Smeatza said:
Yeah that's not the experience I had at all, I've never had a problem sneaking north or heading east (or any other direction for that matter). And the change in tone only made sense due to the setting.
Well, sneaking isn't always a strong-suit that I pick for my characters. In fact, it ends up as kind of an after thought most of the time. That's kind of a big "fuck you" from the developers to me in that case.
Smeatza said:
Yeah I disagree. The factions featured in the main quest do encompass the entire game, the main quest itself, does not. I tend to consider the main quest as anything relating to the platinum chip.
I'm not saying either game is better than the other, or that your opinion is wrong. But the fact that I didn't really enjoy Fallout 3 (especially when it was the first Fallout I played, and therefore I had nothing to compare it against) has always been a puzzler to me and I enjoy discussing it.
Hm. I tended to consider the main quest to be based upon the ultimate conflict between those who wanted to gain control of the Hoover Dam and New Vegas. The "political bullshit" I referenced before. Even for many of the side quests, all paths seemed to double back to the question of who would be left to rule over New Vegas.
I enjoy discussing the games as well, to the point where I've actually just reinstalled Fallout 3 after participating in this thread and remembering all the great moments it had.
Smeatza said:
Like I've said this is the main point I struggle to understand. While the game certainly does urge you to head south (the same way Fallout 3 urges you to head to Megaton by having it right outside your vault) I didn't think someone familiar with the game and it's mechanics would have any trouble adapting their play-style to make heading in other directions easier. Perhaps that's where one of the differences lies.
Yeah, like I said before, maybe you'll stop by Megaton which is a very logical course of action (to the point where
not doing so would be a complete fallacy on the character's part), but that's about it. After that, the sky's the limit. I even came up with the role playing excuse that my character, after hearing how dangerous the DC warzone is, believed there would be no way his/her father survived, which allowed me to just focus on the exploration/survival bit.
But it's very different in New Vegas. The game seems to do more than just "urge" you to follow the same path as your previous characters. Feels to me like the Obsidian is practically
willing you to follow the path down to Nipton where the conflict of the main quest hits you in the face.
Also, there is the unseen constraint of the under-equipped adventurer. Hell, I remember using console commands to get me to Jacobstown after Doc Mitchell's to hit up Marcus, and upon doing the quest with the cave full of night stalkers, I found I kept dying constantly to the point where I had to change the difficulty down to just hard. Felt like I cheated the experience twice in the same day.
Smeatza said:
I don't feel my character being forced down a certain skill route at the start of the game is railroading.
I don't know what you mean by this. I didn't mention anything about the game forcing you to take certain skills. Or are you referring to what I talked about before with the stealth skill going north? I don't see that as a positive design option for the game, especially when I'm not akin to stealth in the beginning usually.
Smeatza said:
Am I sensing a little hostility?
Um... Ooookaaaay. Are
you being hostile with
me? I mean, I don't read it as such. I wasn't really writing with a hostile tone in mind as I was getting my thoughts out on the computer. Well, if you read it that way, it wasn't intentional.
Smeatza said:
Objectively they are both good games. Subjectively (the subject being me) Fallout 3 is inferior.
Yes. Of course. I wasn't sure we were both on the same level objectively. So many fans of the originals seem to curse out Fallout 3 and Bethesda.
Smeatza said:
It is of course a matter of taste, I do understand how and why people enjoy playing Fallout 3, the only thing I don't understand is how it could be considered less linear than New Vegas. Yes there is more freedom of movement at the start of Fallout 3, but can it really be considered less linear when you take into account the more linear story, the fewer choices and consequences and the inability to harm most characters.
I'm not sure how to word it any more than I already have. I guess it just comes down to certain design choices that Bethesda made over Obsidian. Like Obsidian had this really great story they wanted to tell, so that was the intended goal in many design choices when they were building the game. Bethesda from moment one has been throwing you into a very interesting world to explore and interact with interesting characters, so their design choices are going to echo that goal. The result is two different games. Bethesda rewards exploration more than it punishes, and Obsidian rewards following the story path while ignoring it in favor of wandering aimlessly seems to result in a sort of punishment (don't take that as an extreme, you could even say that there's just a lack of reward in free exploration). Going off the beaten path does reap benefits in New Vegas, but the game doesn't feel designed to accommodate that sort of free exploration and aimless wandering playstyle that Bethesda boasts, thus you get left with a feeling of linearity.
Not
true linearity mind you, but it does feel like the core of the game is the conflict between the NCR and Legion. The role playing in New Vegas is limited to how your character reacts to the events going on around him/her rather than forging their own path in the Mojave. Similarly, the role playing in Fallout 3 is limited to a wanderer that decides their own fate separate from the desires and conflicts of others but doesn't seem to leave as much of an impact to the world as the Courier in New Vegas. It's kind of a sacrifice either way, so it's not surprising you have people split on the role playing and choices in both games. Fallout 3 and New Vegas seem to have completely different role playing styles, both great in their respective games but lacking at the same time, so it essentially just comes down to personal preference. That's what it comes down to in the simplest of terms, and it's all because of subtle design choices from both developers. That's all I've got, so if I fail now, I'm completely lost on how to explain it any more than that.
Now, in regards to the "essential" characters that can't be killed, they tend to be characters that really would serve no purpose dead to the main character even from a role playing standpoint. Essential characters are those that would make it impossible to complete certain quests without their involvement, so they are a specific design choice. I guess the essential characters would dampen the mood of a player rampage, but it doesn't limit your choices since, at that point, you're basically playing a berserking insane person. Do you have a specific character in mind that you couldn't kill and ultimately hampered your role playing experience?
Aprilgold said:
The only difference [And I'm only doing the part that you are seeing above, the rest of the post was a giant "My opinion is X" which has been this entire thread but lets ignore that] between being Good and Evil in Fallout 3 was there were two different brands of mercenaries who would hunt you. For your evil dude right there would be a Texas Cowboy who would hunt you down for being a evil dick. Then if you were good there would be this Black Military Group of people hunting you down for being mr-nice. You could be evil, but there was really no point in being on either side of the spectrum. In Fallout New Vegas, your actual Karma meter didn't matter. You could be a saint and still be around the Legion as if they were the holiest of warriors. The way Obsidian approached it, I feel was much better then what Bethesda did. Evil and Good don't matter, its how others see you. The Karma Meter is how you see yourself and the Faction meter is how others see you. If your a crazed murderer people won't know that on-sight of you.
The Karma System VS The Faction System is really what I'm getting at. In Fallout 3, there were tons of people with differing views yet they all agreed your evil? Is there some sort of committee on this? In New Vegas you being a secret cannibal is just that, a secret. You can be a priest or a demon and you can still be seen as a hero of a faction.
Overall, I thought that Fallout New Vegas improved on everything that Fallout 3 did.
Also, how is this differing on what I said when you asked for my reasoning, which wasn't there on my original statement.
Technically, everything both of us have been writing comes down to "My opinion is X".
And you kind of
did have a crazy DJ stalking everything you did and reporting your evil doings or heroic exploits on every radio across the Capitol Wasteland.
Look, I only took issue with what you said about how you apparently couldn't be evil in Fallout 3 but you could in New Vegas, that "at least New Vegas gave you the option to be a dickweed scum". I guess that faction system makes more sense, and it tends to harken back to the main storyline, but it's kind of a non-issue to me when I play Fallout 3. It's good that New Vegas modified it for people that were bothered by the karma system like you were. Like I said before, my problem with New Vegas is inconsequential to you in a similar way that your problem with Fallout 3 is inconsequential to me.
