Why are Fallout 1&2 better than Fallout 3?

[Kagim]

Out of the three games Fallout 2 is the only one i like.
Fallout 1 i find to boring.
Fallout three had such a piss poor shooting system I couldn't hit anything accurately without using vats.

Fallout 1 & 2 were always classic. You never heard of it. A lot of us did. A lot of us were scared of what Bethesda would do to the series. Its almost comforting to know that we were right.

To the person who might rip into me for not liking Fallout 3, read:Opinion.

 

[Diligent]

The original has a better atmosphere to it, and better humor.
But like many have said 2 completely different styles of game. Even as a fan of the first two, I can totally understand how a "new gamer" as it were would find the old ones dated and/or hard to play, because they are. They are pretty punishing games that just don't give a fuck if you screw up.

My personal reason that sums up why I like the first one better?

Spoiler

You can bypass the last boss fight by convincing him TO KILL HIMSELF if you have high enough speech.

You can't do stuff like that with FO3 because it's so focused around being a shooter. (Again, not a bad thing, just a lot different)

 

[Calbeck]

Anyone unable to hit things in FO3/non-VATS will do well to remember that there are three things that LET you hit in FPS mode:

1) Your actual ability to put the crosshair on the target. All this really does is tell the game where you WANT the bullet(s) to go.

2) Your related weaponry skill. The lower it is, the more off-target in a random direction you're going to be.

3) The weapon itself, which has its own spread depending on what it is and what condition it's in. The single most accurate is Lincoln's Repeater, which supposedly has no spread at all...but let it get beat up, or fail to up your Small Arms skill, or just fail at aiming, and you STILL won't hit the broad side of a literal barn.

And of course various Perks which can also help, like Controlled Breathing. Me? I usually end up turning into a sniper. With a good scoped weapon and the right investments, I can kill at ranges the baddies can't even see me.

 

[GoodApprentice]

I love how people just latch onto the idea that Fallout 1/2's writing is far superior to Fallout 3's without bothering to explain themselves. "The writing is better because some other people said so, and I'm saying so too because it makes me appear knowledgeable!" Ya, it makes you appear like a retard is what it does.

Listen children, the writing in all three Fallout games is just fine. If someone gripes about the writing in Fallout 3, chances are good that they are one of those bitter, poisonous, insecure pricks who gripes about decent games because it makes them feel better about themselves.

That said, there ARE big differences in the gameplay between the games which will affect people's level of enjoyment. Many people are turned off by the turn-based combat in the original games. I always enjoyed it despite the odd quirk. I also think that the ambient music in the originals is much better and is full of character and atmosphere.

I also prefered the more robust character creation system in the originals. You could really specialize your character and create someone truly unique and powerful by the endgame. In Fallout3, with the generous amount of skill points doled out, all characters eventually become proficient in most of the skill areas and end up more or less the same.

In general though, I thought Fallout3 rocked balls, and I never understood how some people could complain about its arrival. The Fallout universe borrows so heavily from so many different sources that treating the original two games like pristine creations of the gods is pure hogwash. Interplay openly ripped off huge amounts of material from movies, novels, popular culture, and the video game "Wasteland" to make those two games. And yet, anal gamers get all flummoxed that Bethesdas DARES to make their own game set in the Fallout universe. Naysayers, Bethesda did good with Fallout3, so just get over yourselves and let the people enjoy the game already.

 

[Kwaren]

I have 1 and 2 but I haven't gotten very far with them so I'm not sure why they are so highly rated.

 

[CmdrGoob]

I tried playing them both years before FO3 and again afterwards, and always found the gameplay to be very tedious, and the storytelling is vastly overrated. FO3 has its flaws, but at least it's entertaining.

 

[Choppaduel]

Better writing and the games actually felt "larger" if you can believe that. Plus, there wasn't anything you could compare them with at the time. X-COM? No. Diablo? No. Fallout 3 can be compared to most first-person games. It's still a great game, though, and worth of the Fallout name.

