A new-found appreciation for Fallout 3

[Apollyon]

Dear readers,

Every now and then, roughly once a year, I get an unexplainable urge to play Fallout. Usually this starts and ends with me playing F:NV, however Fallout 3 is always there, begging to be played. Now, Fallout 3 has always had a special place in my heart, since it was the first Fallout game I ever played and when I was young I enjoyed the hell out of it.

A few weeks ago another such period as before hinted at arrived. After having a fair bit of fun with F:NV I was ultimately unsatisfied; another itch needed scratching. And thus, Fallout 3 was once again installed on my PC and I was determined to give it an honest try.

The first character I created was going to be an evil bastard. Naturally I ditched the main quest the second I found a credible excuse to do so. After following Dad's trail to Rivet City, I went my own way and basically roleplayed as a mercenary/slaver character, which was surprisingly fun. There are plenty of quests and quest-outcomes to facilitate such a character. Eventually I traveled to the Pitt and had a decent run there, too. Sadly, by this time, quests were starting to run out, and with it my motivation to keep playing the character.

While playing as the previously mentioned character, I already had a new idea pop into my mind, though. And this is where it gets good.

Really what I needed was a good (read: in-character) excuse to keep exploring every nook and cranny of the Wasteland. A scavenger-type, but with a bit more to it. The idea I came up with was to "miss" Megaton, by simply going right instead of left when leaving the vault. After some crawling around, I would inevitably come across Fort Independence, where I would encounter my first semblance of civilization and would be given a purpose. The Outcasts need spare parts, scrap and anything that resembles technology in exchange for sustenance and hopefully, eventually a spot in their exclusive little club. This would give me a short-term reason to start exploring, and some long-term prospects of fancy power armor, big guns and an Outcast follower (mod).

So there it was. I now had a reason to check nearly every single location in the game in search of glorious scrap. And to my surprise, I was (and am still having) a ton of fun with this. Exploring all the dark corners of Fallout 3 made me realize how absolutely huge this game is. Not only that, but there's also a great amount of work put into every location, always with a unique bit of environmental storytelling, worth-while loot and attention to detail.

Blindly following quest markers when playing in my youth, I had completely missed the fact that all over the metro tunnels there are directions leading you to GNR. In fact, the metro tunnels can be navigated entirely by using the direction boards. But why ever use this? It's much easier to get around using fast-travel; or so my younger self would have thought. Well, no longer. Clearly, if exploring the tunnels is your goal, fast-travel is not an option. But I also resolved to make sparing use of fast-travel if I could find a way through the tunnels that I had no previously explored. (For example, ever tried getting back to GNR after repairing the satellite dish, without using fast-travel?) Upon doing so, only then did I realize the size and interconnectedness of the tunnels. I uncovered places that I, in all my hours of Fallout, never knew existed. I realized that following the main and side quests left the majority of the game unexplored.

Mostly avoiding the more populated locations of Fallout 3, scrounging for scrap and generally getting by with the things I scavenged, provided the sort of experience I find most appealing in a post-apocalyptic scenario. It was only after putting restrictions on myself and avoiding the attempts of the developers to make me play the game their way, that I got there. And isn't that weird?


Nearing the end, here are some questions I'd like to ask you all;

- Have you ever taken a similar approach as I did, traveling directly into the Wasteland or D.C., avoiding the main quest altogether?

- What do you think of the design decision to railroad the player to civilization (Megaton) after leaving Vault 101?

- What is your opinion on fast-travel in the Fallout franchise?


Finally, a concluding topic of discussion;

In Fallout 3 we see countless marked and unmarked locations which will remain unexplored if the player doesn't choose to explore them. This runs the risk of players missing all of that content, but it also makes exploration more authentic. In F:NV we see the opposite. Almost every location has a marker and a quest linked to it, making free exploration unnecessary, but also in a way, discouraging it. Many times in F:NV have I stumbled upon a new area, and was immediately overcome with the dread feeling that I was not supposed to go there without the correct quest. In fact, many places are simply locked unless one has the accompanying quest, and often that quest is also the only reason one would want go there in the first place. In many ways, F:NV was not made with exploration in mind.

In my opinion, a compelling and believable story-arch and exploration are both indispensable facets of a Fallout game. Where F:NV shines in the department of storytelling, roleplaying and meaningful choice-making, F3's huge explorable world often goes unappreciated. It's something I really missed in F:NV and for that reason I am glad Fallout 3 exists.

So, without turning this into a F3 vs. F:NV discussion, which design philosophy do you prefer?


Thanks for reading,

Apollyon

 

[R.Graves]

F3's huge explorable world often goes unappreciated

Probably because there's next to nothing interesting in it and you had to literally play the game wrong while playing pretend and using mods just to have fun.

