Hey forum-goers.

I wrote this article about how Fallout 2 is better than Fallout 3. I would love some feedback on it.

Don't get me wrong -- I still think Fallout 3 is a great game. Just not as a good as Fallout 2 in my opinion.

Here is the link:
http://www.neoseeker.com/news/9147-commentary-11-ways-fallout-2-was-better-than-fallout-3/

"Bethesda -- did they [censored] the soul of the original games?

I have a feeling this little article might ruffle a couple of feathers, in the gaming flocks. After all, game reviewers are going bat-balls crazy for the game. Some reviewers think the game is better than water; others believe it better than Gears of War crossed with Final Fantasy 7, etcetra. Some reviewers think Bethesda does better work than Dostoevsky.

Don't get me wrong. Fallout 3 isn't good -- it's great. One of the best games of the year, easily...but even still: could it have been better? Are mods going to bring Fallout 3 to incredibly new heights, like mods made a gem out of the rough diamond of Bethesda's Oblivion?

Fallout 2 is probably my favorite RPG of all time. So, understandably (I hope), any game I'm going to compare to Fallout 2 is going to come up short. Well Fallout 3 is the sequel to Fallout 2, right? Well I'm going to compare them. And guess what -- Fallout 3 is going to come up short.

Here's my brief list of 11 ways Fallout 3 fell short of Fallout 2. In no particular order.

1. Tag skills

Bethesda completely missed the boat on the whole notion of 'Tag Skills' from the original games...."

I'd love feedback, good or bad.

I'll argue any points, but please don't take any of my criticism of the game too seriously and call me a jerk. I hate it when that happens.

What's the point in writing an article comparing the two games, or any game to Fallout 2 for that matter, if your bias will always lean in favour of Fallout 2? Personally, I wish I could go back and replay Fallout and Fallout 2 in the FPS perspective as what has been done with Fallout 3. It's completely immersive.

Fallout 2 may have more style, but Fallout 3 is a much more impressive game- and I'm a guy who LOVES Fallout and Fallout 2.

EDIT:

After actually reading the article I must say that your blinding bias is so obvious that the article lacks any journalistic integrity. If your goal was to use the article as linkbait (to get people to visit the site to see what the fuss is all about) it's likely worked, but I don't feel it holds any legitimacy.

I mean, have you never actually PLAYED Fallout 2? Have you forgotten the entire concept by which the games (Fallout 2 and Fallout 3) were based on? Based on a lot of what you said that seemed to be the case.

Point 11, for example:

Years after a global nuclear holocaust you will not find unopened boxes of macaroni all over the place. You will not be going through a sewer and trip over a box full of 5.56 mm ammunition. Why not? The game is set 200 years after the war- many things could have, and did, change. How is that not plausible?

People will not be launching mini-nukes at super-mutants. Not even every once in a while. In our reality, no, but you're forgetting that the Fallout series is based on an alternate reality, where the "Nuclear Future" of the 50's never dissipated. In that reality, tactical nukes and nuclear powered cars isn't outlandish at all. In fact, it makes complete sense.

Drinking water mixed with radioactive waste will not fix you up after being shot five times in the face with a shotgun. Agree.

People will not be all friendly and nice to me in the barren wasteland. Some people will be jerks. Many won't even have quests for me. Some won't even care about me at all. Have you not met half the NPC's in Fallout 3? You know- Paradise Falls, the raiders that are everywhere, and the general douchebags that litter the landscape...

Forlorn offices in abandoned dilapidated factories will not have working computer terminals that control robotic guards.

Every-day dudes will not have robotic butlers, after a global thermonuclear war. Says who? You know that the actual area that is physically destroyed by a nuke is actually rather small? Since Robots don't depend on the sun for power, food, and whatever, why is it not plausible that they'd be intact in some areas? ESPECIALLY if you consider that most of the landscape is nuclear powered.

**

As well, your point about the Ghouls is completely ignorant of what's actually in the game. Have you not been to Underworld? Have you not encountered the ghouls that are everywhere that aren't Feral? Have you even played the damn game?

You = fail.

I thought it was an entertaining read. I would refrain from profanity, it's hackish. imho.

Mind if I tackle your article point for point?


1. Tag skills

I do agree that Tag skills seem a bit...muted this time around. But at the same time, there's still skills you're going to sink points into more then others depending on your play style, and having leveled to Level 19 (One away from Max), I can tell you right now that my character was in no way shape or form master of everything. There was a LOT I left untouched.


