Fallout 3 Is Better Than You Think (ManyATrueNerd) - General

Where is that 4chan post where that one guy wrote better dialogue for this conversation off the top of his head?

The same can be said of New Vegas, though ? Like every single faction you can adhere to, perhaps with the exception of Wildcard in some circumstances, is ruled by similar motives. They all want to own Hoover dam. They all want to bring peace and prosperity to the Mojave. They all want to spread their ideology because they all believe it is the best way to progress. The whole plot of that game is about every major force pulling the Mojave apart for power ultimately have the same goals and are at war for this reason. Not to claim that Fallout 3 has good writing by any means but you could have hardly picked a worse reason why it's stupid when the game considered to have the better writing literally uses the same concept.

no offence mate but considering the fact that this isn't the first time you have posted something like this iirc, (apologies if i'm confusing you with someone else), it's starting to look like you are just salty that you have an unpopular opinion. It's kinda dumb to complain about tribalism within a community, when you clearly count yourself among one of the tribes. Personally I think Fallout 3 was a pretty good game despite all of it's flaws, NV vastly improved on Fallout 3 eliminating most of those flaws. And then Fallout 4 ignored nv, went back and improved on fallout 3 again, eliminating some of the flaws but also introducing loads of new ones. Is that a complex enough opinion for you lmao?

It's fucking sad to think that refusing to take a vapid shit on parts of a series and instead being willing to appreciate individual titles for their individual strengths and weaknesses is an unpopular opinion. The last time I refused to take a hard stance on a Fallout game being bad I ended up with a stalker who was stuck up my ass for a few months. This is not an experience I want to relive ever again and it was enough to make me realize how legitimately shitty people can get whenever anything involving these games can be. I don't know and I don't care to know why people feel the abrasive and impulsive need to be this fucking shitty when it comes to game series like this but I am not willing to engage in it ever again.

The entire thread was pretty calm and positive until your post about people liking NV over FO3 being cocks. Fourth post is literally a critique of the video. Plenty of people saying they liked FO3 over NV without being called any sort of names.

This post is extra hilarious coming from you.

Again man, you are complaining about toxicity but here you are deriding the opinions of others as "vapid shit", going on to call them shitty people because they disagree with you about fucking video games. It's funny you should mention the fallout thread as an example of a decent place to have a discussion about the series when i'm pretty sure i remember you throwing this exact tantrum there a while back (again, I apologise if i have you confused with another poster). I'm sorry that you got stalked over your video game opinions (??) but i don't really see what that has to do with anyone posting in this thread tbh, perhaps you should chill out a little?.

Of all the undeniably valid criticisms for Fallout 3's shithouse of a plot, this is the one that always falls flat for me and it surprises me when people cart it out as a hilarious breaking point that collapses the plot entirely. Yeah, of course they're fighting for the same goal, because Project Purity is the Hoover Dam of D.C. Anyone who controls it will have the same bargaining power that the water merchants in 1 had, only this time the guys with the water will have guns, armor, and air support. It's implemented poorly, but drawing Wastelanders out into Enclave control was actually shown multiple times in the story through NPC dialogue, and then half-assedly wrapped up in Raven Rock. Same thing for the Brotherhood, only it becomes less 'get those guys out from their safe towns so we can have them' and more 'get those guys to make trading deals with us so we can recruit them'. It's not very well shown in the main story, but it's clear that was someone on the writing team's intention.

Almost like good game design is having a sense of direction instead of plopping random skinnerbox garbage and nonsensical isolated quests all over the map with no cohesion also you could get pasy the deathclaws if u rly wanted to

I mean, he's not wrong. There is quite a large recurring sentiment in a lot of the Fallout threads on this forum. Particularly on the game discussion thread for the game it's inevitable that at some point, somebody is going to mention Fallout 3 again in either a positive or negative way, and every huge fan of New Vegas loses their shit and decides it's time to come out of the woodwork and defend it rampantly and hold it above everything Bethesda made. It's usually tamer everywhere else, but it has happened a number of times that he wouldn't be incorrect in pointing it out. It's not even really about the game half the time either, sometimes it's just about how horrible Bethesda is and how much better X company would be.

