Weight, impact and meaning : Why I prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas

[Tommy Wiseau]

The story, as well, was nowhere near as compelling as finding the water chip for your dying vault and then discovering a mutant threat at large.

Sarcasm?

No. Fallout started off interesting and continued to be so until the end. F:NV started off dull, and, well, yeah.

Everything in New Vegas is indicative of society attempting to rebuild and organize again. It's not Mad Max in video game form, and I didn't get the impression it was trying to be. Saying that there's not enough emphasis on the 'survival' aspect in a post-apocalyptic world is... missing the point, to say the least.

The world of FO:NV is still quite sufficiently ruined to exhibit most attributes expected of a post-apocalyptic world. In most of it, there's no abundance or thriving, therefore people would be scavenging all resources they could find. They certainly wouldn't let a retarded robot govern their town, or, for that matter, waste valuable power and components that would be better spent on their own generators and defenses.

I grew up in USSR, and we had much better quality of life than most FO:NV population on average, but we all experienced scarcity and deficit, and believe me, if there was a robot sheriff running between the fields of Moldova, it would be knocked on its ass by the nearest tractor and quickly, covertly taken apart. Hell, when I came to America and saw a red flier advertising some free stuff, at first I didn't even pay attention to the contents - I was amazed that someone put out a pretty colored piece of paper for anyone to take!

And there certainly wasn't a single clinic or store without wait lines.

All the scarcity and deficit should have been ramped up to catastrophic levels in the world of New Vegas. Instead we got a world designed by the all-too-well-fed.

And while some less offensive abstractions might work in an overhead isometric view(such as laughably scarce populations), when they are retained in "realistic" first-person, it really starts to get jarring.

There's no real way of knowing how fast civilization would rebuild because there hasn't been an instance of the world recovering from a nuclear holocaust yet. Some parts of the world could have rebuilt much faster than others. All I'm saying is I find it pretty transparent that that's what the developers were going for. They wanted to move away from the gritty survivalist stuff because people would expect the world to be able to rebuild in all that time since Fallout 1.

I don't necessarily find things getting worse after a catastrophe to be more realistic than them getting better.

 

[Endemic]

No. Fallout started off interesting and continued to be so until the end. F:NV started off dull, and, well, yeah.

Fallout 1 is heavily overrated on the Codex. Good game for its time, possibly even GOTY in 1997. Definitely flawed though - for one, the interface was crap even for 97. Getting shot in the back by your companions repeatedly. Blocked doorways. A general lack of interesting side quests and content in general - compare "Beyond the Beef" in NV to any Fallout 1 quest. Anyone who paid attention to what was happening could see the Master was an evil bastard - I don't see any grey in using cults to help influence the wasteland in addition to kidnapping unsuspecting humans for experimentation. The social darwinistic nature of his plan wasn't new to me: this is the future, evolution of the human race, sterilise the defectives blabla. All very textbook stuff that's happened in history numerous times (even Frederick the Great of Prussia figured he'd kidnap tall people to breed better soldiers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Giants).

I don't remember seeing lines of people in\around the clinics and hospitals in Fallout either. Baldurs Gate had more people in the towns - came out the same year from the same publisher. Being isometric is no excuse. I can also nitpick about the repetition in environments and character models - for a game that barely lasted 12-15 hours you'd think there'd be more variety. Fallout didn't seem to be aiming for realism anyway, the one radioactive zone just required you to pop a few pills to get through. The Master\mutant combo isn't far off the fantasy equivalent of an evil wizard and his orcs - I don't recall too many intelligent mutants, just the "Lou Tenant" and that was about it. What "science" is there in dipping people into green goo to get these hulks?

I didn't see The Master's point regarding humans not being enough to survive post-apoc conditions - there were already societies forming, hell the NCR is founded in a Shady Sands ending, the Brotherhood thrives also. Most of the rest is standard wild west gang warfare with better tech - the bar fight in Junktown, Regulators\Blades, the Khan camp... don't start me on how useless some of the skills are. SPECIAL was a hacked together system done at the last minute instead of GURPS, and combat ultimately boiled down to using the best armor and item in your chosen weapon class, then aiming for the eyes.

 

[oscar]

Combat was a lot of fun at low levels. Visceral and realistic in a bar/street fight kinda way. Do you play things safe in going for general blows or take the risk of going for a kick to the balls? HP is low enough that a single close-range burst can leave you a riddled corpse. By contrast, NV weapons feel like peashooters. Though combat does break when you start getting high levels of accuracy.

