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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Why New Vegas is Better than Fallout 3











After having torn Skyrim to shreds, thus tarnishing Bethesda's reputation for generations to come (all with the best of loving intentions for RPGs and the industry in general), I was reminded of my experiences with the two most recent Fallout games: Fallout 3 by Bethesda, and Fallout: New Vegas by Obsidian. Given that they're both Fallout games that even share the same engine, they're about as similar as two games from two different companies can be. And yet, the experience of playing them is markedly different, with a lot of people loving one and hating the other.

I didn't like Fallout 3. Bethesda has a real knack for developing interesting worlds and then filling them with mediocre gameplay, and so I found Fallout 3 a bore and a chore. It just lacked a lot of the gameplay and role-playing elements that made the original two Fallouts (and RPGs in general) worth playing. New Vegas, on the other hand, was the solution to virtually every complaint I had with Fallout 3. Whereas Fallout 3 was basically just "Oblivion with guns," New Vegas was Fallout 3 with Fallout.

New Vegas gets an undeservedly bad rap from people who never played the first two Fallouts. A lot of people were introduced to the world of Fallout through Fallout 3, and they criticize New Vegas for deviating from the formula Bethesda used in FO3. When it should really be the other way around. Fallout 3 is the black sheep of the series, with New Vegas demonstrating a return to form and showing us how a real post-apocalyptic role-playing game should be.

(For related reading, check out my other New Vegas article, "New Vegas is a Better RPG Than Skyrim.")


The world map is far less cluttered
In FO3, I often felt like I was surrounded by barriers. The entire DC area was the worst, with the city broken into very small compartments via convenient wreckage blocking everywhere you could go. Having to take the linear, claustrophobic subway lines to get anywhere was kind of tedious and made me feel like I wasn't exploring a "world" as much as I was exploring various isolated zones. Not to mention, being plopped down in the middle of the map made me feel kind of lost, aimlessly wandering around hoping to stumble upon some kind of interesting content, and I was constantly overwhelmed by the sheer amount stuff (ie, junk) everywhere.

In NV, the map just feels more open and spacious, if only because there's not so much rubble blocking your way. You can see further to the horizon, and there's much less junk constantly springing up in front of you and begging for your attention, which makes locations actually stand out. It's much closer in style to the original Fallouts, where you sequentially go to various hub towns and locations on your way to completing the main quest line. It felt more logically arranged with the game content spread evenly across it, providing a nice rhythm for questing and exploration. Unlike FO3, I actually felt compelled to explore every inch of the Mojave.


No more level-scaling
I was pretty bummed out in FO3 when, level 2 and fresh out of the vault, I was able to kill an entire group of bandits who were using sniper rifles, shotguns, and flame throwers, using nothing but my 10mm pistol. In the original Fallouts, I would've been dead before I even had a chance to seriously damage one bandit. Then, an hour or two later, I killed a group of 3 or 4 super mutants. In the original Fallouts, super mutants were really strong and would've squashed me like a bug that early in the game. The effect is that I just never felt challenged in FO3, and so combat and leveling-up never felt satisfying or rewarding.

In NV, the combat is actually challenging, with a lot of enemies starting out a lot stronger than you. Cazadores, deathclaws, super mutants, glowing ghouls, and centaurs can all kill you easily, requiring that you avoid them until you're stronger. It makes everything a lot more satisfying, because whenever you complete a quest or kill an enemy, you know you're gaining experience towards getting stronger. It makes combat actually rewarding because it took some effort to level-up before you could handle these kinds of challenges, and it just feels great to come back to the starting area to kill all of those cazadores that were outright decimating you in the very beginning.


More quests and better quests
I felt like I spent 10 hours at a time in FO3 running around doing nothing, and the few actual quests I was able to pick up were relatively simple and straightforward. Even the main, central quest for Megaton, where I decided to save the city from total nuclear destruction, was just a simple matter of "Have 25 Explosives skill and press E on bomb." Looking at the number of quests in FO3, it's no wonder I was hardly able to pick up any, and it's also disheartening to notice that about 33% of FO3's side-quests are completely inconsequential "bring me X items" quests.

New Vegas, on the other hand, has a hell of a lot more quests that are logically distributed throughout the map. Not only are they easier to find, they also tend to have more role-playing options to them, with more quests overlapping and conflicting with each other. Much like Megaton in FO3, one of the very first quests in NV is to save a city or attack it. By choosing to save the city, you get the option to enlist the aid of the townsfolk with any number of your own skills like Barter, Speech, Explosives, Sneak, Medicine, and Science. Instead of just being a straightforward quest with a simple binary outcome, there are numerous different ways to solve it, depending on how you built your character, which makes you feel more involved in it.


