Poll: Do I get Fallout 3 or New Vegas?

[Thunderous Cacophony]

New Vegas for sure.

I couple people have mentioned the DLCs, but honestly Old World Blues is the single greatest piece of DLC I've ever played- It's got great characters, a smart and funny plot (potential spoiler: I saw The Physicists at the Stratford Festival a few weeks back and was struck by the similarities), and a ton to do.

I'll say that New Vegas does have a more empty enviroment, but that's more a function of you being in a large desert rather than a section of a bombed-out city. Still plenty to do out there. Also, it's not super-railroady if you don't want it to be; on my first playthrough I made a full circuit of the map before I even went to New Vegas itself to continue the opening part of the main quest just by staying away from Deathclaws and Cazadors until I goot some decent weapons, and I don't regret it or think it was a real grind. The unleveled enemies can be a pain, but I prefer that more organic feel. YMMV.

 

[Hagi]

Playing 3 now, it's nice. I tried starting with NV but they don't give you any tutorial. So better start with 3.

They do, the tutorial is just optional. You go to Sunny Smiles in Goodsprings and help her out, that is the tutorial.

Anyway New Vegas is the better game by a mile. Pretty much every aspect of the game is better. It's my favorite Fallout game. Get it. The two are basically unconnected plot wise so there is nothing stopping you going back and playing Fallout 1, 2 and 3 after you play it.

I've never understood people calling New Vegas more railroady than Fallout 3. Fallout 3 has exactly 1 path to follow on the main questline that you have to do no matter what character you are playing, New Vegas had 4 main paths. Fallout 3 has numerous essential NPCs. All New Vegas has is Yes Man and children of which there aren't many and Yes Man has an in-universe explanation for why he can't die. And while getting to Vegas right away may be a little tricky it isn't impossible at all. You can not care about these aspects of Fallout 3 but saying Fallout 3 is somehow less railroady seems strange to me.

New Vegas always felt really railroady to me because places are connected way too neatly. You follow the main quest down south and every place you come there's quests ready to introduce you to all nearby landmarks which all neatly have a quest associated with them.

In Fallout 3 I remember frequently hitting major landmarks before encountering any associated quests. Heck as far as I can tell there's plenty of major locations that don't really have a quest associated with them. At least none I've ever found.

New Vegas seems too ordered to be real. Every place has a neatly defined story with clear associated characters. Rather reminded me of a Bioware game where every major location you visit is always in a major crisis ready for you, the player, to solve.

Not to say it's a bad game. I even agree that it's a better game than FO3 overall. But I do get the complaint that it's railroady. It may have had more choices within predefined quests but just acting naturally within the game I always seemed to be on one. There was a quest for going left, there was a quest for going right. Both were really good quests, far better than FO3 generally but still predefined quests. FO3 had a linear quest going left yet nothing predefined going right.

 

[layne]

Fallout 3. And, yeah, the GOTY edition is totally worth it. The DLCs are fun on their own and also bring some interesting things (for example, enemies) into the main game. I'd say the graphics are comparable between the two, but the story preference is subjective. I didn't enjoy the story in NV, but perhaps you will. I really loved the sandbox in Fallout 3 and the freedom to do as I wanted. The game felt huge and unlimited.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Both are good games but Fallout 3 is more fun and more replayable. New Vegas is basically a clone with more game breaking additions and a less interesting setting...gotta love those invisible walls!

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

New Vegas always felt really railroady to me because places are connected way too neatly. You follow the main quest down south and every place you come there's quests ready to introduce you to all nearby landmarks which all neatly have a quest associated with them.

In Fallout 3 I remember frequently hitting major landmarks before encountering any associated quests. Heck as far as I can tell there's plenty of major locations that don't really have a quest associated with them. At least none I've ever found.

New Vegas seems too ordered to be real. Every place has a neatly defined story with clear associated characters. Rather reminded me of a Bioware game where every major location you visit is always in a major crisis ready for you, the player, to solve.

Not to say it's a bad game. I even agree that it's a better game than FO3 overall. But I do get the complaint that it's railroady. It may have had more choices within predefined quests but just acting naturally within the game I always seemed to be on one. There was a quest for going left, there was a quest for going right. Both were really good quests, far better than FO3 generally but still predefined quests. FO3 had a linear quest going left yet nothing predefined going right.

Funny, I saw it from the opposite angle: In New Vegas there was always work to be done for these communities just on the edge of civilization, while in FO3 there was nothing really for anyone to do, let alone the player. I never really got the sense that the Capital Wasteland was a real place because there seemed to be no real rhyme or reason for anyone to exist there; there's a big poison river and no fresh water according to Liam Needad, but everyone is getting along just fine without it, or indeed any sort of industry or community work at all. The closest thing to people who actually seemed to be doing survivalist work was the slavers. In NV, I always felt that I could contribute meaningfully to the work that was going on, and I could see my efforts really helping people, and that there wasn't really a place for someone who couldn't or wouldn't contribute.

