Bethesda's Fallout 3 is canon to the early Fallouts 1 and 2. Canon "The general principle" is kept in the overall game-play, it kind of screams out "Fallout" when you play . There may be bits and pieces different in Fallout 3, but the overall "general principle" remains intact. The "general principle" of the overall type of game that it is, the overall type of content, the overall everything-else apart from some exceptions outside of canon, the general principle. That isn't an opinion but actually is a fact.

True Bethesda could say Fallout 3 is now canon to the their new definition of Fallout (having taken over the Fallout rights), but that would not really be true, it would really need to be renamed, if only to avoid confusion.

The early Fallouts 1 and 2 fan-base sometimes see details, which are outside of the "general principle" canon, as destroying canon, failing to see that detail outside of the "general principle" canon, does not in fact destroy the canon, the "general principle. But good luck in getting that accross, smile.

Fallout New Vegas, a somewhat more civilised Fallout with many more Factions to join, and more linear in play, with even more differences than Fallout 3 has to the early Fallouts 1 and 2. New Vegas still has Fallout canon, even though it is a spin-off, as marketed, however Fallout 3 has more of the "general principle" canon overall to the scenarios of the old Fallouts .

Fallout 3 is NOTHING like Fallout 1 and 2, at all, and it is really weird when people say "Fallout 3 kept to the themes", not it didn't, not in the least, I don't remember so much 40's and 50's related stuff in Fallout 1 and 2, yet Fallout 3 is over saturated with it, while I think NV went a bit far with the cowboy theme, its a nice change from the 1940's DC, and I never got a Fallout vibe from F3, all I got was this Post Apocalyptic Oblivion vibe the whole game. and your opinion is NOT fact.



Fallout 3 is canon, Bethesda doesn't have to worry about confusion because they revived a 10 year old franchise that none of the console kiddies even know about, heck I heard from people that didn't know Fallout 3 was a sequel to anything.



Fallout 3 is outside the general principle or whatever the hell you call it.




Fallout has always been civilized up until Fallout 3, then it went back. Fallout 3 is far far more linear, I mean I don't remember being an evil bastard in New Vegas and being FORCED to join the white knights of the wasteland to battle the evil guys in dark armor with a funny giant robot (I liked his one liners), in New Vegas I have choice in everything, in Fallout 3 you get the typical GOOD and EVIL choices, and yes New Vegas does have differences from Fallout 1 and 2, while some bother me and some don't, at least I get some of the redesign choices made since in Fallout 3 they wanted everything to look cooler, in New Vegas it was just slightly tweaking to work in in 3D game.

New Vegas is not a perfect game by a long shot, but its a better Fallout game then Fallout 3, and it is definitely better made in many aspects then Fallout 3, and as you so well put it.




I enjoy debating so lets try not to jerks or anything.

I stated that Fallout 3 is canon to Fallout (1 and 2), canon (being: The general principle). I said Fallout 3 was in fact canon, does not everybody accept that as fact.

Seems you kind of agree.
"I never said Fallout 3 wasn't canon I just said it has a lot of canon issues."

And you agree again below.

Fallout 3 has a lot more content than the early Fallouts, it a much bigger game, yes it has quite a bit of 40's 50's stuff, but that's just extra content that doesn't impact on the canon of the game, or destroy the canon. The canon of the game Fallout being "following the general principle of something” (Fallout).



Er, the "general principle of something" is actually what canon means. I haven't seen anything in Fallout 3 that destroys the canon of Fallout, there has been some additional content, outside of canon, but the main canon theme or general principle has not been destroyed by it.



I don't remember Fallout 2 being civilised.

Fallout 3 is the better game out of the two although the next two DLC's for New Vegas might turn the tables. I'd pick FO3 as it has all the DLC and is easier then New Vegas.

:facepalm:

You never played Fallout 2 did you, because most towns in that game (actually most towns in Fallout 1) were far more civilized then any place in Fallout 3, everyone in F3 was just lazy and didn't want to do any work to make things better, at least Dad was trying to do something even though he's an idiot.

Fallout 3 was a lot deeper. Nuff said

"nuff said" is not reason enough, please explain how you can think Fallout 3 is deep at all.

because its not IMO, its really shallow.