Perks every 2 levels
In the original Fallouts, you got to pick a perk every 3 levels, and with a level cap of 21, you could only pick 7 perks in total. This made perks a really special reward bonus for leveling up and made you weigh the benefits between perks, knowing that you would have to pass on a lot of them. It forced you to role-play your character to specialize in certain fields. It offered a lot of replay value because you could build your next character in a completely different and unique way that would actually play differently. New Vegas gives you perks every 2 levels, which is closer in style to the originals and gives the perks a better feeling of depth and significance.

In FO3, you get a perk every single level. This belittles their value when you can pick 20 in total, but I also just found myself picking perks that I ordinarily didn't want, just because I HAD to pick something. Not to mention with the "SPECIAL Training" perk and all of the bobble heads, you can easily raise all of your stats to 10, on top of being able to get all of your skills very close to 100, which further defeats the whole "specialized role-playing" aspect of the game. In the end, I just felt over-powered, and while I could become a nigh-invincible killing machine in Fallouts 1 and 2, it required me to pick my skills, perks, and starting stats in an intelligent and efficient way, as opposed to just brainlessly maxing everything in FO3.


Better factions
The factions in FO3 were really straightforward, and even kind of betrayed some of the established lore of the series. Whereas the Brotherhood of Steel were isolationist, xenophobic, elitist jerks in the originals, they became noble self-sacrificing paladins for the good of all humanity in FO3. Fallout 3 turned the factions into a simple matter of black and white with obvious good guys and bad guys, and you have to work with the good guys to finish the main quest, with the only real moral decision coming at the very end.

New Vegas, on the other hand, offers more factions with no clear good guys or bad guys. It's a more realistic shade of gray with different groups vying for power and pushing different goals and ideals. Picking a faction was a matter of deciding whose beliefs you agreed with most, what consequences you felt were worth the cost of the greater good, and what was ultimately best for the wasteland. There's actually tension between factions in the Mojave, offering concrete, tangible consequences for your actions and allowing for some good, interesting replay value.


Hardcore mode adds some much-desired challenge
I've already complained about FO3 lacking in challenge and thus feeling shallow and unrewarding. The "Hardcore" mode in New Vegas is not the solution in and of itself, because it really is kind of tacked-on, but it does add some more depth to the experience. With stimpaks healing over time, you have to be far more careful of what enemies you engage in combat, because you can't save yourself by pausing and magically healing yourself back up to full health in an instant. Same for curing radiation and broken limbs. Your followers can die permanently, and so you have to fight a little more intelligently. It also adds a lot more role-playing and survival elements like ammunition having weight, which forces you to carry only a limited amount, and having to eat, sleep, and drink to stay alive.


Less dreary, more up-beat
Everything in Fallout 3 is just so bleak, grim, and serious, all the time. There are some attempts at humor here and there, but it's a very minor emphasis. The capital wasteland is just a very oppressing atmosphere that felt kind of like the game was crying out "Woe is me!" as it constantly called attention to its super-depressing visual design and miserable atmosphere. I guess this would be a good thing under certain circumstances, and it's ultimately more of a preference issue, but it wore on my soul after a while. I just got tired of it.

The tone of NV, on the other hand, is far more in line with the originals, especially FO2. It has its serious side (Ron Perlman's narration, the central conflict of the factions, the whole apocalypse setting) frequently juxtaposed with deadpan humor, bizarre situations, and upbeat atmospheres, which I feel makes it a richer, more interesting world. The Mojave is also just filled with a lot more color and life, as evidenced by the Vegas strip, so it felt more invigorating for me to explore. Especially with the Wild Wasteland trait, which adds even more weird content and cultural references, like the kind of stuff you encountered in FO2. 


A better beginning
The original Fallouts had you complete your character sheet and then they put you right into the action with a main questline, which had a real, tangible objective to pursue. Fallout 3 had the prolonged "Vault intro" which forced you to play literally from birth until you'd fully grown up. It was heavy-handed with tutorials, and the scripted sequences really limited what you could do. Then once you got out into the Wasteland your objective was "Find Dad," which wasn't compelling because I felt no personal attachment to Liam and had no real desire to find him, which made a lot of the game simply obligatory.

New Vegas has a similar character creation introduction, but it's straightforward and to the point; once you finish setting up your Tags, SPECIAL stats, and traits, you're sent out to find the man who shot you and left you for dead. Instead of being on some forlorn quest to find dear old daddy, NV is all about revenge, and its starting quests get you involved in the world a lot faster, and in a much better way. I really didn't care about finding Benny, specifically, but I was curious and wanted to know more, which, coupled with how they portrayed this world right from the get-go, was enough incentive for me to continue on.


