Heh, I still remember the first time I went to Vic's house and found the Pipe Rifle . Traded everything else I had for a handful of 10mm rounds and two Stimpacks and then took on the geckos near the still, and I almost literally felt every miss because I knew I couldn't get more for a while.

While it got old after a few characters, the fact you didn't need anything more than that in the first couple of towns made it so that you didn't feel like you were behind and needed to hoard up to buy the next grade up right away. Of course, if you could buy it you did, because Leather Armor + Pipe Rifle had its limits.

In FO3, though, you can (if you know what you're doing) get one of the best weapons in the game at L3 and plenty of ammo for it starting at L4, so you immediately jump to near the top of the gear hierarchy without having done much to get there. To head off the rebuttal: yes, I am aware it is possible to get top-end gear early on in FO2, however it's a lot riskier due to where it's kept and some of it has to be taken by force (a Gauss Rifle can be stolen, but at a low level that is VERY hard to do and failure means you die).

The fact the scarcity remained no matter how well-situated you were could be annoying as it meant ammo was often a pain to come by for the better weapons, however that wasn't all bad because it meant you had to diversify your weapons to avoid ammo shortages which meant the 'second-tier' weaponry remained useful (up to a point, Assault Rifles did squat against Enclave patrols).

Hey thanks for the long detailed posts, my thread was starting to feel like the neglected evil twin. I is happy.

When I saw this thread I just started scrabbeling down random stuff in a text document and looking around on some other
websites..Now I've summerized those things and I hope they make some sense.

I played FO2 first, then FO1 and every other spin off like BoS and Fallout tactics and then FO3

BTW: FO3 is a awesome game but FO2 kicks it's ass.

Better in Fallout 1/2:

Enviroment: The fallout universe is meant to be a world that exist after a nuclear war but still
it's that post-war culture of 1950s America that makes it so...cozy, in Fo3 Bethesda seems to have put "keep the 50's to
a minimum" leash on the designers. nuff said, more coziness needed!

Conversations: More options and different outcomes
In FO2 if you have a high speechskill you could for example pull info from someone or talk your way out of a fight.
In Fo3 you wont even get a lengthier conversation. Just some more caps.


Humor:
Perhaps the biggest disappointment in FO3 was the lack of that dark sense of humor that was filling the Fo2 wasteland.

Open ended quests:
Not much tops Fallout 2 when it came to open ended quests. Let's take one of the better examples in F2 -- dealing with the Slavers in the city called the Den. The Slavers have a buddy of yours, Vic, that you want to rescue. There were many ways of getting this done.

You could go into the slaver headquarters and shoot them all up. If you were a explosive traps guy, (like my guy was), you could go in the building and plant dynamite, then leave, and blow everyone up. If you had high intelligence and high speech, you could convince the slavers to stop trading slaves, and get them to free Vic. If you were a jerk, you could join the Slavers, get a slaver tattoo on your forehead that would have consequences for the rest of the game, and sell your tribal companion into a life of servitude. If you were a chick with a decent charisma, you can have six with the head slaver guy for Vic's freedom.

The vast majority of quests in Fallout 3 are like this: go talk to this guy. Kill everybody in your way. The end.
Some of the quests, if you have a high speech skill, you can lie and not have to kill the dudes.
Yay. Woot. Let's RPG it up. Let's go kill all the enemy dudes and get the magical hamster or super Frisbee or W-ever-TF they want me to get. Yay this is fun.


Freedom of movement:

In Fallout 2 if you knew what you were doing you could go right from your starting point in the game to the final location. Sure, you wouldn't be able to beat the opponents with out some tricks, but you could do it.
In the entire south-eastern quarter of the Fallout 3 map you are in a city that has invisible walls everywhere. There basically only one way you can go. You are on a quest train track that starts at one location, has 13 (or whatever) stages, and ends.
Don't go down that street dude. There is a big pile of rubble blocking the path. Strangely, just like the other 40 streets.

