Videogames: The War (for equality) Has Just Begun

[Sullen]

... What? How on earth do you fail to get out of the first town? You're not locked! You can walk anywhere you want directly. (just take care to avoid the wildlife) I've done runs where I just walked from the starting town to New Vegas directly (was nicely harrowing trying to avoid the Deathclaws!)

When rushing for New Vegas, I usually go past the Cazadores instead. You can kite them and kill them fairly easily, while the Deathclaw Quarry is pretty much a guaranteed death.

[The Kingmaker]

Seeing those "Quest Failed"s showed me that my actions mattered though, which was way more satisfying than facing unkillable "essential" NPCs through the story IMHO.

It is also closer to the spirit of original Fallout games, but that may not matter for all players of course.

[Sullen]

Yeah, I think what happened is I killed the bandit dude before recruiting all the help, so I got a little "quest failed" notice and restarted. Dunno about getting locked in the town, though.

That was one thing that bugged me about the game; making choices that precluded other quests and getting "quest failed" notices apparently out of nowhere. Made me think I'd fucked up somehow.

Eh, that's the problem when you have too many factions.

What really irks me is that the Legion arena quest is exclusive to male characters... I mean, it makes sense in the context of the universe, but still.

[Werthead]

Elite: Dangerous enters beta.

You are pure evil. Fallout 3 was terrible. New Vegas brilliant.

I wouldn't go that far. Fallout 3 is pretty good on the post-apocalyptic atmosphere (even if that isn't strictly what Fallout is about) and has some solid quests and gameplay. The overworld map is slightly more interesting (even if it makes no sense) and the game certainly reignited interest in the Fallout universe.

New Vegas has a much ropier opening and was buggier on release (not now though). However, its key strength is its subtlety and immense replayability, which FO3 really doesn't have. Plus NV's far superior writing, characterisation, exploration of thematic elements, its better weapons (Sentient Dog Gun!), its humour, its mind-blowing DLC (which you have to really get into to understand what they're trying to do) and it feels much more of a piece with the earlier games, whilst FO3 feels more like a tribute act. A good, solid tribute act, but not the real thing.

FO3 is certainly more impactful for its first few hours, whilst you have to work at NV a bit more to really enjoy it. Its opening hours and areas are distinctly inferior to FO3's. The other 150 hours and the other 90% of NV are what's better ;)

[The Mance]

Seeing those "Quest Failed"s showed me that my actions mattered though, which was way more satisfying than facing unkillable "essential" NPCs through the story IMHO.

Yeah, I'd rather just not even hear about the quests that I lock out with my decisions, though. Let me discover them (or not) on another play through, don't interrupt my story with random notices that make me wonder if I fucked up, or did something out of order, or missed out on some other/better/critical plot thread/loot cache/map area etc etc.

[Rhom]

Everything that can be said about it has been said at this point. If you look around a bit you'll find some good summaries (and a lot of terribl ones).

Haven't rewatched it, but I think this video touched on most of the important complaints people had.

That was a long 40 minutes... but I can see how that sums up the problems nicely, and they were certainly things that I recognized. Guess I just didn't get worked up over it. :dunno:

[Talleyrand]

One thing I'll say for 3 over NV is that I actually made a new game where I played as a good guy after Liam Neeson-Dad said he was disappointing in me for being a dick to most folk

[Gears of the Beast]

New Vegas has a much ropier opening and was buggier on release (not now though). However, its key strength is its subtlety and immense replayability, which FO3 really doesn't have.

Nonsense. Fallout 3 has tons of replayability. If it didn't have replayability then why have I replayed it 5 times? NV and FO3 both inherently have tons of replay value.

[Sullen]

One bad thing about both of the games though, the Karma system.

You shouldn't get good karma for killing raiders, legionaries, or feral ghouls... I think the initial idea of gaining positive karma in combat situations only when you let wounded enemy NPCs live when they call for mercy was a much better idea. (Though you should get an experience reward for letting them go)

[Sullen]

Nonsense. Fallout 3 has tons of replayability. If it didn't have replayability then why have I replayed it 5 times? NV and FO3 both inherently have tons of replay value.

3 seriously lacks factions and options in quests while New Vegas has a considerable amount of factions, who will often compete against each other in a very same quest.

You will always fight the Enclave, James will always die, and you will always defeat Eden and Autumn.

