone. Whatever the case, I think they all stand on their own as great games, despite their flaws.

I don't think you are alone on the sequel thing being a problem. Bethesda is working pretty hard to remind everyone that New Vegas is not a sequel. It was in the first press release I ever read about the game.
 

Low Key

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I played Fallout 3 and had all sorts of fun, enough so that I went out and bought the Fallout Trilogy figuring with all the hype the originals get on this site it would be good.

Boy was I wrong. I stopped playing Fallout 1 after about an hour. I don't know how to explain it other than it was boring. I think it had to do with the view and the turn based fighting. Having a 360 degree view and knowing when the enemy will attack kind of took all the surprise out of battle.

I'll probably give it another shot because I don't like wasting money like that, but in my opinion, Fallout 3 excels where the first two do not.
 

MiracleOfSound

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Jan 3, 2009
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Henrik Persson said:
I think the OP is dead wrong. F3 is hated because the story sucks, the ending is atrocious, the dialogue is poor and it lacks the humour of the first two. Those are the things that people loved about the first two, atleast the people I know. Bethesda always fails on these points in all their games and I can't for the life of me understand why they don't hire a professional writer to handle these things for them (or fire the incompetent one they have now).
I did actually mention that it lacked the humour of the first two, but anyway.

I'm really hoping New Vegas can mix the new-style gameplay with the old-school personality.
 

zerzxes

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MiracleOfSound said:
My conclusion is that it would have been better off named Fallout: Vault 101 or something other than Fallout 3, this way the old school fans would maybe not have had their expectations dashed so hard.
You stole my words mate. Everyday after i played Fallout 3 I thought it was a good game. Just not "Fallout 3" it only have the apocalyptic settings and enemies, not anything sequel related.

I like Fallout "D.C chronicles" but the second wasis the best Fallout.
 

CheckD3

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According to Yahtzee, that makes F3 and the entire creating team a group that doesn't cater to the fans, and instead tries to broaden their interests.

I too am a fan of F3 and will soon be replaying it again, and probably another time after that just to get some more trophies. A game as epic as F3 is something that is replayable and fun beyond words. But I went in not knowing a single thing about Fallout as a series or franchise. So I got a fresh experience that was fun for beggining to end to the point that the ending felt almost TOO quick for me and I know now that I need to flesh out the game to lengthen it.

However, to hear that Fallout fans were upset makes me wonder if they even came into consideration, and if anyone is thought about when they make the Fallout games. New Vegas seems to start you off after being left for dead and starting you off in a village rather than a vault, which from I've heard of the Fallout games, is a large step in a new direction. I for one will be getting New Vegas to rent when it comes out and might buy it if I get a good paycheck one time and find it a price of $30 or less, and I MIGHT even get the DLC this time, too poor for F3 this time.

But going back to Yahtzee, he's the one that says that it's the fans that you need to avoid, because pleasing them locks out more and more people from getting interested in the game, where as pleasing those who didn't like the originals to their whims mean you get more sales, since fans will always buy the game and new people you please will also buy it. It means they can afford more fun things and food so they can live and make the next game.

I wonder why they add numbers on the Fallout games, especially, as you said, the 3rd installment. They seem to be mostly unrelated with the only similarity in the general feel of the game
 

Henrik Persson

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To be fair to Bethesda they did manage to capture the setting really well. The whole bleak future/50's vibe that's trademark Fallout. Fallout 3 wouldn't have been so good if it hadn't had that.

As for all the disappointed fans, I guess they just didn't know Bethesda like I do. I knew what to expect and could enjoy the game because of it. It's a shame that people expecting something else hate it, because they're missing out on a good game.
 

Julianking93

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You're right, and I can see why older fans don't like 3 mainly because well, the first was an overhead and almost RTS style game while 3 obviously isn't

But I like 3 better because I don't like RTS. At all.
 

Optimus Hagrid

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MiracleOfSound said:
F1 and 2 keep the player constantly in fear of the next encounter above their level, constantly hitting save in case they suffer a sudden death

While the first two poke fun at pop culture, indulge in wacky humour like talking stone heads and whales falling from the sky
...

...huh. That actually sounds pretty cool. I gave up on the games when I got stuck behind that horrid combat system, but maybe I should give them another try.
 

Henrik Persson

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Julianking93 said:
You're right, and I can see why older fans don't like 3 mainly because well, the first was an overhead and almost RTS style game while 3 obviously isn't

But I like 3 better because I don't like RTS. At all.
It's nothing even remotely like and RTS. It's friggin' turn based.
 

Julianking93

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Henrik Persson said:
Julianking93 said:
You're right, and I can see why older fans don't like 3 mainly because well, the first was an overhead and almost RTS style game while 3 obviously isn't

But I like 3 better because I don't like RTS. At all.
It's nothing even remotely like and RTS. It's friggin' turn based.
Its a turn based topdown game.