Plus, the general crappiness of the visuals meant you had to put a lot more imagination into the game. It's like how reading a book can be so much more rewarding and immersive than watching a movie. A lack of visual stimuli makes your brain work harder.

This.

Also, Fallout 1 and 2 seem very disparate from fallout 3, so your basis for deciding on which set is better is quite small.

 

[end_boss]

Oh, and I should also mention that weapon degradation loses major points with me. I mean, it's ok if you need to use tools on them now and then, but in order to keep my sniper rifle maintained, I should carry around two other sniper rifles for parts? *Sideshow Bob shudder*

 

[Calbeck]

Oh, and I should also mention that weapon degradation loses major points with me. I mean, it's ok if you need to use tools on them now and then, but in order to keep my sniper rifle maintained, I should carry around two other sniper rifles for parts? *Sideshow Bob shudder*

Hence why I use so many mods and would never willingly play vanilla again. One excellent mod is called "Repair Rethought, Reborn", and lets you use various forms of junk to fix things. Having a good tool set --- like a hammer and wrench --- improves your repair ability.

Then you have major mod revamps like "Fallout Wanderer's Edition", that make FO3 practically a whole new game with new weapons, rebalancing of skills and perks, weather, that stupid green tint to the world being removed, and genuinely dark/scary nights.

 

[CrafterMan]

Because the games are different and- Here's the insane part: Different people like Different things. Hard to believe, I know.

Woah come on now, Mr Imagination over here!

Hah, live in your fantasy world sir!

(Copious interwebs sarcasm)

-JB

OT: Love Fallout 3, couldn't play the first 2, graphics were just to awful even though I'm sure the story was great, yep I'm fuckin shallow.

 

[Raesvelg]

I've played them all, more or less as they came out, and the reasons I think more fondly on 1 & 2 are rather varied.

For the first part, there's the increased level of detail in character interactions. More dialogue options, particularly in Fallout 2, and VASTLY more options dependent on skills and attributes than you see in Fallout 3. There are quests you simply cannot do without the right perks, goals you can't achieve, etc.

Fewer rules in character interactions. Fallout 2 really shone in what it allowed the player character to do in this regard. I recall one of the blurbs for it at the time it came out was "Fall in love, get married, then pimp out your spouse for some extra chump change", and yes, that was indeed an option. Or you could get caught messing with the farmer's daughter, fail to talk your way out of it, be forced at gunpoint to marry her, take her to the Den and sell her into slavery, then go back and tell her father and watch him die of a heart attack.

And yes, I did that.

You could kill kids. Screw Fallout 3 and their wussing out on that issue, tossing nukes galore around Megaton but somehow children are immune. Is it a nice thing to kill kids? No, but it's certainly not any worse than tossing a nuke into your local bar & grill. In Fallout 2, for example, you got a huge penalty if you killed children, but it was an option. Alternately, of course, you could trick your followers into killing them for you, which had certain advantages.

The NPC followers, for the most part, had vastly more character than the ones in Fallout 3, and you could have more of them. It wasn't a one + dog situation, it was a "how many people can I keep around with my stats/skills?" situation.

On the down side, of course, the games were buggy as all hell, and if you knew what you were doing you could skip ahead to critical events, then go back and complete the rest of the game with relative ease, but still, the games just had more character than Fallout 3.

 

[Mattsworkname]

Im gonna go ahead and put something out there for you folks.

You cannot and should NOT compare 1 or 2 to 3.

The fact is, they are almost completely different in terms of style and format.

1 and 2 were, in there day, the best type of game for pc. Deep, engaging games where story and humor and thought took control over game play. Lets be honest, 1 and 2, you clicked in them almost as much as in diablo.

3 on the other hand, when the route of the Elder scrolls and was a first person rpg adventure.