 

[Alphons]

Dear readers,

Every now and then, roughly once a year, I get an unexplainable urge to play Fallout. Usually this starts and ends with me playing F:NV, however Fallout 3 is always there, begging to be played. Now, Fallout 3 has always had a special place in my heart, since it was the first Fallout game I ever played and when I was young I enjoyed the hell out of it.

A few weeks ago another such period as before hinted at arrived. After having a fair bit of fun with F:NV I was ultimately unsatisfied; another itch needed scratching. And thus, Fallout 3 was once again installed on my PC and I was determined to give it an honest try.

The first character I created was going to be an evil bastard. Naturally I ditched the main quest the second I found a credible excuse to do so. After following Dad's trail to Rivet City, I went my own way and basically roleplayed as a mercenary/slaver character, which was surprisingly fun. There are plenty of quests and quest-outcomes to facilitate such a character. Eventually I traveled to the Pitt and had a decent run there, too. Sadly, by this time, quests were starting to run out, and with it my motivation to keep playing the character.

While playing as the previously mentioned character, I already had a new idea pop into my mind, though. And this is where it gets good.

Really what I needed was a good (read: in-character) excuse to keep exploring every nook and cranny of the Wasteland. A scavenger-type, but with a bit more to it. The idea I came up with was to "miss" Megaton, by simply going right instead of left when leaving the vault. After some crawling around, I would inevitably come across Fort Independence, where I would encounter my first semblance of civilization and would be given a purpose. The Outcasts need spare parts, scrap and anything that resembles technology in exchange for sustenance and hopefully, eventually a spot in their exclusive little club. This would give me a short-term reason to start exploring, and some long-term prospects of fancy power armor, big guns and an Outcast follower (mod).

So there it was. I now had a reason to check nearly every single location in the game in search of glorious scrap. And to my surprise, I was (and am still having) a ton of fun with this. Exploring all the dark corners of Fallout 3 made me realize how absolutely huge this game is. Not only that, but there's also a great amount of work put into every location, always with a unique bit of environmental storytelling, worth-while loot and attention to detail.

Blindly following quest markers when playing in my youth, I had completely missed the fact that all over the metro tunnels there are directions leading you to GNR. In fact, the metro tunnels can be navigated entirely by using the direction boards. But why ever use this? It's much easier to get around using fast-travel; or so my younger self would have thought. Well, no longer. Clearly, if exploring the tunnels is your goal, fast-travel is not an option. But I also resolved to make sparing use of fast-travel if I could find a way through the tunnels that I had no previously explored. (For example, ever tried getting back to GNR after repairing the satellite dish, without using fast-travel?) Upon doing so, only then did I realize the size and interconnectedness of the tunnels. I uncovered places that I, in all my hours of Fallout, never knew existed. I realized that following the main and side quests left the majority of the game unexplored.

Mostly avoiding the more populated locations of Fallout 3, scrounging for scrap and generally getting by with the things I scavenged, provided the sort of experience I find most appealing in a post-apocalyptic scenario. It was only after putting restrictions on myself and avoiding the attempts of the developers to make me play the game their way, that I got there. And isn't that weird?


Nearing the end, here are some questions I'd like to ask you all;

- Have you ever taken a similar approach as I did, traveling directly into the Wasteland or D.C., avoiding the main quest altogether?

- What do you think of the design decision to railroad the player to civilization (Megaton) after leaving Vault 101?

- What is your opinion on fast-travel in the Fallout franchise?


Finally, a concluding topic of discussion;

In Fallout 3 we see countless marked and unmarked locations which will remain unexplored if the player doesn't choose to explore them. This runs the risk of players missing all of that content, but it also makes exploration more authentic. In F:NV we see the opposite. Almost every location has a marker and a quest linked to it, making free exploration unnecessary, but also in a way, discouraging it. Many times in F:NV have I stumbled upon a new area, and was immediately overcome with the dread feeling that I was not supposed to go there without the correct quest. In fact, many places are simply locked unless one has the accompanying quest, and often that quest is also the only reason one would want go there in the first place. In many ways, F:NV was not made with exploration in mind.

In my opinion, a compelling and believable story-arch and exploration are both indispensable facets of a Fallout game. Where F:NV shines in the department of storytelling, roleplaying and meaningful choice-making, F3's huge explorable world often goes unappreciated. It's something I really missed in F:NV and for that reason I am glad Fallout 3 exists.

So, without turning this into a F3 vs. F:NV discussion, which design philosophy do you prefer?


