Man tough choices. I would say skyrim is my fav for the ES games and FO3 are my tops.

Quite clearly there are a whole lot of people voting for Skyrim without giving their reasoning. I guess that's to be expected in the Skyrim forum though.

Skyrim and New Vegas. The other choices are absolute garbage. As for which is better out of those two, eh, hard to say. But yeah, the other two choices are laughable compared to NV and Skyrim.

I think Skyrim is my favourite overall - the others are very close though. Between the two Fallouts I prefer New Vegas, but only just. The thing is; the game fixed a lot of the poor level scaling, aiming down sights and added some great stuff like weapon mods. I think that if FO3 hadn't come out and NV came out instead, it would have been a lot better recieved because it was just a bit samey. Had you not seen and done similar things in FO3 already, it would be a much more exciting title. It's a shame they had to work on that awful engine.

how anyone could pick Fallout 3 over New Vegas baffles me. NV is a clearly better game in every possibly way.
I had to pick it over Skyrim too, I just loved that game too much.

I personally love the [censored] out of New Vegas, and ObliviRim, but I like fantasy more so I pick ObliviRim

The first choice is obvious for me because Skyrim is incredibly better but the second poll is rather a draw.

Well said!

Same here...and I'm an old timer, but there was just something about "the Wasteland" that I just haven't felt since.

If we're giving reasons:

Why Vegas?

-Your choices matter. You can fight a battle in the southeast and some random guy in the west will tell you he heard about it, compliment you and offer that you join his clan. EVERYTHING is tied together and every action you take has a reward and/or consequences
-Intriguing storyline. New Vegas basically pits the philosophies of capitalism, anarchy, democracy and dictatorship against each other and highlights their strengths and faults. The game is VERY well written, with factions typically representing a philosophical or political ideal, with those that DON'T acting as tools to challenge the philosophies of the other factions. Characters are deep and believable, likeable and hateable. Everything about the game is just very well-written.
-Factions! Maybe not an important point for everyone, but yes I want factions. Factions act as guidelines and example character styles for me to base my roleplaying on. New Vegas has a lot of factions.
-Weapon balancing. You don't just get a hold of Goldbrand or Umbra and ta-da, you have the best weapon. No, the best weapon is subjective, depending highly on your character's build and a bit on personal preference (for example, VATS vs. FPS or ironsights style) This helps each character feel unique, since not every single one of my characters is running around with the exact same weapon and armor set.
-Amazing character customization. The game knows to limit your perk count, but counters this by giving you higher-quality perks. Your perks define EVERYTHING you do and how you approach a situation, your SPECIAL and your traits govern what perks you can/should take and what your strengths and weaknesses are. You can't have a do-all end-all godlike character that's a master of everything; you have to choose, but the character WILL feel amazing at the path you chose.
-The BEST DLC package I've ever seen from a game to date. I finally felt like I got my money's worth, and Dead Money is easily my favorite DLC I've ever purchased of any game.
-In-depth dialog and character reactions. What I mean is, the game simply prepares for every reasonable player reaction. It rarely occured that the game gave me my dialog options and I didn't feel satisfied with the choices, as I had another response in mind. 99% of the time, my reaction was in there, and 99% of the time if I walked off the beaten path of a quest and did it my way, NPCs actually had dialog ready to react to how I did the quest.
-Amazing voice actors. Joshua Graham, Cass, Arcade Gannon, Boone, Raul, Mr. House, Legate Lanius, Ulysses, the entire Think Tank and Doctor Mobius....SOOOO many good, memorable voice actors that did an amazing job of portraying their characters and making them feel memorable.
-Nice music. This is subjective, but I loved the music.
-Fallout New Vegas started with a bang (you being shot), ended with a bang (a nuclear explosion)...They just did everything right. :celebration:

Only thing we'd disagree on is DLC. I like Old World Blues better :tongue:

Well my philosophy is...

A good game can only last for so long, a good story can last you a lifetime. Dead Money had an exceptional story for a DLC, as well as heart-pounding gameplay. Old World Blues was great too, but it was all gameplay and gags; it never pretended to be an incredible story and that's fine. Dead Money will stay with me longer though.

That's so true. If I had a billion pounds and had nothing better to do than make my ultimate gaming experience, I think I'd hire Bethesda people to do the design and Obsidian people to do the writing. Like another poster mentioned, I definitely feel like Beth is amazing at creating worlds that just beg to be explored, but you're right, the actual people in it maybe stop the experience from being truly engrossing, seeing as there's no real emotional attachment to the people you meet a lot of the time (at least for me anyway).
But I figure that if either of those teams had unlimited revenue resources and time, they'd probably both end up making something which would be pretty close to my idea of a perfect game. They both have done a damn good job so far though!

