And here is the structure of Fallout 3.

Prologue - Have fun with daddy. 1st Chapter - Escaping the Vault... with daddy. 2nd Chapter - Find daddy, and help him with work. 3rd Chapter - Avenge daddy.

That's all I see in the structure.

Epilogue - Fill up Sarah Lyons and become a daddy?

Anyway, FO3 sounds more like you're not the hero, daddy is. Maybe the game would be better if you didn't play your character, but instead played Qui-Gon Jinn, your lightsaber wielding daddy. That way, you would actually be the hero.

That's exactly the problem with the Fallout 3 storyline. It relies on the player wanting to follow a specific path with their character despite offering the player various other possibilities that clash with that specific path in its very own dialogue and side quests. Even the main quest's climix allows you to spike the water for the Enclave as opposed to finishing your mother and father's dream by bringing clean water to the wasteland. Unless the Lone Wanderer has multiple personality disorder the storyline of Fallout 3 is an absolute train wreck if you don't play the game as a good person who cares about his or her daddy and his dream.



This is where you're supposed to fill in the blanks. The Courier can't be given a clear cut motive because of the nature of the storyline; if he or she was given motive to side with the NCR then it probably wouldn't make any sense to side with anyone else. Just because Obsidian doesn't spoon feed you a motive doesn't mean that a motive can't exist, you just have to find it yourself.

Actually I think you were more of a hero in FO3. You really got just one option, to side with the good guys and save the world.
In NV, you wasnt the hero, you were moore like a guy that helped a faction out, you never becomed a head of a whole faction. I really like that, that your character was a guy that just happend to be the guy who would set "the last nail in the coffin" ( as we say in Sweden ).

And if that wasnt enough, you dont even have to be good, you can choose witch side to join, and the game let you decide whats right and wrong.
So thats why I like the NV story moore. I can choose what to do but still finish the mainquest.
FO3 didnt manage to really let me enjoy the story, becuse as someone said, why should I save the father? I mean the cause was noble, but I didnt really become "angry" when the father died.
So therefore, its not that you werent the hero. I think it was that you had to follow your father footstep.

The motive didn't exist. After you kill Benny, really, the story doesn't exist at that point. Nothing happens. I'd be happy with there being motives for selecting a faction, but there just... wasn't! They all seem to assume you'll just keep helping them. None of them try to even talk you into it, they just assume it. "Hey, do this job for me next d00d!"

After you kill Benny, the storyline really just peters out. What's needed is an impetus. Something to give you, the player character, momentum. Each of the factions needed something written into their script lines to make you think "Hmmm, these guys seem OK, I'll help them" (except Yes Man, of course), and there was very little of that. You get more from the companions than you do from anyone else, and the forward motion shouldn't rely on NPCs that you may not have yet found.

I'm not saying the storyline of FO3 was fantastic, but it worked better as a story than NV's plotline. It was cohesive, and self contained.

Please try to understand, I'm not saying it was better overall, or that the questline was better. It was just a more cohesive, and personally identifiable story. To the majority, anyway, unless you hate your father, of course, but that's for you and your therapist to sort out.

I dont hate my father

But i hate the fact that I need to help it, even if I dont like it

I think maybe your first language isn't English? Would I be correct?

And that's OK, but the fact that you don't like it is irrelevant as to whether it was a "good" story. Perhaps instead of "good" I should say "cohesive". When I say "good" I mean as in terms of structure and flow, not content.

I think you are using the wrong term then.

FO3 have a "easier" story, it is so naive and simple that you cannot change any of it to keep it reasonable.

You say NV lost momentum after you deal with Benny, I say FO3 lost momentum when you get out the Vault. While the different faction slowly draw the Courier to aid them, the only motivation the Lone wanderer got is Pip-boy flashing every 5 minute to remained you that is you main quest.

And I think the fact whether it is a 'good' story is altogether irrelevant.

It's an RPG. It's not supposed to be story-based. It's supposed to have a full-fledged world, which you can influence and change in different ways depending on your choices. The moment the game forces you to make specific choices in order to progress in a pre-written storyline it contradicts the very idea of a role-playing game.

_{I would have been happy even with one other darn story-influencing choice, as long as it was there at all. Please, just let me at least choose to give the control of the purifier over to the Enclave without making it a non standard game over. It would have been so easy, too - no need to reflect any changes, they'd happen over time, just make the Enclave non-hostile and give me one 'Enclave won, everyone not vault-born died' ending slide, whatever, throw me a bone, people!} :cryvaultboy:

But I digress. What I mean is - I liked the world NV was set in, I cared about it, and I felt genuinely compelled to help some factions over others, because I supported their cause/motivations/etc. I find that to be a well realized gameworld.