Really major plots: like the NCR/New Reno/Vault city conflict and alliance making. Or the jet in Redding

Friendly muties: (fallout 2)...Cred to the "The Free Vat Society" for trying to change how muties are viewed in the capital wasteland.

The ability to aim for the groin and eyes!

Combat logs: Raider was hit in the head crushing the temple...good night gracie (or something like that)

Funny but effectless perks..like Expert Excrement Expeditor; From shoveling brahim crap.
Gives like 3% to speech I think, but relativitly effectless

Better in Fallout 3:
Music
Three-dog..nice touch to get some apprecitation for our handy work!
A place to call home - Buying and customize the house was yet another nice touch
The action..every other meter is another mutie asking to get his head blown...which is a good thing.
The addons are super! Very nice if you get tierd of all the rubble and want to mutilate some rednecks living in a swamp
instead. Or Anchorage where you get to take part of a major battle was also very sweet and a nice change from everyday life.
Kill sequences: Heads getting torn from the torso of a unlucky raider in slowmotion for example...what's not to love about that.
The introduction part in Fo3 is very nicely done (when you are still inside the vault that is)


Bad in Fallout 3: All the running around to try to get over some rubble..give the player some dynamite and instead
create a bigger world if you fear the gamelength will become to short.

Fallout in my opinion is a game where you should be able to take your time..view the views and see the sights etc. and in
Fo3 there's always a arrow (or two!) telling you where to go and not letting you take your time. It would have been nice
to have the "cruise option" where you could turn of the arrow if you just like to stroll around.

The fact that you can drink some radiated water after some raider emptied a full SMG clip in your face and get health restored.

Random encounters and the outdoorsman need to be re-introduced to Fo4..like if you're fast traveling like in FO3
you could have some random roll if you should encounter Iguana bob's grandson for example, holding on to his Iguana sticks for
dear life in front of some run-down shack (since you blackmailed him in Fo1 and hasn't quite recovered yet..which
Fo2 also bear witness to in NCR) or perhaps the player didnt blackmail him and his grandson made it big time, starting a supermarket
with only iguana products.

Misc: Time to relocate, how is Europe doing these days for example...or did they not construct vaults or whatever and
just got blown to [censored]?

I to Replay fallout one,two and tactics at least a couple of times a year for the last 10 years or so. Tactics I play the most because I like the heavy weapons.

Things they do better then 3.

The over all story.
Places to explore. Many locations in fallout 3 feel cookie cutter and have no real value in exploring them.
Character interactions.
The Endings let me know what happens to each town I go to. Many endings to fallout one and two and five endings for fallout tactics. Fallout 3 has one ending "He was good/bad, blah blah bhah. What happens to Lyons and the outcast or three dog? so many questions I was hoping would be explained in the ending. Thanks to broken Steel there is no ending.

Everything else has been said.

I don't get the story/main quest being better. When I sum it up it kind of goes like this:

FO1: "Go find us a Water Chip, and hurry the hell up!"

FO2: "Go find us a GECK, and hurry the hell up!"

Where as Fallout 3 is less errand boy on a time limit and more personal and emotionally genuine in a way. Who wants to explain to me this here reasoning?

I'll try to. For me having the time requirements in fallout one makes it more importaint to find the waterchip. Exploring is fun but I have to remember that there are people to save, my home.

Fallout 2 So time is just an illusion in fallout 2 it's not importaint.

Fallout 3 is go find your dad but really take all the time in the world. With some of the fans on this forum they would be happy if we never had to find the Dad. Just to wander around the wasteland with no goal.

The main quest no one will die if you don't find your dad. The DC wasteland would go on the way it was. In fallout one the goal was to save everyone you know and love. Then to stop the master and his army of super mutants save the wasteland before everyone is turned Super Mutant.