Thanks for reading,

Apollyon

If you love exploring in Fallout 3 I recommend checking out DC Interiors (adds dozens of smaller locations around DC). If it's not enough there's also A World of Pain (adds several bigger locations and focuses more on fighting).
Interiors:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/5573
AWOP:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/17965

As to your question, I have to disagree a bit. While New Vegas has less explorable locations, I find them far more memorable.
Metro tunnels, n-th raider/supermutant camp or some old building filled with ferals quickly become dull (not as fast as in Fallout 4).
I really can recall only a handful of locations in Fallout 3: Super duper mart, Dunwich, that hospital with Reilly's Rangers, Museum of Technology and Roosevelt's Academy. When compared to New Vegas Repconn, Hopeville and Ashton, Big MT labs and Sierra Madre it really isn't much.
Locations in Vegas feel much more unique due to their bigger scarcity.

 

[Hello Doggy]

New Vegas does feel a little barren, the quest locations are the most interesting part of the game, but in 3 I enjoy just wandering the wastes. That’s just the difference between studios, I hear they got less time than they should’ve.

 

[Veers]

I got softer on 3 over the years. I liked it when it came out, blamed it for ruining the franchise like a lot of others, but then went back to it. It's good for what it is and I greatly enjoy both 3 and NV. They're different games and do different things. As far as that goes, NV is meant to be sparse, since it's in a region that's extremely sparse even in our own un-nuked world, while 3 takes place in a crowded area with half the map dedicated to cityspace.

 

[zegh8578]

New Vegas does feel a little barren, the quest locations are the most interesting part of the game, but in 3 I enjoy just wandering the wastes. That’s just the difference between studios, I hear they got less time than they should’ve.

I always wanted more barren-ness, because I associate Fallout with visitable locations with miles and miles of wasteland between. I know that it becomes difficult to implement in a 3D environment, but in 1 and 2 I loved to watch the days roll away on the little callendar - days and days of wandering between towns, it gave an epic feel, and a feel of significance - and a feel that you can´t/shouldn´t zip between towns willy-nilly, because time litterally flies away. Moving from say Klamath to Vault City takes idunno... 20 days? Maybe a full month, or even more, I don´t remember. It gives you more of an incentive to stay in a new location, and see what it has to offer, before you feel ready to finally continue your journey.

As soon as I started travelling in New Vegas - although it was *still* a bit too cluttered for me, I could really feel and appreciate the effort of making the landscape seem barren - on purpose. I wanted that time to just walk along the road, nothing ahead of me but a sunset, behind me, distant hills. I would have preferred even longer distances, long stretches of nothing. It wouldn´t even have been that invoncenient imho, because upon reaching your place, you could still fast travel back and forth.

FO3 created a whole new set of expectations, a whole new... norm, for what "Fallout is all about", since by now in particular, the majority of current Fallout players seem to have started out with FO3, not 1 or 2.

 

[SquidWard]

ut in 1 and 2 I loved to watch the days roll away on the little callendar - days and days of wandering between towns, it gave an epic feel, and a feel of significance - and a feel that you can´t/shouldn´t zip between towns willy-nilly, because time litterally flies away. Moving from say Klamath to Vault City takes idunno... 20 days? Maybe a full month, or even more, I don´t remember.

I remember there was a quest in Fallout 2 that you had like 30 days to complete and if you traveled back to where you had to go and come back to turn in the quest you only had like 5-10 days left after that travel time. So if you messed up and went somewhere else, time had already passed for too long, sorry bud.

 

[zegh8578]

I remember there was a quest in Fallout 2 that you had like 30 days to complete and if you traveled back to where you had to go and come back to turn in the quest you only had like 5-10 days left after that travel time. So if you messed up and went somewhere else, time had already passed for too long, sorry bud.

Yup, I know just the one you mean, and memories like that stay forever. I do little replays of FO2, and while I know just what to do this time around, I´m still nervous about it - just because I blundered it so disastrously the first time! The journey back is so long, so slow, that even when I know I´m still on time, with some to spare, it´s very nerve-wrecking, and I´m always so relieved whenever I succeed!

Not to mention that feeling in FO1, when you have your little "150 days left", you go "that´s plenty!" untill you move between towns, and you see the days just rain away. It really sobers you up, and immediately implants a sense of priority- where to go, why to go there, what to expect from there, etc

 

[Ayelander]

Pathetic.

 

[BigGuyCIA]

1) Have you ever taken a similar approach as I did, traveling directly into the Wasteland or D.C., avoiding the main quest altogether?

2) What do you think of the design decision to railroad the player to civilization (Megaton) after leaving Vault 101?

3) What is your opinion on fast-travel in the Fallout franchise?

1) Sort of. I followed the pre-conceived path of 101 -> Springfield -> Megaton. I branched off afterwards.

