Holy moly that article feels like it is a direct transcript of my thoughts.....thanks for sharing that :celebration:

I love how it looks at Fallout 3 as a "historians game." I never quite made the connection between my love of history and Fallout 3...EUREKA!!

I didn't either. A friend sent me that link.

Now you gota pass the word along

Oh, alright then.

Ehh, I don't know, being introduced to Fallout 3 as my first Fallout game, I generally tend to like it better than New Vegas. Mainly due to "exploration". Hell, the cover of the game got me to think "Holy [censored], this is gonna be freakin' awesome!". Not to mention, me living about an hour away from D.C. itself. I remember leaving the vault for the first time, a blinding light and then hell, everywhere. It was cool, you could see a desolated city in front of you, and a wasteland around it. Since I love to role play, I went straight into the metros leading to DC. I literally stayed in the metros over night to hide from ghouls and the world above. I literally thought: "Oh my god... there are zombies down here and a freaking war is going on above my head!" It was fun. It's the kind of fun that I can't seem to find in NV.

In New Vegas, it was you leaving a run down house to find dirt and sand. The exploration was dull and boring, imo. I mean I went to the midnight release because I pre-ordered the collector's edition. But after four hours of playing I still couldn't get into it. I understand gambling and its factor in the game, but really some parts didn't make sense to me at all (Being shot in the head and living for one...???).

Sure the game's mechanics were better but the overall feel in my opinion was dull. I even went out and bought the original Fallouts and I just can't get into the them either. :shrug:

I'm not saying NV is a bad game, and I'm sure it stays with the "canon" of Fallout, as some of the veterans say. Reputation system was cool, faction armors were OK, traits... I could care less for them. It was a great game and I'm glad everyone is happy with the outcome and the fact that it sticks with the Fallouts they first played. It's not my kind of game, I like role playing and surviving on nothing in the middle of a wasteland, unlike NV where as it is just a colonized desert.

Ehh, NV is a good game, but not my kind of game regarding post-apocalyptic themes and such. I think FO3 really hit the "destruction" theme where as NV hit the "recovery" theme (Kinda). :shrug: They are both different games for different people I suppose.

I was never swarmed by ghouls or rats or anything besides geckos near Cottonwood Cove, Deathclaws in the Quiry Junstion, and Geckos in the Tutorial in New Vegas. I remember, when Fallout 3 was brand new to me how I decided to go into D.C. while still only a level four... Before I even got to the GNR Station (I was heading there) I got trapped in a small room that I could tell was a raider camp... I stayed their for a while and shot the Feral Ghouls stupid enough to get in my line of sight. I eventually killed them all and stumbled upon a group of ten raiders in a subway station, again I was a low level so I snuck past them with a Stealthboy. (in New Vegas I hardly ever run from a fight, at level eight I called six cazardoses alone) Then when I got out near where you first meet Lyon's Pride there were four supermutants, so I hid inside of those station things that you just close the door (meant for a nuclear holocuast but worked really well against supermutants) and stayed there forever. When I finally had the guts to open the door and make a run for it more had shown up. And another time when I was exploring far to the north (trying to find Oasis which I had a mapmarker for), I didn't want to lose my place and I only had three purified bottles of water left (in New Vegas there are more than enough resources, in F3 you have to buy or scavenge from ruins, in Vegas there are no ruins to scavenge from so you can just find some growing randomly in the wasteland).

I had no experiences in Vegas where I was stuck somewhere with low supplies and hate to fight off and/or run from monsterous creatures that will destroy me as easily as we kill bugs... My enjoyment of Fallout 3 was built off of that. In Vegas I am godlike (i didn't use mods or cheats) but in F3 I'm far from it, even in my account where I'm level 30 I get killed alot.

