After playing for quite a few hours now I can say for sure that the amount of interesting unmarked places have almost disapeared, and the few that are in the game lack any sort of interesting loot.
The reason I am disapointed about the map boarders is it seems so wasteful to have that much area and no perticular reason to exclude it from the game.
I'm the type of player that after the 500 hour mark likes to quick travel to a location and just wonder in random direction to find something interesting to do that I havn't done before. Without the interesting unmarked places this seems unlikely to happen.

Another thing that is decieving is in Fallout 3, the map is wide across, narrow on the sides, while in New Vegas, it is narrow across and wide on the sides. One more thing with all the "empty space" I am hoping it will be put to good use in DLC so we will not have stuff like Point Look out or the Pitt where they can't put it on the actual map.

Comparing the two games is pointless, what you have is what you have. Want more space or more area or better dungeons, make a mod or download one. I would like to see more of the boarded up homes open so I am going to attempt to mod them as soon as I finish the game. Look for a mod that will give you what you want or wait for a DLC and maybe it will give you more of what you want.

There is so much to do though! Map size is almost irrelevant. At this stage in FO3 I had practically completed it, and was hitting the DLCs. But I've got so many quests lined up in my pip-boy that I don't know where to start! Awesome stuff... and I'm sure the DLCs will unlock some of that extra mapspace.

dlc's are not an apologize.

this is the game, and for this you've payed the full price.

and before you start thinking about dlc's, wait if they can even deal with dlc's

forgot about the fallout 3 dlc's??, because this [censored] is still unplayable and far from any patch (PS3), and i bought a goty version for nothing.

Edit
didnt consider this is not the ps3 fraction... ignore my last sentence if you play it on your pc.

They took away the exploration and gave us a more immersive role playing aspect, however I feel that just the role playing aspect is not enough to cover up for taking away ALL exploration. Fallout 3 was a big exploration game, so it's kinda stupid to take it all away in the next entry in the series. They should've kept some exploring and it would've been fine.

+1

Agree with the side quest comment. The amount of side quests available kinda make up for the "smaller size".

Tbh, the map size, as someone else mentioned, doesnt really matter. As they said, its the content, and reallistic. Would you set up shop in the middle of the Mojave, no one around for ages, sorrounded by all sorts of bad things, or settle near the roads with the NCR and the towns with others.

I think what they should of done not to break immersion that instead of the invisible 'walls' a mile of the end of the map, just have some highly irradiated areas? It would make sense IMO.

HUH? LMAo, its amazing how people's minds change after time passes. Fallout 3 had more filler content then most games. There were very few good side quests, most places were all the same with just useless garbage, no weapons that you didnt already have, filled with garbage like crutches, scrap metal, and all looked identical. NV has a lot more interesting areas to explore that vary, and have better loot to find. Fallout 3 suffered the same thing as oblivion, Quantity of quality. Also, the map IS just as big, it takes longer to go an inch across the map then it did on the fallout 3 map.

If you say there is nothing there, then your playing a different game, as Fallout 3 was way worse in that regard. Not to mention most of DC was linear and blocked off and connected with the same looking subway with nothing of interest in the,.

hardcoe mode also makes it more important to collect food, water, and crafting makes all that junk more usefull. real survival. In 3 it was just there for looks really.

*bzzt* - Oblivion was empty as hell and boring because of it. even the most useless building in Fallout 3 had some sort of story in it, big or small, blatant or subtle - and that's what made it an interesting game. Oblivion would've been a much, much better game if there were more places to go that weren't just copy-pasted forts with necromancers, even if those places were small and empty.

Fallout 3's problem was not filler buildings, it was filler landscape. i enjoyed going in the buildings; i didn't enjoy wandering aimlessly for ten minutes through rocks and dirt with nothing but bloatflies for company just to get to them. the atmosphere of isolation only held up in the south and east, where there was a lot more thought put into the world design in general since most of it was the outskirts of DC. probably my favorite place in the game was the area around the Jury Street Metro Station.

New Vegas doesn't have as many buildings, but it has much fewer empty stretches of dirt and nothing, and most of the places that are empty stretches of dirt and nothing are filled with impossible enemies actively deterring you from going in that direction, partly to give you a challenge if you're looking to hunt something but mostly to tell you "hey there's nothing here".

Exactly. Why throw the baby out with the bath water? Exploration in FO3 was a game unto itself.



I must have played a different game. I found there was always something interesting to find and reasons for combing every square inch of the Capital Wasteland, whether it was a unique weapon, encounter, or just a wild scene (like the Mr. Handy reading the bedtime story to the child's skeleton). Sure, there was plenty of filler, and a lot of sameness (the Metro tunnels) but it always felt rewarding. My opinion is still the same about FO3.

geographically no. But there are quests and locations out the wazoo.

I'm not very far along in NV yet, but judging strictly on the approximate size of the area in FO3 as it's displayed in the strategy guide fold-out map (compared to the same map in the NV strategy guide), NV seems considerably smaller (my estimation is 25-30%). I'm entirely too lazy to try to determine differences in scale (if any) between the two, and there's no doubt NV has a lot of great stuff packed in its (seemingly) smaller area, but FO3 to me just felt massive and NV honestly hasn't lived up to my expectation as far as that's concerned.

What then constitutes "more exploration"? More area to wander around and get lost in? More places to find and rummage through? Personally I prefer a larger area to wander but to each his own. I'm sure the game will be expanded by DLC, but I was honestly a bit disheartened when I started comparing world map sizes. Regardless, I'm still looking forward to scouring the Mojave just the same as I scoured the Capital Wasteland.

I honestly loved the size of fallout 3 but I love the gameplay of new vegas more. If they had put this kind of gameplay in FO3. I would be playing it for years on end. IMO the point of an RPG is following a storyline with quests and side quests and also looking for your own discoveries of these unmarked/unused places. Some may have unique items or great for hideouts, etc. Then I actually feel like I am part of the game and not just playing it. It is like my wife said when she first watched me play Morrowind. It is like watching a movie I am in control of finally instead of the producers and directors.

I've actually never given this consideration before, but you may very well be right. Wouldn't it just be typical to include areas of the map that can't be accessed without DLC? This sounds more and more likely the more I think about it.

"Meaningless" is relative. It is meaningless to you so I personally don't understand why you bothered expending the energy to type a response. If it means nothing to you, then ignore the post and move on w/ your life. Some of us may be curious simply for the sake of knowing.

-If you have the pc version:

Though not official, there are mods that do EXACTLY the same thing for FO3.

You would be surprised at what a heavily modded FO3 can have. I'm an old fan of fo series, i enjoy rp and exploration and many mods offered plenty of both.

The thing is that - there are some things that mods can't do OR can do but not as well as official content and sadly some of these things are what New Vegas seems to be missing. These being said i agree with the OP.

It is a wasteland.
There is suppose to be wasted space.

It's a game.

The map LOOKED smaller on the pip boy, but once I got out there, I noticed that it took a bit longer to get from A-B.

Wasted space == Wasteland yes?

I don't see anything annoying about it. :shrug:

**However.... the opposite would be, I think.
(no wasted space == no Wasteland; and no credibility)

I say this because I happen to like the empty wasteland, and enjoy a long solitary walk through it now and again... I think they did a grand job making it.)

Official guy in the Podcast already said NV is larger the FO3

oh god... the metro... THE METRO!!! OH GOD NO! *shivers

hey guys... maps can have different scales cant they?.......just saying