That's what I see as RTS though I know it stands for real time strategy, but I hate that type of game too.
 

hardlymotivated

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(Obligatory spoiler warning in advance)





I'm currently playing through Fallout 3, having played through Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics countless times. I've finished the main storyline, and I'm working my way through the DLCs at the moment.

Let me begin by stating that I think it's a good game. It's fun, it's interesting, the gameplay's all very fluid and whatnot, but I'm not quite sure I like what they've done with the series. Paraphrasing what people have said earlier in the topic, it's a good game - but it's not a good Fallout game. I can certainly agree with that.

It all started off nicely - character creation was cleverly made, all of the growing-up stuff seemed pretty well thought out. But upon the escape from the Vault, everything became a bit troubling. I mean, you've lived in the Vault for all of roughly nineteen years. You've spent all of that time in an incredibly isolated community. The small number of people in Vault 101 would've all known each other immensely well. I'm not saying that they would've had to have liked each other, but when someone's been with the same group of people for nineteen years, I'd expect community cohesion to work out pretty well.

Now, of course, the Overseer wields most of the power in the Vault, and I understand that there's a lot of propaganda which reaffirms this in the minds of those living there, but I still can't get my head around the way in which the guards suddenly turn into mindless, cold-blooded killers when you're attempting to escape. Would they really shoot people they've known for at least nineteen years because the Overseer told them to? I suppose I just thought it was unrealistic. Maybe I've misinterpreted it, but I'd have thought that the Overseer wouldn't have disclosed the Vault Experiment (in this case, 101 being permanently shut) to his mooks. And if he had, why would they have been willing to callously murder people for the sake of it?

I don't have time to go into more detail at the moment, but there were quite a few other things in the game that I thought didn't make much sense when I was playing, so I might jot them down later. (Presence of super mutants, FEV as a convenient plot device, return of the Enclave, a very black-and-white moral choice system, etc.)
 

sketch_zeppelin

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Well i'm one of the rare folks that hasn't played either of the previous fallouts and just did not like the Fallout 3. bethesda does open world great but they really need to fix the combat. Now Fallout 3 does have the best combat in a Bethesda game to date but it's still kind of wonky. Aiming feels off (even when using VATS) the guns don't do a lot of damage till you level up which makes no sense (even if your untrained in a weapon, a rocket launcher to the face should still do massive damage).
I also am sick and tired of gloomy ruined landscapes. People can yell at Halo for being unoriginal but at least it had some blues and purples. Now here's Fallout 3 which is suppose to be original as hell but its draped it the same stale ruined world as every sci-fi game.
Also i hate that you have to canablize weapons and armor to repair the stuff your currently using. It's frustrating, over complecated and it's too easy to accidently dismantle a peice of equipment you were saving.
The enemies aren't any better. Madmax bandit, toxic mutant or random monster or the day.
The story seem'd ok but the rest of the game was so drab and unitresting that i couldn't finish it.

So it's not that i think Fallout 3 sucks compared to the first two, i just think it sucks period.
 

DisturbedMXer8

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Jesus Phish said:
Anyone who hasnt played the first 2, you know not the true horror of a deathclaw.
Couldn't have said it better myself. F1+2 both built up the fear of the Deathclaw really well, before you even got to encounter one. When you finally did for the first time, it was pretty much certain death (it was for me the first few times). In the original games, Deathclaw were by far the most formidable opponents, one of them easily more difficult to kill than several super mutants. It made them scary, yet interesting, and was a triumph in itself just to defeat one. In F3, I've yet to die by Deathclaw, even while being shot at by a gang of Enclave. Sure, they're scary (awesome looking graphic), they just aren't as big and badass as they were. One of the biggest disappointments from F3, for me. Also, I've read that they are going to make Super Mutants even worse in F:NV, "worse than deathclaw"... I don't think that's quite right, hopefully Obsidian won't allow that.
 

Henrik Persson

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DisturbedMXer8 said:
Jesus Phish said:
Anyone who hasnt played the first 2, you know not the true horror of a deathclaw.
Couldn't have said it better myself. F1+2 both built up the fear of the Deathclaw really well, before you even got to encounter one. When you finally did for the first time, it was pretty much certain death (it was for me the first few times). In the original games, Deathclaw were by far the most formidable opponents, one of them easily more difficult to kill than several super mutants. It made them scary, yet interesting, and was a triumph in itself just to defeat one. In F3, I've yet to die by Deathclaw, even while being shot at by a gang of Enclave. Sure, they're scary (awesome looking graphic), they just aren't as big and badass as they were. One of the biggest disappointments from F3, for me. Also, I've read that they are going to make Super Mutants even worse in F:NV, "worse than deathclaw"... I don't think that's quite right, hopefully Obsidian won't allow that.
You're playing Fallout 3 the wrong way, i.e. not on the toughest difficulty. Deathclaws make me run like hell. I'm not sure those things can be killed. Even if they could it wouldn't be worth the ammo. Fallout 3 got waaaaay more fun when I discovered you could change the difficulty. Keep it at the toughest except during a certain fight outside the radio station. That one's not meant to be played at that difficulty.