I think Fallout 3 told the player of it's background, mostly because the franchise was returning after so long and it wanted to re-describe the world of Fallout, assuming most of today's gamers hadn't of played the older Fallout games. I have to disagree with you about how most Fallout 3 characters have little to no personality or background. Upon conversating with them, you can find out alot about a character's past. (Ex: Carol from Underworld, Tenpenny/Dave/Ted Strayer/Dukov, Susan Lancaster, Roy Phillips, Megaton residents, etc etc). Once choosing every dialogue option possible, when conversing with an NPC and then listening to their response, thoroughly...you can find out a lot about that character's past, their hobbies, etc.

But I have to say...compared to what the Fallout franchise brings...New Vegas's faction options are just a minor upgrade to Fallout's "already-there" RPG elements, such as vast free roam, trading, scavenging, etc. Don't get me wrong. I think New Vegas's faction siding is great and it really added a neat upgrade to the gameplay(including the choosing of the 4 paths).

By the way...with a high enough speech level...you can shortcut your way out of most quests in Fallout 3 as well(Apart from "mission" quests which require heavy duty and lurking)

While some characters were pretty interesting, most had very little background and I feel like I barely know them. For some reason the character I liked most was Gob.

And I really don't get the speech thing. For nearly everything it's either to get a better reward or I'm able to get the same result without using speech at all. Ugh. Don't remind me of the lurking. After I beat the game the first time with a whole lot of quests I didn't complete, I tried to put them off as long as possible so I wouldn't have to go in the subways.

The metros can be slightly eerie, I agree. But I liked them. That's just one of the elements makes Fallout 3 so merky and lonesome. My character has an urge to be lurky anyway.

But for example...the player character is able to pass a speech check with Three Dog, upon meeting him at Galaxy News Radio, which will allow you to skip the quest, "Galaxy News Radio". You can also win a speech check, upon conversing with Colin Moriarty and he will reveal to where your dad has gone, and you will not have to kill Silver. I wouldn't necessarily say Fallout 3 has the tendency to be speech-skillful for the benefit of the progression of the quest, more as it has tendency to gain benefits of a quest.(Examples: Griffon in the "Aqua Pura!" quest;You can speech check him to give you part of the sharings from his profits. Lucas Simms in the "The Power Of Atom" quest; You can win a speech check to where he will pay you 500 caps for disarming the Megaton Nuke, instead of 100). Little things like this are seen throughout the gameplay, within Fallout 3.

So not all get you the same result.

That's what I meant by better rewards. I want to use speech to manipulate people to do things for me, or start whole new ways to complete quests. Not just triple the bottle caps or a little more info I would of found anyway.

The beauty of the old Fallouts and mostly in New Vegas was that ypu were able to talk your way out of almost ANY situation! In the first 2 I was able to go whole games without killing anybody. Just by using speech, other times I killed everybody right down to the children. That's what I felt Fallout 3 was missing.

Edit: The Metros weren't eerie. They were tedious. They all looked the same, I wasted a crapload of stimpacks and bullets intended for the other side of the Metro on supermutants, raiders and ghouls, and I ALWAYS got lost.

I have played Fallout 3 countless times and always have speech maxed out and more often then not with really high Charisma and IMO Fallout 3 doesn't have many "talk your way out of it" options. With New Vegas it's very rare not to have a "talk your way out of it option." The only one that comes to mind is with Mr.House and taking out the Brotherhood of Steel.

I don't care if you think Fallout 3 is the best RPG of all time. That is your opinion and you have every right to have it. I am just stating my opinion, and that is Falout 3 is more of a FPS than an RPG, that Fallout Tactics is more of an RPG.