Maybe i'm misunderstanding these "the NV demons come out of the woodwork!!" posts but it honestly sounds like you are pissed off that people prefer a different fallout game to you, or at the very least you get irritated that they criticise Bethesda? What exactly are you suggesting here? that they shouldn't be allowed to express those opinions?

we've kind of come full circle with this criticism tbh. it used to be a valid critique, then people started dismissing it because it was often presented in hyperbole, now we're at a point where people actually pretend it isn't a critique because it was initially presented with hyperbole. multiple factions vying over one special location to all do the same thing, except one faction wants to be evil with it, is lazy. yes, even in new vegas. the difference is the hoover dam in new vegas is well defined in the regions history. it's affected the entirety of the region before, it's entwined in the history and it's not only believable but exciting when, at the end of the game, one faction finally claims it. all of the history and experience with that location finally pays off in a satisfying, realistic way. the dam, a relic from the old world powering the new world, is fundamentally and undeniably linked with the core themes of Fallout. the water purifier is some secret project that doesn't physically make sense, that, until this point, has been completely inconsequential to everyone in the land and the two major factions fighting over it are only fighting over it because James decided to commit suicide while he literally held all the cards, spurring the PC and their science crew out of Project Purity and allowing it to fall into the hands of the Enclave. before this point in the series such a water purifier was utterly unneeded, especially the factions trying to take it. after the purifier is activated, regardless of who controls it, the land would be objectively improved. the purifier would be an interesting conflict if maybe the player got to be involved in both factions and their respective plans, being able to take in and consider each (hopefully) viable option. the player isn't really given any opportunity to understand why the enclave wants to do what it wants to do and depending on who you're talking to, the enclave don't really have a good reason to do what they want to do anyway. the entire purifier plot is a mess from both a practical and thematic stand point. all of what i rambled on about and more can be easily surmised as "both the good guys and bad guys have the exact same goal." even if that is at a glance intellectually dishonest, it is often a side note compared to many more major critiques.

Don't jump that far. All I would prefer is a much more calm discussion of any game without people feeling the need to condemn the game at seemingly any mention. I can see it on the first page that what people posting is more just than a dissent opinion.

there's a lot to look at here tbh, because "good game design" sometimes does railroad you into seeing it's sights and scenes?? A staple of good game design isn't necessarily allowing the player freedom of movement and the choice of where to go?? i know you're implying that open world player driven RPGs shouldn't do this, but you're still even making a lot of assumptions in that regard. which is better, forcing the player to play through a 30-40 min character creation and tutorial process every time they start a new game, or seamlessly implementing that process into the actual gameworld itself, artificially imposing a suggested track for a minuscule portion of the game, in order to achieve a grounded and realistic introduction into the game world? i never understood the railroad complaints about New Vegas because if you accept them at face value you're still complaining that like, at most 1/4 of the game is slightly more linear than the rest, which you admit is full of a spectacular amount of player choice.

Not really. You can go wherever you want in new vegas from the moment you leave doc Mitchell's house, and you can even do much of the main quest in whatever order you feel like doing it in. How is it rail-roaded if you even agree that you *can* get past these dangerous areas if you play it smart? If you dont fancy fighting deathclaws or visiting primm, You could always sneak up the middle of hidden valley by black mountain?. The area is infested with bark scorpions but with a decent sneak skill and maybe some stealthboys. This drops you out at helios one, by novac. It seems like you are complaining that there are dangerous areas a player should avoid at low levels... in an rpg set in a post apocalyptic wasteland? Contrast this with fallout 4, if I walk right from vault 111 to fort hagen (where I know kellogg is hiding) the fort will be inaccessible until I reach a certain point in the main quest, where I am forced to follow the dog companion you get even earlier in the main quest in order to "find" an npc I already know is hiding there- and kill him without any other option. So you have stated an opinion on a fallout game, I have disagreed with you and explained why, have I just "crawled out of the woodwork!" to rampantly screech or whatever? or are we just talking about video games on a video game forum?

this is such an important detail, Fallout 3 and 4 seemingly don't believe that any area should be dangerous until the later game, or a story beat cues it in. they embrace player freedom of exploration too much, sometimes. NV has a pretty damn traditional RPG map design, only when you compare it to leaving the vault in Fallout 3 does it seem railroaded or linear. the glowing sea and old olney are the only two areas i can really think of now that are beth's attempts at dangerous high level areas, but even then with the game balance design Beth rolls with they're not really dangerous to new players.

