Erik, most of what you said is backwards. FO:NV has dramatically superior quests and many more of them. The quests in FO3 seemed fairly bland and stereotypical. FO3 was more about exploration, NV is much more about PC / NPC interaction, quests, and typical RPG things. There are certainly many, MANY more people in NV than in FO3 and they change their patterns and locations based on the quests you do, which was quite nice.

There are many locations in FO:NV where you have to investigate a situation and find out what is going on. The cannibal comment alone should've immediately made you remember the White Glove Society, which is like Andale times a million.

I definitely feel that NV has a much stronger atmosphere and is a lot more believable in terms of the universe.

I've also personally ran into many situations where NCR and the legion are fighting. Every time I go to Camp Searchlight there's a new legion vs NCR shootout. I come across bands of raiders fighting off deathclaws and things like that all the time. It's rare to spend more than a few minutes exploring without hearing a massive gunbattle flare up.

Well, I must say my experiences have been vastly different from yours. I have traveled across the whole Mojave and I have never seen the NCR and Legion clash except when I was near an NCR camp and Legion assassins came after me (which I hear only happens once due to a bug). Do you really disagree though that FO3 had worse personality? The towns in FO3 had far more signs of life in them then any of FONV's. Novac has nobody outside except for a roving trader (whom never restocks conveniently enough) and some other people just wandering around. Jacobstown has a bunch of Super Mutants just standing doing nothing. Heck, Marcus is waiting at the front gate seemingly just for you while the Strip has a few people wandering around and thats it. The only decent places I can think of are in the outskirts of Freeside where you see bodyguards wanting to escort you, kids chasing a rat, and a kid telling you to visit Mick & Ralphs. Now that I think about, Freeside is definitely the most alive place. There are thugs who spawn to attack you, and the Kings outside. No other town in FONV feels quite like that though.

You bring up a good point about the White Glove Society quest, forgot about that one for some reason. I liked it, but it still did not feel nearly as creepy as Andale. You learn they are basically generations of inbreds, you see their crews wandering the Wasteland selling "strange meat", there is a shack full of skeletons (as well as a basemant) and you have the choice of helping those kids out.

Also, I have no idea what your talking about with superior quests. I felt like most of the quests in FONV were either: find me this stuff, or go talk with this person and come back to me. The main quests are quite similiar (gain this factions trust, etc). FO3 had incredibly non blend quests like that of which I listed. How is solving a problem between two wannabe "superheros" bland? How is negotiating with a robot who thinks he signed the Declaration of Independence bland? Both of them have bland quests, and both of them have good quests, I just think FO3 has the better ones.

You are forgetting that FO: NV has at least 10x as many towns as FO3. That FO:NV has much, much more content. More areas to explore, a much larger map, I'd say 100x as many quests, and so on. There's just a lot more content. While FO3 was more just pick a direction and explore, FO:NV discourages that to some extent and wants you to more just explore the nuances of the world. My character right now is nearing 100 hours played, level 35, most of the weapons in the game... and I haven't even hardly started the main story quest. I'm on the House Always Wins pt 1. I've yet to meet Benny. I've never been to the Tops. I still have 13 active quests, something that has never gone down, only up. I get at least a new quest when I finish a quest, if not 2 or 3.

Megaton had a lot of personality, but it was just about the only real town in the whole game. Rivet City was a decent town, but I found it to be rather confusing and annoying so I avoided it as much as I could. I wouldn't view Rivet City as a positive. More of a negative. I'd rather it be like NV where you have many smaller towns and camps instead of a couple much larger towns and almost nothing in between.

The first time I made it to Jacobstown I had to defuse a situation between the super mutants and NCR mercenaries. Jacobstown is quite awesome, imo. When I first made it there I found the environment to be breathtaking and beautiful.

The Strip is fine. Outside of the strip, there's not too much going on, but that's fine considering how many quests there are there and how massive the casinos are. I don't think you can dock NV any points for a lack of content. There's too much content if anything.

I found the White Glove Society to be just as creepy as Andale, if not more. I feel that the team at Obsidian are much better writers so they create much more thought provoking and intelligent encounters.

