New Vegas has much, much better writing IMHO, which makes the game for me. Bethesada can do exploration, but they can't write their way out of a cardboard box.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas; An Examination
- Thread starter Inkidu
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Yeah, those crazy awesome copypasted buildings, cool ugly-green filtered lighting, D.C. landmarks you've seen a million times before, and the amazingly rock-covered desert with nothing in it.MiracleOfSound said:
To be honest, I couldn't give a rat's left tit about exploration. Fuck it all to all. If I could trade all of the exploration in Fallout 3 for a halfway decent story, I'd do it in a fucking heartbeat. But, it's never going to happen, and idiots are going to fucking worship Bethesda because they make decent hiking simulators, and I'm going to continue mocking them until I die or they die, because they apparently think hiking is more important than story or gameplay in an RPG.
New Vegas wins out on story alone. Why?
- The story actually makes sense.
- It's much more interesting: an epic conflict to decide the fate of civilisation, versus a water purifier.
- It actually has deep choices and consequences, not just a contrived decision at the end where you can choose to throw away everything you've spent the game working towards.
Lastly, and this is a big one for me, the main quest feels more optional. It's forced on the player far more, but taken at face value it's much less urgent. There are clear motives to hunt down Benny, but it's plausible that a character might delay or opt not to. If I were the Lone
Wanderer, however, I would not abandon my father in a nuclear wasteland, because of basic humanity. If you want to roleplay, unless the character is a complete psycho, it's very hard to justify putting off the main quest until halfway through.
Also, better gameplay.
- The story actually makes sense.
- It's much more interesting: an epic conflict to decide the fate of civilisation, versus a water purifier.
- It actually has deep choices and consequences, not just a contrived decision at the end where you can choose to throw away everything you've spent the game working towards.
Lastly, and this is a big one for me, the main quest feels more optional. It's forced on the player far more, but taken at face value it's much less urgent. There are clear motives to hunt down Benny, but it's plausible that a character might delay or opt not to. If I were the Lone
Wanderer, however, I would not abandon my father in a nuclear wasteland, because of basic humanity. If you want to roleplay, unless the character is a complete psycho, it's very hard to justify putting off the main quest until halfway through.
Also, better gameplay.
Now now, no need to be so abrasive. I'm sure you could have made your point in a less aggressive manner.OakTable said:
You think people are idiots because they like different things to you? You'll go far in life with that attitude.
Indeed. "I HATE WHAT YOU LIKE AND YOU ARE A STUPID RETARD GUMP FOR LIKING IT!!!!!!"MiracleOfSound said:
Also, what make a good story huh? It gotten to the point I doubt people know what they are talking about.
Nostalgia is a word the militantly ignorant often ascribe to wisdom they do not posses. I'm happy you enjoyed the games, but having played the other two does not automatically forfeit one to "clouded judgment". Such a position is nothing more than a declaration of arrogance. Personal proclivities being what they are, one could honestly have enjoyed fallout3's predecessors and not fallout 3 independently of one another could they not? I met a 17 year old kid at target who told me he had played fallout 3, liked it, then upon seeking out fallout 1 and 2, thought they were the better games. That boy cannot be waved away with the blanket charge of nostalgia. To put this in terms you can understand: Please refrain from use of such pejoratives. Simply preferring one set of titles does not imply anger or some form of personal grudge. It may simply be a matter of personal taste. Different strokes for different folks.Inkidu said:
You're assuming I think my view is superior, while I submit to the argument that I'm supposed to give the best argument for why my view is better, I'm just trying to state that I was looking at it from a different angle. Nostalgia is a seductive liar. ~George Wildman Ball.Ghengis John said:
By asserting that your view is "not shaded by personal nostalgia" you imply that anyone in their "right mind" would think as you do, or that those who don't are deluding themselves. I don't need to assume anything. You declared it.Inkidu said:
No, I declare that I have no past history with the gaming franchise before its third and fourth main installments this is why I compare the two games, I realize that some of the elements I might be conjecturing on may be wrongly applied or just plain wrong, and I have accepted corrections from posters even if I haven't posted that I have accepted them. It would be a lie to say that some people don't let their nostalgia shade their views of Fallout 3 or even New Vegas. My take is that I have no such attachment and that's all.Ghengis John said:
You summed up my feelings on the games rather astutely. Saved me a lot of writing anyway.Irridium said:
And yeah, I agree with it being where preference lies. FO3's world is much more open, lots of neat stuff hidden away, pretty much free to go anywhere. New Vegas pushes you and shoves you around for the first ten or so hours, but after that, I prefer it honestly. The sense of civilisation around every corner, it has much more appeal than desolate buildings. I love seeing new people everywhere I turn, and the conversations and characters are a million times better than the dreary FO3 inhabitants.