There's a special place in my heart for the first moment I left Vault 101. And it's not all nostalgia, though of course, some of it is. When you left the Vault, there was SO much stuff in the distance, that it could have been overwhelming... but it wasn't. It still felt desolate. There was nobody to help you, you were lost, and only your pip-boy could point you in the right direction (something I didn't even realize it did until later). I still have found memories of coming across Megaton and thinking it looked like a menacing fortress of some sort, and reloading several times in an attempt to stealthily kill the robot out front, and the people who ran out when I did, before I realized he was friendly. It seems silly now, knowing what I know about the game, but back then I acted just as someone fresh from the vault would act. Well, excluding the whole taking on an entire town at level 2 thing. :laugh:

In New Vegas, you emerge in a relatively populous town, and the feeling of being lost simply isn't there. Sure, you don't have to do the tutorial, but you still wind up talking to a few people in town. You don't get an opportunity to first discover the world on your own. I suppose it makes sense considering the Courier had a life prior to being shot, but I just don't think they made the first moments of the game nearly as memorable as they could have.

eMM, you dont need to ask to people to go to a certain location, just exit to the doctor place, and go whenever you want, except north, also. I never get lost thanks to some annoying waypoints since Oblivion and the Fast Travel

I had a similar experience, I got robbed (hypothetically) and on my first playthrough it was pitch black, as soon as I left the vault I headed north, got an assault rifle and had a run in with some raiders. I killed them all and while I was tryingto access my loot I figured out that I was supposed to head straight to a town not far from the vault, then that experience (sort of) happened to me. I laughed when I saw the sign that said scenic overlook. When I saw Megaton I shot at Stockholm (due to my run in with raiders and not trusting that anybody with a gun could be friendly). When he didn't return fire I went inside and as soon as I saw the bomb i just thought "Great I'm in a town full of crazy people."

Such good times.

Why do you people hate Fallout New Vegas/Obsidian ?

That's a lie... If you head east you run into a mountain with stupid invisible barriers... If you head weat you run into the end of the map... If you head north then you're killed by stupid giant wasps... If you head anywhere but where Obsidian wants you to go you are almost definantly killed (think of it as the movie Eagle Eye)

With your only [censored] judgement upon it being "exploration" which is pathetic. I GAVE 3 a chance. I tried to like it, but it's flaws are far too inherent, and nothing more than a product of a hype machine. You didn't give NV that chance and started bashing the game on something that was NEVER important to the series as a whole.

Sometimes I wish Fallout could have stayed "forgotten" as you Fallout 3 fans insist it was.

I don't understand the polarization. I loved Fallout 3, and I love New Vegas too.

Oh God why do we argue about this, both were damn good games. Glitchy, yeah, but still solid in the mechanics department.

Oh you mean it's not level-scaled and it's realistic? You can get past the cazadores

And I don't ask them to abandond their new engine (I don't care which one they use). Nor do I ask them to abandon "sandboxy" design. Hub based can be done in a (somewhat) satisfying way for both of the groups - and it isn't "just" hub based that needs to be done. Bethesda should be able to expand their views as a "AAA dev team" and not stick to being a one hit wonder design wise - more so, and especially, when there are two different franchises they are meddling with, because what we now have is two originally completely different franchises that are now similiar in every possible way than the setting and the name of the ruleset. I don't think that should be the case, nor do I see any sense in point in having 2 franchises under your belt if you're going to make them the same anyway.

I don't have to "accept" anything really, what I have to do is "cope with". But what ever they do in the future, they should be able to find a better middleground between TES and Fallout than what it is now.

In all honesty Fallout should be its own series with its own charms and its own focus. I'm not saying that TES is a bad game, but look at Fallout. Fallout DARED to be different. It DARED to be 2d in a time of gaming history where 3d graphics were revolutionizing. It DARED to be isometric in a market where FPSs dominated the market. It DARED to be a Sci-Fi RPG when fantasy RPGs were far more common. It dared to be like Dungeons and Dragons. It DARED to be a RPG when there was no interest in RPGs what-so-ever. Fallout got Game of the Year by numerous game reviewing companies. This is the Fallout I fell in love with.

:foodndrink: :fallout:

People didn't live in most of the Capital Wasteland for most of those 200 years, aside from Megaton, the handful of people in what is now the Republic of Dave, and the kids at Lamplight (and Vault 101 of course). The only settlements in DC proper or its burbs dating from the days after the war are the ghouls in Underworld and the Chinese commandos. Paradise Falls, Canterbury Commons, Rivet City, Tenpenny Tower, and Meresti Station (and probably Arefu) are a lot more recent, most dating 30-40 years before the game begins. From the warning signs all around and the terminals at the Germantown Police Station there was some sort of Emergency Government set up by Civil Defense after the bombing but it didn't last long....maybe only weeks before it dissolved due to desertions or radiation killing them at thier posts. The only way it makes sense to me is if the Chinese used so many dirty bombs most people in and around DC died and the CW was largely uninhabited until about 2220 or so....and only really began to recover after the BoS arrived and started fighting the mutants and ferals so it was possible to venture around DC without being eaten or dipped.