2) I think it was a good decision since they wanted to quickly establish a safe-haven for a player-character that had just been banished from his original community. A quick place to navigate to and offload goods.

3) It's detrimental to a game (and dev) that holds environmental story-telling as their pièce de résistance.

Old-out was upfront about the majority of the wasteland being deserted, but they simulated your character travelling through it and running into random encounters.

In New-out, the dangerous wasteland becomes not so dangerous when you fast travel via black screen, and Bethesda's version is objectively less risky than even Morrowind's.

 

[Norzan]

Probably because there's next to nothing interesting in it and you had to literally play the game wrong while playing pretend and using mods just to have fun.

If anything, people praise the exploration too much in Fallout 3, same for the atmosphere. The combination of terrible level scaling, nonsensical location placement and everything being so basic, bland and forgettable just makes the exploration of Fallout 3 absolutely awful.

It's a theme park where you go unopposed with no challenge, just seeing the sights, no effort required from the player, no content that is too complex. That is not what exploration should be. It should be filled with danger and interesting locations. This is what Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas do, and something Fallout 3, and 4 for that matter, completely fail at. Exploration is absolutely meaningless when what you are actually exploring is terrible.

It feels like people need to find anything to praise Fallout 3 for, so they go for the usual suspects. They go for easy ones like atmosphere and exploration, when Fallout games should be so much more than just that.

They're different games and do different things.

What does this even mean? You mean Fallout 3 tries to be bad while New Vegas tries to be good? Because that's accurate. And what does Fallout 3 tries to do differently than New Vegas? They are both open world RPGs that have pretty much the same goal, suck the player into their worlds. Except Fallout 3 does so many things terribly while trying to do so.

These terrible arguments like "good for what it is" or "tries to do things differently" really don't work here. Fallout 3 is a sequel, it should improve what the first two games did wrong and add new stuff. It shouldn't dumb down, remove everything the first two games did great, and introduce even more bad things. Have people forget what the point of a sequel is? Because in my book, sequels are meant to improve things, not do so much worse than the previous entries.

When people start using these types of arguments, it just feels like they are trying to justify liking something. You don't need to justify liking anything, you can just like it. No one is gonna judge you (well, i won't). But don't use arguments with no water like "good for what it is" to justify liking something.

 

[Veers]

For starters, no Gamebryo game is playable and completely enjoyable without mods and fixes. Morrowind and New Vegas aren't excluded from this either. Be it your hardware preventing you from playing the game, or the game having aspects that could be massively improved, most people play with mods, and I honestly think 3 has a better selection of mods than NV, at least as far as ones that overhaul the experience. Vanilla 3 is piss-easy and boring, sure, but I don't think anyone's played truly vanilla 3 for years. New Vegas is piss-easy without mods too, albeit not as boring thanks to the heavier story focus. Even still you can take down Black Mountain with a 10mm pistol at level 5, wipe out the NCRCF with a 9mm at level 2, and multiple speedruns have shown it's winnable even from level 1. People don't remember how easy it was, or how all the same in 1 and 2 you could become very overpowered very quickly if you built things right, though undoubtedly those were much harder than 3/NV.

You know what fixes all that? Mods.

3 is a shooter with RPG elements, NV is an RPG with shooter elements. They're both good for what they are and they're fundamentally different games with different design mindsets. It isn't a competition, and while NV is of course superior, and while I don't particularly like 4 and wholly detest 76, I don't think 3 is some kind of gaming travesty and an insult to Fallout. I don't think it ruined the series by any means. In fact, all of its complaints came much earlier.

Too silly and not very dark? Fallout 2, where you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a pop culture reference or joke character.
Too casual and simplistic? Brotherhood of Steel, a button-mashing hack n' slash.
Too combat-focused and lacking RPG substance? Fallout Tactics, which is even heavier on combat and lighter on roleplay than 3.

I enjoyed vanilla NV much more than vanilla 3. 3 is lacking in many ways. But it isn't the worst game ever made, it isn't the worst game in the series, it isn't the first Fallout to do the things it did, and it didn't ruin Fallout forever. That deed goes in parts to 4, 76, and Todd himself.

 

[R.Graves]

For starters, no Gamebryo game is playable and completely enjoyable without mods and fixes.

Wrong.

Edit: lol nevermind the version I played was made renderware but the scholarship edition was in gambryo and that one is... Fucking gross.

 

[Norzan]

For starters, no Gamebryo game is playable and completely enjoyable without mods and fixes. Morrowind and New Vegas aren't excluded from this either.

This is wrong on every conceivable way. Didn't need any mods for New Vegas or Morrowind, they worked just fine and were satisfying experiences.

3 is a shooter with RPG elements, NV is an RPG with shooter elements. They're both good for what they are and they're fundamentally different games with different design mindsets.

