» Tue Nov 17, 2015 11:40 am
The reasons why I love new Vegas far more than fallout 3 is because of the deep RPG elements.
In new Vegas, every quest has at least 4 ways of completing it, some have way more. In fallout 3, every quest has maybe 2 ways of completing it, sometimes a few more, but quite rare.
Fallout 3 is designed to have every quest finished by one character in one play through.
New Vegas has tons of quests that require you kill or alienate other quest givers, thus locking you out of those quests in that play through. Bethesda would never dream of this kind of quest structure.
Fallout 3 has tons of essential characters, new Vegas has none. You can kill everybody, and still finish the main quest.
Fallout 3 main story is shoehorned into playing out the same every time. Every time you side with the brotherhood and fight the enclave.
The main story in new Vegas has 4 distinct factions to side with, with variations in each of those endings. You can join the legion, ncr, Mr house and yes man.
New Vegas has a bunch of factions, and each one has a reputation system depending on how you dealt with those factions. Regardless of whether you're a good guy or bad guy, a faction only cares about how you treated them.
Fallout 3 has no faction reputation system, or any sort of crime system. You steal from someone, they attack you until you leave and come back a few days later,then they don't care any more.
Also everyone knows if you have good or bad karma and judge you on that. "Oh this guy nuked a,settlement of innocent people, but Hey, he gave that homeless man 20 bottles of water, so he's a good guy".
New Vegas made an intricate crafting system that relies on the survival, science, repair and medicine skills, as well as perks for more recipes. Fallout 3 had a few weapon recipes that only relied on finding the recipe.
New Vegas added in new ammo types, and ways to craft and convert that ammo, fallout 3 had none of that.
New Vegas has about a 2.5 to 1 ratio of quests over fallout 3, as well as countless more weapons, unique weapons, weapon types, and npcs, and more perks.
New Vegas had companions that had their own stories, as well as unique companion quests, fallout 3 did not.
New Vegas brought back traits you pick at the start of the game that all give good bonuses, as well as penalties, for more character variation and roleplay.
New Vegas has countless more speech checks that require skills other than speech, like survival, intelligence, etc, as well as perk speech checks, for roleplay value, and more options to get through quests.
New Vegas added in a hardcoe mode that makes it so food and water has a purpose, you have a need to sleep, stimpacks heal slower and companions can die, as well as ammo having weight, bringing in more immersion and more difficulty options, rather than enemies simply having more health and doing more damage.
Fallout new Vegas was way more of an RPG and emphasis is around replay value and variations in characters and play throughs. New Vegas literally made every aspect of the game more complex, added in more layers of stats and RPG mechanics, hell even the special attributes had bigger effect on the game and character.
Fallout 4 simplified things rather than make them more complicated. The dialogue system is watered down, even worse than mass effect. Your character will have the same tone every play through, will have the same voice, and the same 4 options to choose from.
No more skill checks in dialogue (only charisma has an effect), hell, no more skills period.
The new perk system is about as complex as farcry 3 or bioshocks gene tonics (neither of those games are rpgs either), skills are rolled into perks to keep the dummies from being able to gimp their character, and not to overwhelm them and make them think too much.
No faction reputation system, no hardcoe mode, much less weapons by an order of magnitude, less choices in quests, brought back a plethora of essential characters, God forbid the player kill someone important! (Protecting them from themselves).
The dialogue system undermines choices, you can say a negative thing to a guy, he will hate you, but then you can go back and say the good thing cus you didn't like the results, and the npc forgets you were an [censored] to him beforehand, cus again, God forbid the player alienates a quest giver!
Removed traits, can't let the player give his character an optional Good and negative ability, don't want them to gimp their character and lose interest in playing, do we?
But don't worry, none of that matters when you can dress your character up in different clothing, and build a little town to play doll house in between your mindless exploring.
Besides, you got nicer graphics to cap people in the head with, and fight the occasional big daddy every other mission. Oops, I mean deathclaw.
In summary, as much as I'd love obsidian to make another fallout, I highly doubt they will get the opportunity, and even if they did, there's not much to work with in fallout 4s engine, they'd have to rework the RPG system from the ground up to have any sort of tangible RPG game.
Unless of course they were allowed to use their own assets and create mauve an isometric game.
I may sound a bit bitter, but I've been following Bethesda as a company since morrowind. They were my favourite developer for years. I never even heard of fallout til they made fallout 3 (and it was my first fallout before I went and played 1 and 2), but after skyrim, fallout became my favourite gaming franchise.
Fallout new Vegas is one of my favourite games ever, as well as fallout 2. So I'm very disappointed and saddened to see my favourite RPG franchise lose almost all of the Rpg mechanics that I've grown to love the series for. I loved fallout a lot, and Bethesda. But fallout 4 is the final nail in the coffin for me, I'm no longer interested in Bethesda games (coming from the guy who lost sleep and wanted to cryogenically freeze myself while waiting for oblivion to come out), and must find another outlet to get my RPG gaming in.
Bethesda still makes great games, but not the same great rpgs that I've grown to love them for.