I think Fallout 3 is more entertaining because there is more exploring and overall action, and the begging sequences of the story are made very well, and for a first time player venturing out of the vault is an epic moment. That said, the story does have some holes in it near the end.

Fallout New Vegas is the indirect sequel to Fallout 3, so it does have certain aspects where it improves on it. Its story has more choice involved, but at the same time if you haven't played the originals there will be parts in the game you will find yourself scratching your head at.

I would recommend playing originals first, like Styles said, and if you could buy both New Vegas and Fallout 3.

But if your hurting for money, I think Fallout 3 is the way to go. It has a huge world to explore, many quests to do, raiders to murder... I preferred this game much more over New Vegas.

I do not believe you people. Fallout 3 is by far the better game. New Vegas is no where near as great of a game. While it is not a bad game, it just does not have the same epic feel and strong story as FO 3. Do NOT get NV first, I assure you it is not the better game.

It's the complete opposite of this quote. I assure you. Get New Vegas and don't gamble with Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 is open-play and can do what you like and when you like, New Vegas is a more linear game. Fallout 3 will find more fun in my opinion, it was for me, and was more a true post-nuclear wasteland scenario. Fallout 3 is more a true sequel to those early old Fallouts (but they had board-game combat, Fallout 3 is normal real-time and far more a developed game).

I think it best if you avoid suggestions like below.
You are being told to buy other games (FO1 FO2 Tactics) instead of what you want , by the time you wade through that lot you will be an old man. Tactics is worth playing sometime though, early turn-base Fallouts only if you are into board-game play.

Wait on NV until the complete package is available and at a low cost. Also, the modding community is catching up with NV still, so wait until that is more fully realized.

I would be hard pressed to play Beth's games without mods, mainly for aesthetics. If I don't care about the characters and do not identify with my avatar, I cannot play. I need the shojo mods and children mods for FO3. I tend to avoid major overhauls like FWE because it is much more difficult to get the mods I prefer working with them, and the mods I prefer are seldom included. Other mods are included, and sometimes they are of interest to me, too (e.g., Primary Needs). However, the main issue is that "balance" and "preference" varies with each individual, and finding what you want when you play a game for hundreds of hours is something only you can do.

This is also why Beth's games would not make a good MMO, at least in general. People mod the games differently, even for very popular, major mods, and an MMO must have a "standard" content and mechanic. Beth's strength is the ability to customize their games to each player.

Of course, the majority of customers have console versions, but it's also true that many people play the console and then wind up getting the PC in order to mod the game and continue with a very enjoyable play experience.

Just to answer part of the OP, consider mods that add tons of weapons, armor, and crafting options to FO3. The base game has a lot, anyway, but people have added many more options including crafting ammo, classic weapons, and new versions of included weapons.

You can always replay in different ways, of course. The game is designed for you to do that.

Fallout 3's gameplay have different purpose than NV.In Fallout 3 you have a world in front of you created for the purpose of exploring and walking around doing random stuff.you are realy a wastelander and a wonderer.In Fallout 3 you are just walking in a pointless direction immersed in a post apocalyptic world,exploring and doing stuff.

In NV you always have goals and the game is more linear.But once you have completed a certain quest an area/place/building is spend and there is nothing for you to do there,its not fun/interesting to revisit the place.But in NV you have more interesting quests and the game gets you involved with exelent implemented factions.You chose a side and so on..,ect.Also the post apocalyptic feeling is kinda lower in NV.You know with your head that its post apocalyptic but there isn't the same feeling of destruction,radiation and grimmness like in Fallout 3.(yes i know the lore behind the lower radiation of the mojave)

Fallout 3 has a Mad Max feeling.NV is like a Wild West with a bit of mafia-crime feeling in the casinos.Also it is like an american action movie-specialy when siding the NCR.

Both games are equaly good/fun.It depends on your mood what you wanna play.

I think it should be the other way around play the series forwards not backwards. You will understand it more if you play like Fallout 1 first or F3 first.

I'd like to throw in my two cents.

Because New Vegas, is in my opinion, the better game, I'll be focusing on where it out-shined Fallout 3.

Companions. In Fallout 3, you're companions are meat bags. There's no quest to upgrade them, you can't have more than a couple, and you're speech options with them are severely limited. In New Vegas, it's possible to meet and enlist 8 companions, all of which discuss what's going on around you and have a "companion quest" that improves their performance and expands on their story. The closeness I felt to Boone or Veronica is far stronger than that of Fawkes, who was essentially just a Gatling Laser-toting pack mule, who would repeat the same line each time I decided to make him hold the heavy crap.