Fallout 2, save Arroyo and it's people. Once you get the GECK it becomes save them and stop the Enclave, then you find out the Enclave want to kill everyone on earth that is not enclave IE: Save the world.

Fallout 3 is go find your dad and work on a water purifier that no one really cares about. Then to stop the enclave yet again. Thing is once you have their FEV to kill everyone and don't use it, there goes the enclaves master plan. Broken Steel comes along and adds more reasons to fight them which I don't like because it messed with the ending.

When I said over all story I meant the dialouge and Characters and Quests. Plus the Character building system with Leveling and when we get perks. Perks and skills were alot better.

Side note: Alot of things I read on the New Vegas area, people ask for things to fix fallout 3 and want in New Vegas, not knowing that fallout one,two and tactics had those things in place but were taken out of fallout 3. Funny thing is some of those people don't like the other games or will never play them simply because they are old.

I see. Good points there, haven't heard that opinion before. I knew about FO2 and it's time limit, but I was just stating what the whole main quest is essentially interpreted as in one sentence as soon as we get started.

Actually the way you described Fallout 2's main quest plot it sounds a lot like FO3. We find out the Enclave is fairly evil and wants to wipe out everyone that isn't enclave so we have to stop them IE: Save the world, or at least the game world.

And really furthering Project Purity affects more people in the long run, and saves more people than protecting a Vault's inhabitants or a tribe's settlement since the radiation is slowly killing people and making them infertile/impotent. So if caring about NPC's or saving people is your thing, you could also make an argument for FO3's main quest being better if you look at it that way. Idk about Broken Steel and perks; that's too opinion based to argue about.

Fallout 3's main quest is a lot like Fallout 2. That's because it was intentionally copied from Fallout 2 and is a major reason why Fallout 3's story and main quest are considered inferior by most people. It's just a poorly done rehashing of old ideas. This is actually a problem that plagues a lot of Fallout 3 beyond the main quest.

I can't see anyway you can argue furthering Project Purity affects more people in the long run than stopping the Enclave from killing, at a minimum, the entire population of North America. When you stop the Enclave in Fallout 2 you prevent a genocide. Whereas if the Enclave in Fallout 3 pulls off its goofy plan to poison the tidal basin what will happen? A tiny, hopelessly undeveloped area with far more crazed raiders and supermutants than people will become uninhabitable. What happens if you use Project Purity to purify the water? A tiny undeveloped area with far more crazed raiders and supermutants becomes slightly more hospitable to human life. Not exactly a big impact and certainly nowhere near the scale of Fallout 2.

That might be true, but the story of FO1 expands beyond the main quest - though very subtly.
The story of FO1 is not the water chip, that's just your motivation for going on... the story is about the master - think about it: you are effectively tracing him down and following his story even before you know it. It's very subtle for most of the game but that's where it comes to eventually.

I would suggest imagining the F03 world in the isometric FO1&2 format. Strip away the graphics, and i don't think anyone can honestly say there would be much to that game (relatively).

On the other hand, imagine having FO1&2 remade with FO3 style graphics, keeping the characters and dialogue etc... That would be AMAZING.

I imagine i'm not the first to think of this though.

The Enclave's second attempt at genocide was so underwhelming compared to their first. In Fallout 2 it is made quite clear that their plan would wipe out everyone in the world who wasn't inoculated and thus made immune to the effects of the modified FEV. This includes "Prime Normals"; being "pure" didn't magically make you immune to the FEV in Fallout 2 like it supposedly did in Fallout 3.



The Master is why I consider Fallout's story to be the best one in the series. Richard Grey (AKA The Master) is hands down the most interesting and developed antagonist in Fallout thus far. He was a great character even though you only got to actually speak to him face to face for five minutes. You learn a lot about him from his audio log, from his actions as the leader of the Unity, and after finally meeting him. He didn't seem evil for the sake of being evil like the Enclave did. He was a brilliant idealist with a naive vision of a perfect utopia that he believed in so much that it blinded him to the flaws in his plans and that his actions were causing more destruction than good, and that made him seem more "real".

