I think there's truth to this, but I wouldn't really call it intellectual versus emotional as that makes it sound like preferring the visual approach means you can't be an intellectual, which isn't true. Instead I'd call it literary versus visual. I tend to look at it like this, Fallout 3 is a great painting, New Vegas is a great novel. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages and objectively neither is inherently better than the other.

I guess now what we need is a great graphic novel.

Yes... I just quoted myself!

Ahhh, the old “if you don’t agree with me, you must not be as deep” argument. With a dash of “it’s OK if you like the pretty, pretty, pictures” thrown in for good measure.

They’re both mighty fine games, and both have plenty reasons to qualify as one’s favorite. No need to delude ourselves into believing that a particular preference makes us a person of greater depth or greater taste.

BTW for what it's worth, I think UndeadPendulum is wonderfully civil and open minded. It's rare to find someone here that takes
opposing viewpoints with this level intellectual humility.

Fair point.

That said my youngest, who is a rampaging idiot when it comes to video games (rampaging = likes to run around just shooting everything), tolerated FO3 and eventually managed to beat/finish it.

He bailed a couple of hours into FONV (not long after he shot Sunny Smiles in the face) :rofl:

I enjoy New Vegas quite a bit more than Fallout 3, but we all get to have opinions, which is nice.

After reading what Destiny wrote, I don't think that's what was being said. I think the way it was being compared is similar to the difference between people who read Tom Clancy or Stephen King books and people who watch Tom Clancy or Stephen King movies.

One is big on story, plot details, and character depth while the other focuses more on making the story more aestheically pleasing. What Destiny was trying to say (at least from my perspective) is that people who like Fallout 3 get more from the visuals and atmosphere whereas the folks that prefer Fallout: New Vegas are more pleased by the depth of the story and the detail put into the game. Neither group of people is dumber than the other (although this gaming community seems to have it's fair share of those people too)... They just have different things they prefer to have as priorities in the game.



I agree here. I think he deserves kudos for presenting his opinion without taking the usual stance on these boards. That being "I'm right and everyone who disagrees with me is obviously an idiot." UndeadPendulum is more honest about where his opinion comes from and even promoted a civil debate as opposed to the usual flame-war. That warrants a prize I think...

Fallout Peace Prize - For successfully stating his opinion: :ribbon:

Fallout 2 is still king *runs*

Fallout 4 is the graphic novel

Not trying to start a fight or anything but I found that the deepest Vegas got was the grave you were buried in in the beginning. After killing Benny you have no motivation, and although you are a local you have absolutely no background...

Unlike F3 where you were motivated to find your father and then carry out his (and your mother's legacy...

If you haven't already realized I like Fallout 3 better :disco:

Agreed, it is. Though on the subject of gameplay & mechanics, it would seem there is more to it in FO:NV... Does the extra make it a better game ~that too is subjective (in my case, its "yes")

*but contextually speaking I find NV to be much closer to the series ideal, (that being Fallout itself). :shrug:

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel forever!

EDIT:


As I said in another thread, you can't really have a pre-determined motivation or a background in New Vegas. Otherwise while it may make more sense for your character to align with one faction, it wouldn't make any sense to align with another. Your character's origins are a complete mystery so that you can establish a history that will work with your chosen path. Where your character is from, and their history and agenda is left completely up to you.

The way Fallout 3 was setup worked for Fallout 3 because you always have to side with the Brotherhood of Steel and fight the Enclave. For New Vegas, if the Caesar's Legion ran over your dog with a steam powered chariot you may be motivated to side with the NCR, House, or be a "wild card", but it wouldn't make sense to be able to side with the Legion.

I can see how people might be motivated more by the father/child connection than the path of revenge and eventual segue into the molding of the Mojave's future. It never felt disjointed to me in Fallout: New Vegas though because that's how almost all Fallout games are. You start with a simple initial task and then find yourself on the brink of doing something incredibly important (Fallout 1: Find water chip then kill Master, Fallout 2: Find GECK then destroy Enclave, Fallout 3: Find father then finish Project Purity...). I was more motivated by the main quest in Fallout: New Vegas because revenge is an easy motivation to latch on to whereas I have a harder time accepting the search for a parent as a motivation. Then I had the different Karma levels to deal with. It always felt off when I was playing a "bad" character in Fallout 3 because it doesn't seem likely that a "bad" person would go off looking for their daddy and helping the DC wasteland get clean drinking water.

Again, there is this wonderful thing that people did back in the 70's, 80's, 90's on pen and paper... called "Role-Playing" where they would give their characters motivation, stories, and a personality. Whereas in Fallout 3 it was "here's the story, your from a vault your looking for your daddy then bad guys kill daddy then you kill bad guys with giant robot. just go with it."

I preferred Fallout 3 because, in my mind, the story had more heart. In Fallout 3, you're a kid who's lost his only family and been cast out of the safe place where you grew up into the frightening outside. And so, you begin a long and difficult odyssey, first to find him, then to rescue him, and then to finish the work that he left the vault to do. And your ultimate goal is to bring Project Purity online and help all the people of the wasteland. The Brotherhood of Steel, your main compatriots, may not be perfect angels, but they're willing to go into harm's way to help the people around them.

