Why the hate for Fallout 3?

[Woe Is You]

My problem with Fallout 3 is simply the fact that despite the fact that the world is 3D, you actually have less choice than in the originals. It doesn't really matter whether I create a character that's dumb as bricks nor am I given the option to play a pacifist if I wanted to (there are predetermined points where you must kill the guy in front of you).

It doesn't matter whether it's isometric or not. It doesn't really matter whether it's from a first person perspective or not. It doesn't really matter whether it's turn-based or not (though admittedly I don't really see why turn-based games supposedly suck). What does bother me is that there's really less options and less depth to it overall. That and the fact that I never really liked Bethesda's RPGs in general (Daggerfall, Morrowind or Oblivion) due to the fact that their worlds seem really hollow, their tech half-baked and the skill/stats balance they have a work in progress. Now it seems quite heavily slanted towards skill: the stats didn't seem to make any difference whether I hit the enemies or not outside of VATS. In many ways, Fallout 3 just feels like a compromise.

I guess if all you expect is an FPS, you'll be delighted that it's deeper than that. If you expect a deep RPG, though... you'll be disappointed.

Out of last year's games, I enjoyed the enhanced edition of The Witcher far more than I did Fallout 3. I might give Fallout 3 another go once Broken Steel is out and when they'll have more mods to fix the actual gameplay issues I have.

 

[Iron Mal]

Fallout 3 was ok (I'll grant it that) and fairly addictive but we all have to admit it was in severe need of a proverbial design enema.

The world was huge (like it's spiritual daddy, Oblivion) but after you've wandered about for half an hour you will quickly realise that you're trudging through the same stretches of wasteland for 20 minutes at a time to find a single interesting room (that fundamentally looks the same as any other room you've found) which ultimately didn't feel like it was worth it.

The story suffered because of the fact that you can have anyone as the protaganist (meaning that you're purpose or antagonist has to be very vague and generic to justify anyone having a reason to oppose them) and the ending was pure shit (thanks for playing, now go buy Fallout 4, bitches!). This is something that plagued Oblivion as well although Oblivion at least had the potential for you to play beond the ending.

The combat felt broken and insecure since they tried to make the player dependant on VATS. I am a veteran shooter player so I thought that there would be little point in me upgrading my weapon skills since I'm a pretty good shot already and I didn't intend to use VATS, sadly the game responded to this with a 'fuck you! you're character's never seen a gun before so you can kiss my ass' and decided that, yes, I can miss at point blank range with a shotgun (and having to constantly pay or scrounge to repair weapons was interesting at first but quickly just became expensive and boring, especially with special/rare weapons/eqipment like the Deathclaw gauntlet or power armour).

The biggest thing that goes against Fallout 3 is that it is essentially Oblivion with a new paint job and firearms, it carries over pretty much all of the faults of it's predacessor (and there were quite a few of them as well) for better or for worse.

 

[dragonburner]

You know I have not scene Fallout 3 hate. Hm I believe that hate probably exists about everything.

 

[SirDeadly]

Despite the horrible ending, I found Fallout 3 a very enjoyable game. I can't get enough of that 50's type music on Galaxy News Radio.

 

[CRAVE CASE 55]

Chill yourself fanboy.

It was released fucking RIDDLED with bugs, many still remain today, that alone is reason enough to tear it a new one.

BUT THEN, it turns out you can't play after the ending, no RPGs do that nowadays, that pissed a lot off too.

Oh, and then theres the SLIGHT detail of them not adding post-ending gameplay or DLC to the PS3 players.

Do your research buddy. In a nutshell, the game was glitched and they made enemies of half the console fanbase.

The DLC Broken Steel is coming out for 360 also not just PS3

 

[Vortigar]

I loved Fallout 1 & 2, kinda liked Oblivion for about 20 hours of gameplay and love Fallout 3 (instead of Oblivion with guns I call it Oblivion with atmosphere. Oblivion's world felt so incredibly bland, there's no little drama's, no imagination, no interesting people, it's all a giant pile of random dungeons and blah. Stuff like the supermarket where the guy booby trapped the place and simply died in the corner of the building, too afraid to leave, I love that kind of detail).

And I play it on the PS3. (painfull2006: it IS bloody annoying we don't get the extra stuff, that's a fact, you can cry about us being sad about it all you want but we are in our right to feel that way. Thank you.)

I have yet to finish the game though, all the horror stories about the ending are keeping me from it. Got one max lvl 20 good girl and one lvl 10 bad guy, the first based on energy weapons the second on unarmed and heavy weapons. The flamer rocks btw, as do grenades, the minigun is a pea shooter that drains ammo like a madman.