Fair enough. I just couldn't stop laughing at [censored]-toes though. Inner child or something....

What this man said. Like I said earlier, if I didn't cream up for mages and paladins more than Scifi, id vote NV. But thats not the case.

Fallout 3 was better than oblivion, skyrim is better than NV.

Cheers

Oh, and to add a couple more things that Longknife didn't mention that is huge to me personally: no essential NPCs. NV had two (one actually after a certain point). You could kill anyone anywhere, no matter their importance, and the game adapted to it. Secondly, you couldn't do everything in the game in one playthrough. Your actions had consequences that you couldn't change. Decisions locked out quests, factions and followers and even merchants, cities and towns could become hostile to you.

For me, Oblivion holds that special place. It was the first time I had ever played that type of game (open world). I remember picking plants and learning that I could make potions. Wow, look more plants over there... and they are different! About a week in and I was completely overwhelmed. I had never experienced being overwhelmed by a video game before. I didn't know it was possible! I never played the earlier TES games, so it was completely new to me.

Then when Fallout 3 came out it was pretty cool to experience a huge game again, with a completely different setting. Initially I missed the spell and weapon creation of Oblivion, as there wasn't a similar mechanic in FO3. I remember that when one of my buddies finally got a PS3 and was given a pile of games from his cousin, I tried to get him to go for Oblivion, but his cousin told him that he shouldn't waste his time on Oblivion and should start with FO3. (FONV wasn't out yet). I told my friend, "No!!!" Start with Oblivion!!!! The technology in FO3 is superior to Oblivion, making Oblivion feel dated when going back, but Oblivion was so wonderful I felt everyone should experience it!

Hard to choose a favorite overall. Right now I would have to say Skyrim>FONV>Oblivion>FO3. That is how I voted.

If it is music, I have to agree with the one who said it first.... FONV all the way. I even made a Pandora channel that is a reasonable facsimile.

Such awesome games. Wonder what the future holds!!!?!?

Except for a couple of important things Fallout 3 and TES games did better:

1- more important for TES: Better, more interesting, more open, more interactive world.
2- more important for Fallout: Matches the theme better. New Vegas hardly felt like a Post-Apocalyptic adventure, rather than a tour in a run down, war-torn countryside (The DLCs kinda fix this though)

For me, Dead Money not only had the best story but was the most fun to actually play through, it was the only DLC I enjoyed playing not just to see what happens at the end, but actually had fun.
New Vegas will always be my favorite. Sure, I didn't replay it as much as I did with Fallout 3, but I didn't need to.
3 kept me wanting more and more, so I played it again and again. Think of it as a blwjob with a finish - it just kept going on and on, and was pretty awesome, but in the end all I got was blue balls and wanting more.
NV left me satisfied and I walked away from that game with great memories and an enjoyable experience, then came back to it for more after I had digested its awesomeness a few months later.

1- Completely disagree. There is nothing interactive in TES games. It's all window dressing. Unkillable NPCs. Nothing you do matters at all. No characters that have any depth. That is the opposite of interactive. And they are both equally "open". You can go anywhere you want in both series.
2- Uh, that's part of the lore and the whole point. New Vegas was spared from the brunt of the war by Mr. House. There are many almost untouched areas in both 1 & 2 as well.

If you had played the first two fallouts, you would know that NV was more of a Fallout game than 3.
The world moved on, espcially in 2, and started rebuilding new societies. 3 didn't even make sense - it was many years since the end of the world yet everyone was still eating old pre-packaged foods and living in [censored]hole dumpsters.

I prefer Skyrim over the Fallouts, but Fallout New Vegas over Fallout 3 and Oblivion. I prefer fantasy setting more anyway, but I liked Fallout New Vegas's companions over everything. Plus, Fallout: New Vegas is set in the West Coast! Throw up them dubs!

Ahem... anyway, and also...



Jeremy Soule is good. Really good. But he can't trump Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.

And radiation levels equivalent to that of a direct atomic blast still linger in the D.C. area, and somehow a society of children manages to exist...

Yeah, can't forget that.
In retrospect 3's entire storyline and tone was pretty mediocre, I think they forgot they weren't making an Elder Scrolls game.
Not to mention the fact that for most of the main quest I didn't really see what the Enclave was doing wrong, they just came to help finish the purifier, and then they had a contest with the BoS over who gets to take credit for fixing the damn thing. Only Eden had the plans for the FEV, and the General was disagreeing with him and NO ONE KNEW ABOUT IT.