Mostly because New Vegas' world is just very weak overall, it has a variety of locations, but they're all so densely packed together, and a lot of the game world the player actually sees is completely inaccessible. I can tell New Vegas wanted to go for a "journey beats the destination" thing, but in requiring the player to go full circle to normally reach New Vegas, it really limits how the early game feels and the types of things you're most likely always going to do in the event you decide to replay it. It's different than a character creation prologue in the style of 3 and 4, but it honestly feels the same when New Vegas wants to lead you through Primm for the second or third time playing it. In essence, I can consider them the same. If I replayed 3 or New Vegas from the very start at the same time, I'd be playing in the actual game world quicker with NV, but the game has a much more defined route. In the time it would take me to finish the prologue of 3, I would very most likely be done by the time I reached Primm, or if I decided to go into the Bison Steve, and then I would be free to go wherever I want. In NV though, I'd still be going on the preferred path until making the complete trip around. I'm not going to pretend Fallout 3's and Fallout 4 's prologues are spectacular going through them several times, but when I weigh the positives of each game startup.. Yes, I believe New Vegas has a spectacular amount of player choice, but that player choice is at odds with player movement post-introduction to the game. New Vegas gives the player a great amount of freedom in its dialogue trees, not its physical paths. Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 are criticized for their weaker amount of choice in dialogue, but the greatest amount of choice it gives is that in its physical, tangible world. Once you're free, you're allowed free reign pretty much everywhere, and it's presentation in both games for conveying this is almost purely visual with no real voice or voices telling you.

New Vegas' world is probably one of the best designed worlds of recent RPG history, in terms of how it relates to it's actual worldbuilding and writing. It isn't a fun themepark. It being less fun is a concession you need to make, but your claim that the world is weak is arguable at best, dishonest at worst. A variety of locations that are too densely packed together describes more practically 3 and 4 than it does NV. Overall from your post I can tell you haven't played too much of NV, because the locations you've listed are the most optional and commonly ignored areas of a NV replay imo. The path you're describing, the one intended for literal first time players, is just one of many that the player can take in NV. This is just considering accounted paths. If you count all the ways the player can cheese through that opening route, it's a marginal 10~ minute experience at worst. Again, I want to emphasize how once you get to New Vegas, which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to multiple hours, the game is as free as any open world RPG should be. What you seem to be complaining about is the detail and attention that was put into the opening hours of New Vegas, which are hours too often neglected in pursuit of a 'truly open' world design. What New Vegas has is a path that satisfyingly introduces new players to the world on their first playthrough, and allows itself to be skipped in replays, or explored more thoroughly to achieve wildly different results. I unironically believe what I said earlier, that the variety and choice given to the player in the opening hours of New Vegas almost rivals the base game of Fallout 3. The ability to wander around anywhere you want is a subjective advantage to these types of games, because ultimately, even if you do ignore the suggested path in Fallout 3 and wander elsewhere, the game still fails to account for that player exploration and you will still end up doing the same quests. Just, eventually, instead of in a satisfying order.

So uh, did that victim complex in the God of War thread work either?

