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

[Roxas1359]

Yeah, I'm all pc. I'm well above and beyond the requirements. And I do turn off autosaves and use CASM to save every five minutes because I'm paranoid whenever I open a door or see a trader spawn off in the distance It'll crash. Not sure why characters being drawn down the road would cause a crash, but they do.

What settings are you running New Vegas at exactly? I can run New Vegas at max for me, but I don't because the game tends to crash more on me I've noticed when I have it at max settings. I just put it a a little above the default settings really. I mean yeah New Vegas is definitely buggy, but I can usually go a good 4-5 hours on my computer, and it has an antiquated graphics card that's for sure, with New Vegas running just fine which is why it's weird that it's not liking you. :/

 

[Easton Dark]

What settings are you running New Vegas at exactly? I can run New Vegas at max for me, but I don't because the game tends to crash more on me I've noticed when I have it at max settings. I just put it a a little above the default settings really. I mean yeah New Vegas is definitely buggy, but I can usually go a good 4-5 hours on my computer, and it has an antiquated graphics card that's for sure, with New Vegas running just fine which is why it's weird that it's not liking you. :/

I think I have everything maxed but shadows (pointless past low I find) and the anti-aliasing/anisotropic filtering. There's no difference in crash occurrence I could find with this, but I also go into the .ini and raise the draw distance by a lot, because I find the standard max to be pitiful.

 

[Roxas1359]

I think I have everything maxed but shadows (pointless past low I find) and the anti-aliasing/anisotropic filtering. There's no difference in crash occurrence I could find with this, but I also go into the .ini and raise the draw distance by a lot, because I find the standard max to be pitiful.

It might be the draw distance then, because one time I maxed the draw distance out and it crashed my game quite a bit until I started lowering it down to the original standard it had. You could try lowering the draw distance to see how that works out.
Anyway, what are the specs of your PC so then I can see how badly they blow mine out of the water? XD

 

[SajuukKhar]

I'm still going to feebly cling to the belief that the east coast was hit by something like 3 times the nuclear payload.

Isn't that pretty much an understood?

If the Chinese were willing to use 77 nukes on VEGAS, imagine what they did to D.C. or the east coast in general, which has many more large cities, that are closer together, and that have more strategic importance then most things in the west.

 

[Easton Dark]

It might be the draw distance then, because one time I maxed the draw distance out and it crashed my game quite a bit until I started lowering it down to the original standard it had. You could try lowering the draw distance to see how that works out.
Anyway, what are the specs of your PC so then I can see how badly they blow mine out of the water? XD

Oh my, no, please. It's a case of "I can't enjoy the experience without this". Low draw distance is the biggest issue I will have with a game.

Spoiler: boring stuff

i5-3570k CPU @ 3.4GHz
8GB Ram
1TB 7200rpm hard drive
Nvidia Geforce GTX 570
Windows 7

uhhh

Cannot remember the motherboard other than it's Asus and has a Z in the name

Oh yeah, I also use that one mod to let New Vegas use 4GB of memory, which indeed helped with crashes.

 

[SajuukKhar]

-You mean the computer that one enclave soldier could totally break or reprogram?
-He doesn't entrust the FEV to Autumn. Maybe there's some reason for that?
-You're still looking at a HUGE area of influence.
-Not to mention the fact that their security is lax enough that you're able to completely bust up their main base on your own
-Except no reason is given as to why they can't make more of those.
-Where is this shown?
-Additionally, there are blatant slaver and bandit outposts around the capital wasteland that go entirely unchecked. If the BoS was concerned with keeping people free, wouldn't destroying these camps help?
-Your head cannon is nice, but nowhere in the actual game does it suggest this
-Which they've only been able to beat because Dev Fiat
-No, Fallout's pretty clear on what constitutes good and evil conduct, even in otherwise morally ambiguous scenarios
-No, it's not a logical stalemate. Not even remotely

