I keep reading these FNV>F3 or vice versa arguments that are completely unfounded. In fact New Vegas itself isn't what annoys me it is the arguments made against FO3 and sometimes the ones made against FNV don't make any sense either to be fair. An advlt discussion rather than a raving flamefest would be appreciated.

First of all the arguments against realism:

There is no agriculture in FO3! (No it's not as if the frequent Brahmin farms count. As if the limited agriculture in New Vegas is any more realistic. And hunting is obviously the main source of food for people in DC which makes perfect sense.)

Iron sights are an unfair advantage. (How the hell is something that is realistically part of the firearm an unfair advantage?)

Radiation isn't enough of a problem. (A complaint I've heard for both games, people don't seem to consider it has been over two centuries since the bombs fell. That aside, I don't think it appeals to the main stream to have to constantly manage radiation.)

Storyline wise:

Obsidian/Bethesda is better at writing than Obsidian/Bethesda (This is purely a matter of opinion, I personally found the storyline of FO3 more interesting while I have encountered more characters I appreciated in FNV. It is noteworthy that in the reviews I have read, particularly the gamespot review, FNV was marked down for having an unappealing storyline.)


The Storyline of FO3 is good/bad FNV is more gray. (While there are more grayish options like siding with Mr.House, as it stands the game is still presented very much in a NCR good CL bad manner. It could be argued that the storyline of FO3 is somewhat gray as well because the Enclave's end goal is actually better for the human race in the far long run. And the Brotherhood can be seen to commit it's share of evils like the slaughter of innocent ghouls and the massacre at Megaton.)

Theme:

Fallout: New Vegas lacks the tongue-in-cheek clever sarcasm of the series. (If you look for it you'll find it and sometimes you don't even have to really look. If there is anything that is consistent throughout the series it is the somewhat sarcastic and satirical view of the past. Or at least, clever quips here and there throughout the game world.)

Fallout: New Vegas lacks the 40s/50s feel that people enjoyed in the past. (It's set in [censored] Vegas with Frank Sinatra blaring half the day.)

Other:

Fans of the originals all hated FO3 and liked New Vegas better. (This is easily the most [censored] argument of them all since it is an example of some trying to speak for all. I personally know someone who is a big fan of the originals and hates FNV.)


More reasonable arguments:

Fallout: New Vegas is extremely unstable. (This is true for the vast majority of people I have spoken to, and for myself. However as I continue to play the game obviously, I have confidence that the problems will be fixed with time.)

Fallout 3 doesn't follow the series very well. (I've played the originals and I realize this, but I really enjoyed Fallout 3 and I think in the end it captured the same civil-apocalyptic theme if not a little overboard in the apocalyptic area. And nothing makes it any less Fallout 3.)

Fallout: New Vegas doesn't allow you to play after the MQ. (True, and with so much to do with the MQ aside, I dislike this fact. Whether or not they will 'fix' this is a matter of speculation. I personally doubt it.)

Fallout: New Vegas isn't very evil friendly. (In many ways it isn't, but this is true of a vast majority of game unfortunately.)

Fallout 3's companions were very removed from the story. (This is true and In my opinion followers are one of the few areas in which New Vegas makes a vast improvement. Although I still miss Fawkes.)

Fallout 3 was too easy. (I personally found Fallout 3 more difficult at least early on than New Vegas. Then again my jack-of-all trades build is designed for all situations. I don't specialize.)

There, I have addressed the issues that matter most to me. Feel free to add your own as long as you can address them in a sensible manner.

No. A. Caesar's Legion is more effective and keeps the areas it takes over safe, it just does it in an authoritarian way, a way which Caesar states they'll evolve out of after it's no longer needed. NCR is an incompetent and corrupt democracy that can't do anything right, but wants to restore civilization and democracy to the Wastes. B. FO3 isn't gray, it's stupid. Why would you fight over who gets to turn on a purifier when they both want to do the same thing? The only member of the Enclave that wants to put the FEV in the water is Eden and Colonel Autumn wouldn't let him. The BOS are a bunch of good guy knights who are protecting people from the evil Supermutants.