I was quite late to the table in playing Fallout 1 but still enjoyed the (low-to-mid level) combat a hell of a lot more than I did NV's horrid Gamebryo pisspoor gunplay.

The Legion being a serious military threat to even a battalion of NCR soldiers is ridiculous when the rank-and-file of the Legion would probably struggle against an equal-sized force of 19th century Zulus.

 

[Endemic]

Combat was a lot of fun at low levels. Visceral and realistic in a bar/street fight kinda way. Do you play things safe in going for general blows or take the risk of going for a kick to the balls? HP is low enough that a single close-range burst can leave you a riddled corpse. By contrast, NV weapons feel like peashooters. Though combat does break when you start getting high levels of accuracy.

Once you get past the Khans fight/reach a certain level, this no longer applies. By the way, I didn't say NV was necessarily superior in combat, I was offering a criticism of Fallout 1's combat. Note the word "ultimately" and not "immediately" was used.

NV's horrid Gamebryo pisspoor gunplay.

See above.

The Legion being a serious military threat to even a battalion of NCR soldiers is ridiculous when the rank-and-file of the Legion would probably struggle against an equal-sized force of 19th century Zulus.

The Legion was poorly implemented, I agree there. That doesn't change my opinion that Fallout 1 was hardly as ground-breaking or perfect as people here make it out to be. To me the best game of 1997 was Total Annihilation which actually revolutionised RTS (the economy model alone was completely different, but that's a discussion for another thread).

To be honest, New Vegas has been discussed to death on here, and this *is* the Codex so I don't feel like spending any more time on this debate again.

 

[shihonage]

To be honest, New Vegas has been discussed to death on here, and this *is* the Codex so I don't feel like spending any more time on this debate again.

And Fallout 1 has been discussed past death, through a thousand reincarnations and then into an antimatter realm of some sort. You can nitpick at its pointy knees and all, but I'm certainly not going to spend any more time detailing to every Internet sceptic the how and why that game, largely responsible for foundation of this very site, was a milestone that moved the entire industry forward.

You want detailed analysis, there's been done mountains of it here and on NMA. But here's one thing for you to think about: 16 years after its release, nobody will be modding New Vegas.

 

[DeepOcean]

Fallout 1 is heavily overrated on the Codex. Good game for its time, possibly even GOTY in 1997.
A general lack of interesting side quests and content in general.

You realize that all your complains can be applied to almost all games ever, right? Only those two points on the quote deserve commentary: 1) GOTY from 1997 much better than GOTY 2005-2013, far from overrated 2) The glow, the Hub, Junktown says hello. 3)What you mean good game for its time? That CoD/Skyrim/Fallout 3 > Fallout 1. 4)Stop trolling.

 

[Surf Solar]

No. Fallout started off interesting and continued to be so until the end. F:NV started off dull, and, well, yeah.

Yeah, well.... No.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

Skyrim has a bigger modding community than the original Fallout. That makes it a better game.

Disregarding the fact that New Vegas is such a shitty game, people really like to comment on how it fails at capturing the feel of the original instead of things like how much it balances out certain gameplay elements (or why it doesn't), how viable certain skills are to build your character around (or why they're not), or whether the game is too linear or doesn't have enough reactivity in terms of C&C. All those things don't matter now, apparently.

 

[DeepOcean]

I can't fault Obsidian for New Vegas, they had the impossible mission of making a good game with Fallout 3 assets, models, animations, gameplay and engine, in general, they acomplished that.

 

[shihonage]

No. Fallout started off interesting and continued to be so until the end. F:NV started off dull, and, well, yeah.

Yeah, well.... No.

Plane tickets. Now.

 

[Surf Solar]

No. Fallout started off interesting and continued to be so until the end. F:NV started off dull, and, well, yeah.

Yeah, well.... No.

Plane tickets. Now.

Seriously, what was there not to like? It was a moody nice little western town with great "dusty" atmosphere, a good introduction in the quest mechanics (solve issue with skill x or y etc) and even some C&C. Much better than Arroyo for sure.

 

[shihonage]

Everything is better than Arroyo. However Fallout 1 started with a motivational urgency, and FO:NV started with you being some loser who got shot and now has to... uh... er... yeah.

 

[Surf Solar]

Meh, there can be a lot worse plot "starters" than "seeking for revenge" IMO. Your suspected "murderer" being a smarky guy you want to hear more about helps too.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

Everything is better than Arroyo. However Fallout 1 started with a motivational urgency, and FO:NV started with you being some loser who got shot and now has to... uh... er... yeah.

Solve a mystery?

