RPGWatch Feature: Fallout 3 Retrospective

I can't say I hated FO3, I had some fun with it. Some.
It had Bethesda written all over the place, means short, sometimes boring, sometimes annoying and completely uninspired story with added endless respawns with a level cap. Someone mentioned a mod in the thread that lowers XP gain, and I have to repeat, how can a game be good if it needs such mods, why didn't they just remove bloody respawns then you won't grind your level to the cap in a couple of hours. But it's same old "makes games for intelligentia subnormalis" Bethesda.

FO3 is utterly different from it's predecessors, it's lowIQ and childrenfriendly game. Someone said F:NV is the real FO3, in a way I can agree, but in another way, can't.
Per Josh Sawyer decision, bizzare things you may stumble upon can be unlocked only with a trait - now that is not what FO1/2 were.
Bethesda's crap endless respawn and grind to the levelcap is happening in FO:NV too, again, that's not what FO1/2 were. Hell wtf is that low levelcap for anyway? FO1/2 had levelcap on level 99.
"Mature" perks like sexperk, pornstar, childkiller, etc, are removed from FO:NV. Again, dumbing down what FO1/2 had.
But with everything else, FO:NV was more FO3 than Bethesda's FO3 will ever be.

As I said, I had some fun with FO3. But was it so good I'd replay it like I did with FO:NV recently? No. Never.
 
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For big open world games like Bethesdas, some limited respawning is a good thing imho. It shouldn't be universal, but neither does it make sense to have the entire gameworld wildlife and monster depleted at the players hands.
 
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I agree with the coments on FO3 that it has atmospheric post apocalyptic setting, I for one have watched the movie ''The Road'' and playing the game I was emerged in to the world.Where without a doubt FO:NV is better crpg in so many aspects, I didn't felt like I was in the wasteland.So yes for the setting to play once or twice for the doubt can be FO3.
But for a crpg fan the FO:NV is obligatory.
 
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Dear Green Place
How far have you gotten into it?

25-30 hours into it when I've played the most. I've gotten to Vegas a couple of times. I didn't like how Vegas was broken up into so many separate cells.

Been trying to get into it at least 5 times - and each time the sloppy technical state, uninspired visuals or crashes prevent me from enjoying it.

I do like the writing and lowkey NPCs - but I don't like how you seem so guided along a set path through settlements.

It doesn't seem to have as many random locations with cool bits in it - and I've been struggling to find them.

But, then again, I'm very much an open world kind of guy - and I'm much more into immersing myself and exploring than I'm into following a semi-linear story with decent writing.
 
Forgot something. I can't remember if FO3 had unstuck-doorblock-Lydia mechanism like FO:NV has. Anyone remembers? I really don't want to install the game just to check it up.
 
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F:NV was a pretty good game overall, I beat it (again, one of the rare games I actually played through to the finish), but I felt like it didn't have as many points of interest like Fallout 3 had. I forget how many hours I logged in the game, maybe 60, and I felt like I had seen everything there was to see in that amount of time. Now, I am a pretty efficient gamer, so maybe I just blew through the content, but it just seemed like there wasn't much to do or see in New Vegas. FO:3 had way more to see I think. I could be factually wrong but that's just how the 2 games seemed to me when I was playing them.
 
Actually I'm about 1/3rd of the way through Fallout 1 right now and I'm not far from getting the power armor so it is actually about the same as Fallout 3 on the amount of time it takes to become powerful.

Yup. People look back on some of the old classic games with rose colored glasses and pan newer games while refusing to see the same flaws in the old ones.
 
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F:NV . . . felt like it didn't have as many points of interest like Fallout 3 had. . . . I felt like I had seen everything there was to see in that amount of time. . . . it just seemed like there wasn't much to do or see in New Vegas. FO:3 had way more to see I think. I could be factually wrong but that's just how the 2 games seemed to me when I was playing them.


My thoughts exactly. FO:NV open ares felt cramped and Vegas itself was sort of a mish-mash to navigate. I felt constant pressure to walk a neutral tightrope and not get funneled into one particular faction prematurely. FO3 seemed to have way more area to explore and stuff to find. Loved the unexpected vignettes of story I'd find hidden away. Some were very sad. Imagination is much more powerful than having everything spelled out for you. The subway/metro system was a creep-fest for me to explore. Loved it.
 
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I agree with the coments on FO3 that it has atmospheric post apocalyptic setting, I for one have watched the movie ''The Road'' and playing the game I was emerged in to the world.Where without a doubt FO:NV is better crpg in so many aspects, I didn't felt like I was in the wasteland.So yes for the setting to play once or twice for the doubt can be FO3.
But for a crpg fan the FO:NV is obligatory.