-Play the game again, you can even ask Eden how you can destroy him and he outright says you have nothing that can harm him. He is too large to destroy.
-Maybe because Autumn literally JUST betrayed him?
-Which would be easy to cover once the people of the wasteland come flocking to you because you have the one thing they want most.
-What are you talking about? The ONLY reason you get out of Raven Rock alive is because Eden LETS you out. they had you trapped in a force field cage with no way out because their security was that good.
-Yes there is..... are you being serious? the parts needed to make and maintain one aren't common. Hell, not even the NCR can make more robots.
-The entire game? seriously.... I don't know wtf you are talking about anymore. Are you seriously trying to say that because The Enclave, a super small faction, has better tech then them, that the boS couldn't level citites full of normal people who hardly have even leather armor? Did you forget about how the BoS effortlessly purged the Pitt losing only ONE man, who turned out wasnt even dead?
-Because they are focused on the super mutants... you know, the REAL threat?
-again... yes it does.... did you even play the game?
-Or because they have spent the last 200years doing it and thus know how to? combined with the fact the Super Mutants don't attack them often because kids aren't good for FEV dipping.
-No it doesn't, hence why Fallout has been largely morally grey.
-Yes it is, Enclave need a GECK to get the purifier working, the don't know where one is, they have no reason to risk proving the BoS until they get it working, and the BoS has no reason to attack The Enclave, and risk their wrath, when the Enclave is technologically superior, and is focused on something that doesn't work, and might not even work with the GECK.

A handful of vegetables in one lab out of all the locations in the Capital Wasteland does not explain away how people have access to food and apparently clean water (the latter of which calls into question the need for purifying water with a giant machine, ignoring of course the ease of purifying water in general)

There's also the fact that merchants survive purely through fiat. Super mutants set up shop in a number of chokepoints, and should you be in the area while caravans are moving through they'll get mowed down by muties
Yet they manage to reach and supply every town in the wasteland

Again, did you actually PLAY the game?

Did you miss the whole organization of animal hunters, tech/food scavengers, and caravan merchants?

Do you not understand there is a HUGE difference in quantity of water needed to not be thirsty, and having enough water to grow crops?

Also, the mutants are along the caravan path in like two spots, and the game tells you they constantly dodge muties all the time.

 

[Roxas1359]

If the Chinese were willing to use 77 nukes on VEGAS, imagine what they did to D.C. or the east coast in general, which has many more large cities, that are closer together, and that have more strategic importance then most things in the west.

I don't think that's the case as much when you see how Point Lookout is, because Point Lookout is still in Maryland and so is Washington DC, so I don't think that they were hit by too many. D.C also isn't really that big of a city either, I've been there. At most it probably got hit by 3 or 4 nukes. There was the White House, which was hit directly, the unexploded nuke in the middle of Megaton, the one that hit Vault 87's door directly, and the unexploded ballistic missile in the middle of the Pennsylvania Ave area when you are exploring.

I think Vegas was hit more because there was probably some systems that were detecting that Vegas wasn't getting hit, and that's because Robert House's defenses were intercepting the missiles while they were still in the air. House even says that if he actually had the Chip before the bombs dropped that he'd of been able to defend more of the Mojave, but because he didn't he got put into a comma because he used too much power and an improper OS when defending Las Vegas.

 

[SnakeTrousers]

Fallout 3 made a great first impression on me but I find myself enjoying it less and less each time I go back.

Fallout: New Vegas made a pretty terrible first impression on me but I appreciate it more and more each time I go back.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I don't think that's the case as much when you see how Point Lookout is, because Point Lookout is still in Maryland and so is Washington DC, so I don't think that they were hit by too many. D.C also isn't really that big of a city either, I've been there. At most it probably got hit by 3 or 4 nukes. There was the White House, which was hit directly, the unexploded nuke in the middle of Megaton, the one that hit Vault 87's door directly, and the unexploded ballistic missile in the middle of the Pennsylvania Ave area when you are exploring.

I think Vegas was hit more because there was probably some systems that were detecting that Vegas wasn't getting hit, and that's because Robert House's defenses were intercepting the missiles while they were still in the air. House even says that if he actually had the Chip before the bombs dropped that he'd of been able to defend more of the Mojave, but because he didn't he got put into a comma because he used too much power and an improper OS when defending Las Vegas.