I've spent way too much time having this type of discussion, so I'm not going to get into it, but I did have a couple of random comments.


I think this is a little bit of a strawman in that it's not the complete argument that I see the most often. Whether it's farming or not, there was very little evidence or back-story to provide even a vague picture of how people were surviving in FO3. I'm not complaining about it, but the fact that it's discussed and an attempt was made to offer justifications in NV adds an additional dimension of believability to the setting in my mind. Just my opinion.


This is obviously going to be opinion that will vary from person-to-person. As storylines go I don't think FO3's was bad. I don't think NV's is any worse either, though, regardless of what some "gaming journalist" thinks about it. I do think that NV's writing goes into a lot more detail about just about everything and does a better job reinforcing its over-arching themes with details. In my mind that makes its story come across as a richer narrative, but like I said this is going to come down to opinion.


There's no doubt that there are a lot of people having problems...probably more than average (I lurk and post in a lot of game tech and troubleshooting forums). I wouldn't use the term, "majority," though, because that implies collection and anolysis of some kind of data, which I don't think has been done. There's no way to determine whether or not its a majority. Simply looking at the number of mentions of bugs on the internet doesn't allow us to make assumptions about the millions of people that bought the title.

For the most part I agree with the overall sentiment of your post. Objectivity isn't something I expect out of most online communities, though. The over-wrought arguments and hyperbole are pretty much impossible to avoid, I think.

I agree with Hackworthy, most of the arguments are personal opinions.

I have my own views but I'll keep them to myself. At least here.

Good post, and I agree with you on a lot of what you've said.

I've said this before, but a lot of people overlook the 'environment' of F3. Basically, it's an anarchaic world, with no centralised government, and very fragmented communities. The ground radiation has pretty much settled in the water courses and other places where ground water collects, which is what you would expect, and the entire wastelands are overrun with hostiles...whether those are raiders, enclave, outcasts or beasties. I think the addition of 'agriculture' to FNV was more scene setting than anything else, providing a backdrop to the much more stable society that exists.

Rather than seeing F3 as an addition to the series, a lot of people stressed over the fact that it wasn't created in the image they wanted...which in some cases was a 2D rehash of F1 and F2 (and yes, there were threads on that).

F3 was different, some people didn't like it, some did.

FNV is far more 'political' in the story, thanks largely to the faction interaction system, although I found it took longer to get to where it was going (but that was perhaps due to the hard ending causing me to try and fit as much in as possible prior to finishing the game...kind of prevents drawing the adventure out...but the same could be said of F3 prior to BS as well).

I see FNV as more representative of a third world city state situation, where the surrounding lands (nevada) are being annexed into a larger neighbouring nation, under threat of military invasion by a neighbouring superpower. That makes it a much more 'strategic' game than F3, where the real issue was much more 'tactical', hence the focus of F3 on combat and FNV on interaction type skills (i.e. speech).

In F3 you were working on ending the war; In FNV you are working on how you want it to end.

This is true, and I think your point about agriculture is spot-on. It would have been cool to have seen some explanation for how people were surviving, though. Perhaps even just a quest or two involving helping out some settlements in finding or securing food, setting up trade for supplies between settlements, etc. When I went to places like Canterbury Commons and Grayditch I found myself thinking, "wait, people live here?" They were pretty much a bunch of bombed-out buildings with little to no evidence that there is/was a settlement there. Primm is kind of like that in NV, but a lot of the other settlements in NV are reasonably believable. At the very least I would have like to have seen a bit of those types of details in Megaton. It didn't ruin it for me, but it would have been nice to have had a better picture of what people were doing to get by.

Is he?

Who isn't?

I agree with you on that Softs. The water caravan thing got me to thinking that it would have been worthwhile to assist in the development of a more organised trade/communications system (although I know the trader story made them into lone nomads).

After the finish of BS, etc, there was a whole game waiting to be played out in simply redeveloping the DC Wastes...

To be honest, I wonder if FNV has the actual DLC potential that F3 had...A centralised government with large resources kind of limits the necessity for a lone troubleshooter in a lot of ways, a la F3.

