Personally, I will be really disappointed if the quests are like New Vegas quests. Not all, but a lot of them consisted of going back and forth and running from one end of the map to the other. I found them boring and not fun. I could also do without all the invisible walls. And I really hope there are not whole areas with nothing in it. I loved the companions, the story was ok, not really a story that grabbed my attention, although I thought the characters involved were great. I didn't start playing Fallout till Fallout 3, so making Fallout 4 a "true" fallout game means nothing to me as I suspect it does to most of the causal gamers that will purchase the game. I like both Fallout 3 and New Vegas so I hope Fallout 4 is a combination of both games(especially the New Vegas companions, hopefully they will improve on them and give them back stories and quests). I really liked all the little side stories and quests in Fallout 3 though, like The Wasteland Survival Guide, Nuka Cola Challenge, collecting the Bobble Heads of course, Blood Ties, the Replicated Man, etc. I do feel like Fallout 3 had more atmosphere and personality and it was more dynamic. I think dynamic is the key word here.

A lot of the quests in New Vegas were boring though.

I'll take those "boring" quests over the very limited ones we usually see in Bethesda games. For an RPG there isn't a lot of choices in completing their quests.

I'm still trying to think of a interesting quest in FO3 myself.

And see that is not "it" for me. My biggest problem with New Vegas is that I always have to go the same way every time I start the game. In Fallout 3 when I leave that vault I can go in any direction I want. If I don't want to immediately go to Megaton I don't have to. In New Vegas I tried to go directly to New Vegas and it was dang near impossible. I prefer to go the direction I want. To me that is fun. I think all this "Fallout 3 vs New Vegas" debate boils down to personal preference. Unfortunately I have a feeling we are going to be funneled in one direction in Fallout 4. I hope not.

Yeah it's personal preference. I need a reason to explore other than "because".

"Because" is the very essence of exploring. It's curiosity. What is out there? What can I find? I don't care about my Dad or Benny. What is out in this Wasteland?

Well I'm more of the it's a nuclear holocaust I'm sure whatever is out isn't exactly "nice" kinda guy. In games like the TES I enjoy random exploring a little more

Well that sounds more a problem with map layout then actual quests, but to each their own.

I would hope that Bethesda looks at their contemporaries and learns from them.

New Vegas did some things better than F3, Witcher 3 did some things better than F3

Hopefully they'd also look at the basis of the franchise for their next iteration.

Fallout 1 and 2 did some things better than F3.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if F4 took all those things into consideration instead of obstinately just doing things their way? I hope they do, and I hope that becomes the new Bethesda way. I hope dialogue and writing is now a "battle they want to fight".

For F3 it wasn't

"After a certain point, when you're taking on a project of this magnitude, you've got to pick your battles, and you can't pick them all because you just end up trying to be everything and not being anything. Dialogue wasn't a battle we wanted to pick."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bethesda-softworks-pete-hines-interview?page=2

New Vegas elitists everywhere. I love both games, but I prefer Fallout 3. So yes, NV had better quests and it did a lot of things right, but it also got a lot of things VERY wrong.

The world and ability to explore, the world was terrible in New Vegas, ridiculously linear. You are literally forced to go one way. Deathclaws to the north, invisible walls to the east, so you have to go south through Primm, and then Nipton, through to Novac. Every. Single. Time. That is at least 5 hours of doing the exact same thing, every character. Whereas in FO3, you have complete freedom over where to go and your choices. Megaton? Nah, let's go directly to Rivet City this time! It was up to YOU, not the GAME. The New Vegas world was cramped, small, and had very boring, bland locations. There wasn't enough enemies to fight either, whereas in FO3 there were way more enemies to give it that feel of a truly dangerous world, danger could be around any corner in FO3. I also love the Metro tunnels, there was a whole underworld to explore with those tunnels!