Both games kinda tie for me. Fallout 3 IMHO had a much deeper storyline placed in a dark and dreary location. When you first left the vault you were thrust into a decision of saving or destroying a town (House quest), and whilst I dont like the whole "I'm 19 and can deactivate a nuclear bomb, but i cant do [censored] to a bear trap", the story after that rather poorly written opening was amazing. The hunt for dad, helping 3 dog for the information on where dad went, vault 108, the morals and sacrifices of the vanilla game (Pre BS) and the overall depresing feel made F3 a great game. Remember the first time you entered Springvale school and found all of the little skeletons in the cage and wanted to kill every single raider in the area? F3 got you emotionally attatched to the characters, alive and dead. When you found a skeleton in the ruins, or out in the wasteland, you thought to yourself "How did you die? What happened to you? Did you have a good life?" (OR atleast I did) When someone brings up F3, you can name off most of the characters in the game because of how unique and rememberable they were. There weren't alot of seperate quests, but for me it had alot of replayability (26 playthroughs)

Now onto F:NV. New Vegas on its own is a great game. You get alot of the same items from F3, a few new toys, hardcoe mode, weapons mods, lvl 30 out of the box and multiple story lines. When you come to and leave Goodsprings on your hunt, you don't meet any real memorable characters outside of companions. You start off similar to F3, thrust into a choice of saving or destroying a town. Unlike f3 this time, you don't get a house off the bat, and the cool british butler bots are gone. You hunt for your would be killer, track him down and choose wether or not to extract vengeance, and choose which faction to side with. (House, CL, NCR or Yesman) and no matter which side you choose, the ending is more or less the same. Theres nothing in F:NV for you to really get attatched to like there was in F:3. Theres alot of quests to do, and plenty of factions to interact with, but for me is less replayable (3 playthroughs)


Tl;dr, both games are amazing, but if F3 had a hardcoe mode, ironsights and weapons mods, it would be much better than F:NV, even if it only had one storyline.

True but you can complain about it all you want doesn't mean they will change it to your liking.

They're both good, if you have the opportunity you should play them both. The main difference I've noticed is that FO3 is a lot darker and has more impressive locations, such as the museum of history, and NV has more ambiguous ethical choices and a better main quest.

How is fighting evil a deep storyline? I mean I'm not gonna say New Vegas had a deep storyline but the ideological conflicts between the various factions are much richer and more complex than anything you experience in Fallout 3 which is just being forced to help the good guys kill the designated bad guys. I'm afraid the dark and dreary atmosphere was a bit lost on me when I was forced into going to Little Lamplight. What's more dark and dreary than Peter Pan right? Again New Vegas didn't really succeed at maintaining a consistent atmosphere either but I would call New Vegas a much darker game overall when you think about what's actually going on beyond just the more civilized setting. I'll probably end up using this example a lot since it's such a masterful location but just look at Vault 11. What in Fallout 3 is darker than what happened there?



I don't really see how it improves. The hunt for dad is just tracking people down and listening to godawful dialogue (I'm looking for my dad middle aged guy maybe you've seen him?), I seem to recall helping 3 dog was just a fetch quest to retrieve a satellite dish, Vault 108 is just a bunch of crazed clones clearly intended to be humorous (again contrast with Vault 11 which is both funny and quite depressing), the morals and sacrifices of the vanilla game were again undermined by Bethesda's inability to handle a storyline (giving players no less than 3 companions immune to radiation kinda ruins the whole dilemma) and again the overall depressing feeling is horribly undermined by the horrendously inconsistent atmosphere.



Using melodrama to tug on player's heartstrings (NOT THE CHILDREN) is not the same as making people care about characters. If it worked for you that's great but objectively you're given no time to establish a relationship with your father which is supposed to be the emotional center of the story, your companions have almost no personality, and other characters range from the ludicrous and stereotypical (I'm looking at you Tenpenny) to the annoying (Moira, everyone in Little Lamplight, Amata being some of the most egregious). Contrasted with New Vegas there's just no contest. Your companions have real personalities and there's excellent voice acting and writing on display. At the end of the day when I care far more about what happens to Chief Hanlon, a character whose only real importance is in one side quest than I did about my father in Fallout 3, a character who the entire game revolves around it's pretty obvious that Fallout 3 dropped the ball.



Characters like Chief Hanlon, Mr. House, Veronica, Arcade, Cass, the King, Fantastic and No Bark (great examples of humorous characters done right), Elder McNamara, Boone, Orion Moreno, Papa Khan, Vulpes, aren't memorable? I think I would have trouble just remembering that many characters from Fallout 3 let alone finding good ones. The ending is more or less the same if you mean the ending always takes place at Hoover Dam during the fighting between the Legion and the NCR. The actual ending is certainly not more or less the same it takes into account a ton of choices you make throughout the gameworld. Fallout 3's ending, on the other hand is quite literally always the same regardless of your choices. Even if my character despises the Brotherhood with a passion and wants nothing more than to see them all dead he has to ally with them and fight the exact same battle in the exact same way resulting in the exact same outcome. The only choice is whether I die or some NPC I've met at most three times in the game does and the results are never mentioned beyond whether or not I was the biggest damn hero or just a skulking coward for feeling it was the duty of the experienced soldier and commanding officer to sacrifice herself rather than some 19 year old kid who has already done more for the dump that is D.C. than she ever dreamed of.