I liked the quest to stop the two supervillains. I liked the quest about the Declaration of Independence. I also liked the vampire quest. Most of the other FO3 quests, however, I could take it or leave it. Like every Moira quest. Some FO3 quests actively annoyed me like the Tenpenny tower quest to deal with the ghouls in the basemant. I found the positive karma resolution, to let the ghouls in, was the most massively evil and unforgiveable resolution and it should NOT have awarded positive karma. Nothing about that was positive.

NV, however, has quests that more fit the burgeoning tide of a new civilization in the wake of a worldwide nuclear war. Like the Red Rock Canyon quest to split up the Great Khans and the Legion. I loved that. I love how there are some quests that take you hours, quests you can't see any way to finish until you hit some point in the game like the Cass quest... and there are quests where you talk to a couple NPCs and you're done. There's much more variety in the quests.

I really can't see anything that FO3 did better than NV except for things that I don't care about, like the radio. Turned that off anyway.

Well, I will stand by my opinion and I suppose you will stand by yours. NV does not have more areas to explore. Most of the Mojave is boarded up shacks. There are more quests, but like I said, they are monotonous. As for the towns, cmon. FO3 had: Girdershade, Paradise Falls, Rivet City, Underworld, Megaton, Tenpenny Tower, Republic of Dave, Little Lamplight (shudder) and maybe the Citadel (not sure if that counts). FONV has: Goodsprings (seems like a ghost town to me), Novac, Primm (again, ghost town), Jacobstown, Strip, Freeside, the mining town (can't remember the name), Nipton doesn't count, and some places I know I'm missing. I'm also not sure about the amount of quests in the actual Strip. If you exclude Mr. Houses, you have the White Glove one, the Tops one (recruiting talent), the Gomorrah one (the prosttute), the Followers one (bugging Mr. House), and brining Vault suits to Vault 21. Not to many quests there and I'm sure others can attest to that.

If we are using such a liberal definition of towns then you forgot Red Rock, Westside, Mojave Outpost, and more I'm sure I am forgetting as well. For the Strip, why would you exclude Mr House's quests? They are a large portion of the Strip quests. Excluding them makes no sense. There's also the quest to take photos of neon signs. There's PLENTY of quests in The Strip and if anyone disagrees, they are just looking for reasons to prefer FO3 like you are. I wouldn't call even half of what you called towns as actually being towns, such as Tenpenny Tower. That's not a town by any means. Underworld, Girdershade, Republic of Dave, Little Lamplight... I would not call these towns at all.

I don't count Mr. Houses quest as part of the Strip because they are main quests. Please tell me all the other quests in the Strip that I haven't already mentioned and aren't main quests.

How is the Republic of Dave not a town? It has citizens and some form of government. Little Lamplight has merchants, a population, and a form of conduct/government. Girdershade is a town, albeit a very small one.

You know what, I'm going to stop. I'm to tired to continue this. You have your opinion, I have mine, no sense arguing about it :icecream:

If your definition of a town is just an npc or two and a vendor, then there's a crapton more like that place where you meet Veronica, the scrapyard north of Novac (Gibson's maybe?), the medical center at New Vegas, the Gun Runners, Camp McCarran, Camp Golf, Crimson Caravan, Old Mormon Fort, the Boomers, and so on. It's too liberal of a definition.

Main quest is a very arbitrary distinction. What is really the difference between this quest and another quest besides it being a part of the main story? You pick it up in the Strip. It's a Strip quest.

For me, what ends up being the biggest difference, and what I think is "missing" from NV, is the tone.

Fallout 3 was a serious take on the material. The game does its best to make you take this world and its problems seriously. It helps they tossed in the easy pathos of the setting of Washington, DC - it's hard as an American not to get invested in the fate of our former capital. OK, there was plenty of goofy stuff, like the superhero quest and the giant robots. But even those things were presented straight - the superheroes were traumatized, Liberty Prime was treated as a force to be reckoned with, etc. Humor, while present, was generally downplayed and subtle with some notable exceptions.