I may just have been reading too many of Shamus' articles, though.

 

[Do4600]

Get Fallout 3 because Liam Neeson is your dad. Also 3 has the better environment. New Vegas is, obviously, mostly desert so it's kinda boring to look at after awhile.

Compared to what exactly in Fallout 3 that's interesting to look at? One has warm filters and cacti the other has cool filters and shapeless piles of junk.

 

[happyninja42]

I personally like FO 3 more. It actually felt post-apocalyptic to me.

New Vegas just...didn't have that desolate feel to it. It looked like you could find that place out in the desert right now. I was just wandering a big open desert, that had some monsters in it every once in a while. Nothing felt old, or felt like I was walking through the shadows of a forgotten world. It was just...dirt and sand, and some people now and then.

 

[Andy Shandy]

New Vegas. In my opinion it improved on nearly everything Fallout 3 did. Well, maybe besides the lack of Liam Neeson, but it's not like he was around the whole time in Fallout 3 either.

Also fuck cazadors.

 

[Hagi]

Funny, I saw it from the opposite angle: In New Vegas there was always work to be done for these communities just on the edge of civilization, while in FO3 there was nothing really for anyone to do, let alone the player. I never really got the sense that the Capital Wasteland was a real place because there seemed to be no real rhyme or reason for anyone to exist there; there's a big poison river and no fresh water according to Liam Needad, but everyone is getting along just fine without it, or indeed any sort of industry or community work at all. The closest thing to people who actually seemed to be doing survivalist work was the slavers. In NV, I always felt that I could contribute meaningfully to the work that was going on, and I could see my efforts really helping people, and that there wasn't really a place for someone who couldn't or wouldn't contribute.

I may just have been reading too many of Shamus' articles, though.

I do completely agree on that aspect. New Vegas's world is much better thought out.

I personally simply dislike though how explicit they made everything. While it's absolutely awesome that New Vegas is actually supported by farms I found it a shame that, like just about every single other location in the game, the farms are currently in crisis and there's a quest for you to solve it! ( http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Hard_Luck_Blues ).

While Fallout 3 was desperately missing in the details on many, many aspects I personally really liked the feeling of finding some landmark in the wasteland. Not knowing what was going on there. Exploring it and upon leaving still not knowing what was going to on there but having seen clear signs that something had happened there once. It made the world feel apocalyptic. That world was dead in many places and the dead don't tell tales or give quests. It made it feel like you were actually exploring and that there were actual mysteries left because even the developers hadn't written everything out.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I personally like FO 3 more. It actually felt post-apocalyptic to me.

New Vegas just...didn't have that desolate feel to it. It looked like you could find that place out in the desert right now. I was just wandering a big open desert, that had some monsters in it every once in a while. Nothing felt old, or felt like I was walking through the shadows of a forgotten world. It was just...dirt and sand, and some people now and then.

I suppose that's the big difference. FO1 is post-apocalypse, 80 years afterwards. Fallout 2 and NV are set much farther afterwards, and are post-post-apocalypse, about what people have built anew.

FO3 is post-apocalypse, despite being hundreds of years after the bombs fell, and it feels like people are just barely crawling out of the rubble (which makes no sense; they can't be surviving on old-world rations for 200 years, but there's nothing else they could possibly be eating).

I always felt like FO3 was just wandering around broken buildings, looking at people who have no reason to be where they were or doing what they're doing, while NV showed you a landscape where people had started their own new societies. Hell, Lonesome Road is all about clinging to the past, and it's about a guy who misses the community he grew up in, not the long-lost Old World that no one in living memory knows anything about. (Except house, though 'living' should be qualified)

 

[AT God]

I prefer Fallout 3's setting and themes much more than New Vegas but New Vegas is much better written, has better gameplay, performs better, and has more content. The only thing Fallout 3 has in it's cap is that it came first and set the bar incredibly high, plus I think the game is more varied since it has ruined cities AND desolate plains and wastelands, New Vegas is mostly desert which is more Fallout-like but is a lot less interesting to me.

 

[Christian Neihart]

Fallout 3: GOTY is the best Fallout to get. New Vegas was a glitch ridden mess that I couldn't get into because the damned game won't load my frickin' save file, I mean seriously who does that?!

 

[rgrekejin]

If you intend to play them both eventually, go with FO3. Because New Vegas will spoil you if you play it first.

