Here's the thing. Comparing it to Fallout 3 in terms of worldbuilding is a huge mistake.

Fallout 3 was made by Bethesda, who are gods of open-world design.
New Vegas was made by Obsidian, who are gods of writing.

Apples and oranges, ya dig?

I find New Vegas to be a lot more filling than FO3's empty world

I much prefer Obsidian's design...sometimes the wasteland really IS a wasteland, just as it's supposed to be

It actually seems bigger than Fallout 3 did, most places feel right and it has one hell of a lot more things to do in it

FO3 just felt like it wanted to shove locations down my throat

Uh Fallout 3 was more empty

If anything Fallout 3 felt too claustrophobic

I find New Vegas to be a lot more filling than FO3's empty world

This is the series as it always was (and should be). There is nothing out there... Its a wasteland.

Fallout 3 was way emptier then New Vegas, besides there is a reason its called a Wasteland

In case you haven't noticed, he's lying to make his opinion more reasonable....

LMAO, love threads like this. Here's just some random quotes:

I like the long open spaces...if the game didnt have them then the setting of 'desert' wouldnt really work would it? and then we'd have people complaining about why there isnt any open empty deserty areas in a game set in a desert.

I think its a mistake ot force the player into the emptiest area of the map at the start of the game.....but other then that I dont mind it. The stuff you do find is most often hand placed and random loot is only filler until you reach the main goal of a building/area/quest.

If you take the time to do some reading, there is so much infomation and backstory that you really learn the reasons for why things happen, why that person wants the quest done etc. you never got that in fo3 much....and its an RPG element that action player dont get, but RPGers really love.

I completely agree with OP, and I must say I've been exploring for about 30 hours now ( also doing main quest which is now completed and doing ALOT of side missions) and I'm almost done with this game. I mean what THE HELL!?? I'm level 28 now so almost at the level cap, this still bothers me but it was the same in fallout 3 (that you would reach you level cap WAY before you were done with the game). However, I've just about explored everything, I've discovered a hundred locations out of the 125 in the game (and been through all of them) I have found 8 special weapons already. And I have completed a ton of quest for various factions and talked to alot of people. But it only took me 30 hours. I'm guessing another 10 hours and I'll have just about anything explored.

The reason I'm so surprised about this all is because I have played fallout 3 for about 300 hours (I've also lost my very first character but I'm not sure how much I played with him), on multiple characters naturally but I could spend atleast a hundred 100 (if not 150) in one single character. But in new vegas I'm just about done after 40 - 45 and I'm not really looking forward to starting over again. People say that fallout 3 was empty but I couldn't disagree more. Sure fallout new vegas is FILLED with locations, but half of them are [censored] ones (abandoned shack anyone?) and you can run through them in a few minutes if not seconds. What I miss is DC, I've spent countless hours exploring that city but in new vegas there's nothing like that. And everywhere you look there's people! I like the concept of all the factions but they have focused to much on it, I don't want to find those bloody ncr at every twist and turn. I want these gritty ruins/underground tunnels to explore every once in a while, however in new vegas there's nothing like that to be found.

There's seriously a location which is searchlight airport (or something like that) and when I found it I was really excited for something big to explore. Guess what I can't enter a SINGLE building, it really feels to me like obsidian just put all their effort into the factions and then filled the rest of the world up with these [censored] locations. And then they put all these big mountains in, which could have been filled with tons of interesting stuff instead there's the rare cave that takes 10 seconds to search through and a MAZE OF FRIGGING INVISIBLE BARRIERS [censored] EVERYWHERE!!!! The world builders have done an unbelievable slack job if you ask me. I mean fallout 3 had some [censored] locations aswell but it was SOME and it also had DC to make up for it.

The next thing I'm particularly dissapointed about is jacobstown. I love the new super mutants over the "old" ones (referring to fallout 3) in every single way. I talked to everyone in jacobstown and did every quest. How many people did I talk to? 3.... How many quests did I do? 2.... How long did it take me to do it? an hour..... I'm so dissapointed that this wasn't fleshed out at all, they could've done so much more with this all this potential wasted. I would've liked to see much more quests and mutants to talk to. And this is not only the case in jacobstown it's the case in much more locations.

The very last thing I wanted to address is the sunset sarsaparilla factory as an example. In fallout 3 the nuka cola factory was filled with awesome and unique stuff! Nukalurks and a bunch of backgroundstory and history. In new vegas the sunset sarsaparilla factory was bland, had barely any backgroundstory and had a very hard locked door with literally nothing behind it except for some 10mm rounds. I take the sunset sarsaparilla factory as an example here because this is the case throughout the whole of fallout new vegas, in fallout 3 a big reason for me to go exploring was to find this unique stuff like nukalurks. In new vegas there doesn't seem to be any at least not in the 100 out of 125 locations I've discovered. Another example is a crashed vertibird somewhere in the wasteland with a prototype tesla cannons next to it (spoiler? well it's too late now) There was absolutely NO information about this whatsoever, just the cannon, the vertibird and some skeletons. I was spyched at finding the cannon but rather dissapointed afterwards. I am quite dissapointed in fallout new vegas, it seems bland, unfinished and empty (not story wise though).

I think Fallout 3 had more junk encounters. More bloatflies and molerats and wild dogs around every bend and over every hill. I like the current design of the wasteland and how it's populated. It feels more realistic. Shouldn't be crowded IMO. NV could stand to have more going on though. Way too many empty buildings. Too few people and def could stand to be cleaned up a bit. Shouldn't be grass growing right in front of the main entrance to the strip. Should be cleaned up and by all means the streets shouldn't be all chewed up like they are. It's been many years and people are pretty industrious and they don't like their roads all chewed up....shrug.