I'm not really sure if the Fallout3 engine can handle everything Fallout2 offered.

Chaotic Evil characters are so rare even in real world. You can't even say Hitler was a chaotic evil character. It may even be true that the only chaotic evil characters in the real world are deranged murderers that don't belong in a prison but an asylum. And your sentences clearly shows why people could feel the world of Fallout1 and 2 much more realistic (in a way that it could really happen) not some child's fantasy.

I got Fallout when it first came out, and then waited for what seemed to be an eternity (which in reality only lasted one year) for Fallout 2. After Fallout 2 there was this enternal decade before I even heard that Fallout 3 was being in the making. I agree with many of the things stated above about which things were/are done better in FO1 and FO2 but I would like to add my thoughts as well:

The number one thing that comes to mind from your question is this: in Fallout 1 and 2 you weren't led by the hand every single step on the way.

E.g. the main quest of Fallout 1 (and this is hardly a spoiler):
You need to find a new Water Chip; there might be one in Vault 15. When you get to Vault 15 there's no Water Chip there, AND NO CLUE WHATSOEVER AS TO WHERE THERE MIGHT BE ONE! (and that is how I like my games).

My point is that you had to find things out on your own, and though some quests occasionally put a marker on you pipboy map there wasn't that d*mn*d little green compass arrow showing you exactly where you had to go and exactly who you had to ask to solve the puzzles of the game all of the time. (I believe that the "History of Rivet City" and "Missing Android" quests are the only ones in Fallout 3 where you actually need to ask around, and one of those include Victoria Watts (of whom I have already stated my opinion elsewhere on these forums))
Somtimes I actually feel that the game is patronizing me!

With that said I would like to conclude with saying that I have played Fallout 3 almost non-stop since it came out - buuuut, I have been playing Fallout 1 and 2 almost non-stop since they came out as well...

Honestly, if I didn't consider the second quest to be ridiculously over the top and a standard video game absurdity where a lone hero is sent to take down the strongest army in the world with the aid of his trusty butter-knife, I'd consider the story of FO1 the best of any RPG I know (and rivaling some of the best ones from Adventure games).

You didn't hear about Van Buren at any point of that decade?



Same here with both originals and third game. Underestimating players ability to think with [skill], [perk] or [karma] in dialogues is bad, but it finally reaches rock bottom when it dialogue tells [failure] or [success] instead something along lines, "That was last time you lied to me, time to suffer." or "Genetic mutation rate of this sample, is as you said, insanely high...". Pretty much only things that third part does bit better are couple game mechanics issues like repair and possibility to crouch. Only thing it does lot better than originals is not in the game itself, that is how easy it is to make mods for the game, third one has tools that are quite easy to use and there is tons of mods available.

Hard request considering how extremly different they are (1+2 vs.3).

-Dialouge/Quest solutions. You did not need to pull the trigger (or use whatever weapon) to have an exiting playtrough in nearly all quests of FO1 and a lot of quests in FO2 IF you char was played/skilled in that direction. Sneak/Lie/Fasttalk/Impress/Seduce/Bribe to get stuff done. FO1 even had a textbox in which you could type stuff to ask for which does not appear in the choicebox.

-Trueest to P&P RPG adaption I ever saw. EVERYTHING you did depended on the skills of you char and how you developed him/her and you never felt punished for choosing skill y instead of skill x since x helped you solve the same problem in a total different way (or rewarded you with something else with a similar worth) as would y have done. Two playtroughs in FO1 or 2 could be totally different from each other in everything you do and the reactions towards it while two in FO3 are mostly the same.

