Why do people think Fallout 3 was actually good?

KingArthur

KingArthur

You Have Alerted the Horse
[REDACTED]
So I just got done playing Fallout 3 and I have to say, I don't get why people think it's so great. First of all, there's no capacity for roleplaying. All of your choices either don't matter or get wiped away. Prime example is that quest everyone mentions, Power of the Atom. Disarm the nuke and live in the corrugated metal death shack that Lucas Simms dares to call a "house". Nuke the shithole and get a place with running water. Hard choice, I know. And if you do nuke it, your father mentions it; too bad he just slaps you on the wrist. ROOOOOOOOLEPLAAAAYYYYY.

Can we talk about the aesthetic? Trash everywhere does not = Fallout. This game supposedly takes place years after Fallout 2, a game in which people were starting to build adobe houses; and you can't be fucking bothered to sweep up the rubble everywhere? Part of this is admittedly due to the setting, which is urban Washington DC...

Let's get something straight.

*exhales slowly*

Fallout has always been a Western. Let's just admit that. It's a series about people resettling a harsh frontier, and beginning again. It is not "HAHA bombed out buildings, am I right fellow gamurz?! NUKES YOU CAN LAUNCH FROM A GLORIFIED SLINGSHOT!! FEV! MUTANTS! LOLOLOLOLOLL" and I'm starting to think that anyone who believes that it is, and enjoys this game, is a lobotomite.

And let's talk about the shit gameplay. No real iron sights, for one thing.

It's a fucking shooter, for another. Next.

And what about character background? Leaving the vault? AGAIN? Jesus fuck good grief, try something new!! New Vegas did this with the ambiguous Courier; why the Hell am I forced to be a goody two shoes Christian vault dweller? Which leads me to my last point, roleplaying. All you can be is good. If you're bad, the game seems to punish you, with ending slides calling you a monster even if you sacrifice yourself for humanity. No unique endings or chance for a "Red Dead Redemption" here, folks, just a fuckin' middle finger to the player with one of three generic endings, the neutral one of which NOT EVEN COMMENTING ON YOUR ACTIONS. And factions? PFFFT. BoS and Enclave. Roleplay as a BoS paladin and install Broken Steel, fucko, because Fallout is all about those wacky metallic monks. What will they do next, amirite? Oh, and the VA isn't very conducive to roleplay, because every fucking character hams it up, and sounds like they jumped out of an episode of Leave It to Beaver.

In conclusion, 3 is terrible, and I can't see why so many people like it.
 
Fallout 3 is a mixed bag for me.
There's a number of high points which make it stand out, when you get exploring, that's all very fun.
Some of the places you find can be outright genius (Dunwhich building for example) and the actual gameplay itself is fine.

I think it's because at the time, there wasn't anything like it in the mainstream to really compare it to.

At the time, PC gaming was finding its footing again outside the niche audience and console gaming was on the brink of making it big.
For a lot of people, this would be their first 'proper RPG', it was for me so I have a lot of nostalgia for it. Without it, I simply put won't be here typing this up right now.

But it was kind of a strange curiosity, a post apoc free roaming rpg which a 50's aesthetic which also makes pop culture references to stuff we like or know about.

How many games could you say did that in 2008?
Admittedly, it hasn't aged very well.

The role playing is shallow and the combat is sub par. The story is filled with so many holes it couldn't hold a ball.
But it's a starting point.

Think of it as a gateway to better games.

While I still enjoy, I recently went through it and found myself only really liking about 60% of it.
It was my first time through since 2016 and it was kind of worse than I remember.

The 40% I didn't enjoy however stuck with me till the end of the game, and muddled the other 60%.

I consider this my first time do my a close to 100% playthrough by the way.

So I hope that's should give you some insight from someone who started with 3.
 
Yo, bro let me fill you in on some KNAWLEDGE a'ight! (1/2)​
· HBomberGuy - Fallout 3 is Garbage, And Here's Why

· MrBTongue - The Shandification of Fallout

· Mr. Caption – Analysis I-III


 
Yo, bro let me fill you in on some KNAWLEDGE a'ight! (2/2)
(Pardon the double post kind Xirs.)​
· Indigo Gaming - Why Fallout isn’t Fallout

· The Salt Factory – Was Fallout 3 as good as I remember?

· MATN – Fallout 3 Is Better Than You Think

· Creetosis - Fallout 3 Isn't Better Than You Think I-II

 
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You have Fallout and you have Fallout 2. That's it. Anything else in the franchise is retarded and made to make a quick buck, yes, even NV. I'm glad Bethesda fucked up the franchise. Now it can collect dust until maybe ten, twenty years from now, another asshole can pick it up and say something like: 'Hey guys, I think I found something that'll make us rich.'
I played Fallout 3 for about half an hour, but I did watch an entire playthrough of the thing, done by someone who hated the game even more than me.
If some fuckface ever plans on making Arcanum 2, I will sharpen a broomstick and drive to his house. The rest will be in the newspapers.
 
