As others have pointed out the war was 200 years ago. FO3 got it wrong by making it look like the war happened 20 minutes ago. For 200 years no one in DC figured out how to farm or rebuild with new materials yet some how some people learned to do facial surgery and work in labs :facepalm:

Fo3 was the one that did not feel like a Fallout game. New Vegas is the return.

I just tell myself, it's because of the super mutants. No-one's been able to rebuild or anything, because of the super mutants. It works, as long as I don't actually think about it at all.

I do think New Vegas is a little devoid of the whole "nuclear apocalypse" feel, but that is personal preference, and I don't like the game less because of it. It's still wonderful.

I dont see it as that much of a plothole. D.C. unlike the West, never had G.E.C.Ks to rebuild, none of them save MAYBE 87 were meant to open (Hence the G.E.C.K in the Vault I assume) so everyone in D.C. was living on minimal power as well as truly scavanging, however, I feel that the overemphasis on the Raiders and Super Mutants preventing/demotivating rebuilding to be a big flaw in the games story telling.

D.C. is super mutant central. it's a super mutant safe haven

No one lives their entire life in squalor when they have access to advanced medicine, military grade armor and weaponry, fusion power, and robotic labor (not to mention functional computers being commonplace).

*So they lived five generations like that in DC? If the area was infested with dangerous aberrations that stifled a progress... Most would move.

IMO the 'sequel' should not have been based on that kind of situation, and that kind of 'out of context' re-use of series assets. If that was their plan all along... They should have just done a series reboot and abandoned all of it instead of poisoning it.


***I agree that Fallout 3:New Vegas doesn't feel like Fallout anymore; but then... Fallout 3 never did either.

I love it when someone who has only played Fallout 3 claims New Vegas "doesn't feel like Fallout". Priceless.

I loved how Fallout 3 looked like a nuclear Wasteland where as Fallout New Vegas was just a wasteland. I like both games equally so I can't really say if New Vegas is more of a fallout game then Fallout 3 is.

I doubt it they never managed to farm because they did not have gecks. People of Arroyo were able to farm and so did other people in FO2. Same with locations in Fallout and no mention of Gecks being used in the Mojave area.

True, but you have to remember, the global node aloud hundreds of miles of exploration. F:3 is D.C. alone. Head to a city outside the D.C. Region? Might be booming or something. I wont defend Fallout 3 saying it was perfect, but I do feel New Vegas made alot more travel in a map, D.C. was just D.C. Vegas was the Vegas Region. All in all. world scaling is oft neglected.

@Thread- Patrolling argument threads almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.

Looks like that DC have more chances to survive a nuclear attack, i mean, it was more hit with bombs, but the buildings still are barely intact, unlike California, where only few bombs fell, and its nearly wiped out every building in existence

NV is suppose to be Fallout with little to no radiation, it is suppose to be "not so Fallout"

But I don't think they need to reboot. All it takes is some carefully implemented prequel, i.e. not SW 1~3

Fan boys are cute when they try too hard

Fallout had little to no radiation (except in a few locations, and anything neon green).

Fallout 3 was basically a caricature of the series trappings ~made first person. Fallout New Vegas, was just a little bit more in line with the series proper.

They should have done a reboot if they weren't doing a serious sequel; there is very little in Fallout 3 from the series but for a few names and the mascot, and none of the gameplay. :shrug:
A reboot could have made a clean break from the series fanbase and started a new product for the new market, unhindered by the unwanted series baggage; (including the original fans). I think that a lot of us would have preferred that to a sort of undead Fallout, that walks and talks, but really isn't the same creature and doesn't know us anymore.

Agreed; that was a real hang up... unless you were brand new to the series, it just doesn't make any kind of sense...
~well... I'm wrong, it does make one kind of cents. :shrug:

I have to agree, but internet 'LOOK AT ME I'M MAD CAUSE SIDING WITH THE ORIGINAL ___' is a dime a dozen, usually their final argument to fall back is 'THATS NOT HOW THE ORGINALS WOULD HAVE DONE IT'

That's not such a bad argument for a series game... I mean as opposed to a setting based game. :shrug:
They chose to market it as 'Fallout 3', not 'Fallout:Apocalypse', or 'Fallout:DC'.

There are folks who might be happy about Warhammer 40K based Tropico clone, centered around city building ~but it wouldn't be the Dawn of War fan, and such a game while fun perhaps ~would be unsuitable as the official 'Dawn of War 3'.

:laugh:

I can see where you're coming from, but honestly, I think to hold the idea a game changing mechanics makes it 'untrue' to the series is just being a ludite about change to anything. That isn't to say F3 is better, I mean, when I bought the Trilogy pack over the summer, I found that Fallout 3's dialogue couldn't match up to one of the olders farts, but honestly, I enjoy F3, granted not anymore as New Vegas is more appealing, I think it's the fancy Vegas lights, call me a dummy, but I think 200 years after a war and having no lights is just...well....dumb.

