With all due respect you should work on your standards and expectations there don't you think? All you want from an interactive role playing game is good writing?

well most of the mechanics are the same between the games anyway, so...

also yes, but good writing is hard to come by so I don't see how that's a low standard.

For a book it isn't, but for a video game.. this

should be a problem for you.

There is a tone to the world of Fallout 3 that is not present in New Vegas. The world of 3 feels a lot more bleak and unforgiving, where New Vegas went back to the corny humor of the first two Fallout games. Even though you can not even question that the main story is better in New Vegas, I feel that the darker tone of the side missions made me enjoy the side missions of Fallout 3 more, or at least I still remember the side missions of Fallout 3, where I have forgot most of the side missions in New Vegas.

I also find that Fallout 3 feels like it has a more thought out attention to detail in the level design. For example; imagine you want to visit a spot on the top of a hill but the map design shows that you have to follow a path around the mountain to get there. In Fallout 3 there is usually a parkour style path that you can follow up the hill because of the easily exploitable jumping mechanics and a few well placed angles or flat sections (that most times feel placed instead of being random) in that game. In New Vegas, you usually have to follow the path around the mountain because the level designers did not focus on that aspect of world construction.

I

@officegamer: I was merely saying in that comparing fallout 3 and new vegas, the mechanics are roughly the same so the main comparison is the story, characters, quest design... etc.

@animasta: I've played both the original Fallout games, (after Fallout 3, I was really into learning about the originals,) and you are absolutely right. But I'm not talking about consistency in the shape of the overall world. I'm simply saying that in general Bethesda builds better systemic worlds, that make for a more enjoyable LONG TERM experience (for me.) Barring consistency or canon or anything else, I found the world that Bethesda put together to be much more atmospheric, and it was a place that I liked spending time in.

I agree, Obsidian did a way better job in the writing of a believable place with a believable story. But the actual playing, and just being in the world they built fell kind of flat for me.. It could just be that since I had already put hundreds of hours playing on the same engine from the previous game, I was just tired seeing the same assets, looting the same ammo boxes and crates, hacking the same computers, picking the same locks etc... Honestly that may have some to do with it. But even recently, I have gone back to both games and still find myself more drawn to the setting of 3 than NV.. Whatever that means.

Anyway, your point is totally right. But that didn't have much to do with the point I was making.

While atmosphere, better side-quests and attention to level design sound very tempting compared to a good story, because of the fact that I've played Skyrim for a long time I think I've had my fill of Bethesda's touch, so I'll stick to my plan to play NV. Also the train station in Fallout 3 sounds like the worst place, and I'm not in the mood.

Oh I understand now, cool.

The opening of Fallout 3 -up to and including the moment you step out of the vault- was fantastic. We don't talk much about great openings to games (compared to endings), but I'd put Fallout 3 right up there in that regard. New Vegas' opening is pretty whatever.

I can't think of anything else. New Vegas is better overall, by quite a margin.

I haven't played much of New Vegas admittedly, but the first gut reaction of it after sinking hundred of hours into Fallout 3 was "...this is the same game." And after about 3 hours of screwing around, I turned it off.

It just didn't push the envelope enough for me, and just felt very rough. I'm not one of those people that swear the devil is in the details. I'm sure to other people New Vegas feels like a completely different Fallout to 3, but it wasn't enough for me, and was ultimately not immersed enough into it to truly enjoy it.

I couldn't get through New Vegas. I just didn't capture the open feeling F3 had. It's in my backlog for now.

It didnt bore me. Or lock up on me,

It's been said already, but the world of Fallout 3 seems to be more indicative of..well....a fallout. New Vegas is just a dirty western - there's no reason to think the world had been through a nuclear war. Everywhere has electricity and clean water.

@officegamer: In general, just everything about it is better than New Vegas

Weird. I've had this game for a while but for some reason only yesterday felt like playing it (New Vegas that is).

New Vegas feels smaller, and I agree with some others the annoying insistence of having death claws is really bugging me a lot. Otherwise, though, it's been a pretty cool game and I haven't had much problem with it. Much like KOTOR 2, I feel like Obsidian does a decent job at expanding on an engines capabilities and making a game better in the process. I guess it's only natural, since they did the follow up in both cases. But nevertheless in both cases I ended up finding the follow up better in most regards. Game play is fun, stories are interesting, and it's about as buggy as any game using this engine.

Fallout 3 is a great game, but New Vegas is a more refined game I guess. They are pretty equal in my enjoyment, but New Vegas has some interesting ideas that give it more focus I feel.

The bastards!

Nothing. New Vegas is better.

my home, olney, is in it. thats good enugh for me

Two things that Fallout 3 does better than New Vegas:

1. The open world is better to look at. Even though both worlds are covered in rocks, I thought Fallout 3 had more random things like houses and towns to explore.

2. I think the main city of D.C. is better than New Vegas. New Vegas seemed really small and there wasn't a lot to look at.

I felt the world of fallout 3 was a bit more interesting and more fun to explore. I feel fallout felt more like a waste land that you did not know what you would run into. New vegas just feels like a post Apocalypse western where people are already reforming back to civilization.

Also New Vegas is far more buggy and glitchy for me which started to affect the game play for me late game.

Your guts are dumb as butt. The gameplay in NV is greatly improved over FO3. It encourages non-headshot spam in Vats for different enemies. You'll be shooting wings and legs and arms way more often. Also the non-Vats gunplay is improved so much so that you don't even really need Vats that often unless you are trying to pull off a status effecting crippling shot. You should play it.


Something FO3 did better... I think:

I really like the start inside of the Vault. There was a weird sense of belonging or something and when things started to get bad I didn't really want to go and leave everything so fucked up. I wanted to be able to fix it. I think it had a really strong open.

The problem with that is that in FO3 the atmosphere was one of the bombs just being dropped, when they were really dropped 200 years ago. There should be some kind of rebuilding happening at that point. In NV having governments and tribes and cities popping up just makes more sense.