Just a minor spoiler example (my fave) from FO1.
The daughter of a village chief got captured by raiders. You could do the following ragarding the development of you char (just what I remember)
>you go in gun blazing, kill them all.
>you could challange the leader in the boxing ring.
>you tell him how dangerous you are and that he don't want the trouble.
>you sneak in though the back door.
>or you just join his gang by showing him how badass evil you are.

-huge scale / world map. It gave the whole thing a big feeling of the emptyness of the wasteland. FO3 put it all together in one city + loose surroundings which gave it a quite crowded feeling.

With these points I'm not telling that I dislike FO3 (I love it) compared to the first two. They are just too different for me to do that.

Yes, I did, and I had high expectations... signed so many petitions for it to be completed as well - sad, sad times...

I played FO -> FO3 -> FO2. Not in 1997 though, more like two years ago. I'm of the younger, spoiled, easily amused gaming generation with appallingly low standards. But here's what I think is done better in FO/FO2.

- Traits. Why were they left out? If chosen, they added to the RPG aspect.
- Balanced skills. It's impossible to become jack of all trades in FO&FO2, let alone become a god character. Choosing different skills (and stats) in the beginning results in different playthroughs, in FO3 it eventually felt like playing the same character over again.
- Dialogues. The dialogue options based on some quality of the character (skill, intelligence) actually provided something instead of being a decoration not serving their actual purpose.
- Characters and their motives weren't one-dimensional.
- No hand holding, which felt excessive in FO3. The game itself is a walkthrough.
- Multiple ways of solving quests.
- S.p.e.c.i.a.l. had a greater effect.
- Endings.

There's many things that are done better in FO3, too. The games have their pros and cons and mostly they're based on nothing more but personal preference.

Unarmed combat in the Classic Fallout's, though it felt extremely choreographed, was by leaps and bounds a lot more exciting and effective, than the Dublin pub brawler style which was used in Fallout 3. The "Classics" really help to hammer home, the superiority of turn-based play over that of real time.

Fallout 3 was a little more accessible for different types of players. Not just for people that like different types of games, but for people that prefer different play styles. The character creation in the original Fallouts pretty much forced you to choose high intelligence. While it is extremely advantageous to have high intelligence in Fallout 3, it is not completely necessary. They also balanced the weapons so you don't feel that you have to use any one weapon class because it is the best. The thing that stood out the most for me about the originals was the vast arsenal of weapons and the great characters.

Not true! The originals didn't force having a high intelligence, playing through the whole game as a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqotv_OpW6o is also a possibility. Even challenging in a funny kind of way. Okay, it influences some dialogue and quests hence creating a different storyline but that's the meaning of roleplaying.

They didn't force it, true, however I found that it was generally better to have INT set high. I did try a low-INT playthrough, but I'm a dialogue addict and really missed the obscure options you could get with a really high INT.

That said, the fact you could even do that was a big plus, whereas in FO3 your INT has no effect on dialogue except for those few options requiring it be at 7+, and most of those you won't miss for not having (does anybody even do that line for WSG anymore?).

As far as weapon balance, I'd say that FO3 absolutely destroyed it by allowing some small arms to totally outclass almost all the heavy weaponry. FO1 and 2 were much better in this regard IMO, because hard targets really should need heavy firepower. Also, some small arms were given the ability to pretty much bypass armor which meant that they weren't completely hosed against the hardest targets. See, to me weapon balance means that all classes can (more or less) get you through the game, not that all classes can do equally well against all types of targets. IOW, if I go up against a military base defended by heavily armored robots it would behoove me to bring anti-armor weaponry since trying to take them down with a sledgehammer probably isn't going to end well.

Short form: if there are going to be heavy weapons (read: Big Guns) in the game there should be an actual reason to use them, and lack of that, such as in FO3, ruins weapon balance IMO.

If you play as a dumb character are you still able to read books?

I did a quick test for you with falche, lowered my INT to 2 points and yes I can read books without any drawback in skill points.

Edit: I only tested it for Fallout 2, but I expect it will be the same for Fallout 1.