Storyline. While Fallout 3 immersed you better from the start, it felt like it was on rails the entire time. The first time playing through, I wanted so badly to side with the Enclave, and for a good part of the game I thought that would be entirely possible. I murdered Paladin Vargas, Three Dog, and many of the nameless Knights at Galaxy News Radio (this even caused a glitch that made the game nearly incomplete-able). I gladly accepted the Modified FEV virus from the President, and was disappointed to find that that would be my only civil interaction with the Enclave. In their own maniacal way the Enclave was very charismatic, and annoyed me that no matter what I did I would be fighting them the entire game. New Vegas on the other hand, allows you to side with whatever faction you want, with the exception of Raiders and mutated animals.

Ending. The Ending of Fallout 3 was lackluster. And that's to say nothing of the fact that there is still an unpatched glitch where the audio for any ending in which I face the purifier myself does not play. One of the many joys of New Vegas was making sure I got the perfect ending for each main faction. I worked tirelessly to make the best decisions determining the fate of the NCR, New Vegas, Mr. House, or the Legion. There are 4 paths to 1000's of endings in New Vegas. In Fallout 3 there was 1 path to far, far fewer possible endings.

What fallout 3 has a back story not really storyline.... Certain things placed perfectly which will literally make you emotional and make you understand the horrors of the post apocalyptic world, makes you wonder how our world might be going forward in times to come... To get those back stories, you need to explore properly read everything take your time in reading and understanding everything you see.. Its the only game which actually made me quiet emotional at certain parts...

The back stories vary from the time before the war and times just after the war...

New Vegas has a really good Quest line and storyline, but an unmodded Newvegas doe snot have stuff to kill and things to explore...

I have mixed emotions about both, but just find myself more interested in Fallout 3. I like the atmosphere a lot better.

I don't understand why people are ragging on Fallout 3's story though.

Fallout 3 starts out simply amazing. You literally get to live life in the Vault and get attached to the residents inside of it. Once you are thrust outside it's a bit of a shock. You look around a bit and then realize you have no idea where to start, but that the possibilities are endless. Up until the sequence where you finally find your Dad, the story is kind of "meh", but doesn't let up from there. Activating the purifier and seeing the main villains roll in while you could do nothing was great. Finding out how the super mutants were made by just reading it on the computers was awesome. You actually had to take an effort to look around that place instead of having it thrust onto you. Meeting the president of the Enclave was a bit of a twist, and the final fight was great as well. The ending scene though, I agree, was a bit underwhelming.

The way New Vegas' story starts sort of fails in comparison. You're just told to go find the guy who shot you and pointed off in a direction. There's no real emotional value besides the whole "revenge" thing. It took me awhile to actually start caring about the main quest. Once it does get rolling though, the four faction thing is pretty interesting. I feel like the majority of the characters just feel... bland though.

This is despite the fact that New Vegas is full of an insane amount of bugs while Fallout 3 has significantly less.

LOl if you have no cash shouldn't you get fo3 goty instead? It has far more content and better imo :tongue: .

Because its literally destroys canon.



The thing is I never got attached to anyone in Fallout 3, the dialouge was too poorly written for me to take the game seriously at all, not to mention dad is an idiot who doesn't know how to purify contaminated water (hint USE DIRT).



I don't know, I think immediately getting shot in the head is pretty kick ass way to start a game, and I felt some drive for answers, mostly I just wanted to know what the hell the platinum chip is, In Fallout 3 Dad leaves the vault, but at this point I don't care too much about him, so I just left and did my own thing, I felt no drive to do anything, I felt more sorrow when Cass died in my hardcoe playthrough of New Vegas then when Dad died in Fallout 3.



I feel the same way about Fallout 3's characters, the poor writing, the repetitive and meh voice acting.

also Three Dog, him alone is reason enough.



My experience in New Vegas was pretty much bug free, NV only started crashing once I started modding it, Fallout 3 was buggy PoS and the DLC's were always broken on release, so far any NV DLC has not broken.

obviously these are just my opinions (as uninformed as they are) and they are based on my experience with these games on PC. Simple put it pretty much comes down to if you want Oblivion set in DC with Guns or a First Person Fallout 2 set in Vegas.

Because it literally doesnt. Bethesda owns the rights and F3 is apart of cannon now.

Cool, so if they decide to add magic spells, elves, and 3 giant godzilla bosses its ok because they own the rights.


just because they own the rights it does not make them right.

This is a FO3 forum so most will probably give a pro FO3 opinion, I am one of those. But you will not be disapointed with FO3 New Vegas (all my friends cant see why its a fully priced new game and call it that...).

To be totally honest the FO3 GOTY edition comes with all the DLC at a good price where I understand Vegas still has more DLC to be released. I would say get FO3 GOTY now and wait and do the same when Vegas gets released with all the DLC included in a year or two time.

