Poll: "Fallout 3": Why Do Fans of the First Two Dislike It?

[ColeusRattus]

I loved FO 1+2. IMHO those two are among the best games ever made.

And I dislike FO3 for wollowing reasons:

1) Top down round based tactical combat. I am a sucker for that. Not that I dislike FPS, I actually like them very much, but it saddens me whenever a sequel swaps a defining part of the gampley or setting for something with "more appeal to the maionstream", like turning a thinking mans game into na action game... (Looking at you, XCOM! And to a lesser, but still bitter extend at you, Rainbow Six!)

2) Oblivion. I am not too fond of the direction Bethesda is going since Oblivion (I loved Morrowind, and before that, The Terminator: Future Shock). I can't quite put my finger on why, but Bethesdas open worlds leave me quite unimmersed.

Allthough, dislike is a strong word. Actually, I'm indifferent about it and think it's, alongside Bioshock and Call of Duty, one of the most overrated games in recent history.

 

[Imbechile]

The first Fallout I played was Tactics, which doesn't have too much in common with the first two. Then F3 came out and i HATED IT. Seriously, I hate it so much. Then I decided to play the first two and they were AMAZING, especially F2. I also really liked FNV.

The fans are probably pissed off because there is less RPG, the story is shit, the Bos is fucked up and F3 didn't have the humor of the first two, insted tried to be serious.

 

[The Electro Gypsy]

I chose option 1, but like a fella earlier, that was purely cos it was closest to my opinion, it was not how I actually feel.

Fallout 1 and 2 were two of the best RPGs I have ever played and I found them so good they've made me snobby about any other RPG I've played in future. Fallout 3 was always going to be a hefty mantle to take up regardless of whatever company bought the rights to it after Interplay collapsed.

Now, while I don't dislike 3, I've played it many many times and enjoyed it often, I always found it a) hideously buggy, but that's due to Bethesda's horrendous use of the Oblivion engine, seriously, anyone else I've seen use the parts of the engine (like the Havock engine for physics) have used it well, Bethesda just suck at their engine and NEVER EVER BLOODY PLAYTEST and b) lacking in comparison to the previous two, which is a massive shame as newer tech surely means that it shouldn't lack, it should build upon as all sequels should anyway. Fallout 2 was genuinely huge and to this day I've never done everything possible, and then there's also the Restoration Patch which adds a ton more.

The previous titles had a greater sense of immersion and depth than 3, which wasn't exactly helped by only having around 5 people of each type, be it Raider, Citizen, Bro Hood and so on, as well as the still appalingly low amount of voice actors (I'm not saying here you should have an entire score of people, but seriously, they used about 8, and then Liam Neeson, who is win).

But in the end there was just so much more to Fallout 1 and 2, and personally I feel it was a daft decision to not have any cult references in cos they were the basis of many jokes and other things in the classics (You can use one of Darth Vader's lines to intimidate someone at a point in 2) while there were more options to do things instead of just guns blazing/sneaky/diplomatic which is the result of most of Fallout 3's predicaments. The older games just felt warmer, more in depth and just more plain fun than 3 did. It also had a FAR darker atmosphere about it which added to it.

Fallout 3 was also very easy, few times did I die and that was usually cos I fell off one of the bridges Fallout 2 was massively hard by comparison and was challenging. the combat system was more tactical in 1 and 2 as well with a bit of luck chucked in for good measure, while in three its mostly trying to shoot baddies around walls and doors with absurdly huge hitboxes (That is, the walls and doors were far bigger than they looked. Also, WHY CAN I NOT CROUCH UNDER STUFF?)

Fallout 3 was still fun, however, just not as fun as 2, maybe on a par with 1

Fallout New Vegas, however, was in between 2 and 3, while still not being as good as 2, it was loads better than 3

EDIT: Oh yes, almost forgot (reading other posts and being reminded 4tw ^^), fucking acceptability nowadays, christ I wanted to shoot the children in Little Lamplight, so I did and found them invincible, which was excruciatingly annoying, I didn't try it at the time, but I doubt "slay" in console would have killed 'em either. (At one point it bugged out anyway and randomly completed the quest without me realising, so I had to turn no clip on to get through the gate that you had to open to complete the quest ¬¬) which you could do in 1 and 2 (admittedly in Europe the "guidance" was just starting to kick in so you had to grab a patch from America, but hey ho, all fixed. And you gained a negative trait for it. But I'm basically going back to my concluding statement anyway, that the older ones were more in depth and better :/

Also, it had far more gameplay. People nowadays ><

 

[Calbeck]

I've played all the Fallouts (excepting the console BoS game, which by all accounts was lamentably horrible anyways), and from what I can tell most of the griping about Fallout 3 is based on NOT PAYING ATTENTION.