The only problem I have with NV is starting the game over again is an absolute pain, since it takes so long to open up, your choices don't have that much effect for quite a while. But then again, skill trees are done far better in NV, most of the redundant skills in 3 are made viable (such as explosives and unarmed), and speech checks for each skill give a much greater sense of a unique character.
When someone puts a minor element of a game, like exploration, over the more important ones, gameplay and story, yeah I kind of do think they are idiots. It's like liking a pizza because of the pizza box, or liking steak because of the fork you ate it with.MiracleOfSound said:
Dreary and dull? Fallout 3 had the better locations, not every map tick was an abandoned shack. Yes brown and grey were the main colours used, but Fallout 1/2 did pretty much the same in that respect. Besides, what colour options are there if all the plants were burned away and everything was left to rot for 100 years? If were just talking colourful and flashy well I guess the strip is one of the only places could happen.lunncal said:
Yes, dreary and dull, exactly the atmosphere it was going for. It did this very well, better even than New Vegas. The problem is that I don't want to explore a dreary and dull world, because it just makes me feel bored. I understand that other people loved that atmosphere, but I just don't enjoy it myself. It's the same reason I tend to avoid depressing books and films, I don't want to feel depressed, I want to feel happy or entertained. New Vegas did this for me, whereas Fallout 3 did not (much). Fallout 3 didn't do anything wrong particularly, it's just that it's setting was not to my taste at all.Blatherscythe said:
Also I haven't played more than 30 seconds of the first 2 games, so I have no idea how they relate to things.
I'm not just talking about New Vegas being "colourful and flashy" here either, I'm talking about how it had a completely different kind of world to Fallout 3. Fallout 3 was gritty and sombre, while New Vegas was lively and vibrant(ish) in terms of locations, characters and story. Both set out to make different kinds of settings and both succeeded. I prefer lively and vibrant to gritty and sombre, so I preferred New Vegas.
I think either Shamus was doing satire or skipped most of the dailouge (in an RPG not made by Bioware I don't find that suprising). I think he's a smart guy, so I suppose it's the latter. I'll just point out a few flaws in his statement.Moriarty said:
1. Your dad killed himself to prevent his machine which could purify the irradiated water as it's sole reason to exist, from falling into the hands of genocidal maniacs. He floods the room with radiation that supposedly shouldn't be there despite us having no idea how the damn thing works.
2. Can't commented on the gibberish and he doesn't seem to mind Lamplight all that much, a device that could make a machine that purifies water, the basic ingrediant in all life, what better use for a wonder MacGuffin than that? Colonel Autum shows up, but turns out if you read the Fallout Wiki he injected himself with a powerful Rad-X to survive apparently, but the radiation still knocked him out. He knocks you out with some sort of flashbang weapon that is never identifiyed, in an area with pipes that could have been used for climbing.
3. He tortures you to try and get an acess code to activate the purifier that the Enclave have now fixed but cannot activate. The reason you shouldn't give him the code is because he caused the death of your father and from what you've heard his plans for the purifier cannot be good. The president set you free to start the purifier with the virus which kills all slightly mutated life except for the Enclave and pure humans. Although he makes it seem that you shall be spared.
4. You battle for control of the purifier to prevent the Enclave from controlling the purifier and thus the wasteland and possibly add in Eden's Virus. After beating Autumn you realize that in the wake of the battle the purifier was damaged and someone has to start the purifier, but it will cost them their life. The only reason you aren't killed is because enough fans complained about the ending and Bethesda tried to fix it.
Fallout 3 could have had a great storyline had they focused on it more, but it seems that got lost to the time spent building the world and it shows. Maybe with an extra year of development to work on the story and plot the game could have had a grand story to go hand in hand with it's impressive environment. Instead we just get a plot-line that just makes the player explore the more dangerous parts of the Wasteland. It's not atrocious, it's mediocre.
What's so great about new vegas and fallout 3 is though I despise the post apocalyptic setting (I find it relentlessly depressing), I was still very engaged with the worlds. The only other company than bethesda that puts an effort into their worlds is Rockstar.
Man, did you watch Spoiler Warning? They went on about Little Lamplight for an entire episode. They pretty much went through that entire game, and picked it apart plot-wise, so I don't think you can argue that he skipped the dialogue.Blatherscythe said:
What's stupid is that Colonel Autumn didn't want to put in the modified FEV virus, he just wanted to turn it on. Sure, the Enclave are assholes but letting Autumn turn on the purifier was an option. If you didn't intervene the Enclave would have been killed by the radiation instead of you.