One problem I have with New Vegas though is the lost potential in moral relativity, the Legion was supposed to be much more grey in terms of motivations and methods, but in the final product they're essentially the token evil faction.

[Gears of the Beast]

3 seriously lacks factions and options in quests while New Vegas has a considerable amount of factions, who will often compete against each other in a very same quest.

You will always fight the Enclave, James will always die, and you will always defeat Eden and Autumn.

I don't think factions add much to the game that Fallout 3 didn't get from from the slavers of paradise falls or Reilly's Rangers etc a lot of the faction stuff in NV feels really stagnant and contrived. The replayability of Fallout 3 doesn't come from the main quest, while that is where a lot of the replayability of NV comes from. It's just the different emphasis of the games. The replayability of Fallout 3 comes from the awesome side quests and the world itself which is vastly more interesting and deep in terms of exploration than NV. One could argue that because NV has more side quests and unmarked stuff it therefore has more replayability but the side quests in Fallout 3 all are pretty substantive while a lot of the quests in NV are like run of the mill vapid RPG quests - like the quests in Skryim *shudders*.

edit: I'm obviously not saying they're as bad as Skryim - just that some are pretty comparable.

edit 2: and to expand on factions, I value the factions in NV as interesting locations with backstory and quests to do. I'm not sure how calling that a "faction system" really adds a lot. Fallout 3 gets all that from the many many interesting locations with back story and quests to do. Tenpenny tower, republic of dave, underworld, andale, arefu, big town, rivet city etc etc I could go on for hours. The difference is that NV basically forces you to go hunt down the Khans and the Boomers etc. But you just stumble into most of these awesome settlements when you're exploring.

[Inigima]

You could take the main road leading out of town.

There are pretty much two tutorial quests.

Sunny Smiles and the geckos, and Ringo vs the Poweder Gangers. I thought it was perfectly reasonable.

3's beginning is considerably more atmospheric though.

... What? How on earth do you fail to get out of the first town? You're not locked! You can walk anywhere you want directly. (just take care to avoid the wildlife) I've done runs where I just walked from the starting town to New Vegas directly (was nicely harrowing trying to avoid the Deathclaws!)

None of you can read for shit. It's after the first town that's the problem. I was warned not to go west, because Here Be Deathclaws, so i headed towards the prison riot/hotel/amusement park. I am unable to progress past any of those and I'm fucking done trying with that piece of shit. I've listened to you assholes half a dozen times already and reinstalled that turd and you've been wrong every time and I've had enough.

[Gears of the Beast]

None of you can read for shit. It's after the first town that's the problem. I was warned not to go west, because Here Be Deathclaws, so i headed towards the prison riot/hotel/amusement park. I am unable to progress past any of those and I'm fucking done trying with that piece of shit. I've listened to you assholes half a dozen times already and reinstalled that turd and you've been wrong every time and I've had enough.

Right. The game's a piece of shit because you can't figure out a basic part of the game that millions of people have somehow got past :lol:

[The Mance]

It's after the first town that's the problem. I was warned not to go west, because Here Be Deathclaws, so i headed towards the prison riot/hotel/amusement park. I am unable to progress past any of those and I'm fucking done trying with that piece of shit. I've listened to you assholes half a dozen times already and reinstalled that turd and you've been wrong every time and I've had enough.

None of that should be very hard at all. Maybe you aren't doing enough before you leave the town so you're not leveling up enough before you strike out. Aside from that, combo some meds, use the appropriate type of ammo, and make sure you actually have your armor equipped so you aren't running around in a helmet and your skivvies for god knows how many hours ( :blushing: ).

[Galactus]

I wouldn't go that far. Fallout 3 is pretty good on the post-apocalyptic atmosphere (even if that isn't strictly what Fallout is about) and has some solid quests and gameplay. The overworld map is slightly more interesting (even if it makes no sense) and the game certainly reignited interest in the Fallout universe.

I don't see anything in the gameplay that New Vegas simply didn't do better. (in terms of character creation options, etc.) Largely of course because NV is a pseudo-sequelxpansion.

