Fallout 3 Is Better Than You Think - Many A True Nerd

[Millim]

I appreciate that someone has taken the time to defend Fallout 3 (FYI, I enjoy Fallout 3 a lot as its own game).

Yet many of the things that MATN likes about it, I dislike. I also disagree with him when he talks about the main antagonists.

My main gripe with 3 is how Bethesda almost pushed the player as being a Wasteland Messiah, yet the story was pretty much your character being a witness in events rather than actually deciding them.

In fact, the writing in 3 leaves a lot to be desired.
However I will agree, 3 is good for quiet time.

Also, I don't think New Vegas ever had the main focus of dungeons, it was more about People rather than action.

 

[Alphons]

I have to agree that he raised some really good points- especially about exploration.

I mostly disagree with part about consequences. It's really strange that he even raised that point- he's the same guy that took rather critical stance towards that part of FO3 (it's most evident in his Kill Everything playthrough where he mentions essential NPCs, towns forgetting that you've killed 20 people during the wedding, being railroaded into MQ).

I still think that he's one of more entertaining Fallout youtubers.

 

[Daniel The NCR Veteran]

I still think that he's one of more entertaining Fallout youtubers.

I agree. He's better than those dudes who just check out mods for Fallout 4 and put tits in the thumbnail or whatever.

 

[Apollyon]

My main gripe with 3 is how Bethesda almost pushed the player as being a Wasteland Messiah, yet the story was pretty much your character being a witness in events rather than actually deciding them.

Not sure if I agree here. Speaking of my own experience, my last FO3 playthrough I enjoyed specifically because I had so much options for being an opportunistic SoB. I agree with you if you're talking solely about the main quest (which I thought was kinda weak and boring), but FO3 did a pretty good job to give players options to be evil whilst still being rational and not "psychopathic". Like the quests involving Paradise Falls and the slave sanctuary, the opportunity to blow up Megaton, dealing with the ghouls around Ten Penny Tower, to name a few. Even small things like using the "Scoundrel"-perk to extort people during the Blood Ties quest.

If you're looking for an enjoyable playthrough of FO3, enter the Wasteland, recruit Jericho and start trying to make as much caps as you can out of every situation.

 

[Alphons]

Like the quests involving Paradise Falls and the slave sanctuary, the opportunity to blow up Megaton, dealing with the ghouls around Ten Penny Tower, to name a few. Even small things like using the "Scoundrel"-perk to extort people during the Blood Ties quest.

Morality in FO3 is a lot similar to KOTOR, especially 2, where you either save people from ruthless gangsters and give money to every bum you come across or kill a man for reminding you about safety rules on a station. You do it for sake of being evil/ good. (I don't say that it's a really bad thing for me.)

What oportunistic man would blow up a town for 1k caps (after bartering), when in the same town there is a guy that buys scrap you can find in every toolbox or broken robot?

Who would become a slaver, when there is a woman that will pay you way over 1k for collecting sodas (you can get 2,5k caps if you choose "evil" option and give them to her neighbour, who wants to earn extra points with her and bang her).

Not to mention finding Naughty Nightwear and bringing it to it's owner for 300, collecting pre-war junk for museum for over 2k or just collecting books and tags for Brotherhood.
It really fell apart for me when I realised that selling Bryan Wilks (fire ants quest) nets me the same amount of caps as finding 3 pre-war books.
The worst part about trying to play as an oportunist though is money being worthless.
You can upgrade your house and visit the only prostitute in the Wasteland or donate to church. That's it, no gambling, no cool weapons or armours to buy. Caps can just pile up in your inventory.

 

[Apollyon]

Morality in FO3 is a lot similar to KOTOR, especially 2, where you either save people from ruthless gangsters and give money to every bum you come across or kill a man for reminding you about safety rules on a station. You do it for sake of being evil/ good. (I don't say that it's a really bad thing for me.)

What oportunistic man would blow up a town for 1k caps (after bartering), when in the same town there is a guy that buys scrap you can find in every toolbox or broken robot?

Who would become a slaver, when there is a woman that will pay you way over 1k for collecting sodas (you can get 2,5k caps if you choose "evil" option and give them to her neighbour, who wants to earn extra points with her and bang her).

Not to mention finding Naughty Nightwear and bringing it to it's owner for 300, collecting pre-war junk for museum for over 2k or just collecting books and tags for Brotherhood.
It really fell apart for me when I realised that selling Bryan Wilks (fire ants quest) nets me the same amount of caps as finding 3 pre-war books.
The worst part about trying to play as an oportunist though is money being worthless.
You can upgrade your house and visit the only prostitute in the Wasteland or donate to church. That's it, no gambling, no cool weapons or armours to buy. Caps can just pile up in your inventory.