Iron Mal:
You made me grin. I've played multiple games that used this system of calculating your odds of hitting based on skill beside your actual aim with the crosshair. Never has that type of gameplay ever come with such a high profile game though, so its not surprising that you've never encountered it before. But its still funny. Like that couple behind me that asked 'When are they going to stop singing?' while watching a movie version of a musical... This is the main reason its billed as an rpg first and an fps second. It should be called an fprpg really.

 

[veloper]

Yeah, it's the lack of meaningful choices that hurts FO3 the most.
The strength of the originals was the choices&consequences and the story/writing. FO3 lacks in those areas.

On the up side:
+ better music than the originals
+ better art direction. The retro look really works for FO3.
= better atmosphere
+ weak FP combat still beats the minimalistic and mindless turn-based combat of the original
= better from a gamist POV


Actually, FO1 wasn't phenominal in the C&C department either, in-game most of it just amounted to SUCCEED or FAIL and get attacked or banished by faction X,Y.
Even the end slides were bugged and you would often get the wrong slide, like Necropolis florishing, when it was actually overrun by Super mutants in game, while the Hub gets destroyed when it's timer hasn't run out yet.
The main appeal of the originals then is simply the X factor. It worked despite it's flaws.

 

[Galletea]

From what I see people are always going to slag off games that are popular, simply because there was one or two things they didn't like about it. Mostly it's an anti fanboy mechanism, as people are quick to say "OMFG it is teh awesomezzz!" or something to that effect. There are those who think it isn't enough like Fallout, there are some who think it isn't enough like Oblivion, and others who just plain old don't like it for no real reason, because it's not their thing. They all come together against fanboys, and then more people get annoyed and people are on the defence on both sides and flame wars ensue.

At least that's how it works in my experience.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Because its not fun. Whenever I played it, I asked myself WHY? It just wasn't fun, and everyone told you to start with small guns, which would have given me the standard shooter arsenal, thus making the game even less fun. I played up to the end of Tranquility Lane, and then took out the disc and put Oblivion back in. Because its better.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

The game is good. I just finished it yesterday and I honestly thing it is a good game. People who were fans of Fallout 1 and 2 will dislike this simply because it's not like the other games. But if you judge it by what it is, it's a good game.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Is this game really worth playing? I mean, I have heard practically nothing about about it and would like to hear more.

 

[Fronken]

My major problem with Fallout 3 is that its not a new game, its Oblivion but in the future.

Personally, if I wanted to play Oblivion I would turn off the PC/Console, and pick up the dozen D&D books on my table; I really don't need another generic Fantasy RPG title when the genuine article is readily to hand.

Post-Apoc is a genre my RPG collection is rather lacking in.

First of all that has absolutely nothing to do with the game in question, your going off topic because you cant seem to handle the fact that Fallout 3 is just a remake and nothing more.

The game in question (Fallout 3), is bad because it took a great game (Oblivion) and just added another theme to it (Steampunk) and changed the map from a fantasy setting into a post-apoc setting.

It did nothing more, and therefore it really isnt all that fun for those of us old enough to have played the Elder Scrolls series, as those were vastly superior to Fallout 3.

Oh, and if you want to play real RPG and not video/pc games, and you enjoy the post-apoc setting, check out Mutant, its really good, played it a couple of years back with some friends.

 

[lokust2001]

Every game that is popular / changes the previous format etc. etc. will always have as many detractors as fans.
These discussions never come to a conclusion, they're always the same wether it's people arguing about Halo, Gears Of War, Resident Evil, whatever. It's always the same and it's boring to hear, I don't know why people even bother asking the question, who gives a fuck what someone else thinks of a game you like, you either like it or not and who gives a shit what anyone else thinks.

 

[The Last Parade]

The main problem that I see with it is that its too imersive, imersion is almost always good... unless you're so imersed that you forget to save, you die and then you realise that the last auto save was 2 hours ago, and honestly I'm considering sell FO3 because I cant bring myself to play it knowing whats going to happen and what I have to catch up on

 

[SigmondK]

First of all that has absolutely nothing to do with the game in question, your going off topic because you cant seem to handle the fact that Fallout 3 is just a remake and nothing more.

The game in question (Fallout 3), is bad because it took a great game (Oblivion) and just added another theme to it (Steampunk) and changed the map from a fantasy setting into a post-apoc setting.

It did nothing more, and therefore it really isnt all that fun for those of us old enough to have played the Elder Scrolls series, as those were vastly superior to Fallout 3.

Oh, and if you want to play real RPG and not video/pc games, and you enjoy the post-apoc setting, check out Mutant, its really good, played it a couple of years back with some friends.

First off just stop. Stop before this turns into a flame war. It's your opinion that all it was is oblivion and I would have to disagree. They share the image and nothing more to be honest. I mean call me crazy, but I do believe there are some critical falicies in the way you argue that point. I'll start by listing the differences.

