Why is everyone so down on Fallout 3?

[Wilco86]

As a Fallout 1 & 2 veteran I think that Fallout 3 has too much fighting in it. Hell, I've even played Fallout 2 through without killing a single human woman (if mandatory destruction of the final enemy base is not counted) by using blinding attacks and striking people unconsious. Have fun trying that in newer Fallouts!

Also, epic infiltration in the Master's Cathedral in Fallout 1 or to the Vault 15 in Fallout 2 is something I never saw in Fallout 3 or New Vegas (although NV is the only one of those I bothered to play through), even though NV had the "faction uniforms" for disguises.

Third, the new "instant-ghouls" are just abominations - and I mean by the lore of Fallout. Goddamn Megaton and Moira Brown; if you are near an exploding nuke, you don't turn into a ghoul - you die!

 

[robinkom]

If you played and enjoyed Fallout 1 & 2 before there was even the conception of Bethesda's Fallout 3, you'd understand where the hate comes from. I mean I could go either way on my opinion, I did love the first two games and played them to death and I'm mad that Interplay's Fallout 3 (Project Van Buren) never came to fruition. I even loved Fallout Tactics, I felt that one had the most polished combat though the weakest story.

Hardcore Fallout fans wanted a top-down isometric turn-based/semi-real-time game like the first two... what they got was Elder Scrolls with guns. It would be like taking Call of Duty and making it a side-scrolling Contra clone and still claiming it's Call of Duty.

Regardless... Fallout 3 was indeed fun on it's own merits. I enjoyed it but I still long for the day of a new traditional Fallout game, no matter who develops it.

That being said... all of the people in this thread who love 3 and never played the first two... go play the first two. For a bargain price, you can go to almost any department store and get the Interplay Fallout Trilogy that includes 1, 2, and Tactics with an updated installer for Windows Vista & 7. And if you judge them by their now-dated visuals, you'll never really get it.

 

[Scabadus]

I've always enjoyed Fallout 3, but I've never really loved it the same way I did with Oblivion (and indeed many other games, but they wern't on the same engine) and I couldn't even say why. I was never confused by the controls or setting, the story is well-paced (assuming the usual overlooking of why I buggered off for 10 hours in the middle of it to do sidequests) and the combat is amazingly fun. Yet it was just lacking that extra special something, not the something that made an adequate game good but the harder one: the one that makes a good game great.

And then I played New Vegas.

And it has that special something.

I don't know what it was, maybe just the greater array of weapons, maybe the (seemingly) slightly improved AI, maybe the better personalities, maybe a mixture of them and more. The only thing I know for certain was that the landscape helped, though I'm aware that's entirely personal preferance.

My point is that although I did enjoy Fallout 3, New Vegas stands as a shining exampe of just how much better the series could be... even if I can't say exactly how the two differ and what makes the latter a better game. And if somebody was honestly expecting a New Vegas as the first 3D installment based on past experiances of the games and they 'only' got Fallout 3, it would be a dissapointment.

 

[Right Hook]

I have played every Fallout game, even Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel...yeah. Fallout 3 is my absolute favorite, Fallout 1 is second, it has a better story but I don't like the gameplay as much as I do the FO3 gameplay. My third favorite is probably New Vegas and the only reason I like it more than Fallout 2 is because I found FO2 too hard and pretty confusing in some places. Then Tactics and Lastly Brotherhood of Steel. The problem I have with people ripping on FO 3 is that Black Isle was planning on making another Tactics game and pretty much everyone agrees tactics sucks. Black Isle was running their franchise into the ground last we heard, Van Buren didn't look fun if you played the demo. Bethesda saved the series and Black Isle worked on New Vegas because they realized how the series needed to evolve. I wish people could take off their damn nostalgia glasses and give Bethesda the respect they deserve.

 

[robinkom]

What the bloody fuck is the difference between Fallout 3 and New Vegas? I couldn't get in to New Vegas because for all the differences between it an Fallout 3, it may as well have been a full-priced expansion pack. Gameplay mechanics exactly the same. Wasteland desert looks no different than wasteland DC. Story was still stupid in New Vegas, not that I cared much, I didn't like Fallout 3 for the story.

