That was intentional by the developers. Fallout 1 and 2 took place just west New Vegas, and in those two games the player got to explore the world when it was more of a recently-nuked wasteland and in all likeliness the player helped to build all those places up. Fallout: New Vegas acknowledges that the story does, in fact, take place 200 years after the bombs fell when mankind has finally had a chance to re-establish itself. New Vegas is more "post post-apocalyptic" than just "post apocalyptic" if that makes any sense.

Things change. Time moves on. FO1, 2, and 3 presented us with a devastated post-nuclear wasteland. New Vegas finally gives us a glimpse of civilization 200 years in the aftermath. If New Vegas was just more radioactive craters, burnt houses, and collapsed buildings like DC was in FO3, then there would instead be threads about all Fallouts being entirely too much the same in atmosphere as well as more comments about how mankind still hasn't gotten anywhere after 200 years when the bombs actually fell. Obsidian simply took Fallout and had it progress in a manner than makes sense.

I'm sorry, but this one statement tells me that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Fallout 3's story was possibly the worst, most ridiculous story I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing. Several issues can be found with it (like, why are the Enclave back when they're supposed to be destroyed, why do they want to control the water purifier and more importantly; who cares because both they and you have the same aims?), but possibly the most glaring is that the very foundation of the story makes absolutely no sense. Nuclear fallout can be very easily removed from water sources using any one of a number of purification methods available to individuals (such as solar distillation) and can even be filtered easily on a large scale (floatation and sediment filtration methods). This is all going by the (absurd) assumption that fallout remains harmfully radioactive for over 100 years. This game isn't realistic by any means, but it doesn't mean that the story line should be something as ridiculous as requiring a paradise-generating machine to purify water that could be very easily purified in any number of ways.

I think the actual story and dialogue is better in this game. But on an emotional level? FO3 had that nailed. I don't know how to explain it, really. I'll blame girly hormones n' such.

In NV, civilization hasn't advanced. NV never got bombed because mr. House shot down all the missiles. If anything, it's condition is worsened compared to that time.

Fallout 3 had a great theme running through the game. New Vegas has all these different themes going on (wilde west, military, ancient rome, post-post apocalypse, sin city), but no overall personality like Fallout 3 had.
I think Bethesda started with laying out some rules for what the world was going to be, and then only added content that fit within those rules. Making evrything feel as a living breathing world.
It feels as of Obsidian thought the world was already there, so they just started adding stuff which they thought was cool, totally disregarding the big picture.

I was thinking in terms of how the NCR built itself up into a major standing government (compared to the way California was in FO1 and 2) and the effect it's had on the world it's come across.

But I'm afraid you are flat-out wrong. You listened to Mr. House tell you how he saved New Vegas and surrounding areas, so you must have heard when he mentioned that New Vegas descended into a barbaric state with loose tribes running around everywhere before he finally got things working again and sent his Securitrons out to recruit the tribes and Vaults into rebuilding the area and then have it protected. It got a lot worse before it improved into the state we see when we actually come into it during our playthrough.

the 'story' in fallout 3 was a copy paste rip off of the first two games main plots.
so what happens, if you combine the water quest from fallout 1 with the enclave trying to eradicate the wasteland people by using a form of fev (fallout 2)? yeah, that pretty much sums up the 'story' of fallout 3.
i was pretty upset, when i had to realize how blatant and uncreative bethesda's work was in that particular area.yet, many folks here trying to sell this as 'good storytelling'. that makes me cringe.




yeah, outside the settlements you were just being attacked by everything under every circumstance. i found that to be extremely boring, tbh
outside of settlements it was just shooting and looting. and i think this is exactly what the most of those complaining are missing to a certain extent in fnv.
fo3 for sure is the better first person diablo game, more dungeon crawling, more loot in containers, less talking.
i'm not saying i didn't like it, i've put nearly 300h into fallout 3, as shooting and looting can be very fun, especially in a nicely crafted world like the DC wasteland
i also think obsidian could have placed a bit more loot into some locations, but from a real RPG standpoint, obsidians game does it so much better when it gets to writing, characters and quest diversity, that i can easily live with that.





you should give the hardcoe mode a try. the most important factor of it is the lack of a quick healing option, that changes combat by quite a bit, and gives you a ton more close-to-death moments than fo3 ever could.

I agree with the OP FO3 was a much better game. When I played FO3 I couldnt wait to go exploring to see what I was going to find. With FONV you go exploring and "oh lookk a few health packs and theres a few ammo" nothing to make you think 'WOW I wonder whats in that building"! In the last week I logged 13hrs in FONV, there were plenty of days that I played FO3 13hrs stright. I guess all games can not be great games, this game was not made by Bethesda and it shows!