Point Lookout wasn't even a town though. There was no reason for it to be targeted at all.

Your joking right? 3-4 nukes? at the nations capitol? the seat of government where most of the "we should really kill these guys to devastate our enemy" live? when a worthless town like Vegas got over 77?

Vegas got hit by so many nukes because they had that many nukes to spare, the whole "77 nukes" thing was to show just how many nukes were used in the war, and how bad off other, more important places, would have gotten hit iof such an unimportant place got hit with 77.

Also, vault 87 wasn't hit by a nuke, the only note that said that twas cut from the game, and is non-canon. Hell, Fallout 3 SHOWS the door works, and Autumn uses it to get it.

 

[Iron Gix]

mmm,loved both but Fallout 3 just had a lot more amazing moments in it and you know, southern rebels and Liberty Prime and also felica day.

 

[Roxas1359]

Point Lookout wasn't even a town though. There was no reason for it to be targeted at all.

Your joking right? 3-4 nukes? at the nations capitol? the seat of government where most of the "we should really kill these guys to devastate our enemy" live? when a worthless town like Vegas got over 77?

Vegas got hit by so many nukes because they had that many nukes to spare, the whole "77 nukes" thing was to show just how many nukes were used in the war, and how bad off other, more important places, would have gotten hit iof such an unimportant place got hit with 77.

Also, vault 87 wasn't hit by a nuke, the only note that said that twas cut from the game, and is non-canon. Hell, Fallout 3 SHOWS the door works, and Autumn uses it to get it.

For one, no the door does not work. If you actually manage to get to the Vault 87 door it doesn't work at all, and the radiation emitting from the door can kill you even if you have the strongest rad resistant suit in the game, and even after the Enclave are taken care of, the door is still entirely intact and shows that they didn't blow it up to get inside.

Plus, when you're launching nukes like how they did in Fallout, no one made any tactical desicions when just launching the nukes, they just went to town. If they were tactical then they would have hit DC first instead of the West Coast.

You also have to remember, Las Vegas was a target because of the Hover Dam, and the fact that Robert House was there. You know, the founder of RobCo. who made Liberty Prime, the Mister Gutsy models, the Sentry Bots, and all other military-grade equipment for the US in the Great War? Yeah, House was a threat that would be taken out.

The Great War when the bombs were dropped turned into a no holds bar attack where it didn't matter who or what was bombed. The UN was disbanded for over 27 years, everyone was on their own as a result no one cared who or what got bombed. Plus, like I said if DC had been hit with as many nukes then it would have been completely wiped off the map because again, DC is not big at all and neither is the surrounding areas, especially since DC didn't have the ability to defend itself like Las Vegas.

 

[Leonardo Huizar]

Although i prefer 3's streamlining of items is better than all that wasted item data in NV, its leveling up system i prefer over NV's perks every even levels [hell no, give me more perks], and then guns seem to have gotten worse.

Diverse weapons, manymanyquests with individual mini endings, the DLC quests were very well done although i would have lived without them if it meant an earlier release of the next FO or ES games, companions were great characters [Veronica & Boone were my fave although i wished i could have reunited Veronica and her lover in Sierra Madre], contending with the factions ultimately meant something to the ingame universe, a very diverse music selection, and unlike 3 I started to play it again and work towards another ending.

FO3 was a great intro to the series but my heart belongs to New Vegas.

 

[GonzoGamer]

It depends on what kind of game you prefer. If you prefer open world exploration and action, Fallout 3 is better but if you want more of an RPG that's based more around the story than the environment, New Vegas is better.
I understand that New Vegas made a lot of improvements in gameplay but I prefer Fallout 3 because I had more fun exploring. New Vegas' locations were very clustered and only a few had the depth of your typical Fallout 3 location. However, Fallout 3 had a pretty pedestrian story when compared to the complex branching conclusions that can be drawn from the New Vegas questlines. So I can understand why people prefer one over the other however you lose me when you try saying one is better. It's like apples and oranges.

New Vegas is way too buggy for me even after all the patches and community fixes. I still can't play that game. It's too frustrating. So I guess my vote goes towards the game that I can play.