2. Items that magically boost stats

Yes, there are items and armor that boost your statistics. I do find it funny though that you don't have a bee in your bonnet over the most obvious alteration - that of Power Armor. It no longer turns you into a walking tank with vast amounts of carrying capacity.

Indeed, in many respects given a character build sometimes...*gasp*...Power Armor is no longer the be all, end all of armors in a Fallout game. A little more variety is a bad thing?


As for the Bobbleheads, I only found two of them - so they never directly affected my play style at all.


3. Dumb weapons

Yes, because 200 years after the Great War, there's still plenty of pre-war weaponry in perfectly serviceable condition without any signs of massive erosion.

Seriously? Ragging on the game for adding a mechanic of adding weaponry to the game? FYI, the Railspike Rifle is a powerful piece of equipment - it can take off the head of any enemy not wearing a helmet in a single shot, provided the shot connects to begin with. It's a One-Shot Insta-Kill weapon.

As for the Fat Man Mini-Nuke Launcher, how is that a unbelievable weapon when the VEHICLES of the game are all Mini-Nukes themselves?


4. Random encounters

Now this I don't understand at all. Never go wandering in the Wasteland? There's plenty of random encounters to be had in Fallout 3 - the only thing is you actually have to go out there and stumble across them instead of allowing the game to shuffle you to them. And no, not all of them have bad guys wanting to rip you to pieces. There's a guy living with two ladies in the lap of luxury on the border of the DC Ruins near Rivet City, after all. As far as I can determine, there's no quests attached to him or them...it's just there.

Next!


5. Difficulty levels

So just play the game on Normal and ignore it. It's starting to feel like you're reaching.



6. Open world freedom

...

Okay, seriously now. You're harping on the game for including rubble and blocked off passages in a game about a Post-Apocalyptic wasteland. "There's only one passage"...well duh. How is that worse then Fallout and Fallout 2's "Fly through the Overworld" and never stop to take in the sights along the way method of travel? Oh and just cause there's one path through the ruins, doesn't mean there's nothing interesting within that maze. Corner Grocery Stores, Radroaches feasting on corpses...kinda sounds almost like...random encounters, doesn't it?


7.Immersion free NPC's

Actually, Bethesda covered this very early on. One of the core complaints about the Elder Scrolls series (Especially in Oblivion), was the sheer number of do-nothing NPCs. Bethesda said early on in Fallout 3's development that they were scrolling back the number of fluff NPCs in order to streamline the experience.

Yes, the child pickpockets, prosttutes, and Junkies that inhabited Fallout 2 in legion are gone. But there's more uniqueness between NPCs now, and especially no more of families speaking about Mudcrabs with bland familiarity. I remember the first time I walked into Rivet City during Lunch Time and being in awe of ACTUAL CONVERSATION greeting me.


8. Ghouls

Yes, because no other Fallout game has had Ghoul enemies.

Also, it's obvious you haven't transversed the world very much. There's friendly Ghoul NPCs all over the place - including their very own city. It's actually quite the nice place.


9. Open ended quests

Actually, depending on your Skills and Base Stats...there's always multiple ways of doing quests. I don't think I did a quest in Fallout 3 where there wasn't at least 3 separate ways of handling any given situation.


10. Not-so-funny humor

That's because Fallout 2 was more of a Pop-Culture Homagefest, where as Fallout 1 (The basis for Fallout 3) was more of a somber affair. Moria's attitude was designed to make players want to strangle her.


11. Complete abandoning of any sort of realism

This coming from the guy who complains about the lack of meeting King Aurthur, the Guardian of Forever, and downed Starfleet Shuttle Craft.



Cept the fact both Fallout and Fallout 2 both included that very thing.


In the end...

You're viewing Fallout 2 with rose tinted glasses, and allowing it to affect preconceptions about Fallout 3. Is Fallout 3 perfect? Hell no. But it's not disrespecting the legacy of the game that came before it either. Hell, given Fallout 2's constant barrage of 90s era Pop Culture, I'd say Fallout 2's more disrespectful to the Fallout legacy then Fallout 3 is.

I didnt play Fo 1 and 2, but FO 3 really made me think about the whole genre.... and i was really interested about the storyline, it got me reading on wiki and stuff... i think that FO 3 is a success because it gives you that ... post apocalyptic feeling or w/e

EDIT: Crap, nevermind.

You ruined any chance of me agreeing when you used the word [censored]. That is not a good start, its a way to get me very very angry.

Lets see what we have:

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1. Tag skills

Bethesda completely missed the boat on the whole notion of 'Tag Skills' from the original games. In the originals, you picked three tag skills at the beginning of the game. They were your character's specialties. You want a medic with a good throwing arm that can pick locks? Pick Medicine, Throwing, Lock Picking. For the rest of the game, every time you level, and skill point put into a tag skill will be doubled. So, like, it's easier to become proficient at your character's specialties.