Moreover, the game has... Pretty much nothing to DO with Fallout. The connections that are feel shoe-horned and stupid. And the thing is... It's not even very interesting. All the little places have almost no connection, there's no sense of "place". (and no, it's not just because they're isolated post-apocalyptic areas. you can make plenty place with that as well)

New Vegas has a much ropier opening and was buggier on release (not now though). However, its key strength is its subtlety and immense replayability, which FO3 really doesn't have. Plus NV's far superior writing, characterisation, exploration of thematic elements, its better weapons (Sentient Dog Gun!), its humour, its mind-blowing DLC (which you have to really get into to understand what they're trying to do) and it feels much more of a piece with the earlier games, whilst FO3 feels more like a tribute act. A good, solid tribute act, but not the real thing.

FO3 is certainly more impactful for its first few hours, whilst you have to work at NV a bit more to really enjoy it. Its opening hours and areas are distinctly inferior to FO3's. The other 150 hours and the other 90% of NV are what's better ;)

Well, this is admittedly personal bias but I hated the opening of FO3 because I fucking can't stand Liam Neeson :p

[Galactus]

I'm not even sure how one would say that (without a great deal of hyperbole) - they're very similar games, nothing about Fallout 3 even comes close to qualifying it as terrible.

The thing was just... Boring. The builds were too limited (admittedly New Vegas DLC helped spice things up, but even the base stuff had far more variation in terms of gear, perks, skills, etc.)

[Jace, Extat]

None of you can read for shit. It's after the first town that's the problem. I was warned not to go west, because Here Be Deathclaws, so i headed towards the prison riot/hotel/amusement park. I am unable to progress past any of those and I'm fucking done trying with that piece of shit. I've listened to you assholes half a dozen times already and reinstalled that turd and you've been wrong every time and I've had enough.

Ini, baby, have you considered that you suck? :P

[Gears of the Beast]

The thing was just... Boring. The builds were too limited (admittedly New Vegas DLC helped spice things up, but even the base stuff had far more variation in terms of gear, perks, skills, etc.)

Well I wouldn't say something is terrible because I personally found it boring, I found Red Dead Redemption totally boring but I don't view it as a terrible game by any stretch of the imagination. Compared to NV Fallout 3 definitely was limited in terms of gear. But that's certainly not something to qualify the game as being terrible, which is why I mentioned hyperbole because I knew it would be based on that kind of a complaint.

[AndrewJ]

Fallout 3 instead of New Vegas, and Asylum instead of City is pure blasphemy, PURE BLASPHEMY.

Well... I gave my reasons for choosing F3 over FNV - while acknowledging NV is possibly/probably the better game. But for Arkham, I simply enjoyed the more stuctured experience, working my way through the facility, experiencing all the varied locations and having to backtrack at various stages.

City was like.... GTB (Grand Theft Batman). A fairly vanilla city landscape with rather vanilla side-quests that I simply couldn't be bothered playing around with much. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy the game, I did. I played through the main quest and really enjoyed it - just not quite as much as with Asylum.

In the end, I think all 4 are great games that I enjoyed immensely. And whichever ones people prefer basically comes down to individual taste.

As the conversation here has moved to F3 versus F:NV, though, I'll elaborate a little more on my feelings.

Probably, my reason for choosing F3 mostly comes down to the fact that it came out first.

I had a blast playing through it. From my time in the vault, to the early quests in Megaton to simply exploring the wastes finding crazy, fucked-up shit to become involved in. I poured hours, upon hours into the game and finished all the DLC. Part of my preference for F3 could well be based simply on where my life was at the time - I had the time to devote to the game and play the shit out of it.

F:NV undoubtedly had a far stronger main quest than F3 - and I enjoyed it greatly. I just didn't pour as much time into it as I did F3. Fallout 3 was new and fresh and offered a gameplay experience unlike anything else (Yes, there are obvious similarities to earlier Fallouts and Elder Scrolls games. But F3 took elements from those and melded them into something new.) F:NV took and existing great game and iterated on it. Yes, it improved upon it. But it wasn't (for me) the awesome new experience that Fallout 3 was.

(I acknowledge that's somewhat of a theme with my "best of" list. I rate the first game in a francise higher in most cases. The first game is ground-breaking and offers an amazing new experience. The second or third game may offer a slight improvement or refinement over the original - but just can't compete with the joys of exploring a whole new universe for the first time. Case in point: Mass Effect)

[AndrewJ]

Oh... and I didn't even consider Walking Dead. Definitely deserves a mention. I'm not sure if it would push it's way ahead of any of the games I listed, but it's certainly amongst those jostling for the next place on the list. (Though The Wolf Among Us may perhaps be very slightly ahead of it - even if I can't figure out exactly what generation that should be classed as).