Yea, I have to say I like New Vegas a lot more since it started working. I got it at launch and really resented paying $60 to beta test it.

 

[Thespian]

mmm,loved both but Fallout 3 just had a lot more amazing moments in it and you know, southern rebels and Liberty Prime and also felica day.

Felicia Day was in New Vegas, friend.


In my opinion, the key difference between Fallout 3 and New Vegas is that F3 is a post-apocalyptic setting and New Vegas is a post post-apocalyptic setting.
Fallout 3 does what it sets out to do quite well, but frankly I think media is absolutely littered with post-apocalypse stories that may feature some post-post-apocalypse aspects but generally they focus on the ruin of society rather than the society that would arise after it. The appeal of F3's setting is witnessing the rampant decay of a once great society - the capital of the united states is chosen to highlight this theme of eroded grandeur. Fallout 3 is filled with what I consider to be only superficially interesting setpieces. Megaton and Rivet City are examples of locations that are entertaining as gimmicky backdrops and little else.
Fallout: New Vegas scarcely focuses on the erasure of a grand civilisation, seeing as it's chosen setting was not necessarily known for being a pinnacle of high society. A symbol of opulence and indulgence, certainly, but those aspects have actually survived until the time of the game's story.

New Vegas is a place where the story of a new society is told, rather than a tool with which one can explore the ruin of the old one, and glean lessons about our culture from.

Which you prefer will ultimately depend on which of these you prefer. For me, the latter has simply been done more often, and has less capacity for stories. Fallout New Vegas is a game bursting with story potential, telling the tale of how a new Mojave's fate is battled over and how each resolution will affect the peoples you have encountered individually.

Another major advantage for New Vegas in my eyes, is Fallout 3's desire to have a story that is "big" and "epic". The game strives for cataclysmic moments and scarcely gives you time to simply enjoy interacting with the varied peoples in its world. New Vegas has no real "Megaton" moment. Your character can sway the field of battle and cause waves and ultimately decide the fate of a new state, but this is all earned slowly throughout the course of the game. For every robot army you awaken, there will be ten times where careful diplomacy is needed. For every president you attack or save, there are a dozen occasions where you will need to understand a people's culture and history.
To me, this is superior story-telling. The fun, gimmicky setpieces and population of bizarre events in Fallout 3 make it a satisfying game to explore, but only in the short term. In the long term, New Vegas is far more rewarding.

Fallout 3 is good, but nowhere in the game will you find a man called Chief Hanlon telling you a quiet anecdote about the bit of good he did a few years back. Nor will you find budding communities that interact in satisfying ways that accurately imitate how we might expect real societies to behave.

All that said, I could just go with the classic, "I'll just leave this here"
(if i was an asshole)

Because when asking which game, F3 or FNV is better, there is just one question you should be asking instead:
What do they eat?

 

[SajuukKhar]

-For one, no the door does not work. If you actually manage to get to the Vault 87 door it doesn't work at all, and the radiation emitting from the door can kill you even if you have the strongest rad resistant suit in the game, and even after the Enclave are taken care of, the door is still entirely intact and shows that they didn't blow it up to get inside.

-Plus, when you're launching nukes like how they did in Fallout, no one made any tactical desicions when just launching the nukes, they just went to town. If they were tactical then they would have hit DC first instead of the West Coast.

-You also have to remember, Las Vegas was a target because of the Hover Dam, and the fact that Robert House was there. You know, the founder of RobCo. who made Liberty Prime, the Mister Gutsy models, the Sentry Bots, and all other military-grade equipment for the US in the Great War? Yeah, House was a threat that would be taken out.

-The Great War when the bombs were dropped turned into a no holds bar attack where it didn't matter who or what was bombed. The UN was disbanded for over 27 years, everyone was on their own as a result no one cared who or what got bombed. Plus, like I said if DC had been hit with as many nukes then it would have been completely wiped off the map because again, DC is not big at all and neither is the surrounding areas, especially since DC didn't have the ability to defend itself like Las Vegas.