It's simple, exploring a broken down city with heavy fallout flavor is nice.
Explore a desert in 3D is honestly more boring that 2.5D imo
It has a full map, good atmosphere, and feels much more rewarding to go off the beaten path then NV does.
Like its the same reason people like lonesome road. Not the plot or story. That's what 1 is for before it got retardedly silly in 2, or mediocre due to blandness in NV.
But thats a hard sell that mailman and vault dweller ain't just blank slates.
 
BiggumsBoi said:
It's simple, exploring a broken down city with heavy fallout flavor is nice.
Explore a desert in 3D is honestly more boring that 2.5D imo
It has a full map, good atmosphere, and feels much more rewarding to go off the beaten path then NV does.
Like its the same reason people like lonesome road. Not the plot or story. That's what 1 is for before it got retardedly silly in 2, or mediocre due to blandness in NV.
But thats a hard sell that mailman and vault dweller ain't just blank slates.
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Then play stalker or metro which sell that feel much better than Fallout 3 ever could, only thing I wish they kept from fallout 3 was no cross-hairs because they're gay and Adam Adamowicz's art design because it was interesting.
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Aurelius Of Phoenix said:
Then play stalker or metro which sell that feel much better than Fallout 3 ever could, only thing I wish they kept from fallout 3 was no cross-hairs because they're gay and Adam Adamowicz's art design because it was interesting.
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not a fan of either of those tbh
stalker is kinda meh
metro is boringly repetitive
 
Aurelius Of Phoenix said:
So is fallout 3, bro. Wandering around killing the same enemy types and finding some unique item every few dungeons seems boring and repetitive to me as well.
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stalker has a boring world
metro is linear
3 is open world
I ain't telling you to like it, so maybe stop telling me what to like? It's not very compelling
 
BiggumsBoi said:
Like its the same reason people like lonesome road.
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That's why it's the most disliked New Vegas DLC.

BiggumsBoi said:
But thats a hard sell that mailman and vault dweller ain't just blank slates.
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Except they are. The majority of their backstory is up to the player.

Fallout 3's protagonist is the one that isn't a blank slate, far too much in the intro for the player to make their own backstory to the character.

BiggumsBoi said:
That's what 1 is for before it got retardedly silly in 2, or mediocre due to blandness in NV.
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And New Vegas bland? Fallout 3 is the equivalent of a stale ham sandwich, it's about as basic as you can get.

Another one doing the same exact schtick as chunglord. Did this man made an alt account?
 
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Norzan said:
That's why it's the most disliked New Vegas DLC.


Except they are. The majority of their backstory is up to the player.

Fallout 3's protagonist is the one that isn't a blank slate, far too much in the intro for the player to make their own backstory to the character.


And New Vegas bland? Fallout 3 is the equivalent of a stale ham sandwich, it's about as basic as you can get.

Another one doing the same exact schtick as chunglord. Did this man made an alt account?
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are you not a pretty blank slate in fo1?
I prefer what your saying, I like mods for alt starts for that reason, it gives more freedom to picking a background better than any games base versions do.
1, 3, and NV feel like you can be whoever you want NOW when the game ends, but I prefer some flavor to what I was that I have a say in, rather then a blank slate with no past or a set one.
On LR I mean playing through it is better then paying attention to the story lol. Place looks nice and has a heavy atmosphere.
But yes, NV felt bland to me. The world was too dead, all empty space and does very little to feel like people live within it.
It has nice things at certain points (thugs in freeside, a handful of scripted things, a few additions to factions interacting and more) but everything plays out heavily like the place is frozen in time, waiting for the chosen one to instill change. The timer in 1 really helped with that feeling imo.
 
BiggumsBoi said:
1, 3, and NV feel like you can be whoever you want NOW when the game ends
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Not in 3. The intro shows too much that your character is no longer a blank state: it shows where you lived, who your parents are, how your childhood was and so on. It completely contradicts what 1 and 2 did by having the majority of their backstory up to the player.

It's also a 30 minutes long unskippable cutscene that does an extremely poor job setting yup its own story.
BiggumsBoi said:
But yes, NV felt bland to me. The world was too dead, all empty space and does very little to feel like people live within it.
It has nice things at certain points (thugs in freeside, a handful of scripted things, a few additions to factions interacting and more) but everything plays out heavily like the place is frozen in time, waiting for the chosen one to instill change. The timer in 1 really helped with that feeling imo.
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Except your opinion is factually wrong. Novac, Goodsprings, Jacobstown, Legion's camp, Crimson Caravan and many other areas with several npcs. Anyone claiming New Vegas's world is dead has no clue what they are talking about. This is just a meme prerpetuated by people that have no actual arguments against New Vegas and just parrot what some people started to say and now think it's actually true. You can not like New Vegas's world, i don't care for that, but saying it's dead is false.

Fallout 3's world on the other hand has an handful of locations with a few npcs and then the rest are one off locations that don't matter jack shit for the world as whole. They are self contained bubbles that don't interact with each other. That's how atrocious the world of Fallout 3 is. It's a theme park where you just run around, seeing the sights, and not actual locations that make sense placement wise. It's just a random assortment of locations.

