Comment on 'Huge respect to the folks at Obsidian': Todd Howard invited Obsidian devs onto Fallout season 2's set so they could see New Vegas in the flesh

• EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Not quiet at all. Lots of people loved 3. I’m old enough to remember when NV was the red headed stepchild of the series. I don’t think you’ve picked up on the fact that New Vegas is a cult hit. It didn’t become everyone’s favorite for half a decade at least after its release.

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• Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I don’t think it’s better than NV as a whole, but there are things it does do better. Probably the biggest is the random events. They have a lot more variety and interaction then NV. You might end up with a BoS Remnant group spawn and a Deathclaw, and they’ll just start fighting. NV doesn’t really have this. It’s much more contained and scripted.

  In this way, 3 is closer to 1 and 2 than NV is. A large part of the first two games are the random events as you travel the world. NV is almost entirely predictable, with the same things always being at the same spots. 1,2, and 3 are fairly unpredictable while exploring. Landmarks will be the same, but what you see along the way usually won’t be.

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  • VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Spot-on. 3 absolutely follows the world design of 1 & 2, but it scales it down to a city area instead of part of a state.

    I’m a huge New Vegas fangirl, but I will say that the random encounters have kept Fallout 3’s world surprisingly fresh. I’ve burnt myself out on the 30 side quests, but if I just go explore then I usually see something new every playthrough. Hell, 3 was the game that really cemented Bethesda’s status as environmental storytellers with a real knack for making a space point toward its previous purpose. Back before they dropped so many skeletons in random places that it became a meme in Fallout 4.

    New Vegas simply does not have that type of design. There’s many more avenues to explore in quests and many more quests, but you can tell they focused the dev time almost entirely in that area. 10/10 tho, would recommend.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’d consider the random events to be a pretty small part of 1 and 2, and a deterrent to frequent travel, alongside the built in time limits.

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    • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      How long ago did you play Fallout 1 and 2?

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      • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Fallout 1 about 10 years ago. Fallout 2 about a year ago.

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• TaterTot@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Well, take this for what it’s worth since I’m personally the 1 > NV > 2 > 3 > 4 > 76 > BoS persuasion, so our preferences probably overlap and I might not be the best person to speak to why some prefer 3. But here’s my best take at why some people might genuinely prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas.

  1. The world is more exploration-friendly.

  Fallout 3 drops you near the center of the map, uses fewer invisible walls, and basically lets you run in any direction from the moment you leave the vault. Some of those design choices come at the cost of immersion and a clear sense of progression, but for players who just want to wander and explore, 3 scratches that itch.

  New Vegas, by contrast, funnels players through a “racetrack” loop that eventually leads you to the Strip, then sends you outward to deal with the major factions. This structure reinforces the narrative pacing and supports the game’s strong story design, but it does reduce the sense of open-ended freedom.

  2. Fallout 3’s dungeons are more extensive.

  Most of 3’s dungeons are longer, more combat-heavy, and offer more substantial looting/scavenging opportunities, including bobbleheads and unique gear. While New Vegas has brilliantly written locations (Looking at you Vault 11), many of its buildings amount to one or two rooms, largely due to the game’s famously short development cycle.

  For players who enjoy the simple rhythm of clearing out big spaces and gathering loot, Fallout 3 offers more of that classic “delve and scavenge” gameplay, even if its combat system is fairly “mid”.

  3. The atmosphere feels more traditionally “post-apocalyptic.”

  This one is entirely subjective, but many players feel that Fallout 3’s bleak, bombed-out wasteland better captures the classic “nuclear apocalypse” aesthetic. New Vegas has richer world-building, themes more aligned with Fallout 1 and 2, and a more realistic sense of a society rebuilding after centuries, but its tone is often more eccentric than apocalyptic. For some players, that makes 3 easier to get immersed in.

  For the record, I still personally believe New Vegas is the stronger game. (Outside of “atmospheric reasons") Most of the things Fallout 3 excels at are also done just as well (or better) in Oblivion and Skyrim. But what New Vegas does well, player agency and narrative depth, is something very few non-Isometric CRPG games even attempt, and even fewer do it nearly as good.

  Still, Fallout 3 delivers the “meditative, exploration-driven gameplay” that Bethesda built its reputation on from Oblivion onwards. For players who fell in love with that formula (especially those who entered the series with 3), New Vegas can feel like a departure from what they enjoy about the series.

  And honestly, that’s one of my favorite things about Fallout: every game is a departure from the last. Fallout 2 shifted the tone dramatically from Fallout 1. Fallout 3 reinvented the franchise entirely. New Vegas reworked 3’s skeleton into something more narrative-focused. Fallout 4 emphasized crafting and building. Fallout 76 went multiplayer. No matter which game is your favorite, each one brings something unique to the table.

  Anyway, I could talk about this stuff until the actual apocalypse, but I’ll end it here. But hopefully this helps explain why some people genuinely prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas.