What Bethesda need to do is make a Fallout game with the visuals/world design/atmosphere of 3 but with the mechanics of New Vegas, that would be perfect

What exactly do you mean by "mechanics"? Because from where I stand, Fallout 3 had the exact same mechanics as New Vegas.

While Vegas was basically the same thing, I'll say I liked it a lot better because of the writing(different from the story!) which felt a lot more like a Fallout game. I think many fans didn't like fallout 3 because its the only fallout to feature unambiguously good dudes fighting unambiguously bad dudes for the entirety of the game. It's really necessary to the series feel IMO that the different groups and factions sit in moral grey-areas.

Also, I found that the hardcore survival stuff and actual plot choices added enough new mechanics to not feel like a glorified expansion

You should know that a lot of the staff at Obsidian that worked on New Vegas used to be a part of Black Isle Studios that developed the original two Fallout game... this most likely why the writing was more on par with the series standard than FO3 was.

 

[Blind Sight]

Fallout 3's a good game, but I'm definitely one of those 'New Vegas is far better' people. Here's a couple of the reasons why (for me):

1. Terrible, terrible main story line- Fallout 3's story was Fallout 2's basic plot done poorly in Washington DC with Liam Neeson.
2. Characters were hollow and uninteresting- Seriously, the characters in Fallout 3 were so forgettable that I can't remember any of their names, cept Three Dog. Even your dad and the President are just Liam Neeson and Malcolm McDowell to me.
3. Basic understanding of environmental storytelling that never gets expanded on: Bethesda got the basics of environmental storytelling down and used them effectively, but beyond that there was a ton of wasted potential on locations. Compare a Vault in Fallout 3 and New Vegas and you'll see what I mean.
4. Poor, half-formed idea DLC. I have the GOTY edition, and none of the DLC was very well done, especially story-wise, again.

In comparison between the two games, I'd say that the issue is this: Fallout 3 is largely just the limbo of the Fallout universe. It doesn't really do anything interesting with the story or environment, just plays it really, really safe. New Vegas, on the other hand, is an expansion of the traditional Fallout progression: Fallout 1 was about the discovery of the wasteland, Fallout 2 was about the beginnings of order returning, and New Vegas is about the emergence of new civilizations.

 

[MeatMachine]

I liked Fallout 3, but it was really... hollow. There never seemed to be much in the way of progression. I used Sledgehammers and Chinese Assault Rifles as weapons at Level 5, and continued to use them until Level 20. The only satisfaction was finding unique versions of them, which really just had different names and an extra 10% damage.

Just, meh.

 

[Deadyawn]

Fallout 3 is a fun game. I played it a ton. The thing is it has many glaring flaws. firstly the main plot makes absolutely zero sense. A lot of the dialogue is stupid. There is practically no game balance. It's still fairly buggy. It doesn't make sense that it's supposed to be 200 years after the war. Everyone looks like a malformed pumpkin. It takes certain unpleasant liberties with fallout canon. Operation Anchorage was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. The AI is dumb. Little Lamplight.

I still liked it though, so make of that what you will.

 

[ZombieMonkey7]

Not sure what you mean about people not like fallout 3, I fucking love the game and it's one of my fav sandbox games. However the Fallout game that I hate, hate, hate, HATE, is fallout new vegas. All it is is fallout 3 copy and pasted except it lacked any charm and creativity. Although the thing that blows my mind is that some people like it or even like it more then FO3 (blasphemy)

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Fallout 3 is a fine game. But it's not a great game, and it's really only tentatively a Fallout game.

Lore wise it does not line up that well(and good god what have they done to Harold.) But even worse than that it ripped out a lot of the parts that made Fallout the game it was. The open world. Even a lot of the writing. And I could honestly care less about the jump to real time combat and first-person and hell even a lot of the lore can be forgiven. But they gutted a lot of the atmosphere, and that is where they failed.

Fallout 3 - Lacked a lot of the humor present in the earlier games. The writing levels dropped.

F3 - Drugs were basically health potions with joke side affects that you could remove with a few caps. In the original Fallouts I remember getting hooked on drugs and having to go fix to fix because of the crippling side effects. It was a major deal and reflected real life consequences.