A robot :laugh:

On Topic: No offense hackworthy, but your OP has indicated to me personally that you're attempting a subtle 'Fallout 3 is better' argument.

My opinion is both are better than the other in certian areas.

My only real strong disappointment is the toned down 1950s Atomic Age feel Fallout 3 produced. I enjoyed that rugged Wild West feel parts of New Vegas, but I personally feel that 'Perfect America of Yesterday' feeling is very lacking in this game. After playing the other 2 main Fallouts after I was introduced to the series, I became aware Fallout 3 turned up the nostalgia of the Pre-War era, but I think it was a step in the right direction in that regards. Seeing alot of those 50's themes of 'America!' added to the heavy hearted 'This is what America has become, it breaks my heart.' vibe.

To be fair, Canterbury Commons, I believe, had a fenced in area full of Brahmin. Grayditch was also destroyed by an army of fireants, and in some random encounters you can see hunters running around. There is also Anandale (spelling?) explaining cannibalism. Other than that, most of the settlements lack any Brahmin or way they actually get their food. It had a more "desperate" feel though than the agriculture did in New Vegas.

That 'desperate' grittiness was missing was one of the first things I picked up on in FNV. When F3 was released, the boards were full of posts about what people did as soon as they stepped out the vault, or what their reactions were, same same as Oblivion.

My first reaction on leaving the Doc's place was "Oh...Springvale...." FNV didn't have that initial impact....

"Fallout: New Vegas lacks the tongue-in-cheek clever sarcasm of the series. (If you look for it you'll find it and sometimes you don't even have to really look. If there is anything that is consistent throughout the series it is the somewhat sarcastic and satirical view of the past. Or at least, clever quips here and there throughout the game world.)"

Vault 11. That is all.

As for "writing", I think Obsidian wins in terms of "well-written", stylistically. But Bethesda put together a more epic kind of storyline, action-packed and with a big special effects budget for Giant Stompy Robots and Space Marine pew-pew laser fights.

FONV instead had a more real-world scale conflict for more real-world style reasons (competing "nations" trying to take/hold scarce resources), relative to any of the first three games. The main villains weren't an army of super-strong mutants or equipped with cutting-edge Pre-War tech, they were just really determined, organized, cunning, and ruthless. But when you see the damage that people can do with nothing but boxcutters, it's hard to say they aren't believable. It's understandable that people would find them less interesting, though.

While Bethesda's writing was at its best when used for driving the plot forward, Obsidian's writing/design was put to use in creating a really compelling sense of place, with memorable characters. All of that is critical for helping the player to give a damn about a conflict that doesn't involve power levels over 9000. The other thing they do really well is tie lots of different subplots together into a meaningful whole. But because their storytelling is more of a passive, pervasive kind of thing, you really only get out of it what you put in.

Vault 11 has no outhouses I can climb down, place an explosive to a rock that looks out of place, blow myself up in the process because all the fecal matter producing methane, but on the second attempt find the bottom of the village well with bottle caps laying everywhere and my character then commences to acting out the scene in the goonies at the bottom of the wishing well.

The problem with the DC wasteland being so disorganized and primitive is that it makes no sense. The West Coast managed to become more civilized since people dug up the ruins of cities in search of old world technology and knowledge. They eventually formed towns and governments. There's no reason why that didn't happen in DC. There were a ton of old world technology and knowledge left in DC. It made no sense why people in DC didn't do what the people in the west coast did. It would make more sense if DC faced greater destruction and less old world stuff was left, but that's not the case, you can find old world salvage everywhere. It would have made more sense if FO3 had taken place in an area that didn't have as many ruined cities or old world ruins like the places Caesar conquered.

I just want them to implement a driveable car and I'll be happy.

I agree with some of your points but I diverge regarding New Vegas' stability and Main Quest complaint.

I haven't had many problems that weren't indicators of me playing too long, at which point any game would freeze. The few actual bugs in the game have been minor at the very worst. Saying that the majority of the gaming community has problems with the game is an unfounded argument as well considering that you don't have the total number of players to compare the number of complaints to. If 20,000 people have problems for instance, it makes a huge difference if the total players are 25,000 or 1,000,000. Without knowing what the number of players overall, it's impossible to claim the the majority have problems.