If the game talked about the Chinese agents using alot of dirty bombs like the Legion did with Camp Searchlight there could be a reason but thats not the case. Would have to be über powerful dirty bombs. Even in the 30 years or so people started settling into DC, someone should have figured out how to farm. If what you say is the case that most people in DC were only there for 30 or so years big question is WHY?!. Why would they move to a radioactive mud hole? With raiders, slavers and super mutants? Can't grow crops there (seems thats the case ) if they came from outside DC they would know how to farm, as well as build and make new things. Have a better economy.They would talk about places outside of DC where they came from. We would see trade with locations outside DC.

Why? For the scavving opportunities. With the area essentially depopulated for most of the last 200 years there is lots of junk lying around. The raiders and slavers probably followed the regular Wastlanders...before people began tricking in there was nothing to raid except Megaton. My theory isn't perfect.....but it is the only way I can put the pieces together that makes sense. The devs should have put more work into the backstory and explained or left clues why things were the way they were. The CW looks more like the bombs dropped 20 years ago rather than 200 and all we can do is guess why.

I laughed really hard when I first saw that. The stupidity of it amazed me.

Well to answer OP. I LOVE Bethesda. I'm working on mods and all that jazz so that maybe I can land a job with them later. As for Fallout 3? It's one of my favorite games of all time. Not Fallout games, but games in general. It failed as a Fallout game as stated by others here.

You can never please all of the people, ever - no matter what you do as a game developer.

That said, I think it's fair to say that while both Fallout 3 and New Vegas lived on the same engine, they were very different games that appealed to different kinds of folks. The strong polarization we see here in this one threads speaks to it, and reasonable people can disagree about things like historical accuracy, content re-use and game features. However I think anyone that feels ill-will towards Bethesda has gone too far, and is not being reasonable.

I loved both games for very different reasons, some features in game A more than game B and visa-versa, but negative emotions like "hate" never enter the equation. There is so much Good about both games, and yet they both imparted a very different style - if nothing else they succeeded in making the two games quite different despite the fact that they are on the same engine.

Folks will spout technical details all day long as to why game A wasn't Fallout or why Game B is a copy of previous work, but I think as Fallout games go both were excellent.

Miax

It dared to be Fallout. :fallout:

This pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole Fallout 3 vs. New Vegas subject. I agree that Fallout 3 was less of a Fallout game in the classical sense, but it had it's moments, enough of them that I don't have a problem considering it canon, and Fallout. I was 10,000 times more Fallout than POS (curse it to hell and back) ever was. Lest we forget just how bad a Fallout game can be.

If we're lucky, we'll see some of Caesar's Hegelian Dialectic at work in the Fallout universe. Fallout 3 (Thesis), Fallout New Vegas (Antithesis), Fallout 4, (Synthesis).

What you are ranting (your word) about mainly in your post are comparisons that could be said to be of similarity between about any two games. Controls, graphics, core structure, UI, menus, design goal, mechanics, dialog screen. In other words, just game structures common to most games.

Completely ignoring how far so worlds apart the actual game-plays of TES4 and Fallout3 are. THAT is what makes the difference between the two games. THAT is why making the comparison and saying that Fallout3 is "Oblivion with guns" is so ludicrous.

When I last argued the case, it was actually claimed that there was magic in Fallout3, yeah right, that a metal bazooka rocket was interpreted as being casting magic. I didn't bother asking how much MANA was used to "cast that rocket" as it seemed that intelligence had left the forum.

Need I go on to take apart the other ludicrous inconsistencies of saying that Fallout3 is "Oblivion with guns".

Yes, Fallout3 has more in common with Fallout2 than TES4.

Immersing oneself in Fallout3 there is absolutely no feeling of being in anything other than a FALLOUT game.

I do accept though that some may have different degrees of depths-of-immersion when they play their games, with the possibility of different views,'cough'.