The Karma system is definitely worse in this game than in Fallout 3. I kill random travelers in the Mojave and i don't get negative Karma. I had negative Karma and then did a run in with some Fiends; killed them. And all of a sudden my Karma was good... Killing shouldn't give you positive karma period, i know that it did in Fallout 3 too, but there where only like 5 NPCs in the game which gave you positive Karma if you killed them. The rep system is also pretty bad, as long as you aren't vilified with said faction you can do just about every quest with them as long as you disguise yourself...

I'm wondering if some people know that Fallout 3 is not the first game in the series. It's the third game. It's supposed to be based in the world created by FO1 and 2, which are more about people rebuilding after the end of the world rather than people just trying to survive in a bombed out wasteland. Even Fallout Tactics showed that people were rebuilding society.

As for FO3's "originality," a lot of it is just copied from previous games. The main story is a mix of the main stories from FO1 and 2. Megaton is a rip off of Gravestone from Fallout: Tactics, which was a town populated by ghouls who worshiped an atomic bomb but that town made more sense since ghouls aren't affected by the radiation. It doesn't make any sense for Megaton to have been around for so long with everyone getting exposed to the radiation leaked from the bomb. Then there are towns like the Republic of Dave and Little Lamplight that made no sense. They're fun but it's like they were put in as a joke rather than to add to the setting of the game. The best designed towns in FO3 were Paradise Springs, Evergreen Mills, and Rivet City, since they actually look like towns that could sustain themselves through trade and protect themselves from mutants and raiders.

Well, yeah, it's two hundred frickin years after the bombs dropped, and the West wasn't exactly hard hit. F3 felt like it was 10 years after the war, especially compared to 1 where it's something like 70 years later and yet there is more than one settlement.

Fallout 3 is set in the east though, the east was easily more effected by the war than the west, hence they where much worse of. Fallout 3 is imo the darkest Fallout game, you can really feel its not the same people that makes it. Story wise its the worst though, but i still think that Bethesda is a better developer than Black Isle Studios and Obsidian and it certainly shows in the game.

Not really, it's constantly breaking the atmosphere with comepletely out of place stuff like Lamplight and the republic of dave. The whole "bleak atmosphere" in my opinion comes from the skeletons and blown up [censored] everywhere. Quite honestly it seems lazy and overdone to me, like we're supposed to care about these people after we've seen a suicide scene in every frickin house.

i hate new vegas, and i was looking foward to this game for a long time, i got about 25 hours in of doing the main quest and any side quest i could find on the way finished the game and thought, WOW only a few hours of that 25 hours was doing the main quest line, the rest was doing side quests that had no emotion or depth the same as the main quest, and then i though ok the game will redeem itself with exploring....no it didnt i found almost all the locations in the game and it wasnt fun it boring the locations where crap had nothing in them, had no back story, it got to the point where i couldnt be [censored] exploring anymore, and the wasteland is so empty it doesnt feel like a living world, like fallout 3 did

fallout 3 walks on new vegas in every way except iron sights, fallout 3 had a great story, the wasteland felt full and living, exploring in fallout was fun scary, and the locations had back story all of them did, and they all had things to steal

How?

There were 2 towns. Maybe like 3 settlements. I think i ran into a caravan once, and the rest were raiders. For the living part, again, how? There were no farms, there was no economy, there were no scavengers.

"and the locations had back story all of them did, and they all had things to steal"

Really? What about the Abandoned Car Fort? What's the story there, as told by Bethesda's writers? And for the stealing part, if the world was alive, someone else would have gotten there first.

New Vegas have absolut no humour compared to FO3.I really miss all the funny stuff here and there,-like the skeleton and toaster in the bathtub.
Also the followers are sooo boring with only a cupple of comment,-exept for one..
And where are all the random encounters?The emtyness and lack of encounters makes it pointless to go out of the way for exploring.
It′s not exiting.
The quests and voices/actors are much much better in NV,but still,the reward of only some caps and xp for completing them, feels emty too.
I like the idea with less skills,but at least we could have got Perks every level.Skillbooks could have been 1 (2) points worth instead of 3 (4), then
there would have been a little more reason to go out and explore.
I find the crafting and surrival absolut pointless,-counts only for the achievements.
The best they have done are the hardcoe mode,where we need to sleep and eat/drink,but it should′nt have been possible to play it (hardcoe) on very easy.

Ohh...,I forgot the music,-its terrible,-and I cant understand the speaker at all (english is my second language),-is he drunk?

^^ you're right, suicide is hilarious

hehehehehe

hahahahaha

i just crack up when i think of a depressed person ending their life. so funny. heheheheheheheheh.

While it took me awhile... i found that i loved fallout new vegas more than 3, the game just feels more right if that makes any sense.