And also, it's hilarious criticizing Fallout 2 for "retardedly silly" and then defend Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is far more retarded than 2 can hope to be. Fallout 2 just has silly pop cultural references and some dumb quests. The entirety of Fallout 3 is retarded, from the story, characters, world, locations and so on. It's a game clearly made with no care or thought.
 
Norzan said:
Not in 3. The intro shows too much that your character is no longer a blank state: it shows where you lived, who your parents are, how your childhood was and so on. It completely contradicts what 1 and 2 did by having the majority of their backstory up to the player.

Except your opinion is factually wrong. Novac, Goodsprings, Jacobstown, Legion's camp, Crimson Caravan and many other areas with several npcs. Anyone claiming New Vegas's world is dead has no clue what they are talking about. This is just a meme prerpetuated by people that have no actual arguments against New Vegas and just parrot what some people started to say and now think it's actually true.

Fallout 3's world on the other hand has an handful of locations with a few npcs and then the rest are one off locations that don't matter jack shit for the world as whole. They are self contained bubbles that don't interact with each other. That's how atrocious the world of Fallout 3 is. It's a theme park where you just run around, seeing the sights, and not actual locations that make sense placement wise. It's just a random assortment of locations.

And also, it's hilarious criticizing Fallout 2 for "retardedly silly" and then defend Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is far more retarded than 2 can hope to be. Fallout 2 just has silly pop cultural references and some dumb quests. The entirety of Fallout 3 is retarded, from the story, characters, world, locations and so on. It's a game clearly made with no care or thought.
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Opinion is factually wrong?
Novac doesn't react to me taking their sniper from night shifts at all, no one has any issues I helped kill someone that works towards running the town (something that would have been an easy solve, showing them the bill of sale)
Goodsprings becomes dead after ghost town gunfight and the powder gangers are just as much in a bubble
jacobs town has like 1 quest and telling the ncr go away
Leigons camp? You mean the cove or the fort? The fort is beyond retarded, they take your weapons when you get there lol They at least do feel like the most active group in the mojave.
The world is dead and lacks believable interaction, something most of the series is lacking. The issue I take is NV isn't better at having its npcs act like living people following a logical through-line towards me and is worse when it comes down to running off on my own. It's alot easier for me to stop thinking about it when the game gives me some shit to explore, rather than things just halting after I finish some shitty fetch quest lol.
I never said 3 isn't retardly silly as well, lol thats why I like 1 for its story best.
3's intro does not stop you from doing things however you see fit when you play the game. So its the same as 1, nv etc when it comes to player choice. Sorry if you think I need to care more about the main story in a open world game that encourages not doing that for most of the time in a playthrough.
I'm not here to tell you your wrong pointing the issues out in 3, I agree with most of them, but if you wanna tell me new vegas doesn't have those same issues I'll call foul.
Liking any off the fallout games is taking the good with the bad, and I'd like NV best if 3 wasn't in a more interesting area. But they have the same problems if your not setting the low bar of "its better then the other game that did this poorly" I like both of these games despite these flaws, but I don't look at things critically to make excuses for the one I prefer.
 
BiggumsBoi said:
3's intro does not stop you from doing things however you see fit when you play the game. So its the same as 1, nv etc when it comes to player choice.
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You are still not a blank slate in 3 like you were trying to claim, the main protagonist is predefined by the developers and there's absolutely nothing the player can do to inject any semblance of backstory to that character. You are locked as a 19 year old with a dead mother, living father, your childhood friend is a girl, you had a bully and so on, what exactly happened in your 10th birthday. It's far too much in a series with one of the main selling points being the ability to give the player character different backstories and have the events you made for that character influence whatever choices you can make.

Then there's the fact that there is only two modes for your character: you are either Jesus Christ or Satan. But even then they fuck that up by having you be Jesus even if you do horrible things because the game sucks your dick regardless of choices. Of course made worse by the fact that the majority of the few choices in the game are either white or black when it comes to morality, making the entire thing feel like saturday morning cartoons in a series that prided itself in its grey morality (most of the time). Fallout 3 is pretty much the game that does character creation the worst.

Fallout 2 gives a hell lot more choice when it comes to backstory even if we know the character is a descendant of the Vault Dweller and your mother is the village elder. The rest is pretty much up to you.
 
Norzan said:
and your mother is the village elder
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Technically, it's not even said in game, the dude and the elder speak in a formal way, 'chosen, go find the geck', 'yes, elder, as soon as I feel like it and that I am not too busy starring in my new film or the like'. So you know, nothing is forcing you to think of the elder as your character's mother, it doesn't even feel vaguely hinted in the game itself. Beside, if you think about it, on one hand there is the elder, who look really old, and the chosen one rather young, twenty if 'canon' on the subject matter to you. Then you have Morlis, who is supposetly the ant, and isn't presented as a hag, mature maybe but not old like the elder.

Really I doubt the devs cared much about the supposed direct bloodline of the chosen one.
 
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