FO:NV compared to FO3 improves in 3 big areas: 1) The writing and amount of dialogue/backstories is excellent! 2) the number of quests and how they are spread throughout different factions and places 3) how most of the quests matter and actually affect the game in some fashion and you cannot do all of them - choices matter and actually close off other areas/paths in the game

The one backward step is not including a large world space with interesting places to explore (dungeons if you will - above, below doesn't matter, just size and feel) that are simply for when people want to go "off the beaten path" and shoot, loot and perhaps discover a small backstory through notes/holotapes.

What I liked about FO3 was the vastness. But the amazing "set pieces" of FO3 were paper tigers - without quests and substance. Raven Rock, Evergreen Mills, Fort Independence, The Citadel, Talon Base, Paradise Falls, Tenpenny Tower - too many had one or no quests - making the world have TOO MUCH shoot, loot and discover without enough "meat" of quests/dialogue.

FO:NV gets most of it right but then squeezes it into a world space that feels small especially if you desire to go off the beaten path to places that would be like: the Corvega Factory, Dunwich Building, Roosevelt Academy, LOB Industries etc.

If we could combine the quests/content/interaction of FO:NV with even 1/2 of the breadth of FO3 we would have the king of Fallout games, imho.

I love FO:NV more than FO3 except when I want to give in to "wanderlust" .....

My thoughts as I have now finished both games and am replaying both interchangeably. Both are the top two games in the last 4 years for me, now if they would have game six and produce a child combining the best of both.....

J

The used world is actually the same size if not a little bigger than Fallout 3. Sawyer came on and made a post about the size of it a while back. Maybe somebody can dig that up for you.

Basically; Fallout 3 was one big square. New Vegas is a rectangle. Longer than it is wide.

It does feel smaller, but it really isn't.

oblivion > both

If we're talking pure size, I think you're correct, especially if you include the Shivering Isles.

Problem with Oblivion's gameworld is that the only points of interest tended to be copy-pasted caves.

It feels smaller because there's an huge mountain slapped in the middle of it. lol Fo3 was wide open gloominess....And years of gray clouds.

I used the word "feel" .... my point has nothing to do with the technical aspect of size/map but rather the overall feel of: quests, content, dialogue (FO:NV gets it right) + the 'feel' of vastness with places of mystery and interest that are standalone (which FO3 got right).

Please do not derail the thread into a debate about map size.

size, gameplay, epicness, fun, roleplaying... everything really. Its just the better game.

i agree with your points mostly.
what i also like very much in fnv is the hardcoe mode.
-no insta-heal really changed the dynamics of the combat, and created some really tense moments, especially in the early stages.
-also i like the crafting, it just adds a lot flavor. and may the majority be fine with eating gecko steaks, i like me having a variety of gourmet food (which also happen to have amazing effects with a high survival skill) with me in this otherwise harsh wasteland
-having different ammo types and weapon mods added appreciated tactical depth without making rocket science out of it
-economy is done better, at least it matters for a certain time in fnv
-the variety in the landscape is very nice. desert, hills, mountains, various urban areas, and even a snowy ski lodge, this is great

regarding the dungeons

-there are fewer, and many of them were a bit short/small, like the repconn hq. here was dreaming of something like the sierra army depot, with lots of skill checks and other challenges, and a marvelous reward at the end.
-i hated the map designs of vault 22 and 34. i can't stand bloody mazes with the typical "oh, you can't pass this door, you need a key card from the far end of this dungeon and return, while getting lost another 200 times" task

things i thought fallout 3 did indeed better

-energy weapons, nuff said
-i really liked the makeshift weapons
-what was really done nice in the cw were all the location and quest souvenirs you could get. i really liked my giant teddy collection, the chessboard with the miniature booze bottles, and lots of other small things that all had a small story to tell.
-while obsidian can't be blamed for las vegas not having a metro, i for sure enjoyed it more than invisible barriers

A Lost Dutchman mine would be been fun, but I have not explored everywhere.