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/208189/ea57f1ef-9d50-42b7-8ea1-88f1d78a07c6/Capture.PNG Just to address that one comment you made.. But anyway.. What I feel it really comes to down to is what you value most. The most important thing I feel when introducing a player into your vast game world is the very first thing see when they gain full control of their abilities and are able to move around the actual game world and not a prologue or tutorial. Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 stand out to me with their introduction to the world because of its visual presentation. You have a goal, you always have one no matter which one you play, but that magic of seeing Downtown DC in ruins on the horizon, a large robust settlement, and the desolate wastes, that scale.. That speaks, it conveys more to me than what could ever be told in a dialogue tree. It's an invitation. When I played New Vegas, I thought I was getting that invitation as well, the intro movie showing a glowing New Vegas background, but the very first thing you see in New Vegas when you're in full control is basically just a podunk nobody really cares about, and from there on out most of the things you do are heavily telegraphed. When I first played New Vegas, you can bet I was very persistent with doing everything I could to actually bypass those limits and go where I wanted, but even though it is technically an option, New Vegas did pretty much everything in its power to fight me every step of the way there. The Mojave is a very established world that's believable, but it just felt way too rigid. No matter what I did, it felt like it really just wanted me to do a lot of the things in its way or I'd just be suffering. When I played Fallout 2 for the first time, I ran into less random encounters of beefy enemies trying to railroad me on a suggested path than I did playing New Vegas, and 2 isn't a whole lot different in its location path, yet it still felt like it gave me more freedom.

Considering your entire reason for liking bethesda games is [sic] "you get to play random dress up and murder anyone you want at any time and abuse the purposefully exploitable xp system", prejudging anyone else for whatever their reasons might be is biblically hypocritical.

I just wanted to point out that I actually really like the amount of freedom New Vegas gives you with the main quest. It can feel railroaded because the North is filled with tough enemies, and the developers have lain a very linear bread crumb trail for the player. However New Vegas gives more freedom than Fallout 1, 2, and 3 by not putting constraints on what the player character knows. The player character isn't a sheltered vault dweller or a home-grown tribal. They're already an active participant in society. And the player can choose how much familiarity they have with the area. If I wanted to, I could play a character who immediately recognizes Benny as a high-powered figure on the strip. I could know from my travels not to fuck with the creatures along the I-15 and run the loop ignoring Deputy Beagle, Manny Vargas, and the Great Khan's in Boulder City. I can return and resolve all those conflicts after my vendetta has been fulfilled. I can resolve them immediately but with a a sense of earnestness rather than necessity. Or I can murder every one of them and ignore the information left on their persons on a roaring rampage up to Las Vegas. I don't have to ask Easy Pete about who or what Caesar's Legion is or what his opinion is of the NCR and the game ticks along just fine. I can pretend my courier already knows of innumerable short cuts through the McCullough Range that allows me to avoid the deathclaws and cazadores and other beasties. Or I could roleplay that my courier left a stash of equipment at a home of their's in searchlight and make a far more personal journey through the mojave, culminating in me irradiating cottonwood cove, before settling my score with Benny. All of this ignoring the oft trodden argument "Well you can just sprint and bunnyhop past the deathclaws hurr" which can feel disingenuous to the obvious vision of the game. I guess ultimately, Fallout 3, and to a lesser extent Fallout 1 and 2, have quite a few gates for the player character to pass through on their main quests. This is due to the fresh-faced babe nature of each of their characters. To each of the three game's credit, there are major skips that can be done if one is familiar with the game, often by beelining the dadGuffin, but in none of the games would this ever seem particularly reasonable and it leaves narrative holes in the proceeding plot when done. So in this particular way, New Vegas allows for more flexibility in its main quest than most. It offers less in that it clearly funnels you in a semi-circular path around the McCoullough Mountains, but it doesn't constrain you any further on visitable locations beyond those clustered along the I-15. It would be comparable to if Fallout 3 made the region between Vault 87 and Arefu unsafe for low leveled players. New Vegas has a bit of a winding trail, cut clearly through the grass by its developers, for you to travel along, but nothing stopping you from completely setting off on your own. It really only has two checkpoints it fully expects players to pass through before the climax, and that is confronting Benny and President Kimball's visit. This is in contrast to Fallout 3 where your direction is determined by a checkpoint that you can approach from any direction, but you must pass through that checkpoint eventually to advance the quest. You as the player must go through Tranquility Lane, rescue scientists to the Citadel, resolve Little Lamplight, and enter Vault 87 through to Raven Rock before starting the climax, and the game STRONGLY expects a meeting with Dr. Li, Sarah Lyons and Threedog at their appropriate cues. I personally prefer New Vegas's flexibility over Fallout 3's. It requires a little more out of the box thinking and intentional rebelliousness to ignore the trail the developers have designed for you, but it can lead to a more personal and cohesive story for your character.