This isn't how it works in Fallout 3.

In Fallout 3, you pick three tag skills at the beginning. These tag picks give you a +10 bonus to the skill and... that's it.

How dumb is that? Not sure why the crippled the Tag skills. Why not just give the player an extra 30 skill points to allocate when he makes his character? It would have the same in-game outcome.

Another criticism of the skills: In Fallout 3, like Oblivion, many characters are going to be masters of everything in the game. This wasn't really possible in Fallout 2 -- well not to the same extent. Stuff like tag skills and actually having to specialize gave your character more... character.

Oh yeah: Fallout 2: 18 skills. Fallout 3: 13 skills. Enough said.
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When your cap is 100, increasing skills at 2x would result in you having easily enough skill points to get 100% in pretty much everything.

As for the 13 skills thing, Interplay were planning that in Van Buren.
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2. Items that magically boost stats

Only a small handful of items in Fallout 2 modified your skills or attributes. Not so in Fallout 3. This time around, we have leather jackets that magically give you bonuses to melee combat. What's up with that? Having a dictionary in my pocket may prevent me from making less errors when writing something like this out -- sure. But what if I'm wearing a shirt with a dictionary on it? Should that cut down on my grammatical errors? No, I don't thinke so.

And bobbleheads. There are 20 or so bobbleheads in the game. The all magically give you stats. I don't want to feel like my character is gimped if I don't track down some damn bobblehead hiding on some ledge some place that I'm never going to find without a in-depth walkthrough. Screw the bobbleheads.
--
Like the fact that you knocked out the masticator increased your toughness magically... And having a karma of a certain level did too? Fallout 1/2 had its magic too.
--

3. Dumb weapons

The Fallout games never strived for realism, sure. But at no point in Fallout 2 did I build a weapon that shoots rail road spikes.

And the Fat Man launcher? Oh man. Don't get me started. I'm just going to pass on that one.
----
And in No point in Fallout 2 did radiation seem scary. A launcher of Railroad spikes is actually a viable junkyard weapon...

There are plenty of links suggesting that the fatman is in fact, real, or was a planned weapon by the US.
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In Fallout 2 you could make molotov cocktails with gasoline and a bottle. Fallout 3, you can make a Rock-It Launcher that'll launch tin cans and plungers at people.
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No you couldnt. Exaclty where yould you get Gasoline or an empty bottle?
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I'll stick with the molotov cocktails.
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I'll let you have all the imaginary crafted Fallout 2 weapons you like
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4. Random encounters

There was a bunch of cool random encounters you could have in Fallout 2. Sometimes you'd come across trading caravans that you could slaughter. Some were more rare, like the Cafe of Broken Dreams. Some were non-combat encounters -- people in the Wastes that you could talk and trade with.

In Fallout 3, enemies are all over the place, according to what zone you are in. There aren't really any random encounters per se -- which is another reason why the Luck stat isn't as much as big deal in Fallout 3 either.

Bethesda, here's a free idea you should use in Fallout 4. I won't charge you for it. Bring the Outdoorsman skill back. Any time you fast travel, to a skill roll on the Outdoorsman skill. If you fail, you run into a random encounter. And 'random encounter' doesn't have to mean 'Random people that want to kill you.' It can be other stuff instead... like roleplaying game type stuff.
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I agree... But it causes you to loose your Realisim argument.
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5. Difficulty levels

This one will be short. Fallout 2: difficulty levels make combat harder, and all skills rolls harder. The game is much harder.

Fallout 3: higher difficulty levels gives your enemies more health... and that's it. On the harder difficulty levels Fallout 3 is only harder because you run out of ammo more often.

Ho hum.

6. Open world freedom

Fallout 3 has a lot of this. But not as much as Fallout 2.

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.
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You can go direct to the vault where your dad is, theres no invisible wall there.

The walls dont look invisible to me. They look like impassable streets

You were expecting all those buldings to stay up after a nuclear war? I thought you wanted realism?
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Just follow the path through the open world.

7.Immersion free NPC's

Most of the dialogue in the game is not memorable, consequently, most characters are forgettable. Many times half way through conversations I just clicked right through to the end bit, where they dispense the quest or what-not.

People like the wasteland super-hero Antangonizer just would not exist, even after a nuclear war. Give me a break.

So many characters are just so unbelievable -- even by RPG standards. The NPC's don't exist as non-playing characters. Most exist solely as pieces of game mechanic furniture -- like the Nuka Cola machines everywhere that somehow, amazingly, all still have Nuka in them. They are function. Not personalities.
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You want peronality from a nuka cola machine? Lucas sims, the President, riley, dad, Dr Li, and the Ghoul that got me to help him overrun Tenpenny are quite memorable to me.
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I don't want to battle through a legion of Super Mutants, climb through a tunnel, then run into this strangely dressed guy deep in the wreckage of the Wasteland that greets me by saying, "What would you like to purchase?"

In the real world, I've never met anyone anywhere who introduced himself, and then thirty seconds later offered me some money to nuke a city. I wish there were more NPC's in the game that didn't give quests or heal you or trade with you -- they are just like, you know, NPC's that are doing there own thing.
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I've never met a man outstanding a door with no obvious handle that knew my name even though I was fresh out of a tribal village. I've also never been asked to repair a nuclear power plant with no training, or eliminate a town of mutants.
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8. Ghouls

In Fallout 2, most ghouls were like radiated, semi-mutated ex-human being people. You could talk with them. Have them join you as team members. Ghouls were people too, in Fallout 2.

In Fallout 3, ghouls are zombies. Besides that one dude Gob, in Megatown, ghouls are stupid zombies that immediately attack you on sight.
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have you been to Underworld? They're people too. Epic Fail. Theres also a bunch of ghoul revolutionaries planning to get into Tenpenny tower, and one of them is even a radio star (on that radio comedy thats played on GNN)
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I realize RPG's need random enemies to kill. Sure. But why did Bethesda have to make them ghouls? Why not anything else? They had the whole wasteland of creativity at their disposal. They could have made you fight anything. Like L. Ron Hubologist cultists. Or mutated raccoons.

Every time I shoot a ghoul I want to cry. I think to myself: "Damn! That ghoul could have been innocent!"

Maybe it was all a misunderstanding.

9. 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.
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You mustnt be looking very hard, tenpenny tower: Kill the Ghouls, let the ghouls in yourself, ot talk the residents into letting in the ghouls.
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10. Not-so-funny humor

There were parts of Fallout 2 that made me laugh out loud, even before the acroynm LOL was even around.

Opinions are like [censored]s. Everyone has them and they all stink.

That last paragraph was a pair of lines that I remember from a game that came out more than 10 years ago. Do you remember any lines from any games that you played 10 years ago? Do you remember any lines from a game -- say, Fallout 3 -- that you played last night? All hail Fallout 2.

Some of the characters are often so un-funny in Fallout 3 that I wish the game had a strangle button.

Like when that ditzy chick in the supply store came up to me, asking me to go hunt molerats for her. Her voice is so grating. Her character is annoying.

Where is that strangle button?

"Oh you are such a sweet heart for getting severly wounded for me so I can study wounds for my book. I hope it didn't hurt! Tee-hee-hee-haw-haw."

Strangle. Strangle.
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Did you visit the woman in Arefu thats convicned the war never happened?

I think that NPC you are thinking of is MEANT to be annyoing... Hang on, wait a sec, werent you arging before that the NPC's werent memorable? Looks like you proved yourself wrong!
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11. Complete abandoning of any sort of realism

Bethesda, listen up.

Years after a global nuclear holocaust you will not find unopened boxes of macaroni all over the place. You will not be going through a sewer and trip over a box full of 5.56 mm ammunition.

People will not be launching mini-nukes at super-mutants. Not even every once in a while.

Drinking water mixed with radioactive waste will not fix you up after being shot five times in the face with a shotgun.

People will not be all friendly and nice to me in the barren wasteland. Some people will be jerks. Many won't even have quests for me. Some won't even care about me at all.

Forlorn offices in abandoned dilapidated factories will not have working computer terminals that control robotic guards.

Every-day dudes will not have robotic butlers, after a global thermonuclear war.

In the end...
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You failed because on one hand you want realisim, on one hand you dont. Make up your mind

In the end, if you must insist on ranking games, go for it. Fallout 1, 2 and 3 are all brilliant. Fallout 3 manages to get the survival part right which Fallout 1 and 2 failed at completely. The terrain actively fights you.

i have to agree with mostly everything you said.
i would rate fallout 2 better mostly because of the free world you had, and the urban feel. and....
-in fallout 3, given its in a different part of the USA, there is nothing around like the old fallout places, ex: new Reno. most of it is just crap buildings made out of metal.
-in F3 there are alot of ghouls and mostly friendly ones, just head to underworld.
-i lost my place...
-there is little humor in here, only real humor i get is when i have a sledge hammer and i crouch-V.A.T.S.-smack old dude-crit hit-bloody mess-blammo.
-while ill admit the 1st-3rd person view gives it a whole new perspective i much would have rather kept it like the old eagle eye view and TBC.
-the pip boy..... this little device controls everything in your life basically, sure its needed and gives you separate views on how to hold your equipment-heal yourself-and tell you your quests, in F2 your pip boy was used for 2 things: sleep and notes (maybe maps).
-no weight on ammo... so your telling me that i can carry 50 missiles and not weigh a pound... WOW..... im superman!!!!1
-fat man? cmon its like.. well hell it is nuke. sure pretty much everything is nuclear powered but why make something as l337 as a nuke launcher?! given you only have a limited amount, but whats to say you just don't use them till you plan to take out a city?
-while i do like the new 50 mile square radius-or whatever it is-look on traveling, i MUCH rather have the point and click travel from city to city. put a 10 mile radius city in there! make it look cool! something.....
-YOU SCREWED UP THE ARMOR!!!! the enclave armor had big huge shoulders and had like a big neck guard thing! that was soooo cool! but now its all small...i do say you did a good job on the Brotherhood power armor, but come on.... in F2 the power armor had 5 less defense than the Advance power armor (a.k.a. enclave armor) and the Tesla power armor? why not make a ADA Mrk 3?! instead of the Tesla, which does look cool but is pretty much useless.
-outcasts, there cool but such [censored]s.... why not give us the option to tell them you want to be part of them and follow their goals? much like everyone else. i remember in F1 joining raiders... in F2 slavers... F3..................?
-i cant kill kids anymore... i just wanna take my knife and go to little lampshade and destroy that mayor kid... (pretty much the strangle button)
-no objection to the robots
-my biggest problem.... i Cannot believe you left out the Gauss rifle-pistol. was it to powerful or something?!...
-low inventory of weapons, F1-2 had such a large arsenal of weaponry you could choose to kill your enemy in pretty much any way! hell even tactics had a good arsenal!
-the laser rifle looks good but looks nothing like F1-2 portrayed, same with the plasma rifle and rocket launcher, also wheres the bozar?!
-random encounters were so awesome in F2 but when i get highly radiated and try to find out whats radiating me to find a U.F.O. and get a alien blaster i kinda just sit there... thinking... WTF?!
-why can nothing go over the left hand? i know the pip boy is there but come on... i look retarded wearing a full suit of armor with my hand dangling out.
-this goes with the last one, why no duel wielding? if you wanted to truly make it free base you could have at least had something like duel sawed off or duel power fist (or what i truly want, duel death claw gauntlets)
-enclave super easy to kill now... even on hard difficulty. why? i remember having the bozar and having to point blank a enclave soldier with it if i wanted to kill him as fast, here its 3 shots in the face with a plasma rifle! why!? there not suppose to be easy!
-last but not least, why no vault cities? like.... vault city!? at least make it to where other vaults are still SANE.

i noticed that i actually ended up putting my own 2 cents in... sorry bout that!
never the less I'd rate F2 a 10-10 and F3 a 8-10 due to above.

Interesting, you'd think FO2 was flawless. What about these?

-There were clones galore (even the player character)

-Lack of voices or facial animations for most characters.

-Citizens had no real lives-No going to the pub, eating, working (I'm not talking about just standing behind the desk), no sleeping (only shop keepers), etc.

-Weak a.i.- I mean seriously, they actually had a button for pushing your stupid party members out of the way. Allies enjoyed shooting you frequently or randomly changing weapons for no apparent reason. In some instances, unless really close, they wouldn't even engage in combat.

-Inferior graphics- Clearly.

Sloppy inventory-Items weren't even organized, just thrown into one huge list.

Character reactions to certain scenarios were also weird- I killed Orville Wright, yet his family didn't react and I was still able to get his son to check on him for a job.

Most of your article has been laid waste, but there are a few more points worth contesting...



There's caravans in FO3, and scavengers you can trade with or who are randomly fighting. There's battles between various groups. And all sorts of other crap I'm too lazy to try and remember right now.



Or maybe you just assumed that is how it works because it is in first person perspective? Most quests I've found have plenty of options for completing them.



And yet you couldn't even find the ghoul city in the rubble? Sounds like maybe it isn't as linear as you make it out. :shakehead:



Why wouldn't you find ammo in sewers that various armed groups have been using? I'll agree the food can occasionally be a bit of a stretch but it isn't really that realism breaking.



Shooting a stimpak will? Last time I played FO2 I don't recall having to goto a surgeon to repair my face everytime I got shot.



Are you even playing the same game I am? There's scores of jerks who don't have quests about you or even give a [censored] about you at all in FO3.

And, of course, arguments about this game "destroying realism" don't really hold up against a turn-based game. Do you have action points in real life? Your arguments are either inaccurate or taking things way too far.

At least with the Food, it makes some sense. Outside the Salisbury Steak, all the food is the variety that have extended shelf lives and rarely is the stuff found concentrated anywhere sans dilapidated Gas Stations. The Super Duper Mart and all the Corner Grocery Stores I've discovered have a pretty big lack of actual goods within them - which makes real world sense. Those kind of places would have been robbed of food very early on while Backwoods Gas Stations would be relatively untouched.

Also, the likes of the food - Mac and Cheese, Pork and Beans, Instamash, etc...those are foodstuffs that are actually purchased in GIGANTIC QUANTITIES. You know how much Mac and Cheese comes in a single box from a warehouse?

Actually, I have a harder time believing a run down Hospital would still carry a treasure trove of Stimpacks and other medicine then Pre-War food still being edible and found in respectable quantities.

OK, pretty good points, here's my side of the story for the Fallout 2 and 3 duel:

1) In F3 unarmed and melee combat is plain obsolete and useless. No reason to spend skill points on them since it's made unusable and ineffective. In F2 there were even new unarmed combat techniques according to your skill level, and matches were held almost up to the end of the main plot

2) The biggest towns or settlements in F3 barely have more than 5 sentient characters around; maybe 10-13 overall. Conversations are pretty shallow, and all your charisma/speech skill has to boast is an extra dialog option (if there is one at all). Speech is humorless, superficial, and "mature" only by gargantuan use of the F word. Heck, in F2 you could sleep with a Mafia lord's wife and daughter, become a pormstar, impregnate a character, or even get involved in a gay marriage. There was a scene were you could kill a senile Mafia boss by stealing his oxygen tank, and remark "Hehe I love killing old people", which i'm sure cracked everyone up. Even your sidekicks had their own family/marital issues

3) Missions were much deeper than *walk a lot-kill 3 raiders and a dog-pick a lock-walk again-get a seizure from all the dark corridors-kill 2 mutants-walk again". Seriously, F3 gave me a migraine. I remember spending hours doing actual negotiations between towns in F2 (like NCR, Vault City and New Reno). And the 90's references were at least tasteful and not in the form of Three Dog, who sounds just like he was borrowed from GTA: Vice City.

4) The inventory in F3 may be in neat alphabetical order, but misc items that could be actually used in F2 are now little more than dead weight. No item descriptions, no images, no way to use them around..which reminds me of..

5)..use of explosives, way too simplified into grenades and mines. No TNT or plastic explosives that you can actually use to blast objects and people (and justify your explosives dexterity)

6) What's with the 20 Level cap and definite end in a sandbox world like F3? I don't recall F2 to have such a limitation. And even after you completed the game, you could go back to New Reno and find that book which boosted all your skills to 300%, and be congratulated by every critter alive

7) In F2 there was conflict and espionage between the Brotherhood and the Enclave. In one mission you should steal Vertibird designs and bring them over to the Brotherhood. In F3 the Brotherhood is reduced to a smooth-talking camp with a senile leader, and a few random outcasts (that bear no relation to the plotline)

8) It may be fun for some to walk vast distances in F3 in hope to stumble on something, but for most gamers it quickly gets plain tedious. In F2 you could have the luxury of owning a vehicle, both convenient (you could also use the trunk to store your stash) and interesting; a case where it was stolen (in New Reno) spawned another side mission. Now imagine, let's say, having a nuclear-powered motorcycle in F3 to roam through the wastes..how cool would that be?

9) I may sound retro, but the lack of a we-all-love-to-hate supervillain (like Frank Horrigan) in the end made the experience lame. In F2 there was also a bigger variety of creatures to deal with (remember the aliens-Wanamingos in the mines? I thought Sigourney Weaver would pop from somewhere)

10) You can't kill children.

11) In F2 there is clear indication of your Karma, or Karma tags (like gravedigger, child killer). In F3 there is little cause and effect. Only for couple possible sidekicks can recognize you as either too good or too bad (but when your Karma is neutral, you can't really tell which by yourself)

12) No plot twists. It's all so blatantly clear and almost fate driven. In F2 you learn among others that the whole Vaults project was only a social experiment by the Enclave in order to create a superior American race. Oh, and I really think that Enclave was named as such because of having its HQ in a god forsaken "poseidon oil" rig.

13) You can't rest in F3 without having to sleep on a bed. Well, all this life in the Vault maybe spoiled our character a bit too much

14) In F3 you get almost everything instantly. Only 10 minutes in the game and you get a flamer. I'm the rushing type myself, but I appreciate it more where there's some escalation. The vendors as well, all sell pretty much the same merchandise. And when do they ever replenish their supply?

These and many more i'm unable to recall ATM. F3 may be a decent game but it's all style over substance, when diverse (and often controversial) content is what made the Fallout series excel. All I can recall from this game is the slo-mo head explosions, and the excellent papa James' voiceover by Liam Neeson. If it weren't for mr Neeson actually, I'd rather leave dad in Tranquility Lane to play fetch with the evil girlie forever

Oh, and here's another reason by itself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G9JZ353_Vo

priceless! for everything else there's mastercard

I stopped reading after the second point because I realize I am playing a video games and therefore can never be realistic.

Cant compare the games lol thats like saying a skate board is like a Aston Martin because they both have 4 wheels (not saying either one is superior both are great games) but you cant go 100mph on a skate board and you cant grind down rails in a car. Both games are unique and dont need to be compared to each other its not a competition rofl. So IMO your just a silly little person who cant embrace the future and accept that a game can be good even though its not Fallout 2 rofl.

Point 9 about the ghouls fails horribly, its not exactly like every ghoul is a feral...

as for some parts being more simple... like quests consisting of walking and shooting... thats because the general intelligence of this planet is sinking, fast, and game are designed to fit the intelligent as well as the morons who gets annoyed, whine and want to have there money back if the cant do it all by just killing... thats how it is ^^

This isn't exactly a list of why fallout 2 is better it's just a list of gripes-- most of which are nonsense and ignore some of the actual faults the game has.

If we're actually working on a list of things fallout 2 did better than fallout 3- DUH pretty much everything. It's one of if not the best game of all time.

Guys don't hate on him....he does have some good points. I like fallout 3, but Bethesda just missed what fallout was really all about and what made fallout 1 & 2 a huge success. Fallout 3 is just like Elder Scrolls, except the part of experience. I do agree they missed the point of tag skills, and some laugh out loud moments, but the enviorment is amazing. And really maybe in fallout 4 they will fix the stuff that they left out. Some of your points didn't make sense, with the ghouls....i remember alot of ghouls in fallout 1 & 2 that just attacted me.... and just because its the waste doesn't mean they don't have ammo....people leave ammo sometimes in a box to keep safe...you just end up stealing it.

To me it seems like we have a jaded really devoted fan disgruntled at the fact that they didn't make F3 catered to his personal tastes. I understand where he's coming from, though. It's so fun to be self-righteous about ancient titles in the pursuit of being perceived as "indy" and "tasteful." Anyone who doesn't enjoy F3 is mad, plain and simple. The game is one of the most immersive, fun experiences to be had in years.

I hate to say this, because it makes me sound like an oblivious Gears-head (I actually don't really think Gears is that great of a franchise, tbh), but if the original Fallout games were such a blaring success, such a pinnacle of RPG goodness, such paragons of what games should be like, why had I never even heard of them before Fallout 3? I'm not a sheltered person. I've been playing games since I was three. I'm eighteen now. I play a multitude of different genres and titles. And yet I honestly had no idea there was a Fallout series before hearing about Bethesda's title.

I have an answer to that, Advertising...the reason why fallout 3 is getting big is because of advertising, the only reason why i heard of fallout 1 & 2 is because of my brother's friend, which my brother introduced it to me and i introduced it to one of my friends. There really wasn't any advertising for the game, not in stores or internet....since we are living in the world of technolgy we advertise more, I've been playing alot of games, and there are alot i had never heard of. Does that make a great game not a success because a couple of people do not know it was made?

Of course that doesn't make it not a success, but I keep hearing people saying how great the original Fallouts were, how much better than 3 they are, and yet I'd never even heard of them. I would have expected to at least know of their existence. I've played plenty of indy games that didn't get much coverage that were indeed successes. I'm not bashing Fallout, I'm just trying to say how odd it is that Fallout seems to have such a cult following and yet I didn't even know they existed.

wow, i watch t.v. and use the computer everyday. i STILL havent seen a fallout 3 advertisment. at all. and agreeing with the guy you quoted, i havent heard of fallout 1 & 2 before fallout 3. heck, i thought fallout 3's name was just "fallout" and the "3" was a youtubers typo.

bethesda didn't cripple tag skills in this game at all.

In FO2 your tag skills went to a maximum proficiency of %300.