In New Vegas, I feel like the game tries a little too hard to be funny. I still think the Kings are a stupid idea (especially when you can't actually license any of Elvis's music) and every time I see one of those guys, it pulls me out of the game. Likewise the treatment of sixuality - it always seems to be used either for a cheap gag or cheap titillation, never in an even modestly thought provoking way. I don't feel the game is taking itself seriously, so I don't take the setting seriously. Again, there's exceptions - the companions in NV were a vast improvement, and I was genuinely invested in their quests, even if I felt the ending slides were generally overwritten and maudlin.

The antagonists of the games further make me lean towards F3 - the Enclave was recycled, there's no denying that. That said, they're an extremely effective group, menacing and threatening, and given the setting, tie in nicely with the general themes of American patriotism. Hulking guys in power armor with trained deathclaws? That represents a legitimate threat, and they become omnipresent after their first appearance.

Caesar's Legion is, to be honest, just silly. I never feel menaced by them, given the fact they look like a crossdressing football team. It's even harder to feel menaced when they start throwing spears at you. Without a plausible foe, the NCR just looks incompetent, which is at least partly by design, but results in me feeling like I'm playing in the junior leagues. It's a huge step down from super mutants and the Enclave in the first three games. It doesn't help that everyone seems to just sit on their hands, despite having stacks of trained operatives, until the UPS guy shows up.

But ultimately, NV doesn't feel very post-apocalyptic. When I think of the genre, I think chaos and anarchy, humanity just barely surviving, which I really got the sense of in Fallouts 1-3. In NV, everything feels extremely civilized. The conflict is less about survival, and more about the consequences of different political systems (democracy, facism, monarchy, anarchy). And that's all well and good, but I miss the feeling that the whole world was out to get me.

That said, I love both games, and I love their for their strengths and even some of their weaknesses. I don't claim that one is "better" than the other - my answer to the better game will likely change by next week. I'm merely saying that I prefer the generally more serious tone of Fallout 3.

I find these viewpoints to be really interesting because I have felt the exact opposite. I felt New Vegas was a far more serious take on the whole thing as compared to FO3. Superheroes, giant robots, Elder gods being summoned in decaying buildings, a group worshipping a nuclear bomb, a Peter Pan town of children, the virtual reality event with the Pint Sized Slasher (which was actually my favorite part of the game but it made me laugh until tears came out of my eyes, which is a good thing because I enjoy humor), and so on.

I don't think this makes either game better or worse, however. I feel New Vegas is better for entirely different reasons.

That's what bothers me about New Vegas. It's too cheery. I want my post apocalyptic games to be dreary and dangerous.

Yeah. My problem with the underground (sewer system) that New Vegas does have is that it is not really necessary. You can travel around and go up at different places, but why would you want to when you can just travel to those places above ground. They should have made some places only accessible by traveling through the sewer system.

I'm trying to remember what was so exciting about Nipton. Getting to GNR however is clear in my mind and very memorable. Different strokes for different folks though.

For me, the biggest drop off from FO3 to NV is characterization. Particularly: "Who am I?"

In FO3 you were the kid from vault 101. You spent the tutorial learning about life in the vaults, making friends and/or enemies, meeting people, and generally establishing a base for your character. You could grow that character anyway you wanted, but it felt rooted. Hearing things like the Dr. in Rivet City say "you remind me of your father," helps to keep you vested in the characters.

In FONV you are, a courier. That's it. The entirety of your life before Matthew Perry shoots you in the face is left a blank. And while some might say "this let's you create and Role Play better," I say [censored]. It's just plain lazy. There's a myriad of ways to let you define your own backstory and still include it in the game.

But I've probably rambled on long enough now, so I'll step down of my characterization soap box.


Edit: this does appear to be getting addressed with the whe Ulysses thing. Hopefully. Maybe?

New Vegas is too much civilized. In first Fallout, GECK wasn't presented as such a potent device that can turn a small town into empire in no time. Even it were: it's a world filled with Deathclaws, Super Mutants, Cazadors, Hostile Sentr Bots etc. Also it's not a brand new world; resources are depleted, agriculture is over for communites without GECK. Fallout has such atmosfere that even after human race consumed and destroyed the world with its resources, keeps fighting with each other over the remmants.

FNW feels like: "apocalypse is just a pause we'll repair it in no time, don't you worry!"