For me it's the complete opposite. After you've explored the map in Fallout 3 there's very little to do in successive playthroughs. New Vegas has more quests with a lot more varied solutions, 4 different paths to end the game and an interesting ending that tells me what effects my actions had. That's prettymuch what RPGs should strive for as far as I'm concerned.

Meant vault 112, why did I say 108? O.0 Anyhow, that is all my opinion, I found F3 a better game for the atmosphere. F3 actually seemed like a wasteland, wheras NV to me seemed like a lawless desert with irradiated monsters. All my F3 playthroughs and i'm still finding new stuff on the map, little secrets hidden in nooks and crannies. NV seems more centered around the new features instead of the flavor elements that made F3 slightly better for me. Vault 11 was indeed dark, and the only place I can think of in Vanilla F3 to slightly compare would be the dunwich building. I saw very little personality in NV with the characters. They may have had more voice actors, but the cast itself was like a bowl of ramen with little seasoning. You had a few good noodles here and there, but the rest were just bland. F3 had alot of the "nameless npc's" but the ones with names had actual flavor and personalities over the derps in the mojave that tell a complete stranger everything but their social security number and then never say another word.

That makes more sense Vault 112 was one of the better executed areas in Fallout 3 by a wide margin IMO.



Don't mean to begrudge you your opinion I'm just trying to understand the argument. Because there are certainly things Fallout 3 does better than New Vegas it's just the ones you listed seemed to be a complete reversal of what I would have said. Also I don't really get the difference between a lawless desert filled with irradiated monsters and a wasteland. They seem pretty similar to me. If you mean New Vegas is too inhabited it actually has a lot fewer encounter spawns than F3 where I was tripping over raiders every hundred feet.



I guess this is the big difference. I don't find this sort of exploration very appealing.



Dunwich building is a good example of why I can't take the wasteland vibe people praise about F3 very seriously. I mean sure it's dark, but what on earth does H.P. Lovecraft have to do with Fallout? It's wildly inconsistent. Good easter egg terrible terrible idea for a location.



It wasn't just more voice actors it was more talented voice actors and much better writing. We all know Bethesda isn't known for having much skill in either area. Who had actual personalities though? Most were just stereotypes. Tenpenny is every aristocratic stereotype even to being British. Contrast with Mr. House who is Tenpenny done right. A rich, uncaring bastard but one with actual motivations and an interesting personality. You start off thinking he's just a typical businessman who wants to rule his little paradise but he has actually has major uplifting goals for humanity. There's no depth to Tenpenny. He's just a dike who wants a town blown up for reasons he'll never explain.

Let's take a look at Megaton. Colin Moriarty is an Irishman running a bar. A unique combination. Also he's a jerk. Much depth there. The sheriff whose name I can't remember is so bland and generic you could put him in any vaguely Western movie or game and it really wouldn't change anything about him. Moira Brown is an awful, annoying character whose attempts at humor make me embarrassed for whoever wrote her. Jericho is an evil mercenary. Unheard of.

There's gotta be characters outside of Megaton though. How about 3 Dog? He's a hip black DJ. How original. Also he's a pretty good guy. Definitely no depth to him. He just fights the good fight with his voice. Madison Li is an Asian scientist (shocking). She's supposedly a close friend of your father even though you can't really learn anything about him from her or talk about their relationship. She also distrusts the Brotherhood for reasons that are never explained.

The list goes on for a while. I just don't see how can you claim New Vegas' characters are mostly bland when there are far more characters with depth and personality to them than the cardboard cutouts that populate Fallout 3. I mean the end I'm not gonna deny it's a matter of personal taste but I just don't see the opposing argument on this one.

Now that I do think about everyone in Fallout 3 was a stereotype, how lazy.

I don't see how everyone was a "Stereotype" character. In your post I see several characters that had more personality the most of the Vegas characters. The only characters in NV with actual 'flavor' were the ones tied to the main questline, Benny, House, Caeser, etc. but with F3 everyone was different. Sure we had a few stereotypes (Colin running a bar and being an irishman) but we had more interesting characters in 3, and you can talk about them being sterotypes all you want but in my -OPINION- F3 had a better cast that would've been made even better if Bethesda had splurged a bit on voice acting like obsidian did for the sub-par cast of New Vegas. So far the only character's I enjoyed in NV are No-bark, Graham and Randall. How many did I enjoy from F3? I might as well list the ones I don't like to make it shorter.