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  • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    For the setting point, I agree three is more classic post-nuclear-apocalypse, but also that’s a big negative. Fallout isn’t just post-nuclear-apocalypse, it’s post-post-apocalyptic. The radiation should be a lot less prevelant and there should be societies rebuilt.

    Three feels like it should be set very soon after the nukes fell. A lot of the narrative and environment don’t make sense with the timeline they wrote. There’s speculation this is because it was originally supposed to be set much earlier, but they pushed the date back late in development to make the story BoS VS Enclave, which wouldn’t fit earlier.

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    • TaterTot@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      100% agree. A youtuber once summed up the setting pretty perfectly imho. They said something to the effect of “Fallout isn’t just a post-apocalypse. It’s an example of retro futurism. Specifically, it’s the year 2077, as the people of the 1990’s imagined the people of the 1950’s imagined it. But then, that society got nuked, and the post-apocalypse imagined by the pop-culture of the 80’s and 90’s rose from it’s ashes.”

      3’s more standard “post-apocalypse vibes” don’t really nail the vision of the original Fallout. This is especially a negative if you are coming at Fallout from the standpoint of a long time fan. Like I said in my first rant,

      “New Vegas has richer world-building, themes more aligned with Fallout 1 and 2, and a more realistic sense of a society rebuilding after centuries”

      And yeah, it seems pretty obvious that 3 was meant to be set much earlier in the timeline originally. With Rivet City being the most advanced in agriculture simply by having a small hydroponics lab, most of society surviving by scavenging, attempts to cleanup and rebuild at an extremely early stage.

      I assume that for folks who prefer 3, these are not hills they particularly care about, and that the more generic post-apocalyptic vibes (that were really in vogue when 3 was released) hit the exact fantasy they wanted to play through.

      But I wholeheartedly agree with your points.

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      • VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        There’s an added layer to the West Coast games past 1 as well: they’re post-post apocalyptic. We have nations now, the world is rebuilding.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Thanks! But I really do mean it when I say I haven’t come across defenders of 3 over New Vegas, so this was definitely all a new perspective for me, lol. I also think there are a lot of people asking for a new Fallout game that haven’t tried 1 and 2, and I’d love to point more people that way when the topic comes up, or at least to the Wasteland games as a close enough proximity.

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    • TaterTot@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      But I really do mean it when I say I haven’t come across defenders of 3 over New Vegas

      Agreed, there are not very many folks still hard Stanning for 3. Though I think a large reason for that is 3 was superseded by Skyrim, and FO4. While NV fans are still kinda waiting on even a true spiritual successor. So NV fans really haven’t moved on, while 3’s fans have long since gone onto other things.

      Plus, the things 3 does well kinda makes you “forget about most of it” after a while. Like, I play A Tale of Two Wastelands pretty often, and one thing that stands out about 3’s world is how much of it is just more of the same. It all just blends together. Eventually, the feeling of a real world breaks down, leaving you with a “lot of gameplay with not a lot of substance”

      NV’s emphasis on world building and choice on the other-hand makes you think about the game a lot more, even when you put the game down, you can still “play it” just by thinking about how your choices would affect the long term realities of the world.

      So while 3’s fans can basically say “Yeah, I really liked that game, the world was fun and stealing the Declaration of Independence from that robot was funny”, NV fans can have full on years long debates of “Independent Vegas vs NCR vs House”, I’ve even seen some mad lads argue that Caesar’s belief that a sufficiently strong opponent to challenge the NCR would force the NCR to address some of the issues they were having as a country. These people are of course insane, but you get my point.

      All of this really adds up to the fact that NV built a game that is easy to form communities around, and people are excited to talk about, while 3 kinda just built a really solid turn your brain off game.

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• ahornsirup@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  As someone else who prefers 3, I think that it’s more fun to explore and generally has a better atmosphere. New Vegas has better writing but the world feels empty. 3 more fun to actually play. Honestly, I’d probably take 4 over NV for the same reason.

  1/2 I haven’t managed to get into. At all.

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  • VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It depends on your preferences, I think.

    Fallout 3 is the better exploration game, New Vegas is the better RPG. Now, I love Fallout 3 and I think it has the best world design in the series (lore not included), but I get a great deal more enjoyment from leveling a character toward a specialization and seeing the different ways my decisions affect the world than I do from dungeon crawling.

    New Vegas has me covered there, its perks are really fun and almost all of its many quests have multiple solutions or an alternative quest. However, if I want to scavenge through the wreckage of a dead world I can think of no finer game than Fallout 3.

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• Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think it’s just new Vegas stans are very vocal lmao

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• sbbq@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’ve seen a ton of debate over 3 and New Vegas. People have said New Vegas is too small or too empty. I don’t get that at all, but I’ve definitely seen several people saying so in different venues.

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