It was gritty, funny, intense, well designed with loads of secerts and extras, you couldn't honestly play the game and not get an urge to just go rampaging through the landscape looking for shit.

Does this make 3 better then 1 or 2? No, cause you can't compare them.

3 beats out most of it's contemporaries certainly, easily handing oblivion it's ass not to mention all the knock off wanna be's that came after it.

1 and 2 were the premerie rpgs of there time and stood up against almost anything out in that era.

So, don't compare them. Enjoy them on there own merits and have fun, I did, even though I think 1 and 2 suffer from a severe difficulty curve issue, I still liked them.

I also loved fallout 3, and still play it and want New Vegas pretty bad to.

So, enjoy, have a fun, and stop comparing them.

 

[Brad Shepard]

I got flamed a few months ago for saying fallout 1 and 2 should be remade in the style of fallout 3 (Really, whats wrong with that?)

I loved fallout 3, while it might not be as good as 1 and 2 in terms of writing, it was still really good and damn fun to play for hours and hours.

 

[Denamic]

1 and 2 were only considered classics AFTER Fallout 3 was popular.

No, they were classics way before that.

Seriously how many of you knew the Fallout series exsisted before Fallout 3 was released.

Me, for one.
I peed my pants when Fallout 2 were released, and I barely even knew English back then.

Fallout 3 also moved 4.7 Million copies which is more than Fallout 1 and 2 when they were released.

That's why they're considered sleeper hits or cult classics.
They rose from obscurity to achieve legendary and lasting status over time purely through being really goddamn good.
It's also why Fallout 3 sold so much.
Not to mention that the games market is like 4 times larger now compared to what it was back then.

 

[obliviondoll]

What I personally think dropped Fallout 3 for me is the ending.

Get to the end of Fallout 1 and 2, and you get still images with a summary of how the major sidequests you did turned out and affected the overall state of the world.

How much better would Fallout 3 have been if the ending referenced the effect of some of the more major quests?

Spoiler: For example:

if you destroy Megaton, then it describes the gradual decay of civilisation in the wastes, but if you save it, Megaton grows and becomes a major centre for the rebuilding of society.

There are plenty of quests they could do this with. Those! and The Family are pretty good examples.

 

[Calbeck]

Absolutely agreed. As it is, the ending cutscene is entirely meh, YOU'RE DEAD (sans the Broken Steel 'fix'), and the impression given is that the only thing you did worth a damn was get the purifier going.

 

[AgentNein]

The original has a better atmosphere to it, and better humor.
But like many have said 2 completely different styles of game. Even as a fan of the first two, I can totally understand how a "new gamer" as it were would find the old ones dated and/or hard to play, because they are. They are pretty punishing games that just don't give a fuck if you screw up.

My personal reason that sums up why I like the first one better?

Spoiler

You can bypass the last boss fight by convincing him TO KILL HIMSELF if you have high enough speech.

You can't do stuff like that with FO3 because it's so focused around being a shooter. (Again, not a bad thing, just a lot different)

To be completely fair, you can do "something like that" in Fallout 3.

 

[SimuLord]

I've played all three games. And I can say without a shadow of irony that I think Fallout 3 is vastly superior to Fallout 1 and 2. More immersive, more fun, better gameplay, better everything.

Not that I think FO1 and 2 are bad games...but in my "gameplay über alles" world, Fallout 3 is the game I go to when I want to just have some fun. I love Bethesda's use of the Gamebryo Engine in the Elder Scrolls games, and Fallout WAS basically Oblivion with guns---which is why I thought it was so great. It didn't try to be art or great storytelling (well, OK, maybe it tried to be the latter and failed miserably, but I don't even have a place in my scorebook for storytelling to gain points for a game.) It tried to be fun. And it succeeded.

 

[thahat]

how about processor power handling, and not whining about specific graphics cards... >.<, 1 and 2 were defnitly better in that respect ( cause my sandwich had enough processing power to handle them, but ignore that little flaw in my logic XD )