New Vegas is essentially FO3+. Better mechanics, weapon mods, factions that are worth a damn, working Iron Sights, and Hardcore Mode (if you're into that) all make NV mechanically superior. In addition, New Vegas has better DLC than FO3. Sure, the FO3 DLCs are all fun in isolation (except for the somewhat crummy Operation Anchorage) but the New Vegas DLCs have an overarching plot to them that almost make them a second main quest, and gives great emotional payoff to the conclusion in Lonesome Road. Although you do have to stick with them... the first New Vegas DLC, Dead Money, is by far the weakest. Finally, of the two games New Vegas has by far the more interesting villains. While there's nothing *bad* about the Enclave as a villain, they're just kind of a generic evil government organization. They have no real personality. In New Vegas, you have a selection of villains to choose from, from the despotic autocrat Mr. House who is voiced to perfection by Rene Auberjonois (of DS9 and Boston Legal fame) and seems to be cut from the same cloth as Andrew Ryan, to the brutal cult leader Caesar, who molds history to suit the purposes of his alien, survivalist dictatorship.

Oh, also, whatever one you get, get the GOTY/Ultimate Edition. The DLC is totally worth it.

 

[visiblenoise]

Go by whichever environment appeals to you more. Also whether you like green or brown.

 

[h@wke]

They're both equal for slightly different reasons which have been mentioned above. BUT the 4 DLCs for New Vegas are vastly superior to Fallout 3's in that they all interlink with each other and the over-arching plot brilliantly, spinning a mystery that you gradually unravel. I'd go New Vegas ultimate edition easily because of that

New Vegas also has masses more choice in how you play the main story campaign.

 

[h@wke]

Also I really enjoyed Dead Money DLC, so don't let other people slating it put you off necessarily

 

[Euryalus]

Eh, flip a coin.

They're basically the same game. New Vegas is essentially a Fallout 3 expansion upsized to a full game. It has a new map and all new content, but mechanics, graphics, UI and whatnot are all nearly identical.

New Vegas has marginally better story and characters (which isn't saying much since FO3 was shit in that department) but also has more bugs, although hopefully the worst ones have been fixed by now.

That's the most brutally honest and apathetic assessment of how they stack up against each other that I think I've ever seen on the internet. Pick a side and stop being all... cold and logical and stuff man. XD

OT: Did you play Fallout 1 or 2? No? Then like 50% of the current fanbase you'll have a lot more fun with 3 starting out. New Vegas has too much lore required to really get into it right off the bat like you can with 3 (or 1).

Although from a condescending New Vegas fan I saw here once, "baby's first fallout" really does fit 3 well. And I happen to think it's a compliment because it nails the atmosphere of a fallout game while allowing new players to drop right into the world (and hopefully go back and play the other games too).

What it doesn't do as well is lore details, which is fine, the kind's of things the missed are really stupid sounding complaints if you're not a 1 and 2-er like I am. I can even admit that even though I shake my fist at FEV and benevolent brotherhood of steel changes.

 

[stroopwafel]

I loved Fallout 3 when it came out in 2008 but man did that game age poorly. Clunky gameplay, wooden animations and a shitty engine barely holding it all together was bad enough 7 years ago but needless to say time didn't do it any favors. If you can look past all that its still a very fun and immersive RPG though. The wasteland definitely has a sense of character, the sense of exploration is second to none and the (destroyed) retro/sci-fi aesthetic has a charm of its own. I think only hardcore fans of the franchise will recommend New Vegas over 3 though. B/c basically like previous poster said this is more or less an expansion to 3 with even more bugs. Though it has better writing and more meaningful choices, I'll give it that. Still, I think you'll enjoy New Vegas more if you played through FO3 first though. So, would definitely recommend that one if you haven't played both titles before.

 

[DrOswald]

For my money, and every one I know personally, New Vegas is the better game in virtually every respect. Better and more interesting campaign, better and more interesting NPC's, better and more interesting writing, the gameplay mechanics of FO3 were refined in New Vegas. And if you are into roleplaying, the role play aspects of New Vegas are infinitely better implemented than in FO3.

The one point where you might like FO3 more is that it takes place in a major city and is therefore more densely populated, while New Vegas takes place in the desert and so is naturally more spread out and hubs somewhat more isolated from one another.

Basically, whenever I play FO3 about 5 hours I start wondering in why I am not playing New Vegas.

 

[Zhukov]

Eh, flip a coin.

They're basically the same game. New Vegas is essentially a Fallout 3 expansion upsized to a full game. It has a new map and all new content, but mechanics, graphics, UI and whatnot are all nearly identical.

New Vegas has marginally better story and characters (which isn't saying much since FO3 was shit in that department) but also has more bugs, although hopefully the worst ones have been fixed by now.

That's the most brutally honest and apathetic assessment of how they stack up against each other that I think I've ever seen on the internet. Pick a side and stop being all... cold and logical and stuff man. XD

When responding to sincere requests for advice or information on the forums I try to keep things relatively objective. No need to bombard someone with my various biases, axes-to-grind and fanboyish impulses when they're asking for help.

If that makes me sound like an apathetic robot... well, so be it.