There's also the fact that one thing I liked about exploring in Fallout 3 over Oblivion was that it brought back an element of the exploration that I loved in Morrowind which Oblivion lacked, that there was actually hand-placed loot, whether actually unique items or just nice items to find. In Morrowind, you could explore dungeons and potentially find some very worthwhile finds, sure, not all dungeons had them, of course, but the chance of finding such a thing alone made me really want to see what was in a dungeon when I found it, it didn't even have to be unique artifacts. In Morrowind, just finding a piece of rare, high level armor, like Daedric or glass or something, in a dungeon was rewarding, since you knew you couldn't find it in just any dungeon. In Oblivion, once you reach a high enough level, you can potentially find such things in any dungeon that has enemies or containers set to use the right loot lists, and with some very rare exceptions, all the worthwhile items you could find in Oblivion tended to be leveled, or quest rewards. Sure, finding good loot was still nice because it was useful, or could be sold for a good price if you didn't want to use it, but I couldn't help but find it less satisfying than when I just found some one of a kind item in some random dungeon. And Fallout 3 brought back an element of that, which I found quite welcome. Once again, if you looked in the right places, and sometimes if you had the right skills, you could find some very worthwhile things, one of the most satisfying experiences I could get when exploring in Fallout 3 was when I explored some old prewar building, cave, or other such place, and then found a unique weapon where I least expected it. I also liked that many of the dungeons had some actual backstory to them, this was of course most noticable in vaults, where the experiments that went on in them would often be revealed through various sources. But even normal buildings often had some little pieces of flavor text on terminals, in notes, or in other places that helped to reveal what had happened in those places in the past. The information didn't always go into great detail, sometimes it wasn't even really relevant to anything important, but still, it helped to make the dungeons feel more like they were places that actually once served some sort of function, rather than just being generic places created to provide players with places to kill enemies and find loot with no real justification for their existence beyond that purpose.

Of course, New Vegas still has an element of that, but I do feel that I can agree with the subject of this topic. In many ways, it improved on Fallout 3, I felt. In many ways, I felt Obsidian did a good job of preserving what Fallout 3 did right, while improving upon things where there was room for improvement. But in terms of the random, unimportant locations in the wasteland, I felt like many of them weren't as satisfactory as Fallout 3. This is not to say that I don't enjoy exploring in New Vegas, of course, certainly, I've found locations that I felt were worth visiting, it's just that I felt that there were more locations that felt ultimately pointless, or seemed like they only existed to provide fast travel markers, so yes, I'd say that in that aspect, the game made a bit of a step back from Fallout 3, still, there's a lot of things that it did better too. I felt that the quests and writing were done better, there are many more quests, and while this of course means that some of them are pretty short and straight forward, there are also quite a few quests that I found quite worth doing. Also, while the changes to gameplay tend to be small refinements rather than major renovations, many of them are ones I approve of. The reputation system seems like a better way to determine how NPCs react to you than karma. For one thing, since your reputation is calculated for each faction based on how you've acted towards them, you can potentially be seen as a complete monster in the eyes of Caesar's Legion, whereas to the NCR, you're the anthropomorphic personification of all that is good in the world, unlike in Fallout 3 where everyone was evidently omniscient and judged you based on your karma, even if they could not have possibly known of the deeds that earned you your current karma, and letting the player choose which faction to side with rather than having one group be the good guys and one group the bad guys and force you to join the former every time you play is a pretty effective way to add replay value to the game, as well as avoiding the situation where you're forced to side with a specific group even if you don't like them. I also like the idea of the crafting system and weapon mods, even if I felt that they could have been developed better than they were (I wouldn't have minded more crafting options, for one thing. And I'd have preferred more options to weapon mods as well.) but I'm not going to list every single change from Fallout 3 to New Vegas that I approve of, so I'll just stop there.

Wow, disagree. If I disagreed any harder I think my head would explode. I've been a huge Bethesda fan since '94 when Arena was released (I've bought every TES game on release day since the beginning), and Oblivion was my first big disappointment. Size? Yes. Everything else? Utter failure until the total overhaul mods came along. The vanilla version was, for me, a huge letdown...especially in the "fun" and "roleplaying" aspects you seem to have liked. Nothing your character does in that game matters, and the level and loot scaling completely ruined any enjoyment I might have gotten out of the RPG aspects. Epicness? Do you judge a game by how "epic" the story feels to you? I thought the story and writing in Oblivion were incredibly bland and cliche. Even juvenile in some instances.

