Game of the Generation Preliminaries: Fallout 3 vs. New Vegas

Never finished both, but I sunk more hours into Fallout 3, and that had Liam Neeson in it, so I'm going with that.

I enjoyed both but the world in Fallout 3 really grabbed me in a way Vegas didn't. Reading these comments does make me feel I *missed* something about Vegas, but yeah.

Fallout 3 also has the advantage of being the first one, so it's a little hard to get past the Wow of something like that.

Fallout 3. I have a limited amount of dirty, soul-crushing wasteland exploration in me. However much it is, it wasn't enough to finish New Vegas.

Also, I broke the storyline of NV by accidentally bringing that sniper into Caesar's camp and ended up killing everyone.

Also, you can't be a proper member of the Brotherhood of Steel in NV.

I really enjoyed Fallout 3 but if you didn't pick New Vegas you DISGUST me. The writing is better, the combat is better, the quests are more interesting and the world is more dense with locations and adventures. I might be being biased but I feel like if half the people here had actually played both (or hadn't burned themselves out on Fallout 3), New Vegas would be winning by a landslide.

@veektarius: I brought Boone to Ceaser on purpose!!! Me and him vs The Legion become more important to me than the main story. So much that now that I've done it, I'm just kind of putting around the wasteland with no real motivation.

@roomrunner: I considered doing that, but considering that whole story of Legion vs. NCR was more interesting to me than the primary 'courier' questline, I really lost all drive to continue. I guess I could consider the game beaten, with that in mind.

@lackingsaint: I agree that there are many things about NV that are better. But if one person creates a great thing, and then another person looks at that thing and says "I can make this 20% better", who deserves more credit? I say the former. Iterating is easier than innovating.

@brodehouse: Yes, I suspected as much. Wasn't a super serious comment, and I think we both get where we're each coming from here - one of polite disagreement. I would never wish to intimate that NV is just another Fallout game. I've never played the old Fallout games, so I am in no position to comment. I just that your original response perfectly encapsulated that side of the argument; the FO3 vs NV debate is, to me, a matter of history and context.

I disagree with you as regards which game is better/my favourite, but you make a very salient point there as regards burn out. People played a ton of Fallout 3 when it came out, because it was so easy to lose dozens if not hundreds of hours in that world - I think I rolled three characters all of whom I put 50+ hrs of time into. Not to mention that they were releasing (mostly) high quality DLC throughout 2009, which both extended the conversation and led to people playing even more FO3. New Vegas is a high quality game, but it's in exactly the same engine, with a lot of the same mechanics, and so I can definitely see why people would have been exhausted by modern Fallout by the time New Vegas hit. I played FO3 when it was new and adored it, and didn't play New Vegas until earlier this year.

It's one of the things that makes judging games retrospectively so tricky - nothing happens in a vacuum. In a world where Fallout 3 was never made, maybe New Vegas would have been much more successful. The amount of people in this thread saying that FO3 was more memorable because it came out first suggests the same thing.

I had to go with Fallout 3 since I still haven't played New Vegas. I really need to get around to playing it.

@leebmx said:

New Vegas is completely on rails, at least compared with Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls.

Here is my experience with the game so far:

1. Start on the tutorial town. Complete a few missions.
2. You are free to "go anywhere", except you must keep on the roads or risk running on hard enemies. I once tried to test that theory by walking in the wild at random, until I was welcomed by two bugs that killed me without me being able to take a quarter of their HP.
3. So, Vegas is up north? I guess I will follow the path north then... Until I found a settlement with people that tell me the shortest way is full of deathclaws. In order to get to Vegas without dying horribly by overleveled monsters I have to go south to southeast and take a huge turn.

By comparison, in Fallout 3 I was able to get to Megaton or Tenpenny right after leaving the vault; and in Skyrim I could even complete the main quest missions' out of order. Not saying NV is a bad game but, based on my early game experiences, its a lot more guided than other Bethesda games.

@atlas: You've really grown into one of the coolest, most unpretentious members of this community. Just thought someone should pat you on the back for that.

I prefer the setting in Fallout 3, but more than anything, I just never got all that into New Vegas because it was a buggy mess in its initial release.

Fallout 3 was good for a Bethesda game, New Vegas was actually a good game.

@chaser324: On what system did you play? On PC the only bugs I had where physic bugs but not much more.

I would have no qualms with Fallout 3 being named the game of the generation. It was amazing. New Vegas was fun, but it was riding the coat tails of FO3 and did not do enough to distinguish itself.

@darji: I played it on 360 where it had major caching issues that would cause the frame rate and loading to get progressively worse as you played. You basically had to quit and clear the system cache every 1-2 hours.