Edit: Although i do have a few issues with New Vegas, such as the atmosphere not being as depressing. as well as their not being enough places to explore.

My honest thoughts are that having suffered FO3, FO:NV is a joy to behold ( its honest but not polite ).
Fallout 3 is fantastic IMO, but fails to live up to the expectation of a sequel with access to seven years advancement in both software tools and consumer hardware support.

Fallout 3 was designed as a about face to the series core (both in gameplay and in precepts). Fallout was sarsaparilla soda on a shelf full of Coke & Pepsi. Fallout 3 the Shasta/Faygo...
Fallout 1 shipped in an age where the market was all D&D elves and dwarves and they chucked it all and did Post Apocalypse. Fallout 3 shipped in an age where the market is all shooters and action adventures ~and so is Fallout 3. (Granted its got a huge world, and provides far more freedom... to shoot and have action adventures.) But where Fallout bucked the trends, FO3 ran with them.

Gameplay-wise I don't consider either one a series game [at all]; but as I emerged into Greensprings and later Primm (and the lands traversed in between), I kept thinking that this feels right ~where it just did not in Megaton.

My pros & cons are these (incomplete as I have not finished the game).
Pro

• (mostly) Plausible locations in context
  
• Enhanced ammo & crafting support
  
• Ammo that actually works (like AP rounds)
  
• Believable NPC's (the ones that I have seen)
  
• IMO better voice work (and voice coaching).
  
• Better music (including Inon Zur's new tracks)
  
• EDIT: I am reminded; another Pro is Perks every other level (they almost got it right).

Con

• Ironsights (the PC should be able to handle his own ~based on skill)
  
• General FO3 gameplay (albeit revised; and that this was expected going in to it)
  
• Bugs. There are too many bugs (but so far they've all been minor clipping or havoc problems)
  
• Limited camera zoom (first mod I installed was to fix this)
  
• Careless tagging of owned items (pick up a Cig off the floor in Primm to see what I mean)
  
• Stimpaks made from healing powder ingredients (this is dumb. Stimpaks were high tech military (battlefield) stimulant/healing drugs ~possibly even nano-tech IDK... they were not rootbeer)
  
• EDIT: I am also reminded; another con is Perks every companion (somebody made up for almost getting it right).

I agree with the first and second point, but not that they should have... Fallout 3 was set 200 years later ~no one lives in squalor for two hundred years; (especially not with access to cheap power and robotic labor).

Yep.

I know i'm posting in this topic a lot, but what.

" * Ironsights (the PC should be able to handle his own ~based on skill)"

What?????

What does this even MEAN? The player's character is [censored] and doesn't know how to operate one of them fancy boom boom sticks? The player's character is so GOOD he doesn't need to? Are you kidding me? That is seriously like the second thing you learn, after how to handle a firearm safely, and he's apparently so good that he doesnt need to use them? So should he just ignore all the gun safety protocols too, like "Don't shoot yourself in the head with a loaded gun" or "Don't shoot your friends" and "Don't leave loaded guns around children"?

I never really got that feeling. Vault 101 was meant to be a control vault, so no one ever left. The various experiments happening within the vaults caused the bulk of their inhabitants to never make it and vault 87 let loose a bunch of super mutants. The settlements are all fairly well established considering how few people actually emerged from vaults to rebuild society, the lack of a G.E.C.K. used anywhere and all of the hostile life all over the place.



Fallout 3's story is heavily inspired by / copied from Fallout 1 and 2, sure-- just like how Fallout 1 and 2's stories were heavily inspired by / copied from Wasteland. =)

It means that perfect stats == near perfect accuracy, while lesser stats reduce the PC's accuracy. Ironsights are to improve accuracy.
These two together are mutually excluding. In a shooter, accuracy should rely on the player's aim to score hits; a STAT based RPG should rely on the PC's stats and skill with the weapon.

In Fallout you select the target and the PC attempts to hit it (and succeeds or fails based on a [Stat & skill] weighted chance to hit). A stat based shooter shouldn't exist IMO, but FO3 & NV are just that, and as such should really use an aggressive "auto aim" to select the target, and employ the PC's stats and weapon skill to determine any hits.
**It doesn't do this... but hey. :shrug:

IMO Ironsights are a con because they further remove the PC aspect into a secondary "role" of inconsequential effect.

Ironsights don't magically make everything 100% accurate, if your skills svck then you're going to be really wobbly and in-accurate anyways.

Well... there is the option in the settings for "true ironsight". I've not used it but would assume that it eliminates the wobble?
If one does not use "true ironsights", and regular [fake?] ironsights don't affect aim then why have them? ~and if they do affect aim then why have them(?), as this tampers with the skill system, and serves to undermine the need for improving the Gun skill. :confused: