New Vegas has a better story, better companion interactions, better companion backgrounds, better roleplaying capability, better weapons, more depth with those weapons, better aiming, better enemies.

Better everything (except potential freezes on NV but they are very rare for me and precipitated by slowed frame rates so I can happily save and reload with no harm).

So why the hell do I prefer Fallout 3?

I genuinely don't understand it, I should love New Vegas, it is what I wanted and what I was waiting for, I've finished it twice and have a third playthrough on the go but I just seem to enjoy Fallout 3 more... I honestly can't put my finger on why.
Maybe it's familiarity? I know precisely what I'm doing.
Maybe it's ease? Whichever way you slice it FO3 is easier but that's unlikely, I enjoy hardcoe mode for it's difficulty and do like a challenge which NV provides.
The DLC? Well they're ok but apart from Broken Steel are all stand alone, not expansions, just DLC.


This is bothering me, I should like New Vegas a lot more than I do but I don't, so why not?

Maybe I'm just crazy : /

Why do I hate Oblivion?
It's something deeeeeep inside.
It's ok.
Don't force yourself to enjoy it.

Sometimes the game you played first is just always the one you'll like the best. There's no real logic to it. Nostalgia, memory, etc.

Dungeon Keeper1 is still one of my fave games ever and beats DK2 hands down....even tho DK2 had some improvements and I did like it/play it a goodly amount.
Same with Diablo1 vs. Diablo2....

Maybe the combination of elements in New Vegas, while each is much better than that of FO3, combine in a manner that, for you, makes it less than the sum of it's parts.

Either that, or you've deveopled a hardline nostalgia for FO3.

Maybe you prefer Beth games, and despite the fact that New Vegas is better in all manners, it lacks that unique quality that Bethesda Softworks has.

I love both games. The bugs in New Vegas don't really bother me too much, but the reason I prefer FO3 is IMO the combat in NV is sorely lacking, whereas in FO3 it seemed to be everywhere you go. I kinda wish Obsidian had spent a little more time on combat. In nearly every other category New Vegas outshines FO3.

I've also noticed that there is a distinct lack of meaningful locations to just explore and go "dungeon crawling" just for the heck of it. Don't get me wrong, I love the game and plan on playing it for a while to come, but there are areas that leave a little to be desired.

And why do I hate FO3 so much? Is it because I hate everything to do with Bethesda? Is it because in my eyes that it is a clear failure to represent the series? Is it because I got bored with Oblivion after the first playthrough? Is it because I think Todd Howard is a tool? It all boils down to opinion.

...and yet here you are on the developer's official forums posting about how much you hate Bethesda...I'm confused. :blink:

I prefer Fallout 3 because the story is stronger with a much more incentive to be the good guy - follow in your fathers footsteps
and bring clean fresh water to the wasteland. Its much more akin to earlier Fallout games - find the GECK and save your village etc ..

FNV starts off as a revenge story which is far less appealing. Its easy to hate the Legion but then the NCR aren't exactly white as snow.
I dont see that FNV is any more like Fallout 1 and 2 either - people are seeing this game through rose tinted glasses if they think that.

You're not crazy. At least I hope not, because I feel exactly the same way. Despite the graphical similarities, I think that the basic difference is between quest/factions (FNV) vs free exploration (F3) - maybe its that. Fallout 3 has more exploration/combat, New Vegas has more character development/quests.

Or maybe its simply that F3 came first and created some memorable moments, which will always be a hard act to follow - leaving Vault 101 for the first time and seeing the remains of Springvale, recruiting Dogmeat and Charon, finding the Museum of History etc. F3 created a sense of being in the midst of a real warzone, whereas a lot of FNV is all about passing speech checks.

But FNV is the better game in every respect, since the new features greatly improve on the F3 gameplay. However, F3 side quests were (at least for me) epic 2 hour adventures, whereas FNV side quests are often fetch + repeat. I notice some reused locations as well - the underpass to the west of Freeside is basically the 'Mole Rat Racing' strip of F3, the Ultra-Luxe kitchen corridor is the Point Lookout underground laboratory, the BoS Hidden Valley Bunker is a lot like Raven Rock etc etc.

I love both games dearly and am nowhere close to completing FNV and am loving every minute of it. But I just know that I've seen a lot of it before. :shrug:

There's no mystery like in the DC ruins. the DC ruins scared and mystified you. you didn't know what you'd find next, and i miss that. and no giant battles:(

Its actually stable.

I still love the originals much more.

When I played Fallout 3 I felt when I started I could go wherever I pleased and still manage to get along and play anyway I wanted.

In New Vegas there seems to be a forced path I have to take to get anywhere in the fist 10 levels.......The paths are blocked by unbeatable creatures.

What I mean is every time I started Fallout 3 I could go off in any direction I wanted into the wasteland, this game feels limited at the start.

because F3's most boring p. location is 10 times better than NV's best. obsidian did better at everything else, but when it comes to making interesting and fun to explore places, they fail harder than that fat nanny who tried to tame cartman.

just saiyan.

Nostalgia's probably the biggest reason. I love the Elder Scrolls series and can't wait till TES V, but TES III was the first one I played, and is still my favorite. Even though Oblivion had a better combat system (i.e. not having to "equip" a spell to fire it), better graphics, better A.I. (one time in Morrowind I was walking, battle music starts and an Alit was charging at me. I readied my sword, and it rushed right past me into the nearby sea, drowning itself. WTF?), but I still find Morrowind to be better. It's got a better story as well, but it's mainly because it was the first of the series I played.

Same with Uncharted. I played two first, and found it better than Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

It could also deal with atmosphere. New Vegas is far more barren, but Fallout 3 had many ruined buildings, even outside of the metropolitan area of D.C. Atmosphere goes hand in hand with immersion and you may have preferred walking past ruined skyscraqers than walking past dust-rolling hills.

I still prefer Fallout 3 for the sake of pure combat. The enemies are more varied and dangerous, your weapons are more powerful and there's a lot more room to have fun killin' things. You can set up huge battles involving multiple factions like Super Mutants vs Talons vs Enclave without even trying or engineer them by dragging around bodies. New Vegas has absolutely nothing like The Mall or the epic slugfest you find in the Capitol Building, Vernon Square, Seward Square, Takoma Park, Pennsylvania Avenue, or out near Fort Constantine. More things happen more often without your intervention in the Capital Wasteland, which could kick the Mojave Wasteland's ass, by the way.

[censored] the nostalgia, I am actually glad it's not like the F3 Diablo cluster[censored] grindfest where I can't scratch my ass without some Talon goon(huh, they make up like half of the population of the entire place) launching a mini nuke at me. Overcrowded places suit Oblivion, but not Wasteland for me.

I feel ya dude. I WANT to love Oblivion but for some reason i despice it. :shakehead:

IMO, New Vegas suffers from TMG and TLSTS

No they didn't, you did

Unless you mean "trapped him to Oasis".

That's what makes 3 exciting: You ain't got time to scratch.

I feel pretty much exactly the same way as the OP.

But I soon found the bugs and glitches too much for me so decided to let the game collect dust, play FableIII and wait till and DLC and patch comes out for FO:NV to hopefully bring back a spark to play the game again.


I think FO3 was better since it was brand new, and theres no other game really like it.
FO:NV is exactly the same as FO3. Except a different theme.

All the things you listed which was meant to make FO:NV much better then FO3 are not exactly that much of a change if you think about it.


New ammo? So basically we still just shoot things with it not really caring too much about what ammo we use
Better companions? They have a nice story to some of them, but that only lasts so long. FO3s companions were almost all great too even without too deep of stories.
hardcoe mode? Made for realism feel but feels even less realistic. Eat and drink once every few days, sleep when ever you want? Carry 10 missle launchers power armour, guns etc.
Suvival skill? When it comes down to it, its useless. Items to find are too uncommon to make it useful.

The main area in new vegas, the strip... it has several sections with loading screens. Its dull. The main attractions, casinos... well you get barred from them after only ONE jackpot! So the only thing keeping you in vegas is actually taken away from you!

I feel like I could go on, but id feel bad about it. As a programmer too I would hate people slating my work lol. I almost moan in all my posts on the forums now about this game but I cant help it. some of the problems are too obvious to overlook that it just seems unreal how the game came out like this.


Also... invisible walls?!?!

You ain't looking hard enough or FT'ing too much

That doesn't matter, they still screwed over Harold.

Care to elaborate what's so bad about it? Adding some personality to companions doesn't seem like a downgrade to me. It's not Bioware, but it's certainly a VAST improvement over those empty shells in F3.