GonzoGamer said:
Ultratwinkie said:
GonzoGamer said:
Ultratwinkie said:
GonzoGamer said:
MiracleOfSound said:
Fallout 3 - by far.
(the following is a rant I made elsewhere a while back)
I've been playing New Vegas a lot and now have 2 and a half playthroughs done, about 100 hours in total. After this short amount of time, I feel like I've seen everything the game has to offer. Most map markers are hugely disappointing, consisting of shacks with nothing but an empty bottle, a campfire on a hill, an airport terminal with nothing but two cases of caps and some radscorpions, a few caves with not a single piece of loot or backstory in them... it feels so empty compared to the Capital Wasteland which had something new, unique and interesting over every hill.
There are no huge, detailed interiors like Nuka Cola Plant, Capital Building, Red Racer Factory, Springvale Elementary, Roosevelt Academy, The museums of History and Tech, National Archives, LOB Industries, Hubris comics... this was my favorite part of fallout 3 and all we have in New Vegas are a few vaults, 4 Casinos, Repcomm and an empty sewer
And then there's the atmosphere... Fallout 3 was haunting, beautiful and soulful. Standing on a ruined flyover watching the sun set over the burnt out forests and ruined Washington monument was just sublime. Nothing in Vegas gave me that same feeling or immersed me in its atmosphere like f3 did at any given moment. Just sand, sand, red rocks and more sand.
I had this complaint above as well. On top of that, Fallout 3 actually worked... Until goty that is.
Also another thing that immersed me in Fallout 3 were the (unique ones especially) random encounters. They gave me the feeling of it being a living breathing world. Fallout NV had a couple at the beginning but other than that the only spontaneous interactions were random beast attacks. Nobody I saved before came by to give me a mininuke, no kid stopped me to ask for help finding his father, not even random slavers escorting their catches. The world of NV felt more dead and contrived.
While the capital wasteland felt like a real place, the mojave wasteland felt like a movie studio backlot.
The biggest disappointment however was how glitchy it was. I expect a normal (Fallout 3) amount, but this one started getting really absurdly shoddy near the end.
You do realize that civilization destroyed the "breathing" in fallout 3 right? Slavery was decimated by NCR presence, Raider promptly slaughtered, and rebuilding of critical rail and military structures. The wasteland isn't ruled by raider tribes anymore, and has rebuilt to the point of actual nation vs. nation war. You don't see raider tribes raiding major highways in our world do you?
By the way, the Mojave desert is a DESERT. Anyone who isn't a part of a military raiding party is dead. In the capital wasteland you can walk around, but in the desert its best to stay in the town otherwise you would die of exposure. If you also notice trade to the Mojave was shut down by the NCR due to concerns of things getting violent.
Everything is explained.
How does that explain everything? I understand that the sands in the mojave would have different encounters than dc but they could?ve been more creative than random beasts and faction grunts. There were slavers in the desert wandering around, it?s just that they weren?t doing anything than attacking the non-slaver faction that was wandering around doing nothing. Why couldn't these factions that did wander about do more interesting things.
That?s what I mean, the story was cool (constructed better than fallout 3) but the world itself was bland uninspired. Sure there were a couple of funky places but as MiracleOfSound pointed out above these places were few in number and not as deep as some of the crazier locations in Fallout 3. And I understand that it?s a desert, but it didn?t seem like one with every location a stone?s throw from another location.
And I don?t care where it?s set, I?m sure if they put their minds to it they could?ve come up with a few more interesting encounters than being attacked by wasps for the 100th time. Especially with all these locations on top of one another.
Well The nations are basically doing trench warfare, except instead of an open field they choose a river with a narrow crossing point over hoover dam. In fact that is the only thing that would happen as trade was shut down to the area. Actually, New vegas doesn't have many encounters, and instead used wild wasteland (which changes EVERYTHING). Monsters attacking you isn't an encounter, its just creature spawns to allow for a more organic world.
Yea. I was kind of expecting the wild wasteland trait to make things totally Fear and Loathing. It changed about a dozen little things around the map but it didn?t change everything and certainly wasn?t a fitting replacement for random encounters.
What MoS & I were trying to say is that the Fallout 3 Map was much more zen. You had these large and elaborate dungeons in the middle of broad empty spaces. Those spaces were made more exciting by spontaneous events that were many and random. Rather the FNV map crammed more locations that were smaller.
I just like the bigger and more spontaneous environment of Fallout 3. I can see how the story in FNV would be a bigger draw, but I always spend more time exploring all the environments in these games and it just wasn?t as interesting with this one.
Wild wasteland changed dialogue, and made much more changes than you expect.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Wild_Wasteland
Random encounters in Fallout 3 either did:
- Add a campsite of followers.
- random attack by various things.
- skill checks.
- one talking super mutant.
They were all depressing. The thing is, random encounters in fallout are originally funny or over the top. If they are not funny or over the top, then don't bother. What did you expect of the mojave? That nevada (and the west coast) is teeming with explorable buildings and big metropolises? The west coast was a WASTELAND before, and is a WASTELAND after. Big metropolises do not spring out of wastelands (usually). Go ahead and look at the population density of the united states and see which coast has more people. while you're at it look at a picture of America during night:
Notice how the Nevada area is completely dark. The lack of buildings makes "dungeons" real hard to do if there is a lack of buildings to work with (this made worse by the gamebryo engine which SHRINKS everything down, ever notice how the cars are big and streets are so small in fallout 3?). In fact the west coast is dominated mostly by low density areas which makes large dungeons nigh impossible (you can't make a big dungeon in a small house). You have to take into consideration that the west coast is vastly different than the east coast. The only cities that i can think of would be Los Angeles and San Fransisco, which are already civilized and beginning to be rebuilt due to the Shi Empire and NCR. California would be ruled out as civilization made the entire area safe which would bore most players because there would be nothing to do. Basically, all the big cities are already under control of nations which leaves tiny settlements and even tinier dungeons.