I think that issue was addressed to some degree in future updates, but if you were playing it at release, it was pretty horrible.

New Vegas is easily the superior game.

New Vegas definitely improved on a number of aspects about Fallout 3 (better writing, better combat, better handling of companions in general) but even so I still don't feel that it did enough to distinguish itself from Fallout 3. Furthermore, I much prefer the environment and characters in Fallout 3 so I gotta go with that one.

Yeah these kind of games are never really enjoyable on consoles. But on PC it was such a great experience and why more closer than an actual Fallout game. Fallout 3 was not a bad game but it was a terrible Fallout game.

I disagree with that. I had a ton of fun and no significant technical issues playing Fallout 3, Oblivion, or Skyrim on 360.

New Vegas was just a buggy mess at release, and that kinda ruined it for me.

@atlas: Yeah I get it.

I have no disdain for Elder Scrolls Games, I just think Fallout Games are superior.

I think the big difference between them is the why of interaction. In Elder Scrolls, there's a ton of content and you can see it all, it's just a matter of finding it. In Fallout games, the content is kind of right there, the trick is figuring out how to make it resolve the way you want. Bethesda's games are about having a ton of stuff to do, Obsidian's are about having a ton of choices of how to do stuff. I prefer the latter.

After 100+ hours of 3, NV wasn't different enough to hold my interest. And 3's music was better.

Fallout 3 was The Elder Scrolls in a Fallout setting. I had a lot of fun exploring the nuclear wasteland. I could go for hours just exploring (Especially with the PC mod that gave most buildings interiors to explore.). It had a better world than New Vegas.

New Vegas was Fallout in first person. You spent the first third of the game essentially on a guided rail tour until you hit New Vegas. It felt like it took place on a barren desert scattered with a few buildings. However, each area had more flavor behind it. There were more meaningful characters, more meaningful interactions. While my hours in Fallout 3 was spent exploring the world, my hours in New Vegas was spent interacting with the different factions.

New Vegas had Fisto. Therefore, it wins.

I just have more fun with 3

Since I actually played through Fallout 3 it wins by default. Just didn't like New Vegas enough to see most of the content so I can't really vote for it.

@historyinrust: That is without a doubt the nicest thing anyone will say to me on the internet today, this week, or this year. I'm humbled and flattered.

Vanilla Fallout 3 beats vanilla New Vegas.

The Nevada and Brazil mods really did add a lot to Vegas though and I'd hope that Fallout 4 takes a few pointers.

I played both and finished neither. I'll probably give it to Fallout 3 based on how they handled DLC. I really liked what I've played of both but I just couldn't make the time for them. I'm more of an Elder Scrolls dude I suppose.

Shame on you for picking Fallout 3. NV was a fucking masterpiece in both gameplay and story compared to that shitshow. Reminded me of the old Fallouts.

Fallout 3 had a way better main quest and was the first in the series. New Vegas is akin to a sequel that suffers from extreme sameness; it improved on some stuff, but was very little in the grand scheme of things. Honestly, I could barely get through it

New Vegas was the buggiest mess I've ever played. The only way to save it is play it on PC with the massive bug fix mod. Aside from that, the game lacked the gloomy post-apocalyptic, dreary atmosphere of Fallout 3. Fallout 3 had a more interesting map, locations, and the music was way better. So Fallout 3 gets the vote.

To people saying fallout 3: you're goddamn high. If you played fallout 3 and haven't played new vegas go fix that right now. If you've already played new vegas and prefer fallout 3 you should just lay off the pipe dope for a while.

(The first part of the video is good too but I prefer to start with the most relevant bit)

Bottom line: Fallout 3 built a somewhat blend video game world based on the fallout franchise. That game is sometimes interesting with things like the tree mission, the nuke and the giant robot.. Fallout New Vegas built a well realized world full of great characters and personality. It's just better than 3 in every way except for the initial bugs they mostly fixed by now.

LIAM NEESON

New Vegas might be the "better" game. But it came out too soon for me. That type of game ran out of steam for me. And blowing up Megaton was gaming's first real moral choice.

I couldn't disagree with that last sentence more if you said shit tasted like cotton candy.

Yep, there is literally nothing moral about the nuke choice in fallout 3. It's a ''do you want to be a mass murderer or not?''. That's not a moral choice. And besides, there were a truckload of moral choices in RPGs before fallout 3.

Man... Neither of these is a "Game of the generation", but Fallout 3 is less broken garbage.

ambrose-nope.png

Fallout 3 is better. New Vegas had invisible walls on some hills for no good reason :(

You people are all on dust. New Vegas' writing is exponentially better than anything that Fallout 3 poops out of its butt. Also it gives incentive to use more than 3 skills. And you don't spend half the game running through identical metro tunnels.