F3 - Children are invincible and extremely annoying(little lamplight.) In Fallout 2 you can kill children and get branded an outcast and a child-killer. Again real life actions and real life consequences.

F3 - had very few actual quests not even like a fourth of what Fallout 2 has. and probably 1/10th of what New Vegas has.

F3 - Had a bastardized version of one of the greatest character creation systems in existence. The only thing worth putting points into were strength, agility and intelligence. And everything else was just unlock extra perks that rarely mattered. You could be a highly accurate sniper with 1 perception. It made no sense and I'm glad that New Vegas fixed it.

F3 - Did not understand tag skills at all. The point of tag skills was so that a few things you had would level up faster so players could play a character that was very stupid but good at a few things. As in the dumb warrior who is good at punching things. Instead we got a minor bump in skills and an intense need to have a super brilliant character because otherwise you completely sucked for 90% of the game. Thus removing a good deal of the role-playability.

F3 - Had skill limits at 100, instead of the original Fallouts where your skills could go up without limit. Coupled with the high intelligence and skill books this meant maxing out 95% of your characters skills was incredibly easy, causing the game to fall into the Bethesda, yuo r soopurman at everything, problem. The end result of all the above being that there is no diversity of play. You can't play as the idiot who is good at shooting guns and punching people and nothing else. You can't play as the super charismatic super intelligent guy who is able to talk his way out of almost any situation, but is so sickly that he couldn't punch out a molerat.

F3 - Power armor is everywhere and its super ineffective. In the original games it was a rare thing that was extremely hard to get, hard to find, and anyone wearing it was a walking tank. Instead it became mundane, boring and for the most part pretty ineffective.

I could probably go on but I'm distracted for the moment and so I shall end it by stating that its simply not nearly as well thought out of a game as the origionals were. A good game that can be fun. But not a great game which is sad because the groundwork for much of it was already there and so easy to simply copy. It reminds me of whenever Hollywood takes a classic novel and adapts it to the screen. Issac Asimov the world renowned science fiction author has a beloved series of short stories? Naaaaah hes some kind of hack writer; we can totally improve on his awful novels by changing everything until they have nothing in them to remind you of the originals except the title and the focus on robots.

 

[Slayer_2]

As a Fallout 3 modder, I can testify that Fallout fanboys are some of the worst and most ignorant of all fanboys. My most common "question" (more like an insult, really) was "Why doesn't this fit the Fallout universe? This mod is shit, it isn't canon!". Bunch of whiners heavily opposed to ANY change.

 

[Cowabungaa]

It's exactly the same as the transition from GTA 1 and 2 ---> GTA 3 and the transition between Warcraft 1 and 2 ---> 3. Same noise as back then, except louder, because the fanboys want to think Bethesda is somehow unworthy of making that leap. Truth is, if Interplay had done it, it would have been 20 times shittier.

Not really. Gameplay-wise there was a huge shift between Fallout 3 and the first two games, totally incomparable with GTA's transition to 3D.

It's way less of an RPG than Fallout 1 and 2 were. Less freedom, less interesting characters, less interesting choices, etc etc. Even the world was less interesting, as F1 and 2's world looked nowhere near as grey as F3's.

Luckily, New Vegas returned to form, despite the increase of bugs. Gods did I hate the PS3 version...

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Because I played the originals and New Vegas, 3 is very different, still an awesome game though

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Because it's a bad sequel to the first two games.

That said... on its own merit, it's my favourite game ever. So yeah.

 

[The Harkinator]

I like Fallout 3, I love it and love it more than New Vegas, yet F:NV has that 'Special something' that F3 doesnt.

Be aware that you're on the Escapist, a LOT of people have played F2 here and love it to pieces.

To be honest though, I think F3 was a better option for a reboot than NV. To reboot a francise you need to bring in old fans who have been waiting for this moment while attracting new fans who will turn your reboot into a AAA title. Putting the reboot in a new setting allowed old fans a taste of the fresh game that F3 was and allow new fans in without punishing them for not knowing the canon. After playing F3 I went on the wiki and looked up the backstory of F1 and F2. So I felt more prepared for F:NV.

