Poll: The Wasteland or Tamriel?

[Lunar Templar]

nether, both games are equally ....


BORING

 

[Knusper]

I prefer the Wasteland, because it's meant to be funny and satirical of '60s nuclear war scare and so they can put in weird and wonderful characters (perhaps not so much in Fallout 3) without compromising the integrity of the game. Also the Fat Man outshines the Notched Pickaxe any day.

However I think Skyrim is better than F3 or New Vegas generally.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

Fallout. Tamriel simply feels... dead to me. The characters I don't care about, the world seems empty. Funny how a post-apocalyptic wasteland is more welcoming than a supposedly decently-populated medieval fantasy world. Better writing, gameplay and atmosphere overall.
*whistles "Heartaches By The Number"*

Funny how you should mention the musicin Fallout. One of my points was how silent TES games are. When I'm in the Wasteland, I had Three Dog or Mr. New Vegas to keep me company. In Tamriel, it's nothing but wolves and silence.

 

[Terminate421]

CAW OF DOOHTY was completely unneeded.

I like both variations but its the "feel" of them.

In fallout new vegas when you go north west up that mountain, you begin to notice something, there are goddamned trees up there, ones that are actually green. (And brown green)

It felt totally different then a fallout game. I loved the yellow/green wasteland feel of Fallout 3 and didn't like the desert/orange/brown feel of new vegas (though I liked New Vegas, Fallout 3 was better in terms of setting IMO while also having a feel that things were actually destroyed)

I've only really spent time on Oblivion which felt like a giant green bowl and Skyrim, in which the tundric feeling is made awesome. The only way it could have been better was a snowy evergreen forest like so:

So I like the both option

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Recently, I got into a bit of a friendly debate with a friend of mine over which world/lore/game whathaveyou was better, the Fallout series or The Elder Scrolls series.

I cited that even though the engine for Fallout 3 and New Vegas were just the Oblivion engine painted brown, the stories and the worlds of the Wasteland just felt better to me. The stories felt personal. Like I was more than just some guy wandering through the woods killing wildlife and trapsing through cities stealing everyone's pants. I know the maps for Fallout 3 and New Vegas were smaller, but that just meant less dead space between discoveries of brand new things to dig through and discover, even if the landscape was decidedly monochromatic.

His reasons were basically that he preferred the fantastical medieval setting and Lore of The Elder Scrolls series. There are Crazy Gods of Madness like Shaogorath and a race of immortals that fear only boredom and pain. He loves being able to get lost for hours in the forests before finally coming across a cave, because you never know what will be inside. He loved that the player was anonymous and being moved by an overarching "destiny" that you have no control over, just made the settign that much more fantastical.

Now my question is this, Which do you prefer? What are your reasons? Got any fun stories from your time with these games?

Be sure to know, neither of us hate the other series, we just prefer our respective series more.

I think you both had excellent points, and that the reasons you felt one way were the same reason your friend felt the other. In other words, it is the very fact that there are crazy gods, immortals, multiple races, overlapping cultures (that are more than just differences of killing vs. not killing everything on sight), and the impersonal hand of Destiny weaving through them all to tap you without making it known to the wider world that you are important in TES games that removes the possibility of the intimate, personal, "soon everyone will know your name" (because there are significantly less people around to know it, for starters) "self-made" heroism of the Fallout games.

It's your basic "chosen one" vs. "every-man makes himself epic" approach - I mean, even when in Fallout someone says you are chosen, you're really not - there aren't any gods/masters of destiny actively present to back that claim up - as there obviously are in TES games. I mean, the validation is right in there, you touch a shrine, you get a perk - gods exist, pretty easy to stand on that claim. Hell, you have tea and cakes with them sometimes, they lift you up into the sky just to talk at you. Not happening in Fallout.

It makes the feel of both games very different - in Fallout you are more alone (in terms of support from beyond and the support of a normal society structure etc. etc.) and therefore companionship is more precious; whereas in TES games you've got your pick of support, associations, companions, society validates you, law enforcement exists, etc. etc.

They are like chocolate and ice cream - both sweets, but offering totally different appeals. Depends on my mood at a given moment which I will prefer.

Overall, I guess I'd say Fallout is more familiar and comfortable in terms of playing, and therefore more easy to get into quickly and stay into over time, but I have to add then that TES is more spectacular and sometimes the unfamiliar is more fun, for awhile.

Edit: Also - am I the only one who really thinks the Wasteland NEEDS to be brown and devoid of interesting visual elements other than rock formations to count as a wasteland?

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I assume the OP doesn't really include the older games in each series. Fallout 3 was really where the Fallout world became a character in the game. It surpassed the world of Oblivion if you ask me, but I think Fallout New Vegas was a bit of a step back. The hour or so I play/saw of Skyrim blew all of them out of the water. I can only assume Fallout 4 will be on that engine and be a bit of an improvement. Hopefully anyway.