This is objectively false. Both are RPGs with shooter elements, but one succeeds, for the most part, while the other one fails.

Fallout 3 has worse combat, worse dialogue, worse writing, much worse world building, worse exploration, a far worse intro, worse story, worse characters and pretty much everything else is worse. Again, they are both trying to achieve the same thing, but Fallout 3 completely fails. There's no "different mindsets" or another nonsense.

Even removing the Fallout name from its title, the shooting is so bad. FPS games from the 90s have so much better shooting mechanics. So its shooting is absolutely awful and its RPG elements extremely shallow, how is it "good for what it is"? It can't be.

Too silly and not very dark? Fallout 2, where you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a pop culture reference or joke character.

This is overblown to hell. Most of the pop cultural references are kept outside of quests and the main story. A lot of them you have to go out of your way to even find them. And to add to that, Fallout 3 is far dumber than Fallout 2. Like, light years in difference when it comes to dumb shit. There's not a thing in Fallout 3 that isn't dumb or at least questionable.

Too casual and simplistic? Brotherhood of Steel, a button-mashing hack n' slash.

Spin-off.

Too combat-focused and lacking RPG substance? Fallout Tactics, which is even heavier on combat and lighter on roleplay than 3.

Spin-off.

But it isn't the worst game ever made, it isn't the worst game in the series, it isn't the first Fallout to do the things it did, and it didn't ruin Fallout forever. That deed goes in parts to 4, 76, and Todd himself.

It was the start. It was the first numbered sequel to complete destroy the brand. Fallout 3 completely misses the point of the series to such a degree that it clearly shows that Bethesda doesn't know what the series is actually about. I don't think i need to bring up the overused Tim Cain quote for this.

Fallout 4 and 76 exist solely because of Fallout 3. People got complacent and accepted Fallout 3, then Bethesda tried to push further with what they could get away with it. That is easily the worst thing about Fallout 3, it was the harbinger of things to come.

 

[Veers]

This is wrong on every conceivable way. Didn't need any mods for New Vegas or Morrowind, they worked just fine and were satisfying experiences.

Morrowind is nearly unfunctional on modern hardware and even "fixed" versions need special patching to work. New Vegas is a good vanilla experience, but to be truly great it also needs mods. There's only so much you can do with the engine.

This is objectively false. Both are RPGs with shooter elements, but one succeeds, for the most part, while the other one fails.

Fallout 3 has worse combat, worse dialogue, worse writing, much worse world building, worse exploration, a far worse intro, worse story, worse characters and pretty much everything else is worse. Again, they are both trying to achieve the same thing, but Fallout 3 completely fails. There's no "different mindsets" or another nonsense.

By what standards are you judging "worse"? I'll agree the characters and story in NV are much more interesting, but I wouldn't say 3's are an absolute failure. They do what they're designed to do. It's not great, but it's not insufferable.

Even removing the Fallout name from its title, the shooting is so bad. FPS games from the 90s have so much better shooting mechanics. So its shooting is absolutely awful and its RPG elements extremely shallow, how is it "good for what it is"? It can't be.

When it came out 3 was praised for the shooting. You haven't played many 90s shooters if you think their systems are so much better. By modern standards it's clunky for sure, but at the time, it was good. And it's still satisfying toting a combat shotgun against a squad of super mutants.

This is overblown to hell. Most of the pop cultural references are kept outside of quests and the main story. A lot of them you have to go out of your way to even find them. And to add to that, Fallout 3 is far dumber than Fallout 2. Like, light years in difference when it comes to dumb shit. There's not a thing in Fallout 3 that isn't dumb or at least questionable.

There's an entire city of kung-fu fighters and Yakuza you have to go through while a telepathic shaman astral-projects to you repeatedly throughout the main plot, and later talking Deathclaws with their own Deathclaw colony make up a major plot point. Are you going to tell me those things aren't dumb? And sure, the pop culture references are generally in sidequests, but 3 does the same thing. Both have goofy, dumb, anachronistic things in them. 2 wasn't some kind of morbidly serious and dark story.

Spin-off.

Developed by Interplay.

Spin-off.

Still a Fallout game. Don't get me wrong, I don't think either of them are "canon" or anything like that, nor 4 nor 76, but they're still entries in the series. If you're going to complain that 3 messed up so many things, don't pretend it was the first one to do said things.

It was the start. It was the first numbered sequel to complete destroy the brand. Fallout 3 completely misses the point of the series to such a degree that it clearly shows that Bethesda doesn't know what the series is actually about. I don't think i need to bring up the overused Tim Cain quote for this.

