The nostalgia can be refers as "refusal of change", Which is what I think most NVbasher is.

I used to be able to pwn everything in VH me am teh 1337!!! But NV changes everything.

I have spend 300hours in FO3 and one of those whom you can say "explored every inch of CW, and OA, and Pitt, and PLO, and MSZ"; and I find I have much more fruitful time in NV. I didn't do as much random exploring in NV because I know, eventually, a quest would bring me there (Ok, maybe that's only true for 90% of the locations). While in FO3 it is a theme park of "what happen to DC if attacked by Radioactive bombs".

For those who feel NV is less tense because there isn't a small band of rider (who svcks in small guns) every 500meters along the road with a hunting rifle (best gun in the game) and ~20 .308rounds. Nor does it have 2 Enclave with badly maintained Power Armour and Plasma Rifle (best value loot) near citadel which you can just trade with the most complete collection of merchandise.

While in NV you got to throw yourself off the road, and there are not easy picks for caps (unless you are a very sneaky character, you still risk fame hit).

And that's pretty much why NV > F3 for me. Since I prefer quality over quantity.

In short word, I would take Vault 11 over the crappy and not-so-funny-as-Beth-thought 'Gary' Vault any day.

Yes, what FO:NV has going for it is the variability of how you do the quests, especially the main quest. FO3's quests are clearly more simplistic and shallow, especially the MQ. Plus, there does seem to be alot more optional ways to character build, since your skills & stats are called on more in the NV quests.


What FO3 has (which powermapler got into a bit in his first post) is more random wasteland crap.

FO:NV is very well designed, but it's very focussed around it's questing. That's Obsidian's strength.

Bethesda's strength is in the random world building - all those locations that aren't marked on the map, that don't have anything to do with a quest. LOB Enterprises. The various shops / stores / factories. The interesting stories contained in the terminals (the best writing in the game, really. Much better than the main quest.) The fact that, even after six playthroughs - four of them ignoring the MQ - there are still new things I find around any given corner.

So, yeah.... while I'm looking forward to my next NV character (different tactics, different skills, different quest resolution), I still am also looking forward to playing FO3 again. Because it's much more of an "exploration" game than FO:NV is.


Personally, I find it an interesting view into different styles of game design - the same engine, the same artwork/etc, but two almost totatlly different styles of game because of the differences in the companies that made them.

Well TC, let me start by saying, I'm not 100% with you on this, but I definitely don't disagree either.

I think what it was for me is, FO3 was fresh for me. Something new. I hadn't played Oblivion for more than a few hours at a friends house, so FO3 seemed pretty new to me. It was fun, and though the guns were pretty vanilla, all the locations had a very distinct feel to them. I just don't get that feeling in the Mojave.

One of the biggest peeves of mine about New Vegas is how Obsidian blocked off at least 1/3rd (or more) of the map by invisible walls, and ... LOL.. Mountains. Seriously? Mountains? Look at that HUUUUUUUUGE area to the west. Undoubtedly space for DLC, but why? Why block off a giant chunk of the game for DLC? In FO3, all the DLC was based on new areas, which didn't impede the size of the actual map. It really bugs me that there are so many hills and mountains in New Vegas. Whilst it makes for great sniping, it's also horrible for exploring.

The thing is, even though I prefer FO3's map (sans sewers/metro system... eeeeeeeew), NV has everything else in spades. Reputation, quests, factions, GUNS GUNS GUNS, other weapons, multiple endings... etc.

I dunno. I just wish the Mojave wastes didn't feel so .. limited. Like in FO3, you could basically run a straight line from one place to another, without having to do too much running around. In New Vegas, there is a giant mountain range in the middle of the map, and an even Giant-er (lol) one to the west, with a large chunk of land to the east (presumably Caesars territory) that you can't explore. For a desert, the mojave sure is .. mountainous. :/

But I love how it seems the flora and fauna have flourished in New Vegas. Look at Jacobstown, and the outlying area. I wonder why it has such dense vegitation? could it have something to do with Vault 22? hmm.

