I got Fallout 3 at launch and it's onr of my favorite games ever. I never got the chance to play any of the originals and just wanted to see if Fallout 3 held up faithfully to the originals.

No.

Its so funny you just posted this... I was just about to post a long thesis about how it compares to the original two games. I've probably talked more about the game than I've actually played it, probably because I was a big fan of the previous two Fallouts but I was disappointed at how the game was so radically changed. But it is so long I will just make a separate thread for it.

No

Nah, it can't hold up to the originals. There aren't any talking Deathclaws, chess playing radscorpions, elton John refrences, scientoligists lead by Juan Cruz, or crashed Star Trek shuttles.

None of these appear in the first Fallout. And Fallout 2 doesn't fully hold up to the original either.

Yea, it's too bad Black Isle/Interplay didn't develop both.

I wonder how far their fallout 3 would have veered. A little Britney Spears dialogue...maybe a cameo by Darth Vader?

Many of the key members of the FO1 team left the company during the pre-production phase of FO2.

If you want to know what Black Isle's Fallout 3 would be like, simply read the Van Buren design documents. In my opinion, it was much better than FO2 or Bethesda's FO3, and could even be better than the original. They did make many mistakes in FO2, but they learned from them in VB, which was an impressive example of design.

Hm, I don't think so.

I think its what Fallout 1 would have been if:
1) Made today (obviously)
2) If PnP Mechanics was never planned as a component.

But I seem to be the only one saying that.

Have to agree design was impressive. Maybe they should have considered a business manager as well though ?

Well it depends how you ask the question. If you're talking about right here right now, I'd say fallout 3 is the best of them. I can say this truthfully because I played fallouts 1, 2 and 3 in the space of roughly 4 months (havent comleted them all) because I played fo2 shortly before 3's release and fo1 more recently, after the release. So i know what it feels like to play them at the same time and compare them immediately. And i'm not biased towards the FPS more than the RPG, i like both genres. So I'd say that for pretty much everything (content, quality, etc), fallout 3 wins. I can see why people that played fallout 1 and 2 in the 90's are disgruntled by the loss of the familiar 'fallout' atmosphere of the game, and yes fallout 3 has less of that black humour, but fallout 3 still keeps a good amount of that atmosphere and a bit of the humour.
However I can't answer that question if you mean a comparison from: playing it when it came out, simply because I didn't. But after playing them first hand from a clean slate I can say that fallout 3 is a better game right now, but whhich one is the best for the time it came out is up to other people to answer...

I don't really see how FO3 is better in terms of "content and quality" aside from graphics.

And blue is cooler than green, pizza better than tacos, and jazz better than country. but those are just facts....

Fallout 3, will never live up to Fallout's 1 and 2. The one saving grace of Fallout 3, is its ability to be modified and I believe that it will eventually earn a place of endearment in the hearts of Fallout fans, not in its original form, but in its ability to expand the ever growing lore of Fallout.

I don't like the course the current Fallout developers are going, but, however, I have to agree with you. Fallout 3 IS a Fallout theme game. And I loved Tactics, also considered a rip-off.

I adore the first Fallout and really liked the second and had fun with Fallout:Tactics. And after two play through with Fallout 3 I can say I like it too. But to be honest, on the first time it felt for me they bought the Fallout license in the end of the production process and not (as it really was) at the beginning.

It puzzles me why they even tried to do Fallout 3 when they change some of the core elements. They could have removing some features (which they already did), change a little bit here and there and they would still have a good (or even better) game. They could save the licenses cost and would have given the designer more freedom in developing.

In the end, I like to see F3 as a very good Fallout:Tactics sequel.

No it wasnt.

Tactics was considered Semi-Canon. It wasnt completely binned.

It was Brotherhood of Steel that was a complete pile of crap.

I've tried them and i think they svck. I am a fan that started with Fallout 3. The whole turn - based thing is garbage.

I like Fallout 3 quite a bit, but there are some things I think they could have improved. I especially don't like the limited implementation skills and stats have in this game over the previous titles. (PER not affecting range, no STR requirements on weapons, Science is only used for hacking terminals now.) They had all the opportunity to expand on these concepts instead of limited them, so I think that's certainly one thing Bethesda dropped the ball on.

Can't say I agree with that. This has been coming up a lot, and I'm still pretty sure that Fallout 1 was actually pretty close in gameplay to what they were trying to do. Maybe 3D with an overhead/ free cam if anything. But I'm pretty sure Interplay was never planning on making Fallout's combat real-time, for instance. Certainly they would have liked to have made it look prettier, but I think that's about it beyond refining the system.

I don't really have a problem with Fallout 3's combat, and had quite a lot of fun with VATS. But I can't say it was some sort of inevitable progression for the franchise.

...

That's mainly because...

1. As an cRPG it's attempting to emulate an RPG which is PnP mechanics. It's like claiming an F-16 flight sim made today should be planned as an iteration of Wing Commander and disregard actual F-16's. cRPG's are attempts to emulate RPG's which require the use of PnP mechanics, you can't emulate something by disregarding it's mechanics.

2. Fallout would've been made like Fallout today, it was designed the way it was for an express reason, it is a cRPG. The developers of Fallout felt no overriding need to waste resources individually modelling every fork.

Not all CRPGs are slaves to PnP mechanics - Ultima Underworld, TES, Deus Ex.

fallout 3 is a totally different experience to 1 and 2, and in some ways it's better, in other ways worse. I really liked the real time combat and superior graphics of fo3, but there's something charming about fo1/2 that hasn't entirely been replicated. the story seems a bit more integrated in the older games, and your actions seem to have effects all over the world, unlike in fo3 where nobody knows anything you did outside their own town, and sometimes not even then (disarming the atom bomb in megaton, for instance, had no consequence to the church). I think as a modern version fo3 does well, but the writing and story cohesion leaves a lot to be desired.

Different genres.

Ever played Jagged Alliance 2? Best game with turn-based combat. EVER. I'm not kidding, buy it from GOG and be happy.

And Fallout 3 is worse than Deus Ex, at least in the combat sense. Combat in Fallout 3 is flakey and fidgety with useless weapon skills, while combat in Deus Ex is very dependant upon stealth, skills and it's much, much harder than Fallout 3. Remember the dreaded Libery Island mission? If you went rambo, the NSF slaughtered you in a second. In Fallout 3, going rambo is not only possible, but its one of the few ways to fight with a gun. You can't make a lone sniper with high PE, LK and great gun skills like you could do in Fallout 1&2. Fallout 1&2 allowed you to go Rambo if you wanted, but standing within punching distance in a firefight with someone carrying a automatic weapon = hardcoe Death. In Fallout 3, VATS can't shoot from far away worth a damn and snipying svcks, totally killing the oportunity of sniping your enemies.