I'll challenge that. 3 wasn't the start of a downward slide, it was the only reason Fallout survived. Interplay went bankrupt, the last Fallout game they made was a complete disaster, and the popularity of Fallout fizzled out like a detonated nuke. The originals were fantastic, the world amazing, but there was looking to be nothing on the horizon, indefinitely. Van Buren didn't get canned because of Bethesda alone, it was having delays and troubles for a long time before Bethesda grabbed the license. Could it have been held on to a while longer for a different studio to come around? Sure. But no one knew Bethesda wouldn't do the old games justice, and even still, it was Bethesda that brought the series back from practical extinction. Without 3, we wouldn't have New Vegas either. I'm not at all going to say 3 is the best Fallout game, or even a great Fallout game in general, not at all, but had it not been made, there still more likely than not wouldn't have been a single official Fallout game even now, and that probably wouldn't change as more and more people simply forgot Fallout even existed.

Fallout 4 and 76 exist solely because of Fallout 3. People got complacent and accepted Fallout 3, then Bethesda tried to push further with what they could get away with it. That is easily the worst thing about Fallout 3, it was the harbinger of things to come.

4 and 76 are radical departures from both 3 and NV. I get where you're coming from, but I disagree. 3 wasn't the start of a slippery slope, because the failures of 4 and 76 were failures even compared to 3. It was a massive leap off the deep end that Bethesda chose themselves. 3 didn't "inspire" them to do it. If anything, 4 is more akin to Skyrim than it is 3.

 

[Deleted member 116891]

When it came out 3 was praised for the shooting. You haven't played many 90s shooters if you think their systems are so much better

Uhhhh, Doom, half life, half life 2, bioshock as random examples all have better shooting and were released before.

Fallout 3 cannot bepraised for the shooting,and it was more praised for the VATS super cool slow motion deaths. That is not the shooting though. Not to mention it was completely broken in that game.

I'll challenge that. 3 wasn't the start of a downward slide, it was the only reason Fallout survived. Interplay went bankrupt, the last Fallout game they made was a complete disaster,

Why do people think this. Troika bid for the licence. Fallout would have survived and arguably would have been much better as a result.

As Norzan puts it so well every time someone comes along and tries to defend it- Fallout 3 is a travesty-defending it for pretty much any reason other than the fact you found it fun is not good.

4 and 76 are radical departures from both 3

No they are not. They are all theme parks. How is nukung west virginia cause it's cool any different to blowing up megaton? How is the kid in the fridge any more stupid than feral ghouls charging at you at 100 miles an hour in the metro tunnels. Sure the quest design is more complex in 3 (and by any other standards it's pretty shallow in most places) but the writing is still awful.

LW (Intelligence):so you fight the good fight with your voice on Galaxy News Radio.

LW:Have you seen my father, a middle aged man?

Whew. A major improvement over Fallout 4!

Saying F3 is not part of the same design principles is just wrong.

 

[Norzan]

I played the FEAR 1 and expansions, the No One Lives Forever games and Half Life 1 plus expansions just recently and they are all far better when it comes to shooting. It's not even a contest. Sure, some of these are after the 90s but they are before Fallout 3, and their shooting is so much better by comparison. Multi million dollar company can't make shooting that's better than dev teams with far less money and personnel.

The shooting in Falllout 3 is weightless, lacks pretty much any impact and the guns feel like toy guns. The shooting in Fallout 3 is objectively bad. I also refuse to believe that VATS wasn't used as a crutch for poor shooting mechanics, besides just recycling a mechanic from the first two games, but forgetting why it even worked in the first place.

It's also been a while since some of these people that claim Bethesda "saved" the franchise by buying it showed up. Was it worth it? Was it worth to see the franchise being defiled with bad games? I would rather the franchise had been bought by Troika or outright died. We would have a franchise with two great games. That's far better than three great games and three travesties while the owners are responsible for the latter three and continue to hold the rights to the franchise.

Also, it boggles my mind how some people are so forgiving towards Fallout 3 and even claim "it's good for what it is". Going from Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas to Fallout 3 is like going from a well cooked filet mignon to a stale, bland burger. How can people accept this? This is how standards drop and why games get worse. Do people really like going from great writing, story, characters, RPG elements to all of this but far worse? Because that makes no sense.

This would only made sense if Fallout 3 was giving an actual different experience, but it's not. It's trying to give the same experience of the first two games, sans gameplay, but doing it far worse.

 

[Veers]

Uhhhh, Doom, half life, half life 2, bioshock as random examples all have better shooting and were released before.

Two of those aren't 90s games.

Why do people think this. Troika bid for the licence. Fallout would have survived and arguably would have been much better as a result.