Fallout 3 had a city and wasteland partially destroyed by nuclear blasts and radiation. You were born and raised in a vault. I remember emergining from the vault being blinded by the light only to observe destruction of what was once a small neighborhood. As far as jumping into a character there has never been a game in which enthralled me more then Fo3.

New Vegas is a totally different beast. I enjoy it though I have only played about 20 hours of game play. It's not as immersive but I never played Fallout 1 or 2 so maybe that's the reason.

There are more noticeable bugs and broken quests in New Vegas. I have one where I was supposed to find 4 performers for the Tops Casino. Found all four easily but can't finish the quest because you were supoosed to find each one and turn them in before finding another one. Little things like that.

Gambling feels like it was a side thought that they threw in at the last minute. Too easy to get banned. Too easy to win.

Really, my onlyl beef with New Vegas is that they had two years to come up with something and we basically just got a rehash of Fallout 3 in a slightly smaller, less interesting environment. But again, it was my fault to assume that it would be better then F3 due to the time laspe between major releases.

That seems kinda harsh to me. For one, Gambling doesn't seem like it was a side thought to me. I mean, it's las vegas, Pretty sure gambling was a part of the game before they even had any idea about the story. Gambling and Vegas go hand-in-hand. To that note, I agree that it's too easy to get banned from gambling. but the ease of winning comes from having a high luck stat. I think having a high luck stat should also increase your winnings before you get banned. Maybe throw in a 100 speech/barter check to get unbanned somehow. I dunno, but I do agree they could have done more about that.

I agree with the immersion of FO3 compared to "Hey, wake up, welcome to New vegas, heres a dam, oh look, bad guys invading, oops, all done!" hehe.

New Vegas's key redeeming factor for me is the iron sights, and accurate shooting. Sniping in New Vegas is easily 150x better than it was in FO3. Hell, shooting in general is 100x better.

It's so very satisfying to take the bloody mess perk, and watch someone/thing explode 200m out, lol. Add to that Boone and ED-E's perks, and being a sniper has never been so much fun/overpowering.

However, I also really like how you can no longer be a master of all trades. in NV, you actually have to kinda specialize. You can only max 5-7 skills depending on your int. There are 13 skills in total. That means that most characters won't even be able to max out half of their skills. That is good. It took me nearly 2 weeks to get a platinum in NV. it took me a few days on FO3. And trust me, when I play a game, I PLAY the hell out of it. I've probably already got well over 100-150 hours into New Vegas. lol.

I have to agree with Kizu and Powermapler here.

I'll play trough the different endings of NV and the sidequests, but Fallout 3 and Oblivion are the games i'll be playing a year from now.

Last night i was exploring the area northwest of Vegas, and came to a ranch. There was a large building that didn't even have a door! One of the barns had Vipers and some stuff, but the other was completely empty. I remember coming to a similar barn in Fallout 3, the upper area had a skeleton in front of a radio with hunting rifle and ammo, that's the kind of details, untold stories, that are missing from New Vegas. And who could forget the various dead Goblins with beer bottles in Oblivion :lmao:

What i liked better in FO3 was "the whole world has gone to shyt" feeling. It made being evil so much more fun. In FO3 the settlements had this " we just started rebuilding" feel to it. In Vegas the communities allready seem to be half way through the rebuilding process. It's because Vegas wasn't hit by (many) bombs that the societies are more evolved(or less devolved). It's good to see that developpers are trying new things, but i prefer my post-apocliptic world to be a real dump, where everything around you indicates that things got waaaay out of hand and a destructive war raged over the land.

Besides the above and the smaller map i really like the game a lot.

I just hope one of the DLCs opens up the full square of the map for exploration. I don't care if there are no quests as such, or new factions, but just some interesting places to explore.

There is a bit early in the game, when you're doing your training at Goodsprings, some random guy asks you to go save his girlfriend from geckos in the hills. How much programming did that take? But it's a brilliant FO3-esque encounter that adds to the exploration enjoyment. Thing is, from then on it things like that are few and far between (infact, seems like closer you get to Vegas the less actually happens, in that regard)

that seems to really illustrate the point i was trying to make. It's not that F:NV is a bad game, it is just missing that element that Fo3 seemed to have, in an example such as the one you're speaking of.