What they did in Fo3 is the same exact thing as in Fo2 it's just essentially on a different scale.

If you like fallout two so much then why don't you just return fallout 3? :shrug:

1. Tag skills: Alright, so basically, instead of being able to choose your skills, you should be forced to gain points only in the skill you chose? That makes sense... Like this- As soon as you choose a skill in life you devote your self to it thoroughly "I want to be a medical doctor" and for some reason you can just never grasp the concept of a computer? Oh come on dude, it just makes SENSE that you can pick different skills... The 10 point adjustment is just to get you going on the right track.

2. Does power armor ring a bell? Better then being as previously stated, "a walking tank."

3. So basically you're saying that it's impossible to make a gun that shoots rail way spikes? Yea, just like its impossible to make a super soaker that shoots flame (you tube.) This is a post apocolyptic land scape, you make do with what you have, and some ones bound to say "Hell, a rail road spike will drill right through some ones head... Now what can I do to make a gun fire it?". If this is what you're proposing, then maybe we should just completely remove laser guns from the game? You figure if it's that futuristic they should be able to make a tin can projector.

The fat man launcher... Why not? If you haven't realized, post apocalyptic... How do you think it got that way? There's a nuclear bomb smack in the center of megaton, hell, the towns named after it! Obviously there was nuclear war, considering everything in the game world is some one irritated. Not to mention the cars, the cars run on nuclear power! It's 2077, who are you to say its not going to a very real weapon in the possibly near future?

4. Wait wait wait... Have you... Have you played the game? I'm deeply confused... No, no way you played the game... Hmm- Give me a second, I'm trying to take this in... So basically, I'm insane, alright, I'll go with that... That caravan I saw jsut out side of megaton with that trader I could talk to? Must have been a complete hallucination... Damn, gotta get off that nuka-cola.

5. Really now? So, you'll go and play the whole game to with max diciulty? Alrighty then.

6. Well, in one direction I saw a city... In the other I saw a lake... And in the other I saw a nuclear power plant... Huh, too much nuka-cola I guess, they all looked really open.

7. Oh well, such is life. Maybe you can download a mod from fallout3nexus.com for "more useless npcs to lag/complicate your game! Want an npc that says hi to you, you talk to them, and then theirs nothing to say? Well dl this baby!" You don't make much sense =\. And as for the Nuka Cola vendors, theres normally about one can in there, normally there would be some hundred. -Ps. Yea, hes paying you to blow up the town because hes a twisted person, he just gets right to the point.

8. There's a very nice city of friendly ghouls... Actually, there's one outside of tenpenny tower talking to the guy behind the gate, if you decided to destroy the town.

9. Not sure what you mean... It's not like there's one way to do the quest in the game... The main quest is an example- "Blow up a whole main city, keep a whole main city."

10. Yep, because post, nuclear war, apocalyptic Earth is the funniest censor. And every one is happy drinking there irradiated water. It's not a comedy game you know.

11. Hehe, a few things I'd like to comment on with this part...

A. Survivors will make weapons to- well survive.
B. There would be no mutants after a nuclear war at all... As a mater of fact... There would be no people... Problem solved. Actually... The nuclear fallout (hehe) would have put us in a nuclear winter and we wouldn't be playing any of the fall out games... Huh. You know, actually it just seems like your downing fallout 3 at this point, doesn't seem like you're trying to prove fallout 2 was any better...
C. Why won't you find macaroni? Imagine this, some guy finds a refrigerator, bust it open, and finds some macaroni, brings it back to his hut, and is all the sudden killed and dragged away by- I don't know, one of those mutated mole things. Hence, you have one case of unopened macaroni. Ammo in the sewers? Why not? Some guy was down there, either forgot it, dropped it, ran away and left it, or was killed by something and couldn't use it.
D. I haven't seen a single robotic butler in the game yet =\.
E. Why shouldn't they have computer terminals for there robots? Of course there going to have computers to control it, it's the future mind you, and why wouldn't it work? The rest of the store is fine, but the computer is broken? You make plenty of sense. Not to mention that people inhabit the place, some one could have fixed it up for them selves for there own good.
F. Thermonuclear- you should just cut this part out entirely. The megaton bomb was clearly not thermonuclear, as, if it was, everything would have been turned into fine dust, not to mention, there would be no 'mutants' there would be piles of dust. And I don't see why you're complaining, if the game was as realistic as you want it to be, the flash would have given you 3rd degree burns, blinded you, and sent nuclear fallout every where with in 310 miles. You, would have died with in hours do to mutation.
BUT- for the sake of the game, we'll say it was a tactical nuke.