_{Note: I hereby solemnly apologize for any linguistic/spelling/grammatical/syntactic mistakes I might have made - English is not my native language...} :whistling:

New Vegas was missing any real consequences of failing to complete quests and of getting on the wrong side of factions. There was an intent to do this but it was only a token effort and did not work very well at all. There were threats but nothing was followed up properly if at all, so it felt very tame. I agree about it lacking impetus to carry on after a certain point as well, although the point for me is after the fort. However both games made situations the player found themselves in during the main questlines far too easy to get out of. "oh your just going to let me walk out of here hoping I'll do what you want (sigh)" It's almost like they don't want to put the player to any real inconvenience.

Not almost... Is. Just look at HC mode, and that it is optional instead of mandatory.

That's because to them you're simply a mercenary who can get results. There's nothing glorious about it, but it works for the story that Obsidian was trying to tell. Each faction assumes you'll help them because you're going to get paid to do so; if you want to add extra motive you can, but that's the basic idea.



You learn a lot about the NCR and their goals between Goodsprings and Vegas, Caesar's Legion is detailed extensively in Caesar's rather large dialogue tree, and you can learn a lot about Mr. House and his plans from him as well. I found that you were given more than enough information to form an opinion about each major player before you had to pick a side.



My whole point is that what you're saying is debatable. I found New Vegas' storyline, and the game as a whole, more cohesive than Fallout 3 because it tried to tie most things in the world to the war going on in the Mojave, and that is the story of New Vegas.

I think both storylines function just as well; they're just two completely different types of stories. One is more personal, the other focuses more on the world and the organizations within it; neither approach is inherently better than the other.

But which one is more :fallout: ?

What is Fallout is purely subjective. I could find Fallout to be about one thing, Fallout to you could be about anything else.

this, FNV is boring, nuff said

Evidence? Figures? Explain to me like I am a five year old, what makes FNV boring and FO3 fun?

Wait, all of those figures that West just balbbed, they are the same as FO3.

The first playthrough, it was fun, but after, EVERYTHING IS EXACTLY THE DAMN [censored] SAME! The story is exactly the same every single time, spawn points are the same as well.

Fallout 3 is boring, NUFF SAID

If you dont like the game, then what in the bloody blazes are you doing here?

And, please, at least, do a good argument of why Fallout 3 is fun (?)



It was better than the rail-driven quest of FO3

You're supposed to select a faction based on what you've seen and heard about them. Remember that not everything must, or even should be conveyed through dialog. Sometimes, what you see can have a lot more impact than what you hear. Example: Your first interaction with a Securitron who isn't Victor is the Securitron gate keepers machine-gunning down someone who's crime is wanting to get into the strip. Depending on your personal thoughts, this could either enamor you to House ("He's keeping the rifraff out and building a place of safety in the wates") or make you choose to support someone else ("That guy builds his little oasis on the backs of exploited people and murders them when they try to get a better life.")

And there's still an awful lot of dialog with certain NPCs (Crocker, Caesar, House) that elaborate on their motives and provide reasons why you should choose to help them for those who absolutely must be told everything. None of them go "OH MY GOD, LONE WANDERER, YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WE CAN COUNT ON!!!" like Fallout 3 and the whole water purifier bit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.



No. Fallout 3's story doesn't work as a story because it has enormous plot holes. Plot holes large enough to walk a giant nuclear-armed robot through.

Plot holes which a giant nuclear-armed robot did in fact walk through. Compared to the ones in FO3, NV's plot holes are minuscule.



...Or if you don't like spotty characterization and plot holes.



The entire Legion trying to kill me everywhere I go (including sending repeated assassination teams) for clearing Cottonwood Cove says otherwise.



I disagree with this. Some of the best RPGs in the history of gaming (Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 2) are story-based.

Those type of options are good, not everyone wants to be bothered with things they see as tedious. It's the games mainline quests that were a big let down, not the things you had to do but how things were handled. Example the fort

i didn't like the fort, its just a collection of tents, i'm sure the "realistic" and "plausible" crowd like how the legions big base is just a lot of tents, but practially its boring and if you want battle the legion, there's no hiding spots really, you just have to run around tents, so artstically it does't work.

How would you have liked it (with knowing it is a fieldbase and not something intended to be permanent - and knowing that even armies of today use tents and don't build concrete cities and brickhouses as their fieldbases, nor construct it them with hide'n seek in mind)?

Here's how I would have done it if I'd written the quest

There was so much opportunity missed with this quest and other side quests.

I do think the fort is set out in a good way. Giving places for the player to hide just to make it easier on them to do something they should not be able to do is no challenge at all.

What?!

Care to explain this

Perhaps I condensed my comment too much, sorry. What I mean is - the way I see it, a game is not a good RPG if the only choices you get are nice/indifferent/jerkass responses in dialogue, while the events of the main storyline play out the same regardless. LIke - no matter what I said or did the Enclave remained hostile, the Brotherhood took the purifier, Raven Rock still got destroyed etc.

The story of an RPG should be fluid - adapting to the player's choices, not preset, right? I don't think I'm saying anything preposterous here, stop me if I am :confused:

Anyway, this is just my opinion, it's why I try to precede my comments with an 'I think' usually. I play a lot of action games and shooters where the premise is 'they bad, you kill' and I'm chill with that, but when I play an RPG I expect something else entirely.