Specifically you mention the hrs you put into a playthrough. If your looking for a long haul then FO3 wins hands down due to size of game, exploration & environment etc. However, Vegas does have included in the vanila version of the game weopon mods or add ons so some guns can be modded with scopes and silencers etc. This sounds like something you might be interested in and I have read before on the forums that Vegas has more types of weopons and armor generally (I don't know how true this is but a lot of the armor is faction based ie. walk into a campment wearing the oposing faction armor = agro!). So it appears there's more items but it's a not a straight forward comparison.

Trying to be fair to both games i would say vegas has taken the FO game forward in some places such as the weopon mods & faction based stuff but it has lost what i call the magic that FO3 had, which was to do with the environment, harshness & nastiness etc. But it sounds like you will enjoy both to be honest :foodndrink:

Are you trying to compare these sorts of ridiculous additions to Fallout as comparable to Fallout 3? If so you are suggesting a overinflated hyperbole. As to the answer to your question, if Bethesda were to introduce these series killing elements, then yes they would be canon officially. Whether or not the fanbase chose to accept that decision is another matter, but the fanbase would be technically wrong. In other words, if there was some court which had nothing better to do than make decisions on the canon of a series, then Bethesda would win hands down.

Now if later Bethesda lost the series and a new company came in and decided their additions were stupid (and they would be correct in that) then they would have the right to change the canon. This happened before with BOS, it was canon when it came out, now it is no longer official canon.



If they have the rights, then they have the right, there is no debate on that. Whether or not the fanbase likes or wants to accept the additions are another matter. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fanbase does not have any legal entitlement to the series.

Thats fine but I can still pretend Fallout 3 was just a feaver nightmare The Lone Wanderer had, because they can't legally do anything about it.

I never got this argument. I'm as much of an old school Fallout fan as the next old school Fallout fan, but I've never felt that Fallout 3 "destroyed canon". There was definitely some questionable stuff (and Fallout 2 had some questionable content as well), but it wasn't as bad as some folks make it out to be. Bethesda actually treated the Fallout canon with more respect than they generally treat their own TES canon, but that may be because Fallout is someone else's creation.

Could it be that you had played and understood what the FO series meant based on earlier versions of the games and this allowed you to make wider judgements about what the overall FO story is, might be and could be and so on, and then FO3 came along and turned your interpretation of the game on it's head? That isn't destroying cannon it's destroying a minority fanbase viewpoint of the game.

You could say FO3 has taken the cannon off on a tangent or brought back to life aspects of the story that we thought were to be gone etc, yeh I would agree with that and I think they did a good job :thumbsup:

Agreed. Bethesda has added some things to Fallout canon that many people have taken issue with (CWBOS being "nice", another source of FEV etc.). But they did not "destroy" canon, they only way in my mind that they phrase could be an accurate depiction of what happened is if Bethesda had decided when they made Fallout 3 that "yeah nothing up until Fallout 3 is canon, we're re-writing all that other stuff". Then of course they would be destroying Black Isle's canon and replacing it with their own.



Key word there. Thats absolutely fine if you want to pretend that something is not canon, by all means go ahead, sweet dreams are made of fan fiction. I take issue however, when people adamently believe that Fallout 3 is not officially canon, and do everything they can to spread that message around.

:foodndrink: never understood the whole fo3 wrecks canon debate i can't really see how .Ok 1 or 2 questionable things but thats it .
And i agree with Lt. Andronicus that the CW bos is out the ordinary but they put in the outcasts that everyone seems to forget who are a lot more like the west coast bos.

I never said Fallout 3 wasn't canon, it is, I just said it has a lot of canon issues.

FEV Being in a Vault when its supposed to be an isolated military experiment at a base in California.

FEV Being in a Vault that was finished a couple years before it was even created.

Vault Experiments going from Social Experiments to actually messed up experiments.

Jet being in Pre War areas that have never been looted when it was created a little bit before Fallout 2.

Ghouls can run when its been stated it hurts for them to even walk.

Moria becoming a ghoul over night when it takes much longer then that.

Enclave in full force with the voice of Malcolm McDowell as their President, even though they were destroyed in Fallout 2.

ALIENS.

No Plant life.

Actually, I don't think that the CWBOS is out of the ordinary at all. Groups naturally change and splinter and I think Bethesda did a good job of stating that this is not what the orginal Brotherhood is about (Outcasts).

Wait can't ghouls run in new vegas aswell and who says it doesn't hurt them i'm sure i can remember ghouls at underworld moaning about pain .Again ALIENS are in new vegas aswell Again jet is in new vegas .Moria was exposed to insane amounts of radiation from a nuclear bomb going off no wonder it happened at that speed .And yes at the rig all most all of the enclave were wiped out and at navarro but there was still reminents that went to d.c to try again so it makes sense that way (but how did they get there ).I don't know enough about F.E.V so :shrug: but none of these are canon wrecking.

Hey, there are things about New Vegas I don't like, like those canon issues that made into NV.

also The GECK is not some magical nuclear device, its just suitcase with some water purifying tablets, seeds and some other crap.