:lmao:

But why exactly?
Mechanics make the series, the setting is just part of the IP ~Warhammer is a great example, but not the only one. Look at Diablo 1, 2, and 3.

Could you say the same thing about "being a ludite" if the next "Call of Duty" were an administration sim?

I enjoy them both, but that doesn't make them decent sequels ~just decent games.

I always thought it was the setting and not the system that made a squeal, and sure Fallout 3 was not perfect on that but it was close enuff for me to still count it a Fallout game.

It's kinda both.

Not get me start on SC2

To be fair if you think in micro details FO3 was a direct sequel to 1 and 2.

Plot: come seemingly from a vault into a wasteland barely settled, help out with water pipe / well in the first town.
Go on to discover a Mutant menance.
Discover a ghoul society.
Find a big ship.
Discover a serious high tech menace to all society.
Help stop anarchy at home in the vault.
Bring water to the the people and solve everyones problem while joining up with the BoS.

The system only changed with V.A.T.s and stream lining skill points, apart from 1st, 3rd person toggable views.
Sequel = rip off, rip off = sequel, still makes a very good game, especially to new blood.

NV again tweaked the system just like every FO game has.
It did not follow the main events in FO2 it just used some small background info from the NCR to add to the history.
It focuses on the Mojave itself, not any other FO game setting, a few things / people are familliar but not enough to call itself a sequel.

When you get into finicky details none of the games are sequels, and I like that tbh.
New places, new people, a common but outright different feel to each's universe with focus on different twisted aspects of RL, all this is what makes FO imo.
Not some idea of purity that even the dev's that made it would hold anymore.

There's a lot more than that. A quick list off the top of my head of things that Fallout 3 axed with significant effect on gameplay: Armor Class, different resistance values for different weapon types, charisma affecting party size, endurance affecting healing rate, perception affecting ranged combat, multiple skills (Doctor, Outsdoorsman, First Aid, Traps, Steal, Gambling, Throwing), Traits.

I'm sure there's more but that's all I can really come up with now and that's just stuff that was removed without even getting into the radical changes Fallout 3 made that again, do have a significant effect on the game (for starters the overwhelming importance player skill as opposed to character skill now plays in comparison to the previous Fallouts). This really isn't just elitist [censored]ing about a minor camera angle change. It's about fundamental differences between Fallout 3 (and New Vegas to a lesser extent) and Fallout 1 and 2.

I'm with the 'setting makes the series' crowd but I understand why so many fans of the first two games were unhappy with 3. It was a very significant change.

Like the poster above pointed out, the first two rely on character skill rather than player skill (the obvious exception being player intelligence and decision making -- nothing the first two could really do about that except in a few cosmetic ways, like the dialogue for dumb characters); Fallout 3 and New Vegas, of course, are beatable at a low level by a player with good reflexes and a smidgen of intelligence. The first two games, in fact, were designed to recreate the feel of tabletop RPGs. They did this very well and gained a vociferously loyal fan base as a result. The new games are RPG/FPS hybrids.

Bethesda, for better or worse, decided to emulate the game play that evolved through the Elder Scrolls series. Personally, I'm fine with that. But you have to give the No Mutants Allowed crowd a little slack -- Fallout 3 must have felt like a slap in the face.

In Beth's defense, though, while VATS has come under criticism, it evoked familiarity by being visually based on the old game's targeting system and it also allowed what basically amounts to turn-based combat. The minigames are also affected by character skill. They did try, guys.

Personally, I think F3 is a much smarter game than the NMA crowd allows. I keep seeing people here whining that this or that is a rip-off, or 'lazy writing' (the laziest criticism) or some other middling agit that's just an excuse to vilify Bethesda. I think that the original faithful are so put off by the new gameplay style that they are sorely subjective about every other aspect of the 'new' Fallout. I started with 3 and then went back to the originals; my experience was pleasure at how carefully Bethesda attempted to capture the Fallout feel. The only really major setting decision I saw was an extra emphasis on the 50's elements of the originals, which were mostly background flavor in the first two. Personally, I love that 50's stuff, so I don't care.

The developers knew that the Fallout fan base, while being a visible and vocal presence on-line, is actually pretty small compared to the fan base of most videogame franchises. Being professionals and aware of fanbases, they knew that nothing they could do would please the hardcoe so they went after new players with a fresh setting that required no lore or canon knowledge. That's a design choice, not a 'mistake'.

I'm sorry, what was the question? :biggrin: