Fallout 3 or New Vegas? (yes, this question again)

[JazzJack2]

Fallout 3 would be an ok if taken as a stand alone game, shit story and characters but the atmosphere is quite consistent and enjoyable. As a Fallout game it's kind of an embarrassment though, I mean super mutants are weak dispensable grunts? the BoS are humanitarian peacekeepers? Jesus Christ.

Fallout NV is considerably better than 3 and not just in the sense it is a better fallout game, taken as their own games and removed from the rest of the series NV is still hands down the better game. NV's characters don't feel like cheap 1D stereotypes, it's world makes a lot more sense in how it is structured and ran, the game gives actually gives you choices in the outcome of the story and it doesn't hold a childish view of morality with each major faction choice having deep rotted flaws which is unlike F3 where it is clearly spelt out to you with no shred of ambiguity who the good guys are and who the bad ones are.

 

[Scootinfroodie]

-Because the more time the Enclave have PP, the more time they can find a way to get it working and use it to either commit genocide against all the wasteland via the FEV, or use it to convince the people to join them, making it impossible for the BoS to stop them, and allowing The Enclave to start up their new warped nation where everyone but them is basically a slave, and can only get water if the bow down before The Enclave.

Except there's nothing to suggest that anyone other than the President (who was a computer that could be beaten by cliches for Pete's sake) would go all genocidal on everyone, and there's no reason why the angry and often hateful groups of the capital wasteland would join up with the Enclave. They have water either way, and there's no way the Enclave can force them to bow down to get it. As a reminder, Project Purity sets out to purify ALL the water
Not to mention the fact that people can still build/maintain robots that can, each week, produce suitable amounts of water for one person

Which is, you know, not the same as the BoS allowing everyone to self-rule as they always have, and giving the water freely.

The BoS doesn't "allow" anything because they only control their own outposts

-Why would Fawks go into the purifier in the first place? Hes your friend, not your slave.
-You can send Lyons to do it in the base game.

If he's your friend, shouldn't he be interested in having you survive? You're asking him a favour, and his rational is completely ridiculous. Plus, again, giving Bethesda money causes him to change his mind
Additionally, I mentioend the fact that you can get Lyons to do it, but that doesn't change the fact that not having Fawkes (or better yet, Sergeant RL-3, who you quite literally own)

-You could, but then you would be faced by tons of kids with high-tech weaponry and would likely be swarmed and killed before you could kill them all.

Except I've fought through super mutants, enclave soldiers and bandits. Virtually untrained kids aren't going to stop me

-You don't have to kiss his ass? you can even tell him you think what he does is stupid.

Your options for calling him out on his BS are ridiculously limited, and are basically only there for evil characters

-You can? its called not doing the MQ, and which point it turns into a stalemate as The Enclave cant get the purifier working, and the BoS has no reason to attack them over something that doesnt work.

Not playing the game doesn't count as an in-game choice.

But, no, what if you wanted less? Then it's not an improvement. I'm apparently someone who liked less quests. I love to see my quest list grayed out and completed, and there's only so many "kill this person" quests per game that I can enjoy. "More is better" is not always true.

You can choose to disregard objective measures, but that doesn't mean that they themselves aren't objective.
Product X OBJECTIVELY has more of something than Product Y. You may not care about what it has more of, or what it has more of may be considered a bad thing, but that doesn't prevent it from being an objective factor. For a more relatable explanation, if you value content (as in the amount of something you can do in a game), consistency (as in "in universe explanations do not come into conflict) etc, then there are far fewer instances of those things in Falllout 3.

For bugs and crashes, once I turned off Fallout 3's autosave everything goes pretty smooth, but in New Vegas, I'm hard-pressed to remember a game session that didn't end because of a crash, a lot of the time when a character loaded into the distance, which did not happen with Fallout 3. I wish I could have experienced New Vegas like you guys did, and I tried real hard to fix it, but it just does not function well for me.

I haven't had a flat-out crash that wasn't caused by mods in NV in ages. Again, luck of the draw
On the flip side, Fallout 3 still crashes, autosave or no (though I wouldn't consider having to turn off a standard game feature a sign of stability)

For the enclave, you don't want the all-for-themselves strongest militant group in the area to control whether water is drinkable or not, and besides that, their goal is to claim the capital wasteland for themselves, meaning kill everyone. You want to defeat them, and their leader was colonel Autumn, and he's at Project Purity, so go stop him.

How are they going to control ALL of the water?
Look at the amount of area they'd have to control. If they don't have the means to take over the wasteland without project purity, they don't have the means to control the water supply. When some random dude from a vault and an intentionally isolationist group with inferior technology can take out your base and pretty much every outpost you have, you don't have the capacity to block hordes of DC residents from getting to any purified water supply.

And talk about the gate to Lamplight, how about New Vegas' invisible walls on hills? I can't go up this hill for no raisin, oh, it's probably because it was the fastest way to a place if I went over it, but I'd miss Novac on the way or something like that. I'm pretty sure there's a mod to remove them.

If we're talking invisible walls, what about those tiny rubble piles in DC and elsewhere? I wasn't aware that a perfectly scalable pile of dirt was a magical barrier that prevented progress. At least in NV's case they were actual mountains and not 10 foot high slopes no different than those that make up the game's playable terrain anyway

You can totally just kill 3-dog. I do it every game, because fuck 3-dog.

Not what I was referring to. There should be a middle ground between psychopath and boyscout ass-kisser

And you could ask why you still have to help the factions in New Vegas fight for the dam if you ask about helping the Brotherhood after delivering the scientists. You don't have to, you can fuck off and do whatever, but that's the story. I didn't care about the Dam, but that was the quest line, so I did it.

Except you have a vested interest in that case. Caesar's legion actually DOES have the means to take over the Mojave after taking its main power source and likely its main means of production shortly thereafter. The NCR and House's personal army are the only things that can possibly stop that from happening, and your quest for vengeance puts you in possession of an item that can greatly influence that conflict
The Brotherhood is fighting for PR reasons, and didn't give a damn about helping people until the Enclave got involved.

I've gone through the I-15 early too, but then you get to New Vegas and it's very clear Obsidian didn't expect you to. Mr. House is like "you've come a long way" and does his speech, but, no, you haven't. You walked up the road. I'm so glad you can, but it seems the intention was for you to loop around every new game. You get nothing and nobody from going up early.

You get nothing because you did nothing. You get nobody because you haven't met them
Actually, that's also not entirely true, as many companion characters hang out in/around Vegas, and the only way to get Cass is to travel there anyway.

 

[Smeatza]

Fallout 3 (like Deus Ex: The Invisible War) is one of those games that wasn't bad but should have been it's own series.

But barring that, New Vegas is still the better game. Fallout 3 has one pro (exploration) while New Vegas has many pros (superior quests, characters, writing, role playing elements etc.)

 

[James Crook]

New Vegas is the much, much better game. Because it has Raul the Ghoul and his awesome .44 Magnum pistolero skills.
More seriously, New Vegas is a better Fallout game. It's a real sequel, and has better writing than Fallout 3.

 

[IFS]

Both are good games, only one is a good Fallout game though. FO3's writing is atrocious, and its quests are fewer and more boring than New Vegas, its a dead world that shouldn't be dead given that its been 200 years and while it is interesting to explore and has a nice atmosphere there isn't anything of real substance in it.

New Vegas on the other hand feels like a living breathing world, I found it just as interesting to explore as FO3 in terms of the environment, indeed to Mojave was often more colorful and interesting to discover than the capital wasteland just on a sightseeing tour. It actually had the themes and writing worthy of a Fallout game, interesting companions each with their own stories, numerous factions with their own interests, and conflicts that stemmed from those interests. Beyond that it improved on the gameplay in every way, the speech system no longer rewarding save scumming, as well as letting other skills, perks, and stats influence conversation. The gunplay was made to actual be useable outside of VATS, VATS itself was given a much needed nerf, and the leveling system was rebalanced so that it didn't break immediately. Tons of flavorful perks were added, companions could be more easily directed in combat, greater enemy and weapon variety, weapon mods, the list goes on and on. Certainly the game is buggier, though I've still not had many significant bugs in my time with it, but that hardly mars it for me anyways. Its a brilliant experience and easily not only my favorite Fallout game but one of my favorite games of all time.

 

[Bug MuIdoon]

Personally I prefer Fallout 3.
New Vegas was still pretty decent for most parts, but I found the general atmosphere to be quite dull. A lot of the map locations are just uninteresting emptiness and I was so disappointed when I finally reached Vegas due to how small and uninteresting it was. In all honesty, Novac was the highlight for me and everything else just seemed a little boring afterwards. I found The Legion to be a bit silly personally, with their roman attire. Plus the soundtrack had nothing on FO3's, despite having the odd decent song. I will say though that New Vegas clearly has the better game mechanics and the companions are a millions times better crafted in to the game world and your story.

I loved Fallout 3's atmosphere. From the destroyed DC ruins and creepy underground subway tunnels all the way to the lonely, deserted Old Olney and far away towns. The music is just incredible, and Three Dog is a better station host. It also had a better sense of humour about itself. And the part where you

Spoiler

Go inside the virtual reality simulator

is so, so good. I prefer the (none companion related) side quests in FO3 also. Though there are less of them, I just found them to be more entertaining, where as New Vegas just sort of threw much more dull ones at me. The perk system was way too overpowered though, and combat could have been a little tighter. Also, the ending with Fawkes in your party is just ridiculously bad, though a decent ending if you don't have him.

I agree that New Vegas stays canon with the series much better, but I just found Fallout 3 to be a much more fun, enjoyable game.

 

[Peahats]

I really enjoyed New Vegas more than Fallout 3. Most people will say the opposite. While the world in FO3 feels more post-apocalyptic, I feel like there was not as much freedom in the questlines of FO3.

In FO3, you pretty much HAVE to join the Brotherhood and fight the Enclave. In New Vegas, you can choose to join any faction and do whatever you want, even if that means directly disobeying the leader.

Plus, New Vegas has Old World Blues

 

[darkfox85]

Although both games are in my top 5 and despite NV being a better RPG experience with better mechanics and balance, Fallout 3 is definitely the superior game. I feel it has much better atmosphere, better exploration, better combat and stronger characters to boot. And I say this as someone who was put through the PC crashing ringer more with F3 than NV.

DLC? I feel Fallout 3 has the very best (Point Look) and the very worst (Mother Zeta.) I actually ranked them and counted up the points and they are both equally excellent as far as I?m concerned.

And I will say that NV has some of the worst fans in the videogame realm. Jim Sterling?s ?Joy Begets Anger? is really appropriate here. Oh, and stop using ?fact? or ?objective.? It just makes me stop reading.

 

[Easton Dark]

The only thing i dont resist about threats like this is the way some people twists the truth, like that guy EastonDark ("FO3 is objectively better because i subjectively liked more, and thats my whole point").

Wow, that's exactly the opposite of the entire god-damn point I made and you go after me?

I haven't even said which one I like more overall.

You are almost everything I dislike about this topic.

 

[Hemingslay]

Fallout 3 was fine, but once the novelty of gibbing enemies in VATS wore off I realized I wasn't really interested in the setting, characters, or story. It made a good first impression, but I found myself quickly getting tired of slow slogs through endless wastelands and copy-pasted subway tunnels for very little payoff.

New Vegas had more depth, colour and character pretty much across the board, from weapons and equipment to settlements, NPC factions, enemies, perks, quests... The game world just felt better realized, more fleshed out, and much, much more varied. New Vegas grabbed me in ways 3 didn't, and really played into what I found engrossing about the first two Fallouts.

If you've got 15 minutes to kill there's a pretty excellent video looking at Fallout--and aspects of game storytelling in general--from a literary standpoint. It has a pretty lengthy (but interesting!) preamble, and starts directly comparing the world-building and storytelling of Fallout 3 and New Vegas starting around the 9:30 mark:

 

[loc978]

The fact is, New Vegas is a higher quality game. In most of the objective elements of both games, New Vegas is superior. The writing is more solid and makes more sense, the combat is improved, the characters are generally more interesting and the DLCs are incedible.

