Fallout 3 > New Vegas

**Muagan_ra** · February 16, 2011, 09:49 PM

To be honest, I don't really see how "being closer to the originals" is a virtue, I don't subscribe to the 'original is always better' school of criticism. Bethesda know how to make great role playing games, and it's down to them that Fallout is now experiencing this renaissance.

Anyhow, my points are being largely overlooked in favour of the above abstractions, and (in my view) undue praise for a complicated but ultimately clumsy and poorly converyed story, so I will just reiterate as concisely as I can. Fallout 3 had a more involving story, an eminently better convieved setting, much more detail, the element of chance and chaos that always kept the player on edge (unlike the cloned experience of replaying New Vegas) and is generally done with more style and aesthetic flair - which is important.

I hope Bethesda keep Obsidian away from the franchise in future. It's not like this is the first franchise that's been put on the backstep by Obsidian - need I invoke the utter folly that was Neverwinter Nights 2?

What's happened is that Bethesda probably wanted to make an earner off the back of Fallout 3, which is no bad thing, but being preoccupied with a much more valuable project (TES V) delegated the task to a company not nearly as capable as they are.

**the_mango55** · February 17, 2011, 12:12 AM

Originally Posted by Muagan_ra

To be honest, I don't really see how "being closer to the originals" is a virtue, I don't subscribe to the 'original is always better' school of criticism. Bethesda know how to make great role playing games, and it's down to them that Fallout is now experiencing this renaissance.

Closer to the spirit of how the original seems like a positive thing.

If not, why buy the Fallout IP at all?

Anyhow, my points are being largely overlooked in favour of the above abstractions, and (in my view) undue praise for a complicated but ultimately clumsy and poorly converyed story, so I will just reiterate as concisely as I can. Fallout 3 had a more involving story, an eminently better convieved setting, much more detail, the element of chance and chaos that always kept the player on edge (unlike the cloned experience of replaying New Vegas) and is generally done with more style and aesthetic flair - which is important.

They haven't been overlooked, but your points are all based on taste and we disagree with you. I thought Fallout 3 had an alright story but it was bland and simplistic. NV's setting was much better for me because it was more believable and felt like a real world, plus it stuck accurately to the political environment laid out by the originals.

I hope Bethesda keep Obsidian away from the franchise in future. It's not like this is the first franchise that's been put on the backstep by Obsidian - need I invoke the utter folly that was Neverwinter Nights 2?

I wouldn't count on it, New Vegas has sold quite well.

And need I invoke the greatness that was NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer? Easily the best expansion pack from ANY neverwinter nights game.

What's happened is that Bethesda probably wanted to make an earner off the back of Fallout 3, which is no bad thing, but being preoccupied with a much more valuable project (TES V) delegated the task to a company not nearly as capable as they are.

They aren't as capable at engine creation perhaps, but when given all the tools Obsidian is clearly better at storytelling.

Keep in mind that many people in Obsidian (including the CEO, senior designer/COO, and Project director for NV) were actually involved with the design of the original Fallout games.

**Gordon Freynman** · February 17, 2011, 01:51 AM

I felt Fallout NV was a much better game, despite my copy suffering dearly from game breaking bugs and CTDS (possibly due to overloading of mods

). I'll just say this, when I first went and killed Mr. House, I genuinely felt kinda bad about it. I never got any feeling like that when playing F3.

**mrcrusty** · February 17, 2011, 03:28 AM

Both games have their strengths and weaknesses.

Personally, I feel that Bethesda were able to make a much more stylistic and immersive gameworld whereas Obsidian made a far more cohesive one.

Mix Bethesda's art department with Obsidian's writing department and then you've got magic.

Seriously though, what's this about Fallout 3's story being better?

I cannot possibly see how on earth Fallout 3's story (which isn't that bad compared to many games) is considered better than Fallout: New Vegas' story?

I mean, New Vegas hardly has the best story in a video game ever, but unless a perfect 10 = Hollywood action movie, complete with logical flaws and plotholes, it is superior to Fallout 3's plot.

**the_mango55** · February 17, 2011, 04:41 PM

I'll lay out some things about Fallout 3

1) No farming, no industry. All the food seemed to be 200 year old packaged snack food and all the guns & ammo are pre-war antiques. This makes habitation of the region unsustainable. Also there were like 20 raiders for every civilian, who did they raid exactly? The slavers at paradise falls were also dumb. Nobody grew anything or made anything, who bought the slaves?

2) Who the hell is Talon company? They look like a mercenary company but what do they do? All I've seen them do is fight battles of attrition against super mutants for control of useless buildings and kill/pay someone to kill nice people. I hope I don't have to explain why that's not a well thought out business strategy. They are so well equipped for such an undeveloped and chaotic area, I don't see what they could possibly even be doing in the Capitol Wasteland.

3) Well maintained electricity everywhere. No long paragraph about this one, it just didn't make sense.

4) The ghouls were wrong, the ratio of intelligent to feral was completely off. Seemed like there were 20-30 times as many ferals as there were intelligent ghouls, while in Fallout 1 & 2 there were more intelligent ghouls than feral. They also depicted feral ghouls incorrectly as well, it's not an all or nothing thing between intelligent ghoul and mindless animal, it was more of a scale. Even completely feral ghouls would sometimes say broken sentences and would use simple melee weapons like knives and crowbards (although they did attack on sight). Feral ghouls should have been more like the knife wielding ghoulified NCR troops from Searchlight, but I guess that wouldn't have been scary enough, and Beth didn't really care about being true to the IP they purchased.

5) Things copied directly from Fallout 1 & 2 without any thought put into why they should be there. You might think this would make people who liked the originals happy, but not when they just add stuff that could be explained in the originals but isn't in the new ones. Radscorpions for example. Why are there scorpions in Washington DC?

Super mutants, while being a lame copy that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, are at least explained as a completely different type of mutant from the Master's army, but Centaurs don't make sense to be there because they were pretty much specific to the Master's army.

**James the Red** · February 17, 2011, 08:54 PM