Next up, the atmosphere. FO3 had an incredible atmosphere, and actually felt like a WASTELAND. It was dark, depressing, gritty like it should be. And then there's New Vegas, this is the part that I hate most about NV, it's way too HAPPY. It's so fruity dooty and cheery, that it sometimes makes me feel like I'm playing Oblivion. I got spurrrrs that jingle jangle, hehe!! No. This is not what Fallout is about. New Vegas is not serious enough and doesn't even feel like a wasteland. In fact, you could literally go down to the Mojave today, walk around, and get a similar experience. FO3 hit the nail on the head for post-apocalyptic atmosphere, it was depressing, hopeless like it should be! The world was dangerous, crazy, filled with psychopaths and mutants, and radiation actually mattered. The only time that I worried about radiation in NV was those craters on Black Mountain, or Camp Searchlight, but other than that, clean water and food was plentiful and you didn't even have to worry. I don't want spurrs that jingle jangle, I want the world that was set on fire. A dark, gritty, and dangerous post-apocalyptic nightmare world.

To wrap this up, I'm tired of the New Vegas elitism, because New Vegas isn't perfect either. It depends on what's more important to you. Quests and personal character development, or the world and atmosphere? New Vegas has better quests and character choices/involvement, but Fallout 3 has a far superior world and atmosphere. And for me personally, the world and the atmosphere are much more important to me, so therefore I like Fallout 3 better. Really, in the end both of them are equally good, they both have strengths and weaknesses, which then all boils down to personal preference. The problem is that some people think their preferences are fact, and this is where all the elitism occurs. Bethesda should try to make Fallout 4 have the best elements of both, to bring a balance between the FO3 and NV crowds, and make it the best Fallout game ever created.

I like how you say "this is not what Fallout is about" yet take your "what Fallout is about" from one game in a series that has somewhere between 5 and 7 games, depending on which ones you count. I do agree with you though. They should take the strengths of Fallout 3 and NV. While they're at it they can look at the other games in the series too.

I agree, it's not.

But it's a game that succeeded heavily by writing a good story and staying true to the originals.

Fallout 3 had some nice things about it, but they're two different games (despite the same engine and similar gameplay), which is why there have been many heated debates about which one is better.

What I hope for is for Bethesda to adopt FONV's successes, as it will only add to the quality of the game. And I hope that they learned from the mistakes they made in Fallout 3.

Well it's the most true to the rest of the series. That being said I've seen just as many people crap on NV and praise Fallout 3 to no end.

No you don't it's quite possible to make it past the Cazadores north of Goodsprings or through Sloan past the Deathclaws. Just get your hands on a stealthboy which there are. That being said it's not like lovers of New Vegas praise it's exploration it's just overall a better game (If we were to make a check list) with its characters, writing, quest choices, companions, weapons, DLC, ect. I'm not bashing Fallout 3 either I like that game a lot but it doesn't feel like it's apart of the series as much nor is there a whole lot of depth to it when it comes to the things I mentioned before. If you just want a game to explore a bunch of locations it's perfect though.

Not completely true there are a lot of locations that much be entered through other cells as they do not appear on the map otherwise. Most of them dealing with the Metro tunnels that you enjoyed.

Was Fallout 3 the only Fallout you played before New Vegas? It has its serious moments but the series is very much a dark comedy at times. Not to mention the reason NV doesn't feel like a wasteland anymore is because it has been over 200 years since the bombs dropped people are you know actually advancing. Fallout 3 did very little of this which is pretty odd given the time frame. As for radiation there are plenty of spots in the game not sure what you mean by that.

Don't think anyone thinks New Vegas is perfect. I think they did an incredible job given the short dev time, it's and amazing game but perfect naw. If they could blend the two where it would make fans of old and new happy that'd be ideal but I just don't see that happening. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim have proven Beth cares more about exploration and wow factor more so then compelling story and characters and that's not necessarily a bad thing it's just not the biggest priority for me. I'd much rather have interesting characters and quests with a wide range of diverse outcomes but hey that's just my personal preference. To each their own, I'm sure you'll be happy with Fallout 4 if those are the aspects of the game you hold dear.

I would prefer that they try to make it better than the best parts of Fallout 3 and New Vegas,

I really liked Agatha's Quest line. It had you travel to the top of the map, to go vault hunting for her.
You usually find her when you're headed up to Minefield, while doing the Wasteland Survival Guide quest, which in and of itself has you going plenty of places.