I in fact do include the older games. I cited Fallout 1 and 2 as well as Brotherhood of Steel. He hasn't played anything farther back than Oblivion, so he didn't really have the experience with the older games to bring them up. But he really didn't seem to mind.

 

[Aeshi]

I'll go with "CAW AH DOOTY!1!!" simply by virtue of you being less likely to fall through the ground or whatever the glitch of today is.

 

[Ironman126]

Well I only played Skyrim for an hour (and I was baked out of my tree if I remember correctly, so everything seemed like the best thing ever at the time, not just Skyrim) but it was a very enjoyable hour, but I don't know how much I would enjoy the full game. I have a feeling I wouldn't enjoy it enough to play for 300 hours like I did with Fallout 3. Don't think I'll ever be sucked into a game like I was with that... Except hopefully Fallout 4. So I think Fallout 3 is still my favourite, then Oblivion, and then New Vegas. Don't think I really played enough Skyrim to compare it properly.

Hehe... Yeah... About that... I put 200+ hours into Skyrim and I'm still not done. Fallout 3 was more like 500 though. But i share that sentiment. The next Fallout game had better be the best one yet. They have a new engine that actually works and a set of RPG elements that works. All they need to do is get the gun mechanics right (they ALMOST had them in New Vegas) and I'll never pass any classes.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Tamriel: Come for the adventure, stay for the scenery!
The Wasteland: Come for the action, stay for the people!

So...yeah, I put a vote for both.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

Ok, admitted, I like the wasteland... a lot. I know this will sound weird, but with the release of Skyrim, I'm finding that "less is more". With less space, more interesting things happen. You can trapse through the wasteland and find a number of critters or some sort of building/people quite quickly. With Tamriel, there's a lot of space between encounters. While it's nice to look at, with so much extra space included, I tend to get bored kind of quickly.
However, it's the opposite with quests. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that there's loads to do in Skyrim. Many, MANY, quests... too many, unfortunately. It's all well and good having the listed quests, the main ones that actually have reason to be. However, there are liturally hundreds of these little mini-quests that pretty much every village has tonnes of. I'm talking about the crappy little ones with horribly small rewards, like going out and killing 10 or 20 bears (I forget how many it was)... only to get bugger all for it. Sure, the goal gives you a reason to get exp, but still.
With the wasteland, you only had a handful of quests in comparison, and most of them were usually pretty well rewarded in one way or another.

Ok, so I've rambled on a little, but I voted "both!!" simply because both have good and bad points, most of which I haven't listed, but I do love both series' of games, even if I'd rather walk the wasteland than trudge through Tamriel.

Doesn't sound weird at all. What you said is pretty much the reasons why I said I preferred the Wasteland. TES feels almost TOO big, which I understand can be appealing, but I don't want to walk for 40 minutes just to run into ANOTHER cave of bandits.

CAW OF DOOHTY was completely unneeded.

I like both variations but its the "feel" of them.

In fallout new vegas when you go north west up that mountain, you begin to notice something, there are goddamned trees up there, ones that are actually green. (And brown green)

It felt totally different then a fallout game. I loved the yellow/green wasteland feel of Fallout 3 and didn't like the desert/orange/brown feel of new vegas (though I liked New Vegas, Fallout 3 was better in terms of setting IMO while also having a feel that things were actually destroyed)

I've only really spent time on Oblivion which felt like a giant green bowl and Skyrim, in which the tundric feeling is made awesome. The only way it could have been better was a snowy evergreen forest like so:

-pic-

So I like the both option

That was there for the people who didn't like either but felt the need to chime in anyways. But I agree with what you say. People who haven't play Fallout games generally just lump it all as an Elder Scrolls game with guns and brown desert. But really, new Vegas especially, the landscape is actually quite diverse. The Mojave has plant like, tall mountains with coniferous forests, and Lake Mead.
But personally, even having explored Oblivion and Skyrim and a little of Morrowind, their respective scenery all looks like the same square mile copy pasted over and over, only they throw in a medieval castle here or a cave there. The map may be bigger, but it certainly suffers for it.

 

[Launcelot111]

For just a sightseeing trip, Morrowind and Skyrim are better than the fallout games, because even when Fallout uses bombed buildings creatively, it's still bombed buildings compared to the architecture of Markarth or Sadrith Mora.

Beyond that, I appreciate sci-fi much more than fantasy, because I am more interested in what the mistakes of man could do to one another than the whims of Sheogorath or Mehrunes Dagon. Elder Scrolls don't do a great job of establishing the history or purpose of locations in my opinion, and I think the Fallout games do a much better job of establishing a purpose for its setting. The retro-futuristic atmosphere of Fallout is also much more distinctive than the generic elder scrolls elf/orc/dwarf fantasy world.

