I would rather not venture back into the oldie graphics of the first fallout, I would like to start with 3. However, will I be missing a massive amount of story from the other games or is it something I can just jump into and read up on things I don't get?

Also as someone who has only played TES bethesda games, how different is this from Skyrim/Oblivion's gameplay?

I believe FO3 butchered the lore a bit, so if you want backstory at least read up or watch LPs of Fallout 1/2.

Oblivion was my first TES game and Bethesda game, and I started out fine with FO3.

I don't think it really matters. I never played any of Fallout the games before Fallout 3 but it never really seemed to affect my experience negatively in any way.

Fallout 3 is largely independent from the older Fallouts, and any things they have in common are explained well enough in-game.

Not much is exactly explained in-game about what happened previously.

OP: It depends. If you played and loved the originals then you would probably have some difficulty enjoying Fallout 3. If you don't then since Fallout 3 uses the same engine as Oblivion and has a slightly better story and writing then you should enjoy it.

It will be easy to adapt to FO3. I still play Oblivion, have two characters there atm. There are better things, like chest management, which will upset you when you switch back and forth like I do: basically, you can take all at a category of chest.
In Oblivion, to see all the contents of a overstuffed chest, you must take all. FO3 has no chest glitch where you can't see all. You will be able to see all, then switch between weapons, armor, medicine, items, ammo, take all at one sub-category, and never affect the others, they will stay in the chest. Makes me cry when I go back to Oblivion.

Yeah this would be my first fallout experience. I'm not a lore hound either.

you still haven't played fallout 3 :gasp: go out and buy it now!

As for the lore/story thing, um its really pretty independent from the first two, it takes place across the country and you'll get the story without any real knowledge of fallout 1 or two. The setting is what is cool about fallout 3 imo, they really push a retro-future feel, i personally loved it.

The actual gameplay is oblivion with guns, also where you shoot people matters, head shots do more damage, arms can be crippled causing dropped weapons or poor aiming. the attributes are replaced with the special, and you need very high lockpick to attempt hard locks

Another thing that is really important is morality, granted its fairly black/white.

As you've guessed from my post i really enjoyed fallout 3 my first playthrough,

F3 before New Vegas?

yes, you'll appreciate both games more, if you do fallout nv first you will probably...well you'll think the story for fallout 3 is stupid as hell, plus its not really as exploration heavy as fo3, fo3 is much more like tes

That's a rather bold assumption, I know it's your opinion and you trust it above all else but still rather bold as not everyone is like you or the other "dinosaurs" around here on how they feel about the series.

I mean I was introduced to the series back in '97 with Fallout 1 then subsequently played F2 and Tactics when they were released. I loved those three back then and still do to this day but i didn't find it difficult to enjoy Fallout 3. And I still do despite it's shortcomings especially when compared to New Vegas.

I suppose I'm just a rarity among the Fallout veterans. That or I simply don't have a stick lodged up my ass about Fallout 3.

If you're not a lore hound why bother?

Fallout 3: You are thrown into a world of chaos after a nuclear fallout. Good luck. Have fun, loot around, oh and find your dad. it's Liam Neeson..

Go for Fallout 3. Its an extremely great game.

Here you go pal, helping you out. Really, I am. You will get attacked running around telling people Fallout 3 is an "extremely great" game.

Yeah, well some people have to propagate the notion that F3 is the worst thing since the plague, and had no redeeming qualities. Those people are lunatics who should be ignored.

It's a flawed but still very, very good game.

It is a good game yes, but EXTREMELY GREAT and better then NV?

You don't need to know anything about the previous games to enjoy Fallout 3. They explain everything you need to know, and I think it's probably a game you are better going into blind. Your character has no idea what they will find outside the vault, so there's no reason you should, either.

Fallout 3 is an extremely great game and yes I find it to be better than NV. Just an opinion, not a big deal.

3 just copy/pasted then crapped on Fallout 1 and 2's stories.

It's gameplay is the same. Fallout 3 is just Oblivion with guns, cliche I know but it's true.

I'll add that I loved it when I first played it and knew nothing of the series. The world is amazing and the game is a metric ton of fun. It has massive replay-value since it takes forever to explore the entire map and every location has something neat about it. I don't hate the game it just has insanely lazy writing.

Well summed up.

Okay so I didn't catch the "probably" you wrote, been a long day. My point still stands though.

I came from Morrowind and Oblivion into Fallout 3, it took a bit of getting used to at first, as I'd mainly played fantasy/ medieval style games for years, but can't see myself going back now. I just loved the combination of black humour about the future, exploration and atmosphere.

Both are excellent games, and have good stories. Play FO3 first, because NV takes everything FO3 did okay, makes it better, and adds in awesome stuff. If you only want to play one, play NV and get all the DLC. Its written better, the DLC is much more fun, and its just overly more awesome. But both are excellent.

On a side note, Steam has FNV Ultimate for 40 dollars, and FO3 GOTY for 20. Both have pretty much the same price for consoles if you buy em at Gamestop new as well.. /shrug.

Actually, I think that Oblivion is much better than FO3, still thinking that FO3 is pretty awesome. Fallout 3 to me, feels like a spaghetti western: lots of gratuitous violence ( a lot, but hey, that's part of the draw) and comedy rolled together. I can roleplay in Oblivion far better than I can in fallout... in fallout, my background is pre-written... it's tough to get around it, but eventually you can roleplay in the wastes to your own story. I end up using the MQ to advance the types of enemies I see in the game... rather than actually following someone else's (the devs) story.