I fully agree.

That's been one of my major gripes with Fallout so far.

 

[Jabberwok]

Not sure if I agree here. Speaking of my own experience, my last FO3 playthrough I enjoyed specifically because I had so much options for being an opportunistic SoB. I agree with you if you're talking solely about the main quest (which I thought was kinda weak and boring), but FO3 did a pretty good job to give players options to be evil whilst still being rational and not "psychopathic". Like the quests involving Paradise Falls and the slave sanctuary, the opportunity to blow up Megaton, dealing with the ghouls around Ten Penny Tower, to name a few. Even small things like using the "Scoundrel"-perk to extort people during the Blood Ties quest.

If you're looking for an enjoyable playthrough of FO3, enter the Wasteland, recruit Jericho and start trying to make as much caps as you can out of every situation.

The main quest is exactly the problem. It's the story of the game, if anything is, and it's the weakest part. It gives you almost no agency, it doesn't fit well with many of the ways people play the rest of the game, and it barely makes sense even without the player mucking it up. Not really new for Bethesda, though. Their sidequests often seem to outshine the main story, which usually feels like it's just there because they had to write one. And so for F3, they came up with Liam Neeson and the Brotherhood save the wasteland. Now throw the player in there and make them watch it happen. Since it's a video game, give them one Dark Side option to screw up the story for no reason.

Granted, a lot of RPGs miss the mark on this, but Bethesda seems to give players evil options which only exist for the sake of being evil. It's a problem with side quests, too. Instead of good vs. evil, it's more like be reasonable or be a sadistic psychopath. That approach doesn't bother me as much in the Elder Scrolls, when it's basic fantasy claptrap about deciding which god to align yourself with. But it does not sit well with me in the Fallout universe, where, even when there is a clear morality, being good and being reasonable should almost never be the same thing. [Strangely, even Oblivion and Skyrim have more grey morality than F3 does.]

I think it's a difference in approach, because I don't remember the old Fallout games being so ham-fisted when it came to player choice and quest writing. I'd guess that in those games, they would consider each branching point and figure out what player options made sense. But now, it feels like the approach is to consider each branching point and just cram in the good player choice and the bad player choice.

"Okay guys, the evil quest hub will be here, and we'll put the good quest hub over here. Then we put all of the evil characters here in the evil quest hub, right? And the good characters, they go over here in the good quest hub."

 

[Jabberwok]

Morality in FO3 is a lot similar to KOTOR, especially 2, where you either save people from ruthless gangsters and give money to every bum you come across or kill a man for reminding you about safety rules on a station. You do it for sake of being evil/ good. (I don't say that it's a really bad thing for me.)

What oportunistic man would blow up a town for 1k caps (after bartering), when in the same town there is a guy that buys scrap you can find in every toolbox or broken robot?

Who would become a slaver, when there is a woman that will pay you way over 1k for collecting sodas (you can get 2,5k caps if you choose "evil" option and give them to her neighbour, who wants to earn extra points with her and bang her).

Not to mention finding Naughty Nightwear and bringing it to it's owner for 300, collecting pre-war junk for museum for over 2k or just collecting books and tags for Brotherhood.
It really fell apart for me when I realised that selling Bryan Wilks (fire ants quest) nets me the same amount of caps as finding 3 pre-war books.
The worst part about trying to play as an oportunist though is money being worthless.
You can upgrade your house and visit the only prostitute in the Wasteland or donate to church. That's it, no gambling, no cool weapons or armours to buy. Caps can just pile up in your inventory.

Yes, this. The problems are baked into the mechanical side of the game, but extend into the setting as well. For a foodless wasteland full of flesh-eating mutants, it's strange that no one appears to be motivated to bad deeds by desperation, or legitimate struggle over resources. The nice people are mostly doing just as well as the bad people, and the bad people are just crazy.

I thought even the KOTOR games did a poor job of making evil choices believable, but at least they had the excuse that there needed to be a dark side choice because it's Star Wars.

 

[Dionis]