Characterization points go entirely to Fallout, no questions asked.

All in all, Tamriel is in a shallow sense more fun to explore, but the background of Fallout is vastly more interesting

 

[Dosbilliam]

I'll go with "CAW AH DOOTY!1!!" simply by virtue of you being less likely to fall through the ground or whatever the glitch of today is.

The main one is the game freezing, but NV can randomly spawn two friendly Deathclaws all ready to tear your face off.:/

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

Well I only played Skyrim for an hour (and I was baked out of my tree if I remember correctly, so everything seemed like the best thing ever at the time, not just Skyrim) but it was a very enjoyable hour, but I don't know how much I would enjoy the full game. I have a feeling I wouldn't enjoy it enough to play for 300 hours like I did with Fallout 3. Don't think I'll ever be sucked into a game like I was with that... Except hopefully Fallout 4. So I think Fallout 3 is still my favourite, then Oblivion, and then New Vegas. Don't think I really played enough Skyrim to compare it properly.

Hehe... Yeah... About that... I put 200+ hours into Skyrim and I'm still not done. Fallout 3 was more like 500 though. But i share that sentiment. The next Fallout game had better be the best one yet. They have a new engine that actually works and a set of RPG elements that works. All they need to do is get the gun mechanics right (they ALMOST had them in New Vegas) and I'll never pass any classes.

It's supposed to be made out of the Skyrim engine, and I hope that's the ONLY thing from Skyrim they use. I love the level up system in the Fallout games, and Skyrim's is just garbage.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

I like the wasteland more than I like Tamriel, but I really don't want to live in the same universe as freakin Deathclaws. They're much scarier than anything Tamriel can throw at me.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I like the wasteland more than I like Tamriel, but I really don't want to live in the same universe as freakin Deathclaws. They're much scarier than anything Tamriel can throw at me.

I hate myself for saying this, but when it comes to Deathclaws, aiming for the knees is your best bet.

 

[Ironman126]

It's supposed to be made out of the Skyrim engine, and I hope that's the ONLY thing from Skyrim they use. I love the level up system in the Fallout games, and Skyrim's is just garbage.

I am going to respectfully disagree. I always hated how I had to dump an arbitrary number of points into a skill before I could properly use the next best weapon. If i want to get better at something, I practice it. But, that's just me.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

It's supposed to be made out of the Skyrim engine, and I hope that's the ONLY thing from Skyrim they use. I love the level up system in the Fallout games, and Skyrim's is just garbage.

I am going to respectfully disagree. I always hated how I had to dump an arbitrary number of points into a skill before I could properly use the next best weapon. If i want to get better at something, I practice it. But, that's just me.

I guess the biggest issue with how Skyrim handled their system was how they scaled the enemies. In Oblivion, you could level up what you wanted and you could kill the enemies because they were scaled with your highest stats, which were the ones you wanted. But in Skyrim, you'll have 7 different stats that are leveled "evenly" and if say your Smithing was particularly high, then the enemies were scaled to that, not your combat skills.

 

[MortalKomic]

Tamriel...Fallout doesn't have dragons.

 

[The Last Nomad]

Well I only played Skyrim for an hour (and I was baked out of my tree if I remember correctly, so everything seemed like the best thing ever at the time, not just Skyrim) but it was a very enjoyable hour, but I don't know how much I would enjoy the full game. I have a feeling I wouldn't enjoy it enough to play for 300 hours like I did with Fallout 3. Don't think I'll ever be sucked into a game like I was with that... Except hopefully Fallout 4. So I think Fallout 3 is still my favourite, then Oblivion, and then New Vegas. Don't think I really played enough Skyrim to compare it properly.

Hehe... Yeah... About that... I put 200+ hours into Skyrim and I'm still not done. Fallout 3 was more like 500 though. But i share that sentiment. The next Fallout game had better be the best one yet. They have a new engine that actually works and a set of RPG elements that works. All they need to do is get the gun mechanics right (they ALMOST had them in New Vegas) and I'll never pass any classes.

I don't know if 300 was an actuate guess or not, it could be as high as 500 or as low as 200 (Though I doubt that) but I completed EVERY quest (Bar the last few main story quests and any DLC, which I really want) in my main run through, I image that probably took between 300 and 500 but I don't know for sure, After I had seen every inch of the wasteland and every conversation and option there was, I took a break, a break which has never really stopped.
While the engine may not have worked like others do or should, it worked the Bethesda way and that has a bit of charm. If they do only improve gun mechanics to make it more like a typical FPS or 3rdPS then that would be enough to make it near perfect.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

Tamriel...Fallout doesn't have dragons.

The Dragons in Skyrim are just annoying. I find myself just walking away from them because I know it's going to be another 3 minutes of waiting for that bastard to get to the ground so I can hit it.