This a pretty big review on fallout new vegas. It was just a hit and miss for me completely. I just didn't understand it lol.

First I'll start off by telling you the changes in FNV from F3. I can say without a doubt the entire core system regarding skills and stats has been upgraded for the better.
Special points and stats make more sense now but still fall short on which perks will be available to you. For example perception unlocks key gun element perks however it says in its description that it basically doesn't have anything to do with guns. So in that respect it still felt short of "amazing".
Random items are more useful now since there is a much larger crafting field to play on in this game compared to fallout 3.

There are much more defined class builds this time around because the skills and stats have been reworked to fit each other better, however like I said before some still don't mingle well with the right perks that become available to you. So creating a specific type of character actually makes a lot more sense this time around, however you may get disappointed later down the road when you are wondering why you never got certain perk options that seem to be key for specific builds but just weren't there unless you researched builds before making a character, which you shouldn't have to do.

The graphics visually look the same as Fallout 3. I am not even sure there are any enhancements at all in visuals aside from some dust storms that are rather mediocre and, what seemed to me, to be fixed in specific locations. Aside from that there is no other kind of weather. No lightning storms, no rain, nothing other than the occasional strong breeze that blows dust around.

Fallout new vegas offers a new game mode called "hardcoe mode" Which is an optional difficulty setting that pops up right after you finish creating your character in the beginning of the game. Basically stim packs heal over time and ammo has weight and such, when you get crippled limbs they can't be repaired with stimp packs, only doctors bag (a new item) or by a doctor. Food//water and sleep is a necessity in hardcoe mode and it doesn't hinder gameplay or make it an annoyance. It actually made more sense playing in hardcoe mode then it does without it.

It also goes on to say that you will receive a special reward for completing the game on hardcoe however all this is, is an achievement and the ability to turn hardcoe mode on//off at will in the options menu. Hardly a reward.
There are a lot more factions and people that can hate you in this game than there was in fallout 3. There are actually just random small villages that either like or dislike you based on what you do for them or to them which was similar to fallout 3 but more pronounced in a sense.

You will enjoy all of this until you abruptly finish the game and aren't able to continue playing. That's right, you cannot continue playing if you choose to take one of the three paths at the end of the game. Good, bad or neutral are all available options however each path leads to the same conclusion, the game just ends and you cannot continue playing unless you saved earlier or make a new character. The lack of space that is used on the map in new vegas is mind numbing. It's about a fifty fifty ratio. 50% space used on the map and 50% just simply wasn't used. In this aspect they fell way shorter than fallout 3 in content and exploration.

The 3 main quest chains at the end are boring and dull and leave you wondering "WHY?". The insane legion that crucifies people. The NCR that taxes people to death and no one likes and forces you to join them or die pretty much, yet protects the people, probably will turn into a communistic group if it got more power in new vegas's future. And then the neutral path that lets you control a robot army (but you dont REALLY have control of it) and lets you make new vegas independent. However you get an ominous "robots will take over the world" warning and the NCR hates you even if you are idolized if you try to make vegas independent. It didn't make any sense at all. If you are expecting anything as grand that happened in fallout 3's main quest or anything that made any ounce of solid sense then you are going to be disappointed.

There is a huge amount of large buildings and houses/huts/ranches/shacks// that are simply bordered up and cannot be accessed at all in the game and are simply there to take up visual space. You would have figured something like this would have been improved upon from fallout 3 but that is not the case at all.

There are no cities in fallout new vegas. The biggest area that could be called a city is the vegas strip and it is tiny and isn't a city. It may look big in the trailer and in screenshots but it is insignificantly small and it is instanced very poorly. You walk down one street and hit an instance, load to next area, walk down a street, hit an instance. Rinse and repeat. Very poorly done. If you were expecting any type of crumbling cities or areas of that nature at all from fallout 3 then again you will be disappointed because there isn't any of that in this game, at all. Again I'll say, most of the houses//small buildings// that ARE there in the game are simply bordered up and can't be accessed.

The amount of bugs in this game and technical problems is absolutely extraordinary. There are so many problems with quests and things you have to wonder why they didn't do an open beta.