Yeah, but we didn't know that, and we still don't. Troika went under hard by 2004, and good as The Masquerade was, it wasn't a critical success and was just as buggy at launch as 3 ended up being. Do I think they could've done better than Bethesda? Sure, but hindsight is 20/20. At the time of the bid Bethesda was still known as the western RPG king. Morrowind was fresh and still being lauded as one of the greatest games ever made. Prior to Oblivion, when Bethesda first won the bid, people were actually very optimistic. We simply didn't know.

As Norzan puts it so well every time someone comes along and tries to defend it- Fallout 3 is a travesty-defending it for pretty much any reason other than the fact you found it fun is not good.

A game being fun is its chief merit. You can make a game that's a modern masterpiece in every single way, but if it isn't fun, then it isn't fun. Granted, fun shouldn't come at the expense of dumbed-down casualized content, but still, if a game fails to be fun to play then any other things it does well are rendered moot for all intents and purposes.

No they are not. They are all theme parks. How is nukung west virginia cause it's cool any different to blowing up megaton? How is the kid in the fridge any more stupid than feral ghouls charging at you at 100 miles an hour in the metro tunnels. Sure the quest design is more complex in 3 (and by any other standards it's pretty shallow in most places) but the writing is still awful.

How is a commune of talking deathclaws or a city of post-apocalyptic 70s kung fu film characters any more thought-provoking or logical? 3 isn't perfect. It is heavily, heavily flawed. The problem I see, however, is that people blame it for the series going down, when in actuality every mistake it made had already been made in previous Fallouts. Goofy jokes and no sense of atmosphere? 2 and Brotherhood of Steel. Mindless combat with no substance or story to it? Tactics. 3 isn't perfect, but it wasn't the first imperfect Fallout game.

LW (Intelligence):so you fight the good fight with your voice on Galaxy News Radio.

LW:Have you seen my father, a middle aged man?

Whew. A major improvement over Fallout 4!

Saying F3 is not part of the same design principles is just wrong.

At least they give you something. NV proved it was a dialogue system that could work very well. Going to a Mass Effect wheel with Yes, No[Yes], Sarcasm, More Info was a radical departure.

I played the FEAR 1 and expansions, the No One Lives Forever games and Half Life 1 plus expansions just recently and they are all far better when it comes to shooting. It's not even a contest. Sure, some of these are after the 90s but they are before Fallout 3, and their shooting is so much better by comparison. Multi million dollar company can't make shooting that's better than dev teams with far less money and personnel.

FEAR is still regarded as having some of the best shooting of any game. NOLF and HL1, however, aren't remembered so fondly. Their story, setting, and characters are, but the shooting is pretty dull and lifeless compared to what we've got now. I wouldn't say they were terribly much better.

It's also been a while since some of these people that claim Bethesda "saved" the franchise by buying it showed up. Was it worth it? Was it worth to see the franchise being defiled with bad games? I would rather the franchise had been bought by Troika or outright died. We would have a franchise with two great games. That's far better than three great games and three travesties while the owners are responsible for the latter three and continue to hold the rights to the franchise.

Hindsight's 20/20. No one is a fortune teller. No one could see that Bethesda would mess things up so badly, and even though 3 fell well short of what it could've been, it still wasn't a total failure. That came later. In hindsight? Sure, maybe it would've been best to let it die, but then we wouldn't have the good elements of 3, we wouldn't have New Vegas, and Fallout would be restricted to an even more obscure and niche populartiy than something like Heroes of Might & Magic.

Also, it boggles my mind how some people are so forgiving towards Fallout 3 and even claim "it's good for what it is". Going from Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas to Fallout 3 is like going from a well cooked filet mignon to a stale, bland burger. How can people accept this?

Perhaps they don't have the same taste in burgers as you do.

 

[Deleted member 116891]

Two of those aren't 90s games

I know. But all were released before Fallout 3 and have better shooting. I can add in quake 1 and 2 for more 90s.

And Half life 1 for example holds up extremely well today. Certainly better than F3 and NV.

fun shouldn't come at the expense of dumbed-down casualized content,

Think you can see our point then?

Besides, fun can come from appreciation of a games design/story/world. KOTOR 2 is the greatest star wars media ever, but moment to moment it is less fun than KOTOR 1. I'll definitely only say to play the first so you can experience the sequel though.

How is a commune of talking deathclaws or a city of post-apocalyptic 70s kung fu film characters any more thought-provoking or logical?

We've explained that we excuse this because it's far out of the way- you don't have to experience any of this-and was forced on the devs due to development hardships-they have since admitted they got it wrong. In F3 you do have to see all the rubbish, from the first town being built around a bomb to being forced to see little lamplight, not to mention the rest of the garbage main quest.