I preferred the atmosphere in 3. NV is great but broken.

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 because bethesda are the ones that did all the heavy lifting for both of these games and the real achievement is the translation of the gameplay and atmospheric feel of fallout, rather than the specific story beats.

Wow, I never expected this to even be a question, I figured Fallout 3 was considered Far better by all.

I mean I really liked New Vegas, but I feel like with Fallout 3 it felt more fresh and different (barring Oblivion) and then New Vegas comes along and it's basically a Fallout 3 expansion, Which is fine, it added Alot of improvements to almost every aspect of the game (combat, crafting, skills, writing, weapon and enemy variety, etc) except the music which I thought was worse. And I think I would replay New Vegas before I did Fallout 3, but I dunno.

Fallout 3 just has a special place in my heart.
All games are great.
nobody should have opinions ever.

Man I loved them both but I'm gonna have to say F3 as NV was as buggy as bug in a dune buggy.

I wasn't really a huge fan of either but Fallout 3 had that console command achievement glitch on the GFWL version that let you get 1000 points by just typing them in so I voted for that.

@pyrodactyl:

The fact that there were actual, meaningful, difficult, interesting, moral, real choices in RPG's (or other game types for that matter) plenty of times up to that point is just a tip of the iceberg.

Plus the whole Megaton situation is asinine from about a dozen different angles. 1. A town of generally sane people surviving in the post apocalypse that was caused by everyone nuking each other out of existence, decides to build their home, their safe haven, around an undetonated nuclear device. That's not dangerous or nuts, at all. 2. Said device leaks radiation 3. The nuke is not safeguarded in any way 4. You, a total stranger is allowed full access to a nuclear device (5. the town sheriff doesn't mind) and can tinker with it to your hearts content. 6. A vault dweller with shit technical skills who has never seen a nuke in his life can operate and tinker safely with the nuclear device 7. No major military power (like brotherhood or enclave) seems even remotely interested in a full on nuke (not even raiders or super mutants), wow, just wow 8. Instead of trying to obtain the nuke and use it as an insane power leverage some loony wants to just blow it up and massacre a whole town 9. This is done with some basic transmitter and detonator 10. People in the rest of the area barely bat an eyelash at a nuclear explosion that wipes out a whole town, instead of this event being the most horrible, devastating, taboo and talked about fucked up shit since the world got nuked to shit. (enclave fart rainbows compared to this) 11. Why would you the protagonist holding the keys to the most devastating weapon know to man just blow it up and not use that power to your advantage (besides the fact that you are essentially a mass murdering psycho when blowing it up) 12. How does this nuclear explosion that goes off right next door not affect you nor turn the massive part of the surroundings into blighted death zone. That's just off the top of my head, I could go on probably with some more time to contemplate about it.

Ugh Megaton, just thinking about that fuckery is sickening.

That kind of retardation in writing is above and beyond even the fact that a vault dweller who has no real survival skills, writes a wasteland survival guide, with just a few days up and about in the devastated world, said guide then gets published and distributed (with seemingly no method of doing such), picked up by people who have survived all their lives in the post apocalypse already (for 200 years worth of generations), and they find it useful. Which is just a pretty rote sort of retardation for Fallout 3, like it's main plot. There are examples like this at every corner in F3. Next time you will tell me you can purify water upriver from radiation, at the estuary, oh wait.

The writing in Fallout 3 makes me want to puke my eyes out through my nostrils, shove them between my ass cheeks and squeeze, really, really hard.

[exhales] Ahhhh, there, my bi-annual F3 rant is done. I feel all better now.

To be honest, Fallout 3. I had no prior experience with a game of that type before and the world is so vast with tons of thing to see, do, collect. Same could be said about NV, but there's one key difference: Fallout 3 scared the shit out of me. Raiders, Radscorpians, Supermutants. You name it, it scared me(and probably killed me). Claustrophobic environments in the sewers and tunnels Once I got a hang of things and got competent companions it got less scary, but truth be told I'm pretty sure that's how it would be out in the wastes.

Pretty much it's a case of I played it first and it left a bigger impression on me.

Waaay damn closer than I thought it'd be.

New Vegas was super iterative from a gameplay standpoint and it was technically kind of a mess. That game froze on me so many times that I eventually just said fuck it to the side stuff (which is insane because that's usually the best bits of those types of games) and ran through the story. But maybe that's anecdotal. Regardless, I think Fallout 3 kind of hit the high water mark by being the first one to "holy shit they actually kind of made a modern adaptation of Fallout and it's legit."

Fallout 3, because I could actually play that one.

New Vegas is easily the most broken game I've had the displeasure of playing this generation.

Fallout 3, less broken and bigger impact at the time.