Anyway, opinions are fun, eh? IMO New Vegas is by far the best game published by Bethesda Softworks since Morrowind, and I enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot more than I enjoyed vanilla Oblivion.

I tend to agree with the original post. Map size aside, FO3 did feel bigger and lend itself better to indulging in a walkabout to see what you would find. I love NV though, particularly the companions and their associated quests, even if I miss Charon (and my combat shotguns!).

As to Oblivion, my Oblivion game was perhaps my favorite game of all time. I say 'my' Oblivion game because I had it modded out the wazoo with mods like Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, Mart's Monster Mod and more huge quests (Verona House Bloodlines, the Archeology Guild, Heart of Darkness, Ruined Tale's Tale and many more) than you could shake a stick at, which added literally hundreds of hours of game play.

In fact, one of my biggest disappointments with FO3 was that apparently it didn't lend itself to the creation of quest mods like Oblivion did. Not sure if it was because quests were harder to mod in FO3, the world was smaller, or maybe fantasy is just easier to write for, but FO3 didn't get a whole lot of player created quests. Oblivion had a large number of quests of such scope that they may as well have been expansion packs, larger in scope than even any of the FO3 DLCs. New Vegas, of course, is still far too new for anything of this scope.

Still, there is a visceral satisfaction in grabbing up a mini-gun and reducing a pack of raiders into red paste.

The problem with FNV is that it takes a long time to really get into it, and find that it does have a lot in it. I used to think it was a tad 'small', but that's just the way the game progresses...there's actually quite a lot to it.

Well put OP. Indeed, the dungeon crawl aspect is very limited in FNV. FO3 really encouraged you to check out those random buildings that had nothing to do with the MQ. There were so many side stories that could be discovered just by exploring a derelict building. It was like being rewarded twice for taking the road less traveled: once for the possible cool loot and unique items sprinkled in these places, and twice for the bonus story elements. You almost played a secondary role as a post-apocalyptic Indiana Jones, uncovering lost history and treasure. I loved reading those little computer terminals to find out what happened, or just trying to piece together the tragic events based on the positions of the skeletons. It gave that creepy feeling of what it must have been like at the end of the world...like you discovered Pompeii or something. FNV just feels a little antiseptic. Sure, there's a couple Vaults to check out, and the occasional loot, but most of the stuff is quest related or just a generic gas station w/ nothing memorable about it. So, yeah, FNV is a great game that evolves the series quite well, but it does lack in some of the charm that FO3 had.

Well, what IS a good story then? Every single game I've seen released in the last 5 or so years has seemed to have a 'bad story' according to critics and other people who play them, while often I see nothing wrong with them.
Seriously, what is there to have against Oblivion's story? I think it's awesome how each town has their own struggle as they battle with their own gate, then band together to fight off an oncoming disaster. Trying to sneak into a Cult's group and then having to escape is pretty darn fun, as is traveling to an evil guy's 'Paradise' to retrieve an amulet from him. Fighting through Kvatch with a small band of soldiers was also epic fun.
Now, I probably sound like a raging f-anboy saying all that, but what is so cliche and juvenile there?

I often found myself finding a new location, thinking "Oh goodie! What cool enemies/loot/stuff to explore will I find here?" only to find it was just a small camp with a bed and a campfire, or a tiny cave with a couple of geckos.
The random world exploration was meh, until you found a more major location and got into a cool quest.

I've said it before but I'll repeat.

I think that FO:NV "feels" smaller because it's designed properly.

In FO3 the main questline happened entirely in a linear band from little lamplight to rivet city.

So when you wanted to explore outside of that you had a LONG haul from the closest nav point. Say you're halfway through the main quest, and you want to visit canterbury commons, or Republic of Dave, or go to Girdershare: you have to run for half an hour across the wasteland just to get there.

NV is the same size (actually a few cells bigger) in map, but the main quest moves you through in a circle, ensuring no matter where you want to go you have some nav point nearby to avoid an hour-long jog across the wastes.

Plus, sight lines are broken by the mountains, so you rarely, for instance, get to see past where you're going to a massive satellite tower in the distance.

I'll agree there are less raw locations (and many less than you can go into), but I'm not sure that's bad.