Also, on the last page someone said that maybe the lack of enjoyment was due to me not playing Fo1 or 2, well you are right I have not played either. But, it would seem counter productive to bank a game's success on the reliance that everyone who picks it up will appreciate it due to it harkening back to two computer games that came out several years ago rather than the GOTY that was a monstrous success on the consoles.

It amazes me that people enjoy Fallout 3's cliche main quest, with lame characters and illogical plotlines.

I'm inclined to agree. I can't wrap my mind around it either. The only thing I found redeemable about it the first time around is that you can "short-cut" parts of it early on which is in line with Fallout. But the characterization? The plot-holes? The unkillable characters? The fact that it's linear despite the fact that it's a wide-open game? Bleh.

As for exploration? Wow... Sure there the occasional nice visual touch in Fallout 3 but... What about the lack of challenge? The aimless and way too numerous critters (or even frickin' robots) that wandered the wasteland? The over-the-top level scaling? The broken skill system? A game world that made absolutely no sense whether it came to how the settlements were surviving or how full of working resources pretty much ever location was.

Don't get me wrong, I had some fun with F3. But I'd say the *only* thing that it beats New Vegas with is that it has more "dungeons" to explore. Which is so far from what the Fallouts were really about in the first place.

Vegas story is horrible. You get shot in the head and get treated and get a gun and told to go get em. Fallout 3 actually had a storyline.

The difference is that in New Vegas you can steer the story while in Fallout 3 you're forced to support dear old dad because hey, he has to die for the DRAMATIC IMPACT. It's lazy as hell writing for a Fallout game first of all (how little choice there is for the player, in a franchise that has been all about player choice in the past) and secondly, Bethesda has nowhere near the writing chops to make it even a bit compelling.

i'm not going back to FO3. I really think FNV is much better.

NV's story is FAR better than F3's story. Funny because the starting as you describe it is exactly like F3's starting. Except you have to chase your digital father that you don't really care about.

I wasn't much a fan of the NV story mainly because when you get to the strip, you get slammed with quests. When I first played I was like "what the heck? Who wants what and who will hate me and what does this quest mean and what the heck are all these wild cards?" I felt quite overwhelmed. After a while I got who was who, but it seems the game lacked good presentation. It was a good story, but I just felt like a tool to all these factions and was doing a crap load of fetch quests and random junk then all of a sudden theres a war on a dam.

How on earth is that a pro?

Fallout 3 pulled in a lot of the shooter crowd.

Good one.

I completely agree, the game needs post ending gameplay. i was really looking forward to it and then they made the same mistake they made in fallout 3. I thought they had learned that people hate when the game ends with their last mistake but appearently not. I am a huge fallout fan and I have to say the ending ruined the entire game for me. I dont build suspense the whole game to find out what happens in a few stupid slides, I build suspense to see how the gameplay changes or what new features i get once I basically conquer the storyline. please please please save this game and finish it with post game play!!!! save my level 22 saint stuck in save game limbo T.T

What is over that next hill in f3?
Lots more ammo and guns and you win stuff. So much more you wonder why anyone in the game is poor.

What do want an infinite disks long game?

If you were a huge Fallout fan, you would have seen the ending coming. Because the majority of Fallout games have had final endings with no freeplay after the end.

What you mean to say is "I'm a huge Fallout 3 fan, but only after Broken Steel."



I cant think of no game offhand that actually had significant gameplay changes or new features after you beat it. Even Broken Steel didn't change much more than a handful of quests and some water barrels around.



To be blunt, it's your own fault if he's in limbo because you ignored the huge unskippable message box warning you that the end was coming and that you should do everything you want to get done *before* taking the final quest.

I don't get how people could possibly misinterpret that message box. Obsidian went out of their way to warn people that yes, the game is ending, and that there is no freeplay.

They have mad moxxis underdome riot in NV what more could you want?

I think its called the trush or something.