I don’t care if I get crucified for it, but for all its flaws I enjoyed Fallout 3 and 4 far more than I enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas. Maybe it’s because I’m more of a shooty shooty bang bang blow up gamer than an intertribal politics gamer, but I just liked them better.
For me, Fallout 3's setting and atmosphere is more interesting to me. Plus nostalgia plays a much heavier aspect since it was my first Bethesda Fallout and the premise and mechanics of the world were more novel.
Gameplay wise 4 blows both of the others out of the water for me due to the addicting loop of collecting salvage and modifying equipment, along with the shooting finally becoming enjoyable in its own right.
Yeah I found 3’s atmosphere to be pretty interesting too. I liked the feeling of danger and tension throughout the world, and how scary it was to make those first few journeys out from megaton as an early-level player. Not to say NV didn’t have that feeling at times, but the atmosphere certainly made it feel a little safer.
As much of a retcon as it is to have such a disastrously destroyed world at the time period it was set, I still think it was a good choice to go “all out” with it.
The atmosphere, taken moment to moment, or at individual locations was good. The coherency of the explanations behind a lot of things and the coherency of the world as a whole was pretty disjointed.
Unpopular opinion but FNV is terrible at environmental storytelling. I vastly preferred exploring in Fallout 4. In FNV, the locations felt empty and it’s more of a go to A then go to B. It’s a great RPG though.
Both games do environmental storytelling, but with vastly different goals.
Obsidian approach is very constantly supporting a consistent tone and overarching setting. It is more desolate and feels more desolate because that’s what a lot of these in-between little areas are supposed to be. But the details in each area that are there so tell a story about what the area is like and how it function, they give a history to what you are seeing but it often isn’t over the top and full of little cute mini-stories you can follow. It isn’t bad storytelling, it’s telling a story you’re not into.
The Bethesda approach is often much more varied. Each settlement or location can have all these environmental stories, often will little miniature running plots. The variety extends to tone, and type of story. This does come at the expense of some coherence if you step back and start putting a critical eye to everything as a whole.
They are trying to give players different experiences. FNV a player can travel through a bleak desert, maybe only with hostile encounters as the Jungle Jangle radio plays until they finally hit a settlement and it feels like an actual refuge from the sun and rad scorpions to the player. The desolation builds that. Fallout 3 and especially 4 don’t want the player getting bored, so there is something interesting and different every ten feet to check out.
I suppose it says a lot about me that my Fallout 4 modlist turns the world into an extremely dangerous, ghoul filled place with dark nights, and rad storms. All of which makes travel on the overworld terrifying, and settlements feel extra secure in contrast.
New Vegas is a better game. And I mean that in the sense that you can go more places and interact with the story and setting in more ways in New Vegas. Also, what do they eat? Fallout 3? unknown. New Vegas? you see corn fields and such all over the place.
In Fallout 3, the NPCs have no existence beyond their part in the highly scripted story. You choices in game don't matter at all in the way the story ends.
New Vegas has little bits and pieces of setting and backstory for random NPCs that you might never meet, and the story can be completed in different ways, your choices matter.
Evidence of farming, or any food source for the NPCs shows that the makers of the game were actually thinking about the world as a livable space.
Fallout 3 devs were just thinking about a world where the story happens, nothing more. And it often shows. You run into little immersion breaking moments, especially if you go too far off the rails. Stay on the rails and it was a solid game.
New Vegas had devs who really paid attention to the details of the world, and if you went off the rails, it became an amazing game.
The capitol wasteland is in much worse shape than the Mohave. From what we see in Fallout 3, people generally eat squirrels, iguanas and pre-war food.
The capitol wasteland pretty much works on the basis of scavenging and trading with the occasional herd of brahmin or small farm here and there.
Fallout 3 also has a big emphasis on water, Megaton has a water purifier that is about to give out while other settlements just drink irradiated water or trade with merchants.
The main story in Fallout 3 is terrible but the world building is pretty solid overall.
The main issue with the pre-war food is that it's been 250+ years. Sure, you might find a cache or two, but overall, it will have been scavenged already.
The honest truth is, food and water sources for anyone in the capital wastes was never seen as important to the writers of the story, So it was cut. Well, it was cut if it was ever written at all in the first place.
The story of Fallout 3 is very linear. Which means that it can be tightened up and polished, and it was. But if you go even a little bit off the rails, it starts showing cracks that are immersion breaking.
New Vegas didn't have that fully polished main story. Instead, it had a polished game world. One that felt alive and vibrant.
It's the reason why people have x amount of time playing Fallout 3, and three or four times that amount playing New Vegas.
Fallout 3 takes place 200 years after the war and, like I said, the main story is terrible but most of the game has nothing to do with it.
New Vegas’ world is mostly empty and static, the writing and RPG mechanics like reputation are what make the game as good as it is.
The thing about New Vegas vs Fallout 3 is that they have different target audiences, Fallout 3 is a game about exploring and immersion while New Vegas is an old school rpg with big decisions central hubs.
I really don't think you played New Vegas much if you think it wasn't about exploring and finding new shit all over the place.
Fallout 3 had the quest hubs. Also, the fact that water was super important to the story, but aside from one beggar, no one seemed to care about it much.
But New Vegas, well, everyone wanted power from that dam.
It comes down to, what do they eat? Fallout 3, nothing. NPCs don't eat, so there's no need to actually put that into the game, and since that part isn't in the game, a lot of other shit likely isn't.
New Vegas, they have farms and ecology and all sorts of other shit, and it's all over the place.
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