All in all, I was disappointed in fallout new vegas. You are lead to believe the end-game will be grand as it drags you along its lackluster dull path that hints that you are able to refine specific things in the world or have some REAL control over things but you ultimately don't, and its just as boring as new vegas's lack of content and sparsely used map. The space that actually IS USED on the map have a lot of locations that are simple single-room huts or buildings or caves that have 1 or 2 rooms inside most of the time. It just didn't measure up at all in regards to fallout 3 in any of these aspects to me. The only elements in this game that were improved from fallout 3 was hardcoe mode, more weapons, and crafting. Everything else either felt lackluster compared to fallout 3 or simply wasn't improved upon enough. I mean this REALLY could have been an expansion pack for fallout 3, but on its own I'm sorry but I just DON'T see it.

I mean really why wasn't this an expansion pack for fallout 3?

Quality(NV) > Quantity(F3)

I respect ye opinion though.

Not sure if you read my wall of text or not but where exactly is the "quality" in FNV that isn't in F3 if you would care to explain... ?

From what I can tell there's a ton more bugs in FNV than there ever was in Fallout 3 too so... again, where is this "quality" that you speak of?

Even if it can be said that only 50% of the content in fnv could be compared to all the content in F3, how exactly is FNV more quality controlled than F3? I don't see that at all. Are you referring to the plot? Sub missions? What exactly do you mean?

Fallout 3 wasn't exactly bugfree during its relase. And don't get me started on patches that usually broke something too(mods, stuff...), I still have to use the FO3MasterUpdate thanks to patch 1.7.

I did read your wall-o-text, and I must say that our taste probably differs.

Roaming around a deserted wasteland or dungeon crawling the same metro for X amount hours does not constitute as the actual game, any person can do that in any RPG. What matters is the amount of story and atmopshere that is involved. And NV does that just right for me.

I could easily say that the only aspect of the character in F3 you are involved with is combat capability. Player interaction with the game world, storyline and npcs is strictly linear(Oh, I blew up Megaton. So what? I just lost a bunch of vendors.) and 75.9% of the time involves woop-ass. NV on the other hand is closer to an "hard-core rpg. Player interaction with the story is diverse and multilinear and heavily influences the game world.

Granted I understand your point on underground tunnel crawling and the amount of it there was in F3 was indeed annoying.

And I also know what you mean when you say NV is a bit more fleshed out in terms of there being more factions and actual people around. But in terms of plot and sub missions I have to give it to fallout 3 still. FNV's main plot at the end just seemed like every choice you made was a bad one or had some sort of ominous consequence which is really lame and there was NO mixing whatsoever. I mean I did ALL the ncr quests up until the ending and I wasn't even an officer in their ranks at the end of it and I probably did more for them than a general would. I tried to get the robot army to join me and then help the ncr but that just was not an option either.

So yes, there are more factions and more people in the world of FNV but in terms of quality I don't really see that being that big a factor at all. I felt much, MUCH more connected to the NPC's and story in fallout 3's quests than I did in FNV's.

Don't get me started at the F3 main plot. It was executed terribly. And again, it was a complete rehash of the F1, F2 plot. Hated how they used the Enclave again as your generic armored baddies.
And it still doesn't change the fact that your actions have zero impact on the world anyway.

As for the NPCs? Please, besides the typical nutjob humour reference Moira Brown I can't think of anyone even mildy interesting in there. Everyone is so terribly one-dimensional(Autumn, Moriarty...). How were you 'more connected to 'em" is just beyond me. But I still respect your opinion.

In NV, even your companions even have personal quests for christ sake, and serve as something different than a sidekick cannon fodder/pack brahmin(Yes I am looking at you Jericho).

The same can still be pretty much said about the companions in fnv in terms of them being sidekick cannon fodder and pack brahmin. Most of the companions you got in fallout 3 had a quest//mission// during the times when you picked them up that they were a part of so there was some story behind them. But yes I agree FNV did "uprade" a system that already existed but that isn't that big a deal.

The npc's in fallout 3's main story line were way more fleshed out than in fnv. I mean you save the president from being killed and the ranger you are working for doesn't even blink. At least with the brotherhood you wanted to fight for them and with them and become part of them. Those feelings never happened once in FNV, I mean I didn't get a sense of that AT ALL in FNV. Did you??

Wait what? Fallout 3 companions didn't any personal quests(Fawkes being the only exception, and he was still forced upon you in the Vault.) or enviroment interaction. Has anybody in Megaton noticed there's a supermutant tagging along me? No? Well in NV majority of the NPCs at least acknowledge that damn flying bot.