Just gonna point out, kindly since you chose Fallout 3, none of those are objective elements. Objectively, Fallout 3 would be better since it doesn't crash nearly as much, unless you like unstable games. Opinion for everything else.

I'm just glad you can combine these two together into one game, so no one has to choose.

Even the crashing thing is subjective. It's not just based on preference, but also what system the user played the games on.

With both games' launch I was calling people crazy all over the internet. Fallout 3 was a buggy mess of broken physics, broken quests, and is still the only game to give me the blue screen of death (regularly, I might add) under Windows XP. New Vegas, on the same old computer running the same OS, was relatively stable for me. I think I had a few crashes to desktop, Nellis AFB produced some frame issues, but it was far and away more stable... at least on my system.

Mind you, with their latest patches on new hardware, they're both rock solid under any of my 3 OSes (even though they're both modded to hell and back)... so the point is moot now.

 

[SajuukKhar]

-Except there's nothing to suggest that anyone other than the President
-Project Purity sets out to purify ALL the water
-Not to mention the fact that people can still build/maintain robots that can, each week, produce suitable amounts of water for one person
-The BoS doesn't "allow" anything because they only control their own outposts
-If he's your friend, shouldn't he be interested in having you survive?
-Virtually untrained kids aren't going to stop me
-Your options for calling him out on his BS are ridiculously limited, and are basically only there for evil characters
-Not playing the game doesn't count as an in-game choice.

-You mean the guy who runs the Enclave and whose orders the soldiers follow?
-Incorrect, it is explicitly stated that PP only set out to purify the water of the tidal basin, the Patomic river itself, and the ocean, were never meant to be cured by PP.
-Except they cant, as Megaton shows, the purifiers they have only work enough to give RESIDENTS of the town water, all of those generic Megaton Settlers, don't get water, and say so in dialog. Not to mention having enough fresh water to drink =/= having enough to sustain farms, which is needed for growth.
-The BoS is technologically advanced enough to burn pretty much any city, except maybe Rivet City, to the ground with ease. The only reason the CW isn't ruled by the BoS is because Lyons doesn't want to. It is under the BoS's will alone that the CW remains as free cities.
-Yes, but he also has to consider his own survival as well, the irradiated water doesn't effect him, but curing it would cause a massive expansion of humans, and power to the BoS, both of which hunt super mutants like him down. Its literally in his best interest to not cure the water himself. He isn't going to stop YOU, because he respects you, but he has no reason to do it himself. And I think Broken Steel letting Fawkes go in was stupid.
-They are actually pretty well trained due to having to constantly fight off super mutants.
-Opinion
-Except you are playing the game, as you can go off and do whatever you want, the game's MQ doesn't progress because of a logical stalemate situation.

If you've got 15 minutes to kill there's a pretty excellent video looking at Fallout--and aspects of game storytelling in general--from a literary standpoint. It has a pretty lengthy (but interesting!) preamble, and starts directly comparing the world-building and storytelling of Fallout 3 and New Vegas starting around the 9:30 mark:

The problem with that video is that it asks the rather retarded question of "what do they eat in Fallout 3" when what they eat, how they get it, and how it is transported, is explicitly shown to you, its just not ever told to you point by point by a NPC that exists to baby the player.

 

[Easton Dark]

Even the crashing thing is subjective. It's not just based on preference, but also what system the user played the games on.

Apparently. And jeez am I jealous. My kingdom for the system configuration to play New Vegas without crashes.

Someone should research the optimal computer for playing both. Windows 7 apparently works great for Fallout 3, despite not being supported, so I don't know what to think.

 

[Roxas1359]

Yeah, I'm aware of that and I do agree it's a bit of an issue. Fallout 3 would be a better game if they hadn't set it when they did.