Yeah, I'm not surprised about that latter part the most. It has a more open main quest and related, that's for sure. As open as it can be though, a few things are really just copies of each other, but you definitely have more choice and how you do it playing the mid portions of New Vegas when you finally get there. It certainly makes it easier to metagame than other titles, that's certain.

That statement has no bearing on the truth. A game does what it needs to do to show you the world. Sometimes that means dropping you in the middle of everything and letting you explore anywhere, sometimes it means holding your hand from start to finish, GPS marker and objective trail included. New Vegas is in the middle where it shows you around for the first few hours and then lets you start doing whatever you want. No approach is inherently better than the other, it depends on what you want to achieve. There's no rule that says "good game design means letting the player explore anywhere immediately", you just made that up.

just occurred to me that it might be kind of obvious which one of these camps I'm in

I never really felt that New Vegas left you to your own devices except for the Independent ending. House, or Caesar, or one of the NCR questgivers will always give your main quests in a sequence. You will always get The House Always Wins I through VIII for House, or House->Boomers->The Kings->Khans->Omertas->Brotherhood->Kimball->End for the NCR, or Bunker->House->Boomers->White Gloves->Brotherhood->Tumor->Kimball->End for Legion. Act I of the game is actually the least restrictive it gets, where it only encourages you to follow Benny's trail and lets you make it to Vegas (and Act II) on your own if you can slip off the railroad without being gibbed by overleveled enemies. After Ring-A-Ding Ding!, the game lets you pick one of three very linear quest tracks and just expects you to make the decision to go off them and do some completely unrelated quests if you want. I do appreciate the level of freedom the Independent ending gets you, and wish that the other factions had quest "lines" like that.

New Vegas' railroading is a legitimate criticism, but it's not one that ever bothered me, largely, I think, because the main quest's "hook" acknowledges the player's natural desires. This is a place where Fallout 3 fucks up significantly. Fallout 3's main quest hook is finding your father and discovering why he left so mysteriously. The mystery part is legit, but there's just no way for the player to ever form an attachment to the PC's father, there's too little time involved and the writing isn't compelling enough. You begin Fallout 3's main quest because the quest marker points that way, basically. New Vegas' main quest hook is way simpler and more fun. Benny stole something from you, shot you, and left you for dead in a shallow grave. You don't need any emotional attachment to want to follow up on that. You want to find out what the package was, find out why he wanted it, take it back from him, and kill him. That's just the natural gaming response to that scenario, and New Vegas' main quest enables that desire beautifully. Playing Fallout 3, I wanted to kill the fuckin dad so people would shut up about him.

Its weird, I didn't feel railroaded in Fallout NV even though it clearly is. But I feel entirely railroaded in 3.

That's because railroading can be done right. Having an open sandbox that guides the player along a linear story path isn't too uncommon for RPG's, happens quite a bit in TTRPG's. A friend of mine described it as a procedurally made railroad line, where the players guide the railroad to their predetermined destination. Or something like that... but yeah, I feel the same way about New Vegas.

I don't understand why people keep citing "exploration" as a strength Fallout 3 has over New Vegas. Sure, I went all over the wasteland when i first picked the game up 9 years ago, but I recently replayed it, and I was just terribly bored by the setting. New Vegas has more weapons, more variety in enemies, and most importantly, its locations all seem to matter, even if they're self contained, or have some logical place in the world. With Fallout 3, there are only 3 real "Cities" in the world, one of which is the infamous Megaton, and none of which have the depth that settlements in NV do. While Rivet City is justified, Tenpenny Tower and Megaton seem more like gimmicks "A Tower of rich people in the wasteland! A town around a bomb!" that didn't really have their writing developed past the initial concepts.