FO3 definitely had better atmosphere than New Vegas - that's one of the things Bethesda does best: world design and, by relation, atmosphere. I always felt like I was in some wannabe western with New Vegas. While the Fallout franchise has some parts of the western genre, I don't think it should comprise 90% of a game.

Also, in terms of atmosphere, I'm thinking that FO3 was simply more fun. New Vegas was obviously the better CRPG, but in terms of fun standout moments, there really isn't much beyond the Battle at Hoover Dam. Fallout 3 had a giant, rampaging robot, a Cthulhian-inspired dungeon, a slaver camp w/ a caged Super Mutant Behemoth, and surely others I'm forgetting at the moment.

Plus you could blow up a town:
cDJaR.gif


If Bethesda can ever implement Obsidian's writing and quest design alongside their world building, we'll have one helluva good rpg, Fallout or otherwise.
 
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My thoughts exactly. FO:NV open ares felt cramped and Vegas itself was sort of a mish-mash to navigate. I felt constant pressure to walk a neutral tightrope and not get funneled into one particular faction prematurely. FO3 seemed to have way more area to explore and stuff to find. Loved the unexpected vignettes of story I'd find hidden away. Some were very sad. Imagination is much more powerful than having everything spelled out for you. The subway/metro system was a creep-fest for me to explore. Loved it.

Well said. I agree.
 
I agree with the coments on FO3 that it has atmospheric post apocalyptic setting, I for one have watched the movie ''The Road'' and playing the game I was emerged in to the world.Where without a doubt FO:NV is better crpg in so many aspects, I didn't felt like I was in the wasteland.So yes for the setting to play once or twice for the doubt can be FO3.
But for a crpg fan the FO:NV is obligatory.

Yeah, both "The Road" and FO3 initially succeeded in making me depressed about the bleakness of the setting and the story. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it did succeed in making me stop playing FO3 for a while.
 
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Tbh I like New Vegas kinda more. Not sure why so many bashed it, just because it was from Obsidian.

Oh yes, this site and every other site bash games because they are from obsidion and not from bethesda:rolleyes:
 
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Also, in terms of atmosphere, I'm thinking that FO3 was simply more fun. New Vegas was obviously the better CRPG, but in terms of fun standout moments, there really isn't much beyond the Battle at Hoover Dam. Fallout 3 had a giant, rampaging robot, a Cthulhian-inspired dungeon, a slaver camp w/ a caged Super Mutant Behemoth, and surely others I'm forgetting at the moment.

I suppose that rather depends on how you get your kicks.

The Fallout series up until 3, despite its overtones of 50s camp, was fundamentally grounded in reality. Other than the day to day business of surviving in the post-nuclear hellscape, the people were recognisable as people, factional, flawed, political people.

In Fallout 2, Vault City asks you to blow up a town because its nuclear reactor is leaking radiation in to the groundwater and is threatening to kill them all. In Fallout 3, Alastair Tenpenny wants you to blow up a town because it spoils the view from his balcony. One is a typically human, xenophobic and short-sighted reaction that we can understand. Kill or be killed. The other is the plot of a bad comic book from 20s, with characters completely unrecognisable as humans, even psychopathically deranged humans.

Even taking FO3 as game apart from the Fallout series, it's jarring and immersion breaking to keep encountering these aliens in human clothing, and they're everywhere. Factor in the complete disregard for series canon and you have a game almost custom made to annoy RPG fans and fans of the Fallout series alike. I suppose it can be fun if you're looking for something like a Saint's Row game, where bizarre things happening is the point, but as an exercise in world building it fails on every level.
 
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The Fallout series up until 3, despite its overtones of 50s camp, was fundamentally grounded in reality.

Like the city of New Reno being run by 1930s style mobsters in Fallout 2? You have an interesting view of what "grounded in reality" means.


Even taking FO3 as game apart from the Fallout series, it's jarring and immersion breaking to keep encountering these aliens in human clothing, and they're everywhere. Factor in the complete disregard for series canon and you have a game almost custom made to annoy RPG fans and fans of the Fallout series alike. I suppose it can be fun if you're looking for something like a Saint's Row game, where bizarre things happening is the point, but as an exercise in world building it fails on every level.

That's odd, because I've been a fan of the series since FO1, and I didn't find anything jarring or immersion breaking about FO3. In fact, I found it more immersive than the previous games.
 
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Yeah, Fallout 2 was hardly grounded in reality. Would you like some wanamingo with your rose-tinted glasses? :) In the end, we're still playing a computer game based in an alternate universe where 200 year old Pringles chips are edible and immortal radiation victims with a bad case of skin rash have trees sprouting from their head.
 
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