Brotherhood was another example of the crappy black/white faction system. In original Fallouts, those guys were supposed to scavenge technology and mostly keep a distance from 'outsiders'. Not going on bravado humanity crusades like gamesas told us in F3. That's why I never wanted to "fight for them" because I felt so sick of this recycled scenario from other games. If I wanted the same old good/evil thing again, I would probably play the TES series.

Granted, if you haven't played the old Fallouts or are new to the series, these Oblivion-styled 'knights in a shining armor' will probably cater more to your taste.

I never played fallout 1 or 2 so that might explain it, and that might explain why the brotherhood were such pansies in fallout new vegas lol.

I got really confused when it said they were a group that hordes technology as that didn't really seem to be the case in fallout 3 at all. I thought they were just "defenders of peace" or something lol.

I thought the enclave were the ones who horded technology and such. So, on that note, it didn't make much sense coming from fallout 3.

I completely disagree with your opinion.

Expansions usually don't have more content than the original game.

Your argument is failing. It's hard for me to respect someone's opinion when it's all based on FO3. Well FO3 had more wrecked buildings!! FO3 was less colorful!! etc etc........... Where Fallout 2 is really basically New Vegas in 2D graphics.

If you want real respect of your opinion from more people. Go buy the Fallout Trilogy for $10 on eBay and let all of those thoughts about Fallout 3 float out of your mind......

Fallout 3's story was terrible, it was hard to feel sorry for the wanderer when his dad was such an idiot.

Most negative opinions seem to stem from people comparing it only to FO3, when FO3 is completely different from the games before it. I do not think that FO3 is bad, just different from what I think a FO title should be. FO3 was all about telling stories through atmospheric cues. The rest are about how your choices effect the world as you progress through the game. I do not mean just the placement of NPCs. I refer to how NPCs interact with you. Sure they will respond differently if you are "good" or "evil" in FO3, but they do not react to shades of gray.... completely polarizing everything is not role playing.

FO NV is very different and I would dare to say similar only in the most basic traits as: names and titles (including that of character customization options) and game engine. The rest is all done differently.

This, a hundred times this, hence all the bewildered posts from FO3 fans at release. They are fundamentally different games that happen to share an engine.

I love NV but I think Fallout 3 will always reign supreme as the best Fallout title ever. It was just so good and so detailed and perfect in every single way (bar some of the technical details of the game engine) and I think that no other Fallout game will ever be able to match Fallout 3 which is why some people are disappointed by FNV.

I wouldn't go as far as "fundamentally". The basic mechanics of gameplay (which form the biggest portion of the game) are much the same - combat mechanics are done a bit differently, but they work so much alike that the difference is only visible to you if you look closely enough - there's a big open world to explore. I'd go as far as saying the games are fundamentally similiar (which - gameplaywise - is a sore part for me). The difference comes from design goal of giving bigger emphasis writing and general storytelling, than random exploring (which leans towards the opposite of what Fallout 3 set out to do). And that (imo) goes to tell that either people don't like storytelling in games or the basic gameplay mechanics are lacking since, despite the otherwise huge similiarity, people are put off only by lack of caves and abandoned officebuildings (which still do have a fair count in the game).

The emphasis on writing can (and does) affect the appeal of the game, I'm sure, but it really doesn't make it "fundamentally" different because everything you had in Fallout 3, you find in New Vegas, just in different amounts.

imo

So you didn't like New Vegas because you weren't able to be the ultimate knight in shining armor. Too bad; that's not what Fallout is about, and Bethesda only gave people that impression with their lack of meaningful choices in Fallout 3.

Fallout is about making hard decisions to accomplish your goals, whether that's robbing people to survive, trying to ride a wave of goodwill to get the material to be self-reliant. It's a game where self-centeredness is the ultimate neutrality, hurting everyone just a little to make sure number 1 comes out on top. Conversely, if you choose a path and commit to it, you're going to hurt a few people a lot. The choices in real Fallout games, even in Fallout Tactics, are a balancing act, and its up to you as the player whether you want to do more harm than good and who gets harmed.

The main problem with Fallout 3 is not that it paints a positive picture, or allows you to be a white knight; there's so few options in that game, and even fewer are meaningful, that the player is able to project whatever they want into that void. Like another poorly written piece of garbage, the Twilight novels, Fallout 3 is so devoid of character and charisma it can be whatever the person who has emotionally invested itself into it wants it to be.

Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas, and to a lesser extent Tactics, are true Fallout games because of the choices they offer and the way to go about making those choices. If you like Fallout 3 and none of those others, then you're not a Fallout fan. It's not a judgment or condemnation, it's just that Bethesda sold you a bill of goods that those other four games I mentioned can't deliver, because they're not stupid enough to deliver them.

:thumbsup:

NCR isn't communist, it's pretty much exact opposite of that, an powerful and corrupt capitalistic state, where nominally democratically elected officials serve interests of big economic players above benefit of people. That is reason why many NPC's doesn't like 'em. You are getting to very essence why this is more of Fallout than third was, moral choices with plenty of shades of gray. NCR hates you if don't let 'em take over the city, just because you step over their interests, fact that you could have been their best buddy five minutes before doesn't count. NCR represents plenty of different thing, on good side there is rule of law, stability and democracy, minus sides are bureaucracy and corruption. There isn't really good vs evil in Fallout, there is only bad and even worse choices, bad guys are usually idealists gone too far. Enclave purest form of evil in Fallout, even they serve ideal, that of non mutated pure humanity.

Fallout 3 "epic" ending was really not so epic, the evil plan was only watered down version of Fallout 2's evil plan. In FO3 Enclave was about to kill just population of single city, in FO2 they tried to do that whole world.

It isn't about destination, but the journey to it applies a lot when it comes to Fallout.



I think same applied to FO3, in even bigger scale.



There one rather large city in game. I think it's called New Vegas and it's pretty hard to miss. The building might be there to serve a purpose in story or just for background scenery in FO:NV. In FO3 those building were the actual content of game as there was very few guests.



True, but reason is most likely deadline pushing up to developers too fast. Most of bugs I have encountered seems to be scripting issues, stuff like quests leaving not completed while those are really completed. I wouldn't be surprised if last minute changes to whole basis how scripts are implemented is behind that, script part got big change and there wasn't time change every thing to new version and check it was done properly. That might be behind rather random hanging and crashing too. If game would have been put out couple weeks or month later large chunks of those would have been already fixed on publication day. There is still plenty of bugs in game that were inherited from FO3 and Oblivion, those aren't made by Obsidian and graphic glitches and physics engine stupidities are still annoying.

Besides Obsidian has never been most bug free game developer, it wasn't really surprise at least for me.



Did you read or listen any of dialogues when playing the game? There is tons of more quests, unlike ones in FO3, most of those make sense and develop the story. Only thing there is less in FO:NV than in FO3 is pointless filler locations that doesn't carry story forward.



Because there is now actually a story with number of player choices in the game.

Edit fumble.

Bravo.

I'll very much second that.

I'd sig all of this if I could.

We're kind of simultaneously going to agree and disagree here; when I say they're fundamentally different I mean this: Fallout 3 is an explore-'em-up (note I do not use the term RPG) in which you can pretty much go anywhere from the get-go; New Vegas is a narrative-driven RPG that just happens to be trying on a poorly-fitting sandbox hat. Beth's focus is on world-building, Obsidian's is on attempting a mulit-layered story with a focus on dialogue. You can see this difference in the quest design; in NV a large portion of the quests essentially consist of "go and speak to dude X", in which the reward is an exchange of dialogue/the introduction of a new character (though you may be given some token caps or whatever too). In 3, a large number of the quests essentially consist of "go and find dude X, who happens to be located at the end of a large dungeon full of loot", in which the reward is more the aforementioned loot, less the interesting dialogue dude X may or may not have. This is not a judgement call; whilst I personally prefer the Beth approach (I'm a spelunker at heart) they are both entirely valid, but the two games possess a distinctly different focus.

(Obviously when I say "fundamentally different" I mean in the context of the series, and that of two games using the same engine; I'm not saying they're fundamentally different in the way, say, Super Mario Bros. and Civilization are.)

sidetrack edit:



It's true that there are loads more quests, but a lot of them are under-developed and don't develop the story as one feels they might. "Cold, Cold Heart" and "Booted" being two that spring immediately to mind.

Why wasn't GTA Vice City a GTA3 expansion pack back in '02? Why isn't mario galaxy's sequel a mario galaxy 1 expansion pack? Why isn't halo reach around a halo 3 expansion pack? Why aren't any of the mega man sequels expansion packs? Why aren't you an expansion pack? you ARE the controller