Wikia:
"The Fallout developer team had nearly 100 members (mostly artists). Although most of the team dissolved after Fallout was released, about one third of them formed Interplay's Black Isle division that was responsible for Fallout 2. Some went on to work in future projects, and several key players left Interplay altogether to form Troika Games."

Fallout 1 was created before Black Isle.

Sure, the overworld may be (slightly) bigger, but once you factor in internal maps FO3 clearly has more yards to tread. All those huge abandoned buildings, plus the subterrennea, mean it's no contest.

Simply put:

FO:NV has a slightly bigger map (albeit with inaccessible parts) and LOTS of quests that (almost) lead you to explore every area.

FO3 has a slightly smaller map, but the space that IS there is FILLED to the BRIM with buildings and explorable area. I needed more time to explore the DC ruins ALONE than to ("truly", excluding aimless walking) explore New Vegas.

I think this has to do with the devs focusing so much on The Strip, which, in my opinion, coulda been a LOT better, but I digress...

I wholeheartedly second this.

Okay, granted, the technical heart of this thread is shear size. As I stated, I'm not neurotic enough to pace off the map so I concede this point without reservation. However, I submit that the discussion of "size" in terms of a world such as Fallout must consist of more than just distance. To my way of thinking, the "wow factor" must eventually come in to play.



Okay. If ya weren't going there then it didn't apply to you. It's a good thing you're not the only one reading these forums, eh?
:P



Again, my lack of neurosis prevents me from detailing every single location in either game, let alone allow me to make a viable comparison. My point was that NV marks off WAY more locations than FO3 and a great many of those locations are trivial. I agree, if FO3 had marked off every trivial location, then it would have been shear ludicricy (sp?). The fact that NV does and uses that as part of the claim to a "bigger world" is just silly, in my opinion.

Getting back to what I was speaking of in terms of dungeon diving and exploring ... adding a dozen or more "locations" which add nothing but (maybe, if you're lucky) ammo or stimpacks doesn't exactly make the game world bigger. Sure, in technical terms, maybe. However, the idea of "bigger" and/or "better" exists, to me at least, more in terms of depth and complexity as opposed to distance and/or sites. :shrug:



I actually agree but I wonder how long it's been since you've played FO3?
Wandering the Capitol Wasteland, there are literally dozens and dozens of unmarked locations which offer ammo, rest points, little bits of humour or whatever. Sure, there are such places in NV but my point, and the point of the OP, is that they are marked! It's hard, for me at least, to find any humour in an abandoned shack with a skeleton and a magazine when the game comes up with that wanna-be epic sound and marks the location on the Pip-boy.

I'm not bashing NV ... as I said ... and I'm not trying to say that FO3 is better.
What I am saying is that in FO3 there were tons of unmarked locations that I had to try and remember if I wanted to kill some raiders or robots or find a less-than-wandering scavenger/merchant. As much as I love NV, the game is much more linear in this way.

NCR isn't really that good. If you actually would look at what they are doing in the Mojave, you'd find that they are just as much expansionists conquerers as the Legion is. They go about it differently, but that doesn't make them automatically good.


I, at times, found FO3 too crowded. It seemed like beyond every hill were more enemies, loot or some undiscovered oddity.
There were some more interesting things to be found in FO3, though. The Rube Goldberg machine in that store for example.

All in all there's something to be said about either.

Having played Oblivion just before playing Fallout 3 I didn't think it was crowded at all. At least not with dungeons.

I used to hate those sewers and subway tunnels, but now I realize I miss them ALOT.

I want my dungeon crawls back

I remember people complaining that FO3 was too crowded and had too much stuff in it. It didn't feel like a wasteland. So FNV gives us a more spartan setting and people complain that it's too empty. :facepalm:

I REALLY enjoyed the sheer amount of exploring that could be done in FO3. Loved checking buildings of all sorts, camps, and even the sewers/subs to a degree. There are wayyyyyy too many buildings that cannot be entered in FONV. Actually seemed rushed, like they wanted to fill in those dead buildings (dead being inaccessible), just ran outta time. I have played and enjoyed both node based and sandbox and while I prefer sandbox, I like node based enough that I wouldnt have minded this game being that way. To me, FO3 was bigger, more stuff to explore and find, more area to cover. One thing I am happy about, no damn albino rad scorpions, hehe.

A map node system with random encounters? I like that idea!

I second this too, anyway, i dont miss too much the dungeon crawling style of FO3, most of my time im wandering outside of DC