The stat systems are different.

The development systems are different.

The lock picking systems while similar are still different.

There are no guns in oblivion.

There are no atomic age themes in oblivion.

There are no perks in Oblivion.

Granted those are just a few, but if you can't give me more then they look similar then enough of the pointless flamebait. They were developed by the same people so of course it is going to look similar. It is going to share elements of design. But to say the two games are the same is a gross injustice to both games. I bring this all up because I'd rather like to keep this a civil conversation. There is a deep story involved and if you look at the shreds of evidence (and I'm not talking about the main quest, but the actual story about how the world came to be) they did a pretty decent job keeping it close to the way the Fallout Bibles dictate they should be.

 

[Fortesque]

I thought Fallout 3 was great.
However i do much prefer the original two.

It reminded me of the good old days of playing Diablo for hours on end. Instead of Bows, it was Guns and instead of Swords, it was Sledgehammers.

 

[listlurker]

Because hating on things most people like gets your posts noticed and discussed, and you can pretend that you're smarter than everyone else.

 

[Wargamer]

Is this game really worth playing? I mean, I have heard practically nothing about about it and would like to hear more.

I would say it is. Most definitely.

It doesn't play as a 'typical' RPG, but thankfully it avoids that god-awful pitfall of "One Player MuMORPuGer that quite a few titles (including FFXII) have fallen into.

It's not a First Person Shooter either; partly because you can play Third Person (though I hate the third-person mode), and partly because your ability to damage the enemy is determined by a bunch of invisible probability tables, not how well you aim. I swear to god I have scored headshots by firing over enemies before now, and the game has magically swung the bullet down into their face. That said, I've fired dead at the chest and done no damage at all, so it works both ways.

Fallout 3 is, I'd say, perfect if you want a 'Paper-lite' RPG; the sort where all you keep track of in terms of numbers is your weapons, armour and how much swag you've earned. It's great just to go exploring, and I've been so busy exploring I've actually built up a backlog of places I keep meaning to revisit to 'look at properly'.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Is this game really worth playing? I mean, I have heard practically nothing about about it and would like to hear more.

I would say it is. Most definitely.

It doesn't play as a 'typical' RPG, but thankfully it avoids that god-awful pitfall of "One Player MuMORPuGer that quite a few titles (including FFXII) have fallen into.

It's not a First Person Shooter either; partly because you can play Third Person (though I hate the third-person mode), and partly because your ability to damage the enemy is determined by a bunch of invisible probability tables, not how well you aim. I swear to god I have scored headshots by firing over enemies before now, and the game has magically swung the bullet down into their face. That said, I've fired dead at the chest and done no damage at all, so it works both ways.

Fallout 3 is, I'd say, perfect if you want a 'Paper-lite' RPG; the sort where all you keep track of in terms of numbers is your weapons, armour and how much swag you've earned. It's great just to go exploring, and I've been so busy exploring I've actually built up a backlog of places I keep meaning to revisit to 'look at properly'.

I like gun combat based stats more than skill but generally only if it's something like Jagged Alliance or Silent Storm so the combat doesn't really sell it for me.

I do like exploring in games but not the Oblivion sort of exploring. Is it hard to explore in the game, like, do you really have to work to find something unique as in it's hidden or surrounded by near impregnable defences? When I get there is it something better than a cut and paste dungeon with 2d20 worth of monsters evenly distributed about spawn points?

 

[Vortigar]

Fallout 3 is, I'd say, perfect if you want a 'Paper-lite' RPG; the sort where all you keep track of in terms of numbers is your weapons, armour and how much swag you've earned. It's great just to go exploring, and I've been so busy exploring I've actually built up a backlog of places I keep meaning to revisit to 'look at properly'.

I've definately found the best way to play this game is to NOT follow the quests. Some people in this thread who didn't like it said they got upto this and this point... That's wrong from the get go. You should be going out there and explore. Just pick a spot on the map and WALK your way there and see what arrows appear on your compass.

"Hey, look, a cave full of Deathclaws, let's sneak in and see. Oooh, shiny bobblehead!"

"A camp, let's walk in." *beep *beep "Mines?!" *boom "Raiders?! Ah crap. Oh look, someone's journal. Oh, an interesting location's marked in it, let's go there!"

etc etc.

This kind of gameplay is a lot of fun in Fallout 3 and very lacking in Oblivion. I got the 100 locations trophy without having met up with dad yet. In Oblivion I quickly got bored of walking and quick travelled everywhere.

MoreFunToCompute:
Fallout 3 has no random generated dungeons whatsoever. All buildings and their inhabitants are fixed. And its too much to all visit within a 100 hours or so, so don't worry about that.