-Except the door DOES work, if you go back inside Vault 87 after you get captured, you can go into the passageway the Enclave used to get in, and ACTIVATE the vault door itself. The outside cave entrance door only doesn't work because you were never really intended to reach it, thus, it doesn't function.

Also, we see autumn use Enclave drugs to survive a lethal dose of radiation from the purifier, and the BoS soldiers explicitly say the Enclave has vastly better anti-radiation gear. Them getting through the radiation field is far from impossible.

-Factually false, the missiles would have hit the west coast first no matter what because the west is closer to china. All the nukes were launched at roughly the same time. The east coast just took slightly longer to hit because of the distance.

-Except Hoover Dam really isn't THAT important in the grad scheme of things because all it does is power Vegas itself, its not a military instillation. As for House, he would be significantly less of a target then pretty much any government employee.

-And it was hit hard, you forget that nukes in Fallout work differently then those in the real world, this is a universe where they have mastered mininuke technology, and as the white house has shown, they did make mini tactical missles.

Because when asking which game, F3 or FNV is better, there is just one question you should be asking instead:
What do they eat?

Mirelurk, brahmin, radroach, molerat, yao guai, bloatfly, both kinds of mutfruit, punga, and the fresh food grown in Rivet City, supplemented by scavenged pre-war food, all of which is explicitly shown to you in-game through random encounter hunters/scavengers, the caravan trade routes, the inventories of food merchants and general NPCs, item placement in settlements, and dialog with numerous NPCs throughout the game.

 

[ThreeName]

New Vegas was far superior. Obsidian's writing shits on Bethesda's.

Little fucking Lamplight, the "Oh, I can't get the fucking MUTANT to go into the irradiated chamber because it's apparently my fucking destiny to kill myself" ending, the Brotherhood of Niceness, Three Dogshit and all of those fucking subways basically add op to a horrible experience for me.

Meanwhile, New Vegas actually lets you give the finger to every organisation in the game, plus has the New Vegas Bounties mods which are better than all the quests in both of the damn games.

 

[JazzJack2]

Mirelurk, brahmin, radroach, molerat, yao guai, bloatfly, both kinds of mutfruit,

A)Apart from the mutfruit all of these things also need to feed off of either meat or plants of which there doesn't seem to enough of to sustain their populations.

B)All of these food sources would contain radiation and for people to be consuming them regularly over a large period would kill them, of course you could argue they could use radaway but there wouldn't be (and neither does there seem to be in game) enough of it left after 200 years to sustain people who would need it frequently to counteract regular intake of radiation through water and food.

and the fresh food grown in Rivet City,

Which can hardly be relied upon to feed large numbers of people across the wasteland given that:

A) Traders would find it difficult to access Rivet city to trade for the food on a consistent basis given its only access points are either through subway tunnels swarming with ghouls and raiders or through the D.C ruins which is filled with Talon mercs and Super mutants. Also they would only be able to take the food so far anyway given that travelling on foot is not particularly fast and fresh vegetables will start turn after only a few days.

B) Rivet City doesn't seem to have the logistics to produce the sort of food to feed themselves let alone others, there's only a few carrots and potatoes scattered about the table and fridge in the lab and that's about it, there doesn't seem evidence that they're even attempting to mass produce this food. I mean if they did actually have the capabilities to produce food to the point where they could feed people then why are they still serving irradiated rubbish in the market place? surely they would be serving the fresh fruit and veg they grow in their own city?

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

A. Besides the fact the C.W. is full of grass and bushes for things like brahmin and molerats to eat, and radroaches just eat junk, and then they feed things like mirelurks and Yao guai, who in turn feed deathclaws. It all works, its just vastly scaled down because "game".

I get the feeling lots of people think that game scale = lore scale, or something like that, when pretty much no game has ever worked on that principle.

B. "People" in the C.W., and indeed the rest of the world, are mutants. Its been shown in Fallout games since the beginning that people are able to survive in constant low-level radiation areas, and food, since the war.

C. Accessing Rivet City is far from hard, if you actually look at the path the traders take, they neither go through the subway or the ruins themselves, they sitck along the coast from Rivet city, to PP, and then head north and across by the Citadel, thus bypassing pretty much all of the ghouls, super mutants, and raiders in D.C.