Still, I'm really just referring to the tone. I like to rationalize Fallout 3 by assuming that the east coast was hit much, much harder than the west, making for a far slower recovery. And that maybe because the east coast would be the first thing hit, the vaults there weren't all populated in time, resulting in fewer people. Like with that one ghoul that owns the hotel who got irradiated just as she was entering the vault.

I'm talking out of my ass, but Fallout 3 is my favorite game, so I have to find some explanation.

Sadly, while that would make more sense, it's countered by the fact that the west coast was hit harder by the bombs, and they were hit first. I mean, most of the Capital Wasteland's water has been irradiated, yeah that's bad. Then you compare it to the west in how the West Tek Research facility was hit directly with a warhead and ended up sending FEV into the air itself, and destroying what little settlements of San Diego were left. Yet it was still able to be populated by Ghouls who set up trading routes of their own in no time and it's now a thriving town.
I mean it would make sense that the West Coast wasn't hit as hard, except for when you have to account for the fact that because California was hit in a surprise attack, the East Coast had more time to prepare, as Carol will actually tell you if you ask her questions about the Great War.
Plus if you take some timezones into debate, a tap in Little Lamplight tells of how the bombs are just dropping, but for them it's 2-3pm, but on the west coast most clocks are stopped at 9:47 am, and there is only a 3 hour difference between the east and west coast.

Note I'm not trying to invalidate your opinion, but I think the thing that irks me the most about Fallout 3 is the sheer fact that it takes place in 2277, definitely wasn't hit much worse, yet still has little to no progress at all. If the game had been set at like 2200, or even a little after the events of Fallout 2, 2241, then I probably wouldn't mind as much honestly.

Fallout 3 is a fun game, I will admit that and it has it's fun moments, but the timeframe thing combined with the plot holes kills it as being my preferred Fallout game for the 7th generation. Now I say preferred, because Fallout 2 is still the best Fallout game in my opinion. XD

 

[loc978]

If you've got 15 minutes to kill there's a pretty excellent video looking at Fallout--and aspects of game storytelling in general--from a literary standpoint. It has a pretty lengthy (but interesting!) preamble, and starts directly comparing the world-building and storytelling of Fallout 3 and New Vegas starting around the 9:30 mark:

The problem with that video is that it asks the rather retarded question of "what do they eat in Fallout 3" when what they eat, how they get it, and how it is transported, is explicitly shown to you, its just not ever told to you point by point by a NPC that exists to baby the player.

He covers that with an extremely valid dismissal. Even the unsustainably tiny population of the game would have eaten every prepackaged foodstuff in the DC ruins long before 200 years went by. If you want to say they live off of brahmin, mirelurk, molerat and giant bugs, okay... but you'd have a malnourished population ravaged by scurvy.

So again, what do they eat?

 

[loc978]

Even the crashing thing is subjective. It's not just based on preference, but also what system the user played the games on.

Apparently. And jeez am I jealous. My kingdom for the system configuration to play New Vegas without crashes.

Someone should research the optimal computer for playing both. Windows 7 apparently works great for Fallout 3, despite not being supported, so I don't know what to think.

I think it may have something to do with DirectX 9 video cards. Most people I saw have loads of crashes in New Vegas back before all the patching were running DX 10 or 11-capable GPUs, while I was still plugging along with my 7950GT (on an AM2 system. Dual-core 2.4ghz... far from a powerhouse even back then).

...but wait, are you saying it's still unstable with all of the updates? Because that's beyond my realm of experience.

 

[SajuukKhar]

He covers that with an extremely valid dismissal. Even the unsustainably tiny population of the game would have eaten every prepackaged foodstuff in the DC ruins long before 200 years went by. If you want to say they live off of brahmin, mirelurk, molerat and giant bugs, okay... but you'd have a malnourished population ravaged by scurvy.

So again, what do they eat?

Did you forget about the two kinds of mutfruit found across the CW?

How about the punga that gets imported from Point Lookout by various people such as Tobar and the smugglers?

Or how about the large hydroponics bay in Rivet City where they grow fresh apples, potatoes, carrots, and pears that they trade for scrap metal to keep their city afloat?