I see most of your arguement revolves around Lamplight. Despised Lamplight. Lamplight made me wish you could have enslaved children. I'll give you that one, Lamplight was a terrible idea, but you can't go off and say all of F3 was bad. I got money that not to long ago you were saying "This game is so amazing." but now with F:NV, everyone calls it a bad game because it's an older title and something new is out, just like people do with CoD. "Someting new came out, old stuff is automatically crap" i'm getting that kind of vibe from your arguement. Something tells me if this was brought up pre-NV, this would be less of an arguement, more of a collaberation of things that are different.

To be fair, its not as if the Lovecraft themes are blatantly obvious, aside from some random moving objects and occasional creppy voices (which are extremely easy to overlook), the building really isn't that much different from any other abandoned ghoul invested building in the wasteland. The Holo-tapes are creepy, but honestly I think they fit and don't shout "Lovecraft" if you are not looking for it. If someone isn't familar with the concept of the Necronomicron then all they hear is the diary of a guy looking for his father and how he became a ghoul. The obelisk at the bottom is out of the ordinary for sure, and with Point Lookout the black magic reference becomes more clear, but even still those elements aren't shoved in the players face (which I think makes it a good easter egg), its quite easy to miss the basemant.

All in all I thought Dunwich was a brilliant location, its not even necessarily the aforementioned "creepy-lovecraft" elements that make it great in my opinion. Possibily the creepiest thing for me was reading some of the pre-war terminals and actually getting a verbetium transcript of the sounds and dialouge invovled with the start of the Great War.



Agreed. Lamplight was horrible, but its not what characterizes the rest of the game, Fallout 3 has so much more to offer in my opinion than that.

Well not everyone certainly. I don't have the time or the inclination to go through and classify every character in Fallout 3. I honestly can't think of a decent one though. I guess Autumn was okay but as usual his character wasn't explored nearly enough.



I just don't see how. Again I'm not joking about being able to put that Sheriff in any vaguely Western setting and having to change nothing. He's just that bland.



Can't say I agree. At most 4 of the characters from the short sampling I gave are tied in with the main quest somehow. Again Chief Hanlon has nothing whatsoever to do with the main quest and yet is one of the best characters in New Vegas. FNV has nothing but differences between the characters. There are four main NCR commanders in the game. Hsu is clearly a more cerebral, managerial type of officer who retains the affection of his men. Moore is an extremely competent hardass who is respected but not exactly liked by her troops and blinded by her one dimensional thinking. Hanlon is a brilliant tactician who's clearly mentally and emotionally exhausted and has basically collapsed to the point where he cares more about getting his men out alive than doing his job. Oliver is a pompous, incompetent gloryhound with political connections who is risking the NCR's entire position in the Mojave for personal glory. How are these characters all the same? Again this is just a small sampling from a group of characters serving with the same faction in command positions yet they're radically different characters that are effectually realized miles above anything Fallout 3 managed.



Again I just can't agree. There's no depth to most people in Fallout 3 and those that do have it are often hampered by poor writing or general ineptitude. I mean I kinda thought I was building up a rapport with Fawkes and then he suddenly refuses to do an easy task that will prevent me from dying because he believes in prophecy? Or is that just his excuse because he secretly loathes me? The game just handwaves this because they needed a DRAMATIC ending.



Not really it's just the most egregious example because it's supremely silly, stupid, totally undermines the bleak wasteland vibe and is an unavoidable part of the main quest. There's also things like the vampire clan, Tenpenny Tower, which makes little sense in general and is modeled way too heavily off Fiddler's Green in the avoiding cliches sense, battling superheroes (sure is some bleak wasteland), a druid cult, cannibals who think they're living in the 1950s, (how? why?), the fact that my robot butler gives me unlimited purified water even though the central premise of the game revolves around the scarcity of clean water, the entire Megaton situation (hurr durr let's not disarm this bomb because it'll look really cool to blow up), the existence of crazy Nuka-Cola addicts who give tours (yup sure is a dark setting), and etc.

I can assure you that I have never said in my life that F3 was amazing. I didn't like it as an RPG and I didn't like it as a Fallout game. Again I'm not trying to say that F:NV is perfect or it's setting is consistent or it doesn't have silly crap in it I'm just saying that people who claim the atmosphere in F3 is so amazing are ignoring the fact that it has just as much silly and inconsistent stuff as they often criticize New Vegas for without the depth of choices and writing that New Vegas provides.