Frixample, people ***** that there are Super Mutants in FO3, because in FO1/FO2 Super Mutants originated on the West Coast and never got far enough East to be in the D.C. area. This ignores, of course, that East Coast Super Mutants were created independently as a result of Vault experimentation. Two different strains with two different backstories.

The rest is almost entirely a preference for turn-based isometric style over VATS-based first-person shootery. But the reality is, turn-based isometric games have been obsolete for many years now; only the original hardcore fans would buy it, and because of that the market would be too small for Fallout to be made at all.

 

[silasbufu]

That I think is actually one of the Golden Rules of Fanboyish..ness.

 

[Merkavar]

i only ever played fallout 3 and new vegas. i liked them both.

from what i could see the first 2 had to have really good stories cause they didnt have the gameplay.

 

[Calbeck]

LITTLE. FUCKING. LAMPLIGHT. If that's not enough on its own to explain why I'm not a particular fan of Fallout 3, then you must have a far higher tolerance of those little brats than I did.

If there's any one thing utterly unforgivable about FO3 (which I liked, and yeah I played FO1/FO2/FOT when they were new), Little Lamplight is it. Not only are the "unkillable children" annoying, they're practically as utopian as a child society can possibly be. But worse than all that is the known-at-launch gamekiller bug.

It's extremely stupid that, if you find Little Lamplight by exploring, without having a particular part of the main quest actively flagged, you BREAK Lamplight's function as a quest bottleneck. The dialogue options which are required for opening either of the two ways into Vault 87 just plain disappear and never return, even if you come back after being properly flagged. You can't open the gate, or the back door, because both are activated by the lost dialogue. The only way to finish is to use cheat-clipping to get past the gate into Murder Alley...IIRC, even loading a previous save wouldn't fix it because the Lamplight flags remained locked in place.

The kicker? The FO3 Strategy Guide MENTIONS THIS AS A GAME-BREAKER. It was known about, at launch, never fixed, makes no sense from a design point of view...I have to stop here, I'm raeging. -:/

Fallout: New Vegas is pretty good, though.

For most things, yes...but I found it less replayable because its worldmap is so very linear. Unless of course you want to go through the Deathclaw MurderKillZone, raid Black Mountain, or battle through Cazador swarms, at early levels. Unless you use a starting character specialized for sneaking past Deathclaws, you're going to Primm and Nipton and YOU WILL LIKE IT -:F

 

[Imbechile]

Pretentious people acting on their nostalgia. That is all. Fallout 1&2 were great games, but I prefer Fallout 3&NV more personally.

So it's nostalgia because you happened to like Fallout 3 and NV more ?

lolwut? Your sentence, it makes no sense.

What does my preference have to do with the fact that nostalgic people spend their days bitching about how much better the old games are?

I played F3 first and hated it, then played 1+2 and liked it. It's pretty stupid from you to claim that only nostalgic people think that old games are better than new ones.

 

[darth.pixie]

I disliked Fallout 3 and am a fan of 1 and 2. You know...I expected 3 with the enthusiasm of a fanboy. And it fell short. It's like...fanfiction. It's trying to be Fallout but..ultimately failing. There's almost nothing memorable in it, the jokes were...well not par for the course and the canon was dumped aside.

So I tried to see it as an individual game, being objective instead of a former fan. And I didn't like it because the writing was pretty bad. The ending infuriated me.

As for NV..I started liking it but then it just sort of dwindled away, had a few crashes and I stopped playing. I might get back into it someday but I can't state an opinion. Other than the fact that the beginning of it is really weird.

 

[Vault101]

I am a big fan of Fallout 3. I like the atmosphere, the atmospehereic soundtrack, as well as the catchy Jazz tunes, I love Three Dog, I even like the combat, which I'll readilly admit is lackluster.

I am currently installing Fallout Classic Collection, and I wanted to know just why fans of the first two sometimes dislike the third so much. Perspectives. Discuss.