Well I won't watch the video because I remember damn well Fallout 3, I remember being so happy and hyped that there is a direct sequel to my favorite game of all time, but I got disappointed really fast. Believe it or not I wasn't that familiar with Bethesda at the time, I knew nothing about their game design but I remember seeing some isometric demo of it so I thought they are on the right track, but no, they had to go with their TES series design, I understand it's easy for them so why not, but they made it a shooter, first person/third person shooter, and a HORRIBLE one, you couldn't even look down the sight.
But I can overlook that if there are actual RPG elements in the game, guess what, they were TRASH, a bare bones of an RPG system, like "BE GOOD" here are some fake choices you can make.
But I can overlook that too, if there is actually some sense or reason and smart quests behind being good and all that shit, but look at it, it's a joke, they treat you like a kid, no, even worse than a kid, they treat you like stupid monkey holding a pistol. I played that game a lot, I tried so much to find enjoyment in it that I just gave up in the end. I can say a lot more about the gameplay but it would require a video not a comment.
I read earlier here that someone found Fallout 3 immersive and it made them feel lonely.... My question is how? How did it make anyone lonely playing that game? Every 100 meters there is some stupid location with tons of loot and people or creatures, it's like a sandbox for children with random toys unloaded in it.
Now the artistic direction is just out of this world ugly!!! Yes I know it's in post apocalypse, but if anyone seen Tim Cain's interview for the art style of the game you will see how much care and how many pictures of different kind (books, movies) went into Fallout, but in Fallout 3 everything looks like it was made by some 80's futuristic theme, not only that every technology looked like a toaster, like WTF. Did they even played or looked at the game they make a sequel to, hey what makes Fallout, emmm I don't know, hey look, Nuka Cola, bottle caps, power armor, yey...
The story! I don't even have to start, it's stupid, the end.
Delete the title of Fallout from that game and maybe you will find some pleasure in playing it. Maybe you will enjoy it if you haven't played Fallout games before, which is kinda sad.

 

[Norzan]

Saying Fallout 3 is better than Fallout 4 really means nothing. Not really a compliment to the game when they are both garbage.

I don't bash Fallout 3 to be "cool" or "follow the bandwagon" like i'm seeing some comments in the video are saying so to people who despise this game. I bash it because it's an example of everything wrong with AAA games, just dumbing down and stripping off everything that made the series appealing to the older fans to get more causual gamers, therefore more money.

The problems with the "logical" part of the lore, which a lot of people seem to find extremely important, I never found that big of an issue. In fact, I never noticed most things until people on this forum mentioned it. I call them purists. Whatever.

God forbid we care about the most basic things about a world, when the point of the game is to explore said world. It would have been fine if Fallout 3 didn't cared about the basic things like how people even survive, maybe as a gag to make the game more comedic, but what is the plot? Finding a source of clean water. You can't not care about how people survive but then make the plot about how people need to survive. Pick one, not both.

 

[Deleted member 93956]

I feel like y'all are missing the point talking about Fo3 and not the video itself, though. Had "enough" Fallout 3 threads at this point in time.

 

[Risewild]

I feel like y'all are missing the point talking about Fo3 and not the video itself, though. Had "enough" Fallout 3 threads at this point in time.

Then you should lead by example and talk about the video instead of talking about the people posting .

Unfortunately, I can't watch the video. It is just too long for me to squeeze in my "too busy" time at the moment.
I think someone already mentioned that having the script of the video available would be better for people that have no time to sit through 2 hours of video when it would probably take much less to just read the script, if it was available.

 

[Black Angel]

Then you should lead by example and talk about the video instead of talking about the people posting .

That, or we should blame @Jogre for taking all the cakes.

 

[Norzan]

He raises very valid point about the world being designed in a way that encourages exploration. Personally I think it's better when the games actually give you good reason to find all the locations, however for a game about exploration, it's now pretty much undoubtable in my mind that Fallout 3 does it extremely well.

To me Fallout 3 actually kind of fails in exploration. One of the things that needs to come with exploration to me is the looming presence of danger and i mean actual danger, like powerful enemies that you can run into that can wreck your shit in early level or even later levels. There's hardly any of that in Fallout 3 because nearly everything scales to your level.

It makes exploration hollow to me if there's no threat of being in danger.

 

[Jabberwok]

To me Fallout 3 actually kind of fails in exploration. One of the things that needs to come with exploration to me is the looming presence of danger and i mean actual danger, like powerful enemies that you can run into that can wreck your shit in early level or even later levels. There's hardly any of that in Fallout 3 because nearly everything scales to your level.

It makes exploration hollow to me if there's no threat of being in danger.

Yeah, the problem is it tends to make any direction equally optimal or suboptimal if you can't really decide on a wrong way to go. [That's why I kind of like the Death Claw no man's land in NV.] Takes some of the meaning out of the choice, especially if you're going to be fighting an abandoned building full of generic raiders every hundred feet. I think Bethesda's games do "encourage exploration" but I think this is more just a result of the style of game rather than specific design decisions they made. If you give a player a huge world to explore and toss them into it, they will naturally want to. And very few studios deal in large, contiguous, first-person worlds.

I don't remember if F3 had level scaling. That's certainly been the culprit in other games, like Oblivion.

 

[Norzan]

I don't remember if F3 had level scaling. That's certainly been the culprit in other games, like Oblivion.

A majority of the enemies, as far as i'm aware, scale to your level in Fallout 3. That's why the enemies you fight at the start of the game become bullet sponges by the end of the game.

It's like Bethesda is afraid that people will run into powerful foes and that will annoy people. I don't know about anyone else but i actually like certain areas that you are not supposed to tackle early on, unless you want to risk a very hard fight. It's just leaves these areas on the back of my mind to remind me that to go back to see if there's cool stuff there after i get stronger. In most RPGs these areas are home for some of the best items in the game.

 

[Supreme Shah Ismail]

videos 2 hours long so I will have to get to it eventually but yes I myself quite enjoy fallout 3 and feel people can be a bit unfair to it at times.

Either people are super anal about what an RPG is or lore blah blah but I think its a rather fun time even with its faults. Certainly not a master piece but not the turd people make it out to be. Certainly more re play value than fucking Skyrim that for sure.

It has the typical bethesda stumbles but people ought to be kidding themselves if they really think NV is any more of a different game besides its superb writing. NV is just way better written with better choice and factions. Thats it, its virtually the same game gameplay wise beyond a few MINOR changes.

 

[Dionis]

videos 2 hours long so I will have to get to it eventually but yes I myself quite enjoy fallout 3 and feel people can be a bit unfair to it at times.

Either people are super anal about what an RPG is or lore blah blah but I think its a rather fun time even with its faults. Certainly not a master piece but not the turd people make it out to be. Certainly more re play value than fucking Skyrim that for sure.

It has the typical bethesda stumbles but people ought to be kidding themselves if they really think NV is any more of a different game besides its superb writing. NV is just way better written with better choice and factions. Thats it, its virtually the same game gameplay wise beyond a few MINOR changes.

Those are not "minor differences" you just described. Fallout 3 is not a bad game, it's mediocre imo but not bad, what it is, is a big disappointment and a bad Fallout game compared to first two games, that's all, it's ok if you enjoy it, but the criticism is very fair, I would even say many people go easy on it.
Now NV is a totally different game, you can feel it the first time you step out of good ol doc's house, the only BIG issue of NV is that it looks like F3, it has the same buggy engine and the same shitty visuals. NV did everything F3 supposed to do while working on flawed old engine with flawed old and mediocre mechanics, it would be easier to pinpoint things that these two games have in common than things that differ because like I said, there are soooo many differences.

 

[Norzan]

It has the typical bethesda stumbles but people ought to be kidding themselves if they really think NV is any more of a different game besides its superb writing. NV is just way better written with better choice and factions. Thats it, its virtually the same game gameplay wise beyond a few MINOR changes.

The "That's it" is why NV is far better than Fallout 3. Writting and characters are some of the most important things in this series and Fallout 3 mostly butchers this (an handful of decent quests and characters doesn't hide the big chunk of laughable characters and quests).

And Risewild is gonna heavily disagree with you on both being virtually the same gameplay wise when he's working on Tale of Two Wastelands. They have many differences between each other that are not easy to spot from just a superficial look.

 

[Jabberwok]

videos 2 hours long so I will have to get to it eventually but yes I myself quite enjoy fallout 3 and feel people can be a bit unfair to it at times.

Either people are super anal about what an RPG is or lore blah blah but I think its a rather fun time even with its faults. Certainly not a master piece but not the turd people make it out to be. Certainly more re play value than fucking Skyrim that for sure.

It has the typical bethesda stumbles but people ought to be kidding themselves if they really think NV is any more of a different game besides its superb writing. NV is just way better written with better choice and factions. Thats it, its virtually the same game gameplay wise beyond a few MINOR changes.

Frankly, I think Obsidian made some much needed improvements to the gameplay from within their limitations, like iron sights and the companion wheel. One of the things that irritates me about Bethesda is they are super lax on quality-of-life design improvements like this. Both games are not great action games (they're first-person RPGs, story and world is where the quality is supposed to be...*ahem*), but NV does feel better in a number of areas, if only by a small margin.

As for replayability, I don't think Bethesda's RPGs have ever been designed or structured with it in mind. They've always gone for breadth of content, not depth. That's why I can spend several hundred hours on a game like Skyrim or Oblivion, and see more or less all of the content in one playthrough. At that scale, replayability is not only unnecessary, it's also inadvisable. Adding in some cursory nod to reactivity is just asking players to repeat 99% of the same content for 1% new content. Why would I want to spend another hundred hours reliving a story that was bad the first time? I'd rather keep playing the same save or stop playing the game entirely.

I'm not vilifying Bethesda (in this case) because the Fallout franchise was known for player choice from the beginning. So it's sort of a given that they would make it more reactive than their flagship title, yet I don't think that was ever the studio's strong suit. And it shows. Not every game needs to be replayable, though. I actually think the Elder Scrolls games are at their worst when they make that attempt.