Also, most raiders don't attack the caravans, hence why they stop at evergreen mills.

trade route map.

Spoiler

Furthermore, going from Rivet city to Tenpenny Tower would take, at most, 10-13 hours, given that IRL Warrenton is 40 miles away from the Washington Naval Yard, and the average human walking speed is 3-4 mph.

D. Except it does, if you actually LOOK in the science lab, right below where all of the tubes that connect to the water tanks are is a giant closed door, the majority of the hydroponics bay is behind that closed door.

As for why they still serve that radiated crap in the market

Being able to produce fresh food =/= being able to do it at such a scale that they can feed people it every single meal. Its the same things as being able to produce enough clean water to drink for yourself =/= being able to produce enough to grow crops.

Its all a matter of different levels of severity.

 

[JazzJack2]

B. "People" in the C.W., and indeed the rest of the world, are mutants. Its been shown in Fallout games since the beginning that people are able to survive in constant low-level radiation areas, and food, since the war.

I don't recall that from any of the previous games, yes the people in fallout are FEV mutants but this doesn't give them any sort of radiation resistance if I recall correctly. Also being resilient to frequent exposure to small amounts of radiation but still being vulnerable to infrequent exposure to large amounts makes fuck all sense but anyway even if I am remembering wrong and the other games did include this horrible misunderstanding of radiation it's inconsequential because you can cut it out and their worlds still make sense because all the other fallout games show that the majority of people have very obvious access to non irradiated food and water sources.

C. Accessing Rivet City is far from hard, if you actually look at the path the traders take, they neither go through the subway or the ruins themselves, they sitck along the coast from Rivet city, to PP, and then head north and across by the Citadel, thus bypassing pretty much all of the ghouls, super mutants, and raiders in D.C.

It's still hardly a safe route, In game there's plenty of raiders along it and also a talon outpost very near by, it would be pretty dangerous to routinely pass through there.

Furthermore, going from Rivet city to Tenpenny Tower would take, at most, 10-13 hours, given that IRL Warrenton is 40 miles away from the Washington Naval Yard, and the average human walking speed is 3-4 mph.

And what about areas that are considerably further away and take traders through considerably more dangerous areas. eg. Temple of the union, paradise falls?

D. Except it does, if you actually LOOK in the science lab, right below where all of the tubes that connect to the water tanks are is a giant closed door, the majority of the hydroponics bay is behind that closed door.

It's all very well making up whatever you want but there's no evidence to say what's behind that door.

As for why they still serve that radiated crap in the market

Being able to produce fresh food =/= being able to do it at such a scale that they can feed people it every single meal.

Then it seems odd to bring it up when trying to prove that fallout 3 does establish food sources to sustain all the settlements in it's world given the hydroponics can not even sustain one.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

A. Fruit in Fallout 1 and 2 was shown as being irradiated, and people ate it all the time without any adverse effects. Its pretty much a constant that people can eat irradiated food all the time and not die, they do feel bad after awhile, and may suffer mutations, but they don't die.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fruit_%28Fallout%29

Hell, half the stuff even in NV that people eat contains some radiation, and they are shown as being fine.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_consumables

B. The entire C.W. is dangerous they still DO it. Also, as mentioned before, many raiders don't attack the traders, at least in lore, as they, at least the main raider base of Evergreen Mills, does business with them, and you are told that they don't trade with people who have attacked them. I wouldn't be surprised if TC was the same, or the traders simply walked around the small outpost that only has like three guys in it.

C. Uhh look at the map more closely, The Temple of the Union and Paradise falls are around the same distance away from rivet city as Tenpenny Tower is. It takes two days for the caravan merchants to do a complete circuit of the route.

D. Besides the fact that all the pipes from the hydroponics bay go into the same room as the door..... I am totally sure NOTHING dealing with the hydroponics bay is behind the door. /sarcasm

E. Uhh... what? The argument was that Rivet City supplies food to the wasteland to supplement the food they get from mirelurks, yao guai, molerats, radroaches, mutfruit, punga, and w/e 200 year old food they can dig up, not that it supplies ALL of it.