- Morally black and white. Fallout is gray, always.
- No jokes, or memorable characters. Fallout is fun, not sad.
- Lacked the weapon and armor selection. Modern AND sci fi guns. They put in weapons from WWII which are CENTURIES OLD yet the new guns are NOT AROUND. The power armor was nerfed and replaced with PROTOTYPE armors that were from WEST TEK IN CALIFORNIA. How the fuck did all the PA find its way to DC? and yet the official PA the t-51b is rare? California has t-51bs by the THOUSANDS. T-45ds couldn't be in DC because west tek is highly irradiated, and only ghouls can go into it. EVen if they found anything, the armor would be too irradiated to use. West tek has approximately 1,000 rads a second.
- shat on established lore.
- many plot holes.
- Ruined the BOS.
- no explanation for the shameless copy-paste.
- took out the morally questionable stuff due to the higher sensitivity of today's audience. God forbid a hooker be put in the game or child killing.

I said exactally the same hting before but ill say it again here

I dont think they ruined the brother hood of steel, for two reasons

1. the outcasts, not onyly are they closer to what the brotherhood are suposedly like but they show how much controversy The elders decicion created, that it caued a rift

2. the fact that almost every brotherhood member you talk to is frustrated and/or pissed off at the elders decision indicates that playing peace keeper is not standard brotherhood protocol

as for black and white morality and plot, yeah thats the games weak point, but if you play it through being "good" then things arnt that bad, though as I said above being evil dosnt make much sense

anyway I really liked fallout 3 and it good for anyone who hasnt played the orginal fallout games, even though the game can feel soul crushingly depressing, there is humour there (ever hacked miora browns terminal? hilarious)

The humor was rarely more than immature poop jokes. It does not compare to the amount of humor in the originals. You can't beat prank calling the enclave.

The BOS was ruined because they are one dimensional. They are brain dead 90% of the time, and have to be shuffled around. There is no resemblance to a human intelligence in either the BOS or the enclave. The plot is more contrived than COD: Modern warfare 1 & 2.

I have played some of fallout 1 and I think both the orginals are awsome games , but they are not really my thing in terms of gameplay/combat

so yeah I can understand why somone may dislike fallout 3

anyway I think they changed the brotherhood to make things very obviously black and white as I said before a weak point of the game, (I mean at least they ackowelged that)

But everything said its actually not a bad game, there are alot of good things about it, the way I see it is its kind of like comparing a book to the movie version, people who have read the book hate the movie where as people unfamiliar with the scource material love the movie

and I see a similar thing happening here

 

[kerlc123]

well, i never understood the fuss about fallout 3. yeah, the story = turd, but the feeling is way better than in FO2 and FO1 (they are still on the top 5 of all time great games for me)but the exploration is so much better in FO3, now that you can see stuff from the first perspective, the atmosphere became known. i actually did not know that falllout 1 and fallout 2 were set in the retro-sci-fi of the 50s, but thanks to the fallout 3 it's much more clear. and the combat is not THAT bad. but New Vegas takes all the ingredients from all the fallouts and mixes them together almost perfectly. but then it adds a lot of bugs, that kick it back on my list to the 4th place. well done, Obsidian, you ALMOST made a perfect fallout.

 

[silver wolf009]

I started with 3, moved onto a compilation of the 1st 3 (1, 2 and Tactics) and I found every one of them lacking and boring, not to mention counter intuitive, I couldn't even figure out how to unequip my pistol to get into Shady Sands.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

FO3 was allot milder for example: in 2 you can become a child murdering porn star, sleep with prostitutes and become "special". They re-added a few of those features in NV.

I was very sad that New Vegas had no dialogues for retard runs. The low INT characters in F2 were some of funniest shit I've ever seen.

 

[StormShaun]

The First person view, that what my friend says...

 

[GavmatexD]

This is three dog BOW WOW and your listening to galaxy news radio

 

[Sharalon]

I played Fallout 3 before fallout and fallout 2, and I don't think there is anything wrong with them except that turn based combat is really boring!

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

The game is balanced for the 8-12 hour main quest, meaning skills,ect level way to fast and allowing for 20 or less pieces of equipment for a "50" hour game and Vasts is broken.

Its(and bioshock) a fcking lulz fest they barely have patched and working right for the mess it is much less something more balanced and fun like the first 2 games.