Lastly even their survival wasn't explained properly, FO3 had more better towns and such.

I think Eratis put my feelings for the two in better words than I could have myself. I enjoy New Vegas but It feels silly most of the time, not at all like a "Fallout" situation, I really miss the serious "fight for survival and aid humanity" feel. And I cant stand that your stuck with the unchangeable Gambling theme for your main home in the lucky 38 it looks tacky and pulls me out of the experience even more. All of this being said their are still great improvements elsewhere that make the game enjoyable.

Yet those towns dont make sense, I mean Megaton, a town constructed in the middle of a BOMB

Tenpenny Tower, no agriculture, no pure water, the caravan doesn even appear, near ghouls

Rivet City, near a warzone DC, Mirelurks, radiated water, where is the agriculture?

Not even the caravan makes sense, DC is a warzone, Mutants, Enclave,Raiders,Slavers, how they reach their destination without a scratch?, how does that explain the very definiton of SURVIVAL?

at least the NCR defends the routes so the caravan can reach to their destination safely, thats enough explanation for me


Hope not, I dont want my character to have some kind of characterization or backstory

The orange people are missing with their horrible grammar.

Nipton wasn't very exciting to me (although the lottery thing was interesting). GNR though was like "BAM". You walk into the area infront of GNR with the Brotherhood of Steel and then a freakin behemoth charges out at you!




I don't mind either. FO3 beginning was very unique and I liked it a lot the first time. It added to the whole "Fallout" experience for me because my character lived in a vault. On the other hand, after the first time it became very tedious. I found myself simply using a save at the exit for any new characters. FONV opens up a lot of possibilities for who you want to be and doesn't have as many down sides to it (not as memorable though).



Hey, you can't ask for a perfect town in a devastated world. I found Megaton to be interesting (not sure why they built it around a bomb, but interesting nonetheless). Tenpenny tower was very cool in my opinion, but Rivet City was the coolest. They were out in the water, only accessible from a draw bridge which I think makes for a very good defense against mutants. How do they get to those places? Well, who knows. Its a video game mystery, but they did have guards. Also, I don't know if you played Broken Steel, but after the main quest the Brotherhood starts traveling with the water merchants to protect them .

Meeting the Legion for the first time. It oozed pure atmosphere. Probably one of the finest moments in the whole series.

I don't remember making it to GNR at all. Refresh my memory. I remember most of FO3 but that specific event is something that I don't recall at all.



What? That was the worst part of FO3. By far.

Uhhh no, it's not lazy at all. It's vastly superior. I didn't feel anything about the FO3 story. I actually tried to kill my father every time I saw him because I loathed his character, but the game wouldn't let me, which just made me more angry. It's much better to have a completely open slate in terms of character for role-playing purposes. It's not lazy at all. The FO3 story was lazy. The way you purify irradiated groundwater is to sift it through dirt. It's very well known. Basing a story around something that humanity has already solved and then giving it some ridiculous, magical solution was freakin' lazy.

The only thing i miss from Fallout 3 is better songs on the radio and more of the 1950's sci-fi feel.Other than those two things FNV outdoes FO3 in every way.

Wow Mako, I am suprised you did not say "TALON COMPANY!" no sarcasm intended.

FO:NV has a bit too much of a goofy feel. FO3 people were starving, slavery was rampant, you got to see america's symbol of success rotting away (Washington monument), in the pit people were being beat, but deep down there was always humor. FO:NV just kind of overkilled it; It's not one thing, its alot of it; dinky the dinosaur, half the conversations were pretty much "look on the bright side! My other half of my body may be in a deathclaw's mouth, but at least I got to go to gommorah earlier!" bleh. It's not bad, it just ruins the feel IMO. So I guess in a sentence; FO3 is more dark and serious and FO:NV is more sunshine and radiation waves (there isn't even much of THAT either).

NV had black and snarky humor, along with brick jokes and...... yeah, innuendos, it something common, well at least since Fallout 2

NV's dark humor and sarcasm is very welcome and appropriate IMO, usually in difficult times the survivors have a bitter sense of humor. Didn't see much of that in FO3.