out of the way real quick like. It isn't 'Fallout 3'
. Now don't get me wrong I don't think it's a bad game or that 'Fallout 3' is that much better but there are a couple of things that lead me to favor 'Fallout 3' over 'New Vegas'. The first is the one that the game itself has the least control over and that would be where I live. As a longtime resident of the Maryland suburbs it was very interesting to see a designers take on what the region would look like after nuclear Armageddon and while the results weren't totally (or even remotely) geographically accurate* it was close enough that when I encountered landmarks that do actually exist that it really had an impact on me and greatly enhanced my immersion into the game's world. The other thing that 'Fallout 3' does better is the character creation. Now I'm not talking about all the stat configuration or ability selection though that is part of it more so though the fact that you guide your persona from birth through adulthood and then out into the wasteland. While in 'New Vegas' it kind of goes halfway with regards to the blank slate character as even though you're given a job title very little else about your character or their motivation is spelled out. This leads to a few too many questions about why your character is doing what they're doing and compared to the character in 'Fallout 3' it feels much more like Quantum Leaping into someones life to puppeteer them through a series of conflicts rather than actually molding “you” in the game world. Outside of those two things I feel that every other difference between the two titles is up for debate (somewhere else). So now that that's out of the way I'd like to go a little more in depth into 'New Vegas'.So the question you may (emphasis on “may”) be asking is why the difference in the character creation is so crucial. The answer is that by starting from the beginning in 'Fallout 3'
the game gives you the opportunity to define your characters entire back-story which in turn gives more weight to your actions and the actions of others later in the game. Did you pick on someone during the childhood phase of character development? Well, then maybe they won't help you out later in life because they still hold a grudge. Stuff like that greatly enhances the gameplay experience by making more actions have actual consequences. Now, I'm not saying that every game would be better off starting their protagonists off from birth and letting the player define their characters entire life story but the game needs to make certain decisions about how much of the character is going to be predefined for the player. Where 'New Vegas' makes its mistake is in hinting about the characters life before the events of the game but never actually explaining how the character got to the point shown at the beginning of the game in being ambushed by bandits, plot important item stolen, left for dead, etc. In short the game leaves too many “Why” questions unanswered. Even in its attempts to fill in some of this via Downloadable content (DLC; which will be discussed in the next few weeks) there are still a lot of unanswered questions. This became especially incongruous to me when the back-story filled in by the DLC didn't really feel like it matched up with the character that I'd created.OK, so when I said earlier that there where only two areas in which 'Fallout 3' really surpassed 'Fallout: New Vegas' I lied. The other area beyond the emotional impact and the character creation would be the openness of the world. Now looking at your map in both games you might think that you're dealing with a large post-apocalyptic sandbox to explore and to some extent you'd be correct. However the world is much more open much sooner in 'Fallout 3' than it is in 'New Vegas'. This is because the latter uses a lot of high level enemies to sort of railroad the viable directions that the player can travel for a large portion of the game. Getting murdered by mutant wasp things and you're under level 10? You probably took, according to the developers, a wrong turn. By contrast 'Fallout 3' is perfectly fine letting the player screw around as long as they like as the nasty player murdering enemies either only show up as the player levels, as part of particular scripted events, or in very isolated areas of the map. In short 'Fallout 3' is a much less linear game than 'New Vegas'. Not that either is especially linear but it really feels like you're given more freedom earlier in the former whereas you really have to earn it (usually via heavy firepower) in the latter.
OK, so still building off the lie told earlier about their being only two significant ways in which 'Fallout 3' was better than 'Fallout: New Vegas' there is actually yet another one. That being quality assurance/quality control. Yes, both games, like almost every Bethesda Softworks game, have some significant bugs and scripting issues. However having extensively played both, 'New Vegas' is much, much worse in this department. The number of random game crashes I've experienced is staggering as are the easily replicable game crashing actions (for me fast traveling into or out of one region in the 'Honest Hearts' DLC crashed the game every time). That's not even counting the number of bugs with scripting issues (i.e. you give a non-player character an item and they give you the next step in the quest only sometimes they don't). By contrast I don't recall any easily replicable game crashing actions that I ran into in 'Fallout 3' and the scripting issues where much less of a nuisance. Now I realize that games as massive as these with as many variables as these are dealing with are bound to have some issues but it really seems like, somehow, the older game of the two handled this better.
So now having concluded our walkabout in the main wasteland of the game complete with all its foibles we're looking ahead to (hopefully) filling in some of the gaps in our characters back-story as we explore the DLC for the game in the 'Dead Money', 'Honest Hearts', 'Old World Blues' and 'Lonesome Road' expansions. See you all next week.
really surpassed 'Fallout: New Vegas' I lied. The other area beyond the emotional impact and the character creation would be the openness of the world. Now looking at your map in both games you might think that you're dealing with a large post-apocalyptic sandbox to explore and to some extent you'd be correct. However the world is much more open much sooner in 'Fallout 3' than it is in 'New Vegas'. This is because the latter uses a lot of high level enemies to sort of railroad the viable directions that the player can travel for a large portion of the game. Getting murdered by mutant wasp things and you're under level 10? You probably took, according to the developers, a wrong turn. By contrast 'Fallout 3' is perfectly fine letting the player screw around as long as they like as the nasty player murdering enemies either only show up as the player levels, as part of particular scripted events, or in very isolated areas of the map. In short 'Fallout 3' is a much less linear game than 'New Vegas'. Not that either is especially linear but it really feels like you're given more freedom earlier in the former whereas you really have to earn it (usually via heavy firepower) in the latter.OK, so still building off the lie told earlier about their being only two significant ways in which 'Fallout 3'
was better than 'Fallout: New Vegas' there is actually yet another one. That being quality assurance/quality control. Yes, both games, like almost every Bethesda Softworks game, have some significant bugs and scripting issues. However having extensively played both, 'New Vegas' is much, much worse in this department. The number of random game crashes I've experienced is staggering as are the easily replicable game crashing actions (for me fast traveling into or out of one region in the 'Honest Hearts' DLC crashed the game every time). That's not even counting the number of bugs with scripting issues (i.e. you give a non-player character an item and they give you the next step in the quest only sometimes they don't). By contrast I don't recall any easily replicable game crashing actions that I ran into in 'Fallout 3' and the scripting issues where much less of a nuisance. Now I realize that games as massive as these with as many variables as these are dealing with are bound to have some issues but it really seems like, somehow, the older game of the two handled this better.So now having concluded our walkabout in the main wasteland of the game complete with all its foibles we're looking ahead to (hopefully) filling in some of the gaps in our characters back-story as we explore the DLC for the game in the 'Dead Money', 'Honest Hearts', 'Old World Blues' and 'Lonesome Road' expansions. See you all next week.
*This is a little weird as the game is made by Bethesda Softworks named as such because they're based in Bethesda, MD. I personally would have loved it if the game had simply copy pasted the entire region as accurately as possible just to see how it would have turned out. I also find it amusing that one of the few immersion killing things for me in 'Fallout 3' was the existence in game of Metro Stations that don't exist in real life mostly because it took this region five decades to fund highway expansion and I found it too hard to believe that the government would somehow find the money to build a dozen new stations between now and 2077.
was the existence in game of Metro Stations that don't exist in real life mostly because it took this region five decades to fund highway expansion and I found it too hard to believe that the government would somehow find the money to build a dozen new stations between now and 2077.
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