 

[Surf Solar]

As said, it was more about "Revenge!" for me, atleast initially. I don't know about you, but if someone shot me in the head and I would survive it, for sure I would be after that guy.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

That too, but also finding about why they wanted the platinum chip.

 

[shihonage]

Dunno man. That's not how you build connection with the character. I didn't even know my guy before he got shot in the head, and when the game started, I cared exactly as much about him as the next sewer rat, which rendered the whole "motivation" null.

This narrative mis-step was in fact very similar to "looking for my middle-aged father" thing in Fallout 3, which I also couldn't give a crap about, because his character was flat and boring in the few flashbacks the game started with, and my character even more so.

I didn't care for my guy at the beginning of Fallout 1 either, which is the reason why they didn't try to elicit a sense of involvement from the player by artificially tying him to caring about what is essentially a cardboard cutout.

Eventually such care starts to develop as you get attached to your character through actual gameplay, but this is not the right way to start a game.

 

[cvv]

Guys, wtf, what is this prattle about character attachment and emotional connection to whatever, you're freaking me out.

 

[shihonage]

Emotions harshing your buzz?

 

[Lancehead]

I didn't care for my guy at the beginning of Fallout 1 either, which is the reason why they didn't try to elicit a sense of involvement from the player by artificially tying him to caring about what is essentially a cardboard cutout.

And New Vegas tried to elicit such? I'd disagree. The game did sort of gate the world by putting deathclaws north of Good Springs, but that's to get the player involved with story, not come to care for his character. The Courier is more or less a blank character, a tool for both the player and the developers.

 

[shihonage]

And New Vegas tried to elicit such? I'd disagree.

Not a subjective matter. The game, through its "revenge mystAry", purposedly aimed to summon player's initial motivation/interest by assuming you cared about your blank character, as the "revenge mystAry" stems from him.

 

[Lancehead]

No, the game doesn't assume that you care about you character that you seek revenge. The game never has any dialogue choice that says the pc is looking to avenge; the dialogue to enquire about your attackers is always neutral. In fact, you can not ask anything about your attackers in Good Springs and just move on after getting out of the Doc's house. The only information that the game forces at the start is the little slip the doctor gives you that contains details on the platinum chip delivery job. In other words, the only thing the game tries to elicit in the player is the mystery part which doesn't require caring for your character.

Beyond the starting area, the Benny questline can be finished in number of different ways which shows revenge was not meant to be the only motive for the player to seek him out. The game hopes that the player goes through the "default" path (Primm, Nipton, Novac, the Strip) meeting several different factions so he can make a decision on how to deal with Benny. The game assumes that not every player would have revenge as his motivation and gives options for different outcomes.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

Giving the player motivation isn't the same as wanting him to 'care' about your character (as in, form an attachment to him). Writing a more clearly defined character would accomplish that, not a blank slate. That's like saying Fallout 1's plot fails because it assumes the player character would care about saving his vault. It gives the player motivation, sure, but who exactly living in the vault am I supposed to care about?

I'd argue that Fallout 3 tries to do things differently from either games as Bethesda wrote 'Dad' specifically for the purpose of getting the player attached to see the story through.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

I didn't care for my guy at the beginning of Fallout 1 either, which is the reason why they didn't try to elicit a sense of involvement from the player by artificially tying him to caring about what is essentially a cardboard cutout.

And New Vegas tried to elicit such? I'd disagree. The game did sort of gate the world by putting deathclaws north of Good Springs, but that's to get the player involved with story, not come to care for his character..

You could say that Fallout 1 did exactly this as well, with Mariposa Super Mutants due west of Vault 13, and similarly "got the player involved with story" with "railroading" him to Shady Sands.

You can go and seek your revenge or simply to find answers(and 99% of players did exactly this), but you don't have to. I'd say it's primarily a tool for the game to introduce the player to the setting first and foremost (every game has to begin with something) and not to make you 'care' about your 'toon'. Emotional engagement is for Biodrone deviants and the worst form of writing.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Scarsity is partly elevated by fact that NCR has 50 000 people instead of atleast 50 000 000 California had before the war. Add to this hostile wildlife, mutants, rogue robots, raiders, escaped prisoners, Legion raiding parties and and General sit on the butt and do nothing Sullivan No surprise Mojave is full of buried treasures... and dead prospectors. You can't really compare it to old Commie times when there was scarcity but also order and safety. Game motivated me to seek out Benny and Water Chip but I could expierence Mojave at my own pace with Character I liked to RP which is best way INMHO. And Yes People who claim F01 was better than F02 don't remember horrible UI and simplistic interaction with NPCs.