As for the Main Quest, Fallout 3 originally ended at the end of the Main Quest too; as well as Fallout 1. I personally do not see it as an issue considering that anything that I could do in the game can be done before I move on to the last quest.

While I agree that the writing/storylines involved in both are down to subjective opinion, I do think the companions were more fleshed out and better written in NV. Not bashing F:3 - they are both good, but I think that NV was bound to have some improvements over the last installment; I think that's what everyone aims for when they continue any kind of project (like the ironsights, hardcoe mode, tweaking VATS etc.).

Well, there is some agriculture, but it's only a representation, and to me, the value of it was well stated by the post you are quoting here. However, there isn't enough of it to support the life around it. There is this little patch at Nellis, and it looks like most of it goes to the bio-diesel plant. The people there talk about other stuff, but we don't see it. It's going to take more then a couple stalks of corn to keep dozens of people alive.

Splitting hairs, perhaps, but this "FO3 how do they live" argument has become tiresome. FO:NV is just as bad, IMO. It's like they put a couple stalks of corn up to give it all a lick and a promise.

People live here? Yes, they make due with something close to nothing, which is why I like the atmosphere of fO3 over that of FO:NV. FO3 is grittier, more hopeless, more dangerous. One gets the feeling that, in a blink of the eye, Mankind could disappear under the rubble. It's that close of a thing...that desperate. That's more in line of my own vision of a PA environment. FO:NV is too settled to be PA, IMO.

To me, the Capital wasteland made perfect sense. The disorganization amongst settlements and their primitive state is actually the only thing that would make sense in DC. The old world technology was actually one of the reasons for this chaos, because everyone was striving to get it. Normal people and settlements were too busy to survive in this land of strife, so it's no wonder most were primitive and disorganized. Think about it for a minute.

-If you have a vast army of mutants in multiple fronts, who have taken over most of the wasteland and more importantly the ruins of DC
-A whole city and faction of ghouls which are mostly hostile with humans and vice versa because of their racial discriminations.
-Raiders everywhere, saluaging whatever they can find, killing everyone in their path.
-Slavers who only care about taking advantage of other fellow humans to make profit.
-The Talon company. Lawless mercenaries whose goals are actually to keep the wasteland disorganized and killing everyone else.
-And last but not least, the Enclave, propagandizing everyone, especially the remaining humans, and working for their own goals, usually clashing with the Brotherhood of Steel.


How can the human civilization or any faction flourish, be organised, hell, even cooperate under all this conflict? Would that make sense to you? Compared to DC, Vegas is actually a peacefull place. Under such circumstances, there would be no Ceasar's Legion or NCR expansion in Vegas. NCR would never expand in such a place, cause it wouldn't be able to afford taking part in this kind of conflict thus it expanded in New Vegas, a place ripe for exploitation. Same for the Legion. Ceasar would actually hide under his own bed if he were to face the DC Wasteland's hospitality.

In both games, the settings are quite lore-friendly. Vegas can afford being more political, with humans having lesser trouble in surviving each day that passes.

What doesn't make sense to me is:
The super mutants haven't been there from day one, so why haven't there been any noticeable progress prior to the rise of the mutants?
Faction of ghouls?
You mean ferals? That's not cause of discrimination, it's cause of extreme insanity.
And where do they all come from? Why haven't they died out yet?
Raiders, well, where the hell does the raiders come from? It makes no sense for raiders to be everywhere without rhyme nor reason.
Slavers, except for Pitt, where do they sell their slaves to? Made no sense to have a slaver faction but no settlement/town which used slaves or even giving an explanation for what other place they could sell their slaves.
Talon Company, like... What? Why are they there? What is their purpose? None. The game could have had them cut and it wouldn't have made a difference.

Capital Wasteland make sense how?

I mean, I understand that DC is the [censored]hole of the Fallout Universe, it's the most inhospitable place ever encountered.
And I can accept that.
What I cannot accept is that there is little to no explanation for most of the things there.

1: The agriculture in NV is supposed to be merely a token representation to show that there's agriculture going on. Just like the Strip isn't comprised by just those 6-7 buildings, and just like the Mall on F3 wasn't supposed to be smaller than an ordinary avenue. You're supposed to make an an abstraction out of them and account for scale. To be honest, arguing that those tokens aren't realistic (when they were never supposed to be in the first place) just speaks ill of you :shrug:
2: Hunting being the entire food source for a human population the size of the CW doesn't make any sense at all, and an ecology comprised entirely of carnivores makes even less sense. All they had to do to make it more palatable would be some off-hand remarks about caravans from out of CW bringing foodstuffs from nearby regions with more stable ecosystems and proper agriculture.


As some people already said there are a lot of bad spots for the NCR and a lot of good spots for the Legion. And even if you personally see F3's BoS and Enclave as being gray, the game obviously don't. The only in-game supporter of the Enclave gets locked up and withdrawns it. And at any rate, you're still iron-tracked in supporting the BoS and going against the Enclave. :shrug:


This is a fallacy. It's safe to say eg that cockroaches are dirty isn't it? Even though there are instances of clean cockroaches. The same way, if the overwhelming majority of the fans of the originals liked NV better than F3, it's safe to make a generalization. The fact that you personally know one, or even a hundred of individuals that are an exception to this doesn't change anything.


That a sequel doesn't follow it's predecessors very well doesn't make it any less of a sequel? Seriously. :facepalm:


That's a matter of taste I suppose. I like it because it allow your actions to have actual consequences and meaning. At any rate, all things being equal, they should stick to the originals, and the originals had closed endings.

The super mutants haven't been there from day one, as well as the reconstruction of the human civilization couldn't have began from day one. Are you under the impression that just after a nuclear war and especially in a place that had been hit directly with nukes and having tremendous amounts of radiation that someone could start building a civilization as if nothing had happened? The Master had plenty of time. Scarce resources, mutations from the radiation, raiders (i will answer your puzzlement about them below) and a myriad other reasons are more than enough to aswer your question.

Also you can check wow wiki and see that Richard Gray's aka the Master's expedition to Mariposa where FEV was kept was only after 10 to 30 years after the bombs fell. I won't say much, read for yourself.



No ferals did not have a city on FO3 (have you even played FO3?). The normal ghouls were discriminated. And for your second answer quoted from Fallout wiki (also answered by playing the game): "In the Capital Wasteland, many ghouls currently alive were born long after the Great War in 2077"





That's the easiest question you could ask and it doesn't need to be answered by a source of lore or fallout history. After civilization is destroyed, do you think everything will be in order again, laws will continue to exist and everyone will respect them or care about each other? Raiders looting, killing, [censored] etc would be the most common phenomenon after such events. If that does not make sense to you, i honestly don't know which planet you came from.



http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Talon_Company

And on top of all these the Enclave keeps the masses uninformed, doing its propaganda and trying to manipulate them.

Topic title couldn't be more fitting for your "arguements" - mostly coming from lack of knowledge.

Just cause they don't explain everything in the wasteland doesn't mean it's not there.

A massive army of Supert Mutants that wasn't destroyed like on the West Coast has occupied the city and many surrounding areas. You also have to worry about the limitless raider gangs and slavers that further destabilize the CW. There is no will power for the people of the CW to form a stable society like the NCR on the West Coast.



1. Progress towards rebuilding society would take decades at best after a nuclear conflict. With the widespread looting, pillaging, and mass murders that would last for weeks or months, and then the survivors of all of this forming small little communities instead of coming together. By the time you would start to see progress, the Super Mutants would start to be appear.
2. Ghouls aren't only pre-war. While a few were pre-war, most would have been "created" post-war because of the high levels of radiation still lingering.
3. Raiders came from the ordinary population that turned to pillaging. The reason they are there is to survive.
4. Slavers sold their slaves to the Pitt. With the amount of slaves needing to be purchased by the Pitt, the Slavers of Paradise Falls only needed to sell exclusively.
5. Talon Company is just a mercenary orginization that carries out various contracts. Basically raiders with high end equipment that are set on a specific warpath.