At least they give you something. NV proved it was a dialogue system that could work very well

My point was not about the dialogue system. My point was about the atrocious writing, which cannot be defended, surely?

 

[Norzan]

We've explained that we excuse this because it's far out of the way- you don't have to experience any of this-and was forced on the devs due to development hardships-they have since admitted they got it wrong. In F3 you do have to see all the rubbish, from the first town being built around a bomb to being forced to see little lamplight, not to mention the rest of the garbage main quest.

I don't think anyone defends the more dumb parts of Fallout 2, but a lot of the other parts of Fallout 2 that are great hold up the game so well that you can kind of excuse the more dumb shit. Not to mention the more outlandish stuff in Fallout 2 was due to very short development time. Black Isle was basically told to rush the game for the holiday and make it as big as Baldur's Gate because of that game's popularity. Making weird shit is easy and fast, making content that requires a lot of time to develop takes, well, a lot of time and work to develop. Black Isle didn't had time to do that.


Meanwhile in Fallout 3, Bethesda had all the time in world. Four years as far as i know and yet, its content is so much dumber than Fallout 2's content. Little Lamplight alone is dumber than the entirety of Fallout 2. Dumber than the radscorpion playing chess, the ghost and some of the more outlandish stuff in Fallout 2. It's a town of kids that somehow can fight back against Super Mutants with poor weaponry and also apparently always get new kids every so often. And this is not some location in the corner of the map or something you have to go out of your way to interact with like a lot of Fallout 2, you HAVE to interact with this location. You are forced to go to this location if you want to beat the main story.

Plus, like you said, the devs of Fallout 2 have admitted that they went too far with some of the content and admitted to doing wrong. Hence why New Vegas is much closer to Fallout 1 in terms of tone and writing consistency. Bethesda never apologized for all the inane shit in Fallout 3. They don't need to because it's their work, but it shows their true character when they are fine with such crap.

And last, I'm not gonna defend the talking deathclaws, but it is explained ingame. The Enclave experimented with the FEV after they collected it from the Mariposa base. And the FEV was known to, at times, increase the intelligence of anything that was injected with it. I could do with no talking deathclaws, but they don't come out of nowhere.

FEAR is still regarded as having some of the best shooting of any game. NOLF and HL1, however, aren't remembered so fondly. Their story, setting, and characters are, but the shooting is pretty dull and lifeless compared to what we've got now. I wouldn't say they were terribly much better.

Citation needed. From the several forums i checked, the retrospectives and from several people i know, the gunplay in Half 1 and NOLF is still to this day praised and for good reason. The guns feel like actual guns, sound impactful and feel satsfying to shoot. Specially in NOLF2, gunplay there is actually damn great and extremely satisfying even today. Specially if you compare it to the atrocity of Fallout 3's gunplay.

And this, unfortunately, applies to New Vegas too. The gunplay there is better than Fallout 3 but not by much, because Obsidian was dealing with Bethesda's version of Gamebryo. And that version is atrocious because of how old and poorly maintained it is.

Hindsight's 20/20. No one is a fortune teller. No one could see that Bethesda would mess things up so badly, and even though 3 fell well short of what it could've been, it still wasn't a total failure. That came later. In hindsight? Sure, maybe it would've been best to let it die, but then we wouldn't have the good elements of 3, we wouldn't have New Vegas, and Fallout would be restricted to an even more obscure and niche populartiy than something like Heroes of Might & Magic.

The writing was on the wall before Fallout 3, and that was Oblivion. That game was going out of its way to strip and dumb down everything Morrowind did and not actually fix what the latter did wrong. Fallout 3 is just the continuation and Fallout 76 is just latest iteration. Bethesda themselves admitted that they don't mind dumbing down their games to get the most profit. Even if it means alienating their older fans.

And what good elements in Fallout 3? What are these fabled good elements in this trash heap some people keep babbling about? There are at best a few passable elements, but the game is a colossal disaster. And there's even one thing i forgot that this game did: it warped the series to such a degree that now a lot of people think the series is actually about shooting, looting and exploring, when the series was actually about the politics and how you could influence them, basically changing the wasteland based on your choices. That is actually what Fallout is about, not the nonsense Bethesda tricked people into believing.

This is why some Bethesda fans were bitching about New Vegas, because that game actually focuses on what the series is about from the start. That game put much less focus on exploring terrible locations, with terrible dungeon design, where you shoot and loot and then come out of it from a convenient switch you press at the end that bring you to the entrance of said dungeon.

And last, the franchise could have been picked up by some other company down the line if it died after Fallout 2. A company that actually gave a shit about the series and not a company that wants to turn it into Elder Scrolls with guns. I prefer the possibility of this happening or have the franchise die than having it fall into the hands of Bethesda like it actually happened.