I see i'm beating a dead horse with a dead horse here. Carry on, I think i'm done.

Except for all the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Dunwich_Building#Notes and flashbacks that don't occur anywhere else in the game to the best of my knowledge. Whether or not you get the Lovecraft reference the obvious message about Dunwich is that's its magical and creepy which is a terrible idea if you're trying to establish a consistent atmosphere that has nothing to do with magic.

If the basemant were truly hidden I'd grant you it's just an easter egg but the basemant isn't exactly hidden so much as you have to just explore the building a little bit. I mean I found it no problem and I hate exploring things.



Brilliant maybe. But it still doesn't fit the setting. It would be one thing if the whole thing was just a vision you had or if it truly was an easter egg you can't travel back to but it's a real location that you can revisit and see the obelisk in all it's glory.



And bleak wasteland isn't what characterizes the rest of the game either. Fallout 3 has a great deal of goofy, inconsistent, content in it that sorely undermines the atmosphere it was striving for and I often see it praised for.

Strong story? Seriously?

That's like calling Twilight a 'strong story'.

LOL, this. FO3 did have an epic feel, but the faction based quest lines of New Vegas were far more interesting.

There was nothing wrong with the writing of the side-quests both named and unnamed, well-written of all flavours and of all shades of grey, putting the player's morals in question as well.

The main quest though is a mere fraction of the side-quests and other quests in the game, it gives the game a central aim and direction so that we don't just wander about at random, though it can be more fun to do just that, the other quests being a greater part of the game, and Fallout 3 is without doubt the master at such side quests, many of them mini games in them selves. Moral and ethical choices abound in those quests of Fallout 3.

Ah the dead horse scenario, I know it well.

I tried to get across to old Fallout fans that spending less time on doing A would give more time to do B which was the main thing you wanted to do... no chance, I gave up, smile.



"I'm looking for my dad middle aged guy maybe you've seen him?"
They're mostly all young around here, a few older ones pass through in the direction of Drisedale, North-east of here. Can you describe him?
"I only know that he is middle aged."
Best find out a bit more about him first, try going back to the beginning to find out what missed. (... and learn to play a RPG)

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

Sitruc quote
Bethesda's Fallout 3 is canon to the early Fallouts 1 and 2.
Canon "The general principle".

KyleM quote
Fallout 3 is NOTHING like Fallout 1 and 2, at all

KyleM quote
Fallout 3 is canon

KyleM quote
Fallout 3 is outside the general principle

Sitruc quote
Canon (is)"The general principle".

You seem a little confused KyleM about canon, kinda contradicting yourself as well, grin.

Okie quote
I don't find this sort of exploration very appealing. End.

It's exploration of the game content in Fallout 3, all over the map that is the joy, and it's never quite the same on play-through, even a reload is never quite the same, and along with the randomness in the game a play-through is going to be different in Fallout 3. The wasteland of Fallout has vastly more content to explore as well than the barren New Vegas, Fallout 3 wins out quite big there, and it's a more atmospheric real Fallout scenario. New Vegas was on the other hand a spin-off and marketed as such, after all. Fallout 3 has total open-play, New Vegas has some linearity to it.

Okie quote.
And bleak wasteland isn't what characterizes the rest of the game either. Fallout 3 has a great deal of goofy, inconsistent, content in it that sorely undermines the atmosphere it was striving for and I often see it praised for. End.

Sitruc
Fallout 3 has more of that Fallout feel. Shrug.
There is no faulting the writing of the quests in Fallout 3, named and unnamed.



Carry on, I think I'm done as well.

So if I explore less Fallout 3 will suddenly improve in the areas that matter to me? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say the game is not magic and doesn't work like you describe.



What does this gibberish even mean? Are you saying all you know about your father is that he is a middle-aged guy? Are you saying there are no other middle-aged guys in the wasteland? Both of those are obviously untrue. How about just asking if the Sheriff has seen a Vault dweller pass through? Suddenly the line is not completely [censored] since you're actually asking something that makes sense.



Just for the record this is not what canon means. At all. But you being unable to look up a common word and instead substituting your own unique definition is not surprising.



But you just told me anything could be the joy if I would just stop being a [censored] and focus on it. Now exploration is the joy regardless of how I play. Not very consistent Sitruc.



If by Fallout feel you mean a feeling that was never present in either Fallout 1 or 2.



[Intelligence] Are you saying the writing in Fallout 3 is without fault?[Intelligence]



Abandoning the argument before even a single response? I think that's a new record for you.