I think that Fallout is rather backed into a corner on the West Coast, since New Vegas its become too developed. Not enough wasteland. With the massive rise of the NCR its harder to show stuff we havent already been shown.

Bethesda is better at environments, thats why Washington DC was so fun to explore, it was a destroyed city, an echo of pre war America forever tarnished, what Fallout was all about. But their writing is not as good as Obsidians therefore the characters did little except point you to your next quest.

Obsidian was the opposite, they had great writing (I've spent hours mulling over New Vegas's main quest option) and more interesting characters with motivations and complexity but they cant design locations anywhere near as well as Bethesda. New Vegas itself was a bit of a damp squib and sucked the life out of other areas. The bright lights of an idylic oasis were a flimsy facade for an uninteresting bit of casino minigames and about 3 NPCs. Plus many of their locations had absolutely nothing of value, interest or meaning.

I think for Fallouts future it needs to scale the timeline back to maybe early to mid 2100's and have it in a new area untouched by other bits of backstory. It needs a huge area brimming with interesting locations and complex people. All this needs to be untouched by other Fallout stuff that might restrict it. Pick a location in central America, then create something fantastic.

 

[duchaked]

not sure why people hate the main quest. personally I loved it and towards the end when it all came crashing together I was like OHHHH awesome!

yes, I did find myself at the end standing up to my eyeballs in radiation flipping through my notes like a panicked college student seconds before the final exam starts...and on that note back to studying =.=

 

[giggetygooo]

How come noone mentions fallout tactics? loved that game even though it had more bugs than a bethesda game. feel like i may have missed out on something by not playing fallout 1 & 2 but...meh. FTR fallout 3 was garbage.

 

[Warforger]

Everytime someone talks about the fallout series any praise they give it is almost always accompanied by the phrase "except Fallout 3" why is this exactly? Did I miss the memo or something? I thought that game had great atmosphere and brought all the fun of a post apocalyptic wasteland with an awesome 50's vibe.

In fact it was because of my playing this game when my brother owned it that I got my own console when New Vegas came out, without it I never would have gotten into this whole gaming business

so what gives?

The only complaint I had when I was playing Fallout 3 was that it was too easy, but yah I'm guessing it's those Fallout 1 & 2 players who don't like how it's well either a FPS and not Isometric, or that it doesn't follow the lore exactly (which is hilarious to see people say since they're saying that this shouldn't happen in an imaginary world) or both.

 

[adrakonis]

If you're fine with bad writing and like a lot of exploration in games, fallout 3 is awesome. If you want good writing you're better of not playing it. That's what most people who don't like fallout 3, I guess. I'm one of them.
Never played the original two fallout games, but I just couldn't get into fallout 3, because they would introduce cool subjects and just fail to explore them. As in how did it all end up like this.

Fallout New Vegas did this much better and that's why bookish people like it more. It has great writing for a video game. Great choice in what you can do in the world, and a sense that there is a reason for how New Vegas come to be. In New Vegas it is nog so much the present that interested me. It is how it all happend, and what I could do to change it all, to my liking.

So yeah, fallout 3 is a nice beautifull box, with good looking things inside.
Fallout New Vegas is a not so nice box, but filled with the story of how it came to be, and what more it could become.

 

[Vault101]

Everytime someone talks about the fallout series any praise they give it is almost always accompanied by the phrase "except Fallout 3" why is this exactly? Did I miss the memo or something? I thought that game had great atmosphere and brought all the fun of a post apocalyptic wasteland with an awesome 50's vibe.

In fact it was because of my playing this game when my brother owned it that I got my own console when New Vegas came out, without it I never would have gotten into this whole gaming business

so what gives?

not everyone...fallout 3 has alot of flaws (and the way they played around with the lore..and simplying every situation to good/bad)..BUT with DLC its a very solid game..more of a "go in this direction and see what you can find" type game than New vegas

New vegas doesnt quite have the same level of detail in its environment..but then again it has better charachters and alot else going for it

and then there are the old school types who hate fallout 3 because it itsnt the same as FO1&2 and would still hate it no matter how good FO3 was