Compare this to New Vegas: you start out as a courier, and get shot in the head. And so, you begin your quest, seeking vengeance. Ultimately, however, you gain the power to decide who gains control of Hoover Dam and New Vegas. You have no other choice: no matter what happens, you are helping someone gain ultimate dominion over New Vegas, even if that someone is you. And in most aspects of the storyline, you are forced to commit various atrocities: House, for all his noble intent, demanda that you mass-murder the Brotherhood of Steel, and all of the other storylines require that you betray and murder Mr. House. And don't even get me started on what Caesar makes you do.

Furthermore, F3's focus on karma made it more a game of good and evil rather than F:NV's focus on playing factions off against each other. Both games allow you to be a monster, but F3 allows you to be a saint as well. In F3, you can sell the Stradivarius for caps, but you can also give it to its rightful owner, and restore a measure of art and beauty to the wasteland. You can kill Three-Dog, but you can also restore his broadcasting ability, so that the truth is broadcast. You can enslave Bryan, leave him on his own, or find him a loving new home. You can help Moira write an outstanding guide, or a poor one, or no guide at all. You can enslave people, decline to do so, or eradicate slavery once and for all by taking out Paradise Falls. And, of course, you can vaporize Megaton, or you can save it.

New Vegas, conversely, may be more realistic, but it's also more depressing. Even if you aid the NCR (which is about as close to a "good karma" main faction as you can find), there are consequences to some factions that aren't necessarily good. And an "Independent" Vegas has consequences of its own. It's pretty much impossible to find an ending that is satisfying across the board.

I do agree that F3'sa storyline feels stilted if you're playing an evil monster (unless you poison the water at the end), but by and large, I like the opportunity F3 gives you to do amazing good, or appalling evil, or to just look after yourself. Just my opinion.

This.

I had to get quite creative to play a non goody two shoes char in FO3. Having the character go "bad" after becoming very disillusioned after daddy died in the purifier was how I managed it. Of course I had to play good until that time, then abandon Dr Li (and the main story) at the Citidel to go off to the Pitt or wherever (side missions) to slowly devolve into a life of bitterness and poor decisions.

However, I had to find that moment of clarity (maybe Mothership Zeta? Alien abduction would sure make one rethink their life) to prompt her to go back to the Citidel in search of self and redemption thus resuming the linear (and somewhat annoying) main quest.

Can't lie, it did make for a fairly powerful playthrough but the options are limited if you want to somehow make that main quest mesh with a (temporarily) evil or angry character.

Yeah but... being evil in FO3 makes no [censored] sense.

Ok, I'm the most evil bastard in the Captal Wasteland. I'm so evil I'm let into Paradise falls simply on reputation alone. Then why the hell am I helping the [censored] white knights of the wasteland? I don't gain any money from it, and by the time I finally do get an option to do something evil, I've already acted out of character enough that it looks freaking stupid.

Personally I see what the OP means. Much as I prefer NV as a whole, Fallout 3 did the scary thing much better. Even when it didn't make much sense.

Much of Fallout 3 was indoors, in long tunnels and abandoned areas full of monsters. NV was mostly reclaimed, and full of friendly humans, with 100% of travel taking place in the bright open air, where nothing can creep up on you.

Well, NV isnt the only Fallout game with depressing endings for example, in Fallout 2 the endings of Broken Hill ( a village led by Marcus) always ends in a depressing way, Fallout 3 is the only exception of all Fallout games, due to the Black And White moriality

I mean, the game is really biased against evil characters, no matter what you do you ends helping the East Coast BOS, I always wanted to help the Enclave, or also why not, do not help anyone and reclaims the Capital Wasteland for you own interest..... yes, moar evil mhuaaaaaaHAHAHAHAHH ....
ehem...

With all due respect I think you just hit on the very opportunities that FO3 FAILS to provide (and that FONV does). It is, in my opinion, the single biggest flaw in this really fun RPG.

In FO NV, if you do not like what a faction tells you to do you can betray them or just walk away and do your own thing. In FO3 you have to do what your dad and the BoS want of you no matter how you feel about it. I think a lot of people forget that role-playing your motivations for the end of FO NV is ROLE PLAYING and not "Here is what you have to do. Now be a good little vaultboy and do it while we sit on our asses in the pentagon playing with transformers." That is just my opinion.

I think fallout new vegas does better with options. Fallout 3 gave options on side quests but on main quest, you ARE a white knight out to save the wasteland. Fallout NV you decide on who you fight for and what you do for them

There are plenty of people who feel the way you do, OP, myself included.
i know exactly what you mean.
NV doesn't have that eery feel that FO3, and no matter how many people here want to try and make an excuse for that, that was how a post-nuclear wasteland should feel, and the game was great because of it.
Let's put it this way, if NV had an even eerier feel, many people here would be saying "Wow! The atmosphere is so much better here than that stupid Bethesda game!!"

Whoops, I meant to say not as much as a focused aspect in the older games, FO3 shoves it in your face.

If you were given the option to side with the Enclave and still activate the purifier without using the FEV.... then I might have enjoyed FO3 more. You could be like, "Ya I gained your trust and now the wasteland has clean water, svck it!" Or I could put the FEV in if I wanted.