1. Large "dungeons"
Dungeons, instances, ruins, indoor places of exploration in independent cells. FO3 had plenty of these not related to any quests. Bethesda Offices comes to mind. As well as the Dunwich Building and even an armory or two (they even had decent loot). Where's the Wheaton Armory of New Vegas? Where's the Keller Family Transcripts of New Vegas? (I don't consider the Star bottle caps to be the equivelant. Pew pew versus the MIRV)

2. Random Encounters
You never quite knew what was gonna happen over the next hill or down in that ridge there. A wandering merchant? Two wastelanders arguing over how to dismantle a frag mine and blowing themselves up? 3 captives guarded by Super Mutants? It made the Capitol Wasteland a tad more exciting.


I'm probably already beating on an old dead horse by this point, but I felt I had to say it anyway.

We already knew this! Exploring in this game is boring because there is almost nothing to salvage.

so true.. It took four years to make FO3 and what, two to make New Vegas? Look at differences and you will see how much they screwed up on this game. Was it Obsidian? Yes. Did they rush it as well? Hell yes.

I do think you should have more random encounters but that complaint would be like making a mountain out of a mole hill

I'd like more random encounters myself, but the amount of [censored]ing people are doing over it is just idiotic. Seriously, New Vegas is better than Fo3 in every way 'except' the lack of random encounters. Large dungeons didn't impress me because they were EMPTY. They had the same three enemies recycled over and over for no reward, and the locations almost never had any lore behind them, or anything going on inside them. To compare an example in New Vegas and one in Fallout 3 (Spoilers, obviously):

Sunset Sarsaparilla Bottling factory in New Vegas: Has a hilarious talking cowboy robot, a sassy robot butler, and lots of boxes of sarsaparilla to scavenge. This is how a random dungeon should be handled.

Nuka-Cola factory in Fallout 3: Like the above, but without the personality. Nothing here worth finding, no interesting locales, just Nuka-Lurks to kill.

Bethesda would have pressured them to get it finished when they wanted to. It's not entirely obsidian's fault taht this game was rushed. 18 months compared to 4 years...