Plenty of things to explore in F3 with a reason behind it, if you're talking to people in settlements and/or snooping around.

That said,

I am hoping for some carry over from NV.
And really hoping that they took copious notes from and/or have obsidian consulting.
I'm really optimistic that Bethesda and Obsidian have and will continue to have a productive work relationship, regarding FO. So my thinking is that if they are going to play volleyball with the series, they should be working together to make all of the games great.

Sometimes you need to guide the player this way or that way in order to tell your story. In FNV you could go through the deathclaw route early on, but it would be very difficult as a low level character. That's one of the fun things in open world rpgs, certain areas only really open up to you after you've reached a certain point in the story. Many great games do this and nobody complaints about that.

And as for the whole post apocalyptic world that FO3 supposedly does better. FO3 ignores the fact that people in the wasteland are building new settlements and towns just like in FO2, so graphically FO3 looks like a wasteland but gameplay wise it's the complete opposite! In no time do you amass a sh*tload of ammo and stimpacks and radaway in FO3, making what little radiation there is pointless. hardcoe mode in FNV where stimpacks/radaway heal over time and where the player needs to keep an eye on food/water/sleep gives the player a real sense of danger in the wasteland. Whereas in FO3 you would see all this destruction around you but none of it actually presents you with any real danger.

This isn't FNV elitism, but to many people (myself included) FNV simply is the game that FO3 should've been. I didn't start FO3 with a sense of snobism that it would be a crap game. No, I actually wanted to like it, but after playing through it I quickly realized that it was a hollow game with only some superficial elements from the original games. FNV wasn't perfect either, but it did everything FO3 did an much more. Because they understand the Fallout universe better than Bethesda care to admit. Obsidian knows how to build a great story and write great dialogue, Bethesda, by their own admission, don't and they don't even care that they don't. That's the real shame.

That said, Bethesda does learn from the criticism aimed at their previous games. I have no doubt that FO4 will be a much better Fallout game than FO3 was. But wether the writing and story and challenging combat will be better as in FNV remains to be seen.

No it literally didn't. Plenty of people have gone through those obstacles and ran straight to The Strip. It's not a sin to require some ingenuity and skill from the player rather than just laying the open path with a red carpet in front of him. I'm not even a "New Vegas elitist", that game has plenty of problems to criticise, but this recurring complaint about linearity and initial hardships is one of the pettiest of them. It's very fine to not like how it does its thing, even the project directior himself said that the structure of the opening terrain might've been a bit off, but the opening is neither linear nor does it force one path over the others.

Fallout new Vegas for me was the definitive fallout experience. I played fallout 3 and when l had to decide I chose fallout new Vegas And I think that fallout 4 should take some of the steps new Vegas did.

Yes, it's called introduction. Better than throwing one into the wasteland and having them get lost. Also on the way there are some things that the player needs to know to make some sense of the world. It's called narration, something Bethesda needs to learn.

FNV definitely wasn't perfect, nobody has ever claimed that. But it's much more of a Fallout than Oblivion. Fallout 3 is the opposite.

Personally, I preferred Fallout 3's style of open world and scattered quests. Like a previous poster said NV was just too linear. I even liked the atmosphere of FO3 much more. Although, it would have been nice if the quests had more choices and consequences and we could actually witness changes take place in the game.

Unlike F3 FNV has plenty of branching quests, once you get past the introduction, and even there is some branching. That's hardly "linear". Quests in Fallout 3 are "follow the instructions, collect a reward", sometimes with a minor decision at the end of it.

It's like saying "Fallout 2 was linear because it's difficult to get to San Francisco right after leaving the Temple of Trials"....

*gasp*

People have different opinions?

No way!

Depends what you mean. Level of linearity certainly isn't an opinion. An example for all http://i.imgur.com/mAENC.jpg

Of course you can prefer TES-style of world/writing, nothing wrong with that and I like it myself, but that doesn't have a lot common with Fallout. It's then a TES game set in Fallout universe.

It is an opinion. To me the game has always felt very linear. Whether you can prove that on a chart or graph won't make it feel any less linear to me.