In defending Goodsprings, you've cut yourself off from a questline. That particular questline also has two different outcomes depending on what you choose (and could've seen the assault on the prison by NCR). In defending Goodsprings you have also affected the ending slides.
In assaulting the Powder Ganger prison, you've also altered the ending slide (provided you killed the head honcho there).
I only killed everything outdoor in Prison, the "choice" is probably right after.
From what I have seen I don't remember consequences highlight, perhaps it's later, if not it's a rather poor design. You can't expect players read a comment, or a walkthrough, or replay the game with the right different options, so they quote choices and consequences they have done. Choice is obvious but consequences need some design effort to highlight them to the player and linked them with the choices. The Witcher did that sometime, not sure it did it for all consequences but at least the main.
Now, if this had been Fallout 3 there would've been a few things different.
Well like in FNV I didn't quote in FO3 consequences highlight. The only time I quoted some localized and immediate consequences was through reload and replay a small part.
But see, I don't care much of the difference because I'll probably never replay any of them or until a very long time. Fault of FNV to not highlight consequences, if that's a big point for people putting it high, it's not surprise most players don't care or didn't noticed.
But where it really shines and stands high above Fallout 3 is the entire backstory. Locations and factions in the Mojave are connected to each other, they have histories and relationships with each other. There are forms of production and farming, there are sources of clean water being taken advantage of and pumped around through pipelines. People and factions have moved across the Mojave and will reference other places. It's "tied together" whereas the Capital Wasteland was mostly a series of random locations "dumped" into a world space.
I haven't noticed that point of FNV too but probably I haven't played enough of it yet.
For the "random locations dumped into a world space", lol my only comment on that would be that Hardcore RPG players have became mad, I feel it's giving marmalade to pigs, they don't know appreciate good stuff.
Well ok apart if it's, in their opinion, close to perfection.
I don't mean one is better than the other, just that it's so exaggerate that it's like you haven't played it.
And the second point is, FNV could setup a very strong setup of organization and do it well, but that's different from a setup more wild region and less organized with less strong organizations that rule the lands.
But what's clear, I can admit, I haven't played enough of both of them to have a fair point of view on them and even less to be able to compare them fairly.
But many plus for FO3 for now, the radio use, the exploration, the architecture, the filling, the secondary quests, the small links. I noticed some minus (I don't add the points you quote), the partial scaling is too obvious when in FNV either there's none either it's better hidden. But common, it's just first impressions and I agree they don't mean much for both whole games because I need play them more.
The good point from my FO3 experience is that I had lost a lot of my motivation to come back into FNV. But now I feel more curious thanks to FO3 and could even try a restart.