Dungeons are the weak point of this engine and design philosophy, because they rapidly become redundant. Honestly playing oblivion almost cured me of my obsessive explorerism by the time I hit the 30th near-identical, near-lootless alyid ruin.

The game is much smaller from my perspective. Sure the "map" is about the same size. But the dungeons + the map = smaller then Fallout 3.

dungeon crawls were awesome in oblivion and fallout 3, until i did 100 of them and then it became a "Oh no, not another building that I'm going to get lost in 100 times", or a "not another damn cave". I actually enjoy New Vegas more because there is actually above ground open world exploration to be done. Going through burned down towns and having battle with Rangers in fields is more fun than in a building or cave. And there still are some dungeons, caves and stuff that i can explore so i have both.

With you 100%


Exploration is a funny one. I thought exploration was the best part of Fo3, see a new location and bang, instant gratification, well, most times. Strangely I find exploration in NV to be an even more rewarding experience exactly because not every location yields an instant reward - "Sheesh, nothing more than a hole in the ground, reasonable landmark, may even have a bed but I'll have to explore some more to find someone to talk to or something worth hauling home"

Fo3 is feeding reward psychology in a very MMO fashion, NV is making much more of a game of things. Guess I like games

Yes, the game world could do with being enlarged but I would argue that the increase in size should be accompanied by more intrigue in the plots and a return to more complex game mechanics vis stats, abilities and even clothing options, just to give me something to think about on longer walks.

A couple of things they got totally right imo:

The advlt balance, it does feel quite real world.
The fact that not all NPC's instantly regard you as a life long best friend - I can handle the attitudes and insults.
With apologies to Todd, I love the fact that the occasional NPC will cheat me.
The levelling and mix of mobs is really quite good, I'm forever expecting the unexpected.
The fact that not everything is possible in a single play through, even down to some conversation options. My second play through is full of "don't remember that" moments.

The five points above are contributing greatly to my game in that I always feel a little off balance as no two situations are quite the same.

Last on my 'they got it right' list has to be the companions. I'm not a fan of companions but they are so well realised in NV that I envision at least 4 more game starts just to see what the fuss is about.

Agree with your whole post.

But so you know, if you do this: save early, save often and be prepared to redo a hell of a lot of ground. The companion quests are the buggiest part of the game right now, a good half or more of my playthroughs one or more companion quests is bugged unplayable or even unstartable.

I agree with the original poster 100%. The reason why New Vegas feels so small is that almost everything is accesible by well defined roads and a large part of the map is taken up by impassable mountain ranges. Not to mention that all of the "zones" inside DC itself made the game much much bigger than the map would suggest. L'enFant Plaza alone was enormous. Fallout New Vegas is a much better written game, but the loss of the sense of exploration, for me, is a huge one.

Good advice but also, chill, relax, enjoy the game.

I'm certainly not about to throw a tantrum over a couple of missed flags. From quite early on in the game I assumed the attitude that you play with the cards you are dealt. I've found nothing game breaking so far and any other eventualities can be wound back into the story. ED-E apparently didn't recognise some place he was supposed to respond to, no problem, perhaps he was more damaged than I first thought, heh, he did open up eventually. If Cass decides to stay in bar one day or if Roni runs off with a deathclaw because she likes the horn on its head then so be it, lol. There is too much good about the game to worry about little things, besides I'm playing on a PC so most knots can be unravelled if necessary

Agreed, it did feel smaller and I didn't really like the smallness, I preferred the open space of the FO3 Wasteland and I did miss the Dungeon Crawling which is one thing I loved about FO3 (and Oblivion) all the tube systems and getting lost trying to find the right Exit to a particular part of DC, I never really got lost in Vegas and in games I like getting lost it adds to the tension a wee bit. The companions I've used Boone and Veronica have proved themselves Excellent in Combat, a definite improvement over FO3 for sure and I'm not a great Companion lover.
What I really liked as well was the music included from the earlier Fallout games, some of the music when I played them I thought Wow still the business, good eerie composition, many years later still sound great (latecomer to the originals) but excellent idea to include scores (if that) from the older games I didn't like the invisible walls though, not good.

Replace caves with metros.