A better ending
Fallout 3's ending is pretty simple and only really changes depending on your final decision, and whether you had good or bad karma. New Vegas, on the other hand, follows the style of the originals by showing the consequences for nearly every single one of your actions. Every town, faction, and important NPC you interact with gets its own part of the ending slideshow narration, each with several different possible outcomes. It's just a nice touch that helps add some weight and significance to your gameplay decisions, by showing that you actually had an impact on this world.


The bottom line
I don't know how it's even possible to argue in favor of FO3, just based on its own merits. I think literally everyone who prefers FO3 to NV willingly admits it was their first Fallout game, and that they prefer it for that specific reason. "Fallout 3 was just such a fantastic and original experience for me, and New Vegas just couldn't live up to that spectacle of FO3." That's an entirely subjective argument, and yet they objectively score NV worse. Does that seem fair? 

I have a bit of an axe to grind, here, because I'm scared for the future. With Bethesda owning the rights to Fallout, if they decide to make a Fallout 4, I'm concerned they'll look at the critical reception and sales of FO3 versus NV, and continue the series in the direction that FO3 veered off into. If that's the case, then perhaps I just won't buy another Fallout game, but it's kind of an injustice to see a beloved series turned into shallow mediocrity, all because a majority of newcomers don't "get it" and are perfectly content to remain in ignorance of how much better it could be. 

New Vegas is a better RPG, and it's a better Fallout game. Its quest structure, faction system, role-playing elements, narrative, characters, balancing, and ecosystem are all just far more intelligent and sophisticated for an RPG. Fallout 3 is mediocre for an RPG and a weak Fallout game. If you disagree with that, then I'd have to question the other games you've played to have come to that conclusion, because anyone who really knows RPGs can tell you that FO3 wasn't that great. 

If you like FO3 better, then that's your opinion and that's fine. But at least realize that New Vegas is more in-keeping with the series, and that the reasons a lot of people say it's "worse than FO3" are actually the very reasons other people prefer NV. 

34 comments:

  1. I agree completely, in that FO:NV hews much closer to the first two Fallout games than Fallout 3 (it should, as Obsidian Entertainment was founded by former Black Isle Studios employees). It makes me sad to see people, whose first entry in the Fallout series was Fallout 3, declare that game to be the "greatest game ever!" and that Fallout 1 & 2 are just "stupid old crap."

    To be brutally honest, Bethesda is a terrible developer. They have released absolutely nothing of note except The Elder Scrolls games, and even those are the same game with fewer features, less depth, and more bugs with each release. Fallout 3 feels less like the first two Fallout games and more like a total conversion mod for Oblivion (hence why it was derisively named "Oblivion With Guns").

    Worse, they have absolutely no idea how to implement RPG mechanics, what purpose they serve, or why they exist (observe the horrid level scaling in Oblivion that completely negates any sense of character progression). They seem to have only the vaguest idea that RPGs are based on character skill, instead creating a game that's more like a shooter with a few superfluous RPG elements thrown in (much like what Mass Effect 2/3). Sure, your character has stats, but their irrelevant. A character with a Strength of 1 can wield a MIRV launcher. A character with an Intelligence of 1 can talk like a scientist (whereas in New Vegas, he would talk like a caveman). At Level 1 I can take on the entire Vault security team. Nor does the game offer any actual choices, beyond "This is the good choice!" and "This is the evil choice!"

    Bethesda doesn't understand the series' lore, either. As you pointed out, they got the Brotherhood of Steel completely wrong, treating them like knights in shining armour fighting for all that is good and holy, as opposed to being a bunch of xenophobic fanatics.

    Neither do they get Fallout's brand of subtle, dark humour. Apparently Todd Howard thinks blowing someone's into chunks and laughing about it constitutes "dark humour."

    It's just an absolutely medicore and forgettable game. I really wish Obsidian had the exclusive rights to the Fallout franchise, and have it kept out of Bethesda's incompetent hands.

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  2. My first fallout was fallout three and it introduced me to rpgs so it does hold a place with me but I was talking with my brother earlier today about the two and we both brought up the fact that the story in fonv was pretty damn interesting. It provided a lot of tension in an already dangerous world. Which explains why I beat no. 3 once and nv three times. Yesman was the coolest cat I've ever seen in a game the first time I met him, but then again, so was Mr. House, and yet again ceaser. Don't know if I wrote that right but moving on. I wanted to see all of these characters in there own habitat so I played the game three times. I also enjoyed all three of my play throughs. Especially since each bigwig wanted something different out of each clan. Such as the ncr or that tribe in red rock canyon. I forgot their name. I really enjoy the console fallouts with, imo, nv being the better one and I am hoping fallout 4 provides that and not produce something similar to Skyrim. An epic disappointment in my eyes. I was so pumped for that game too.

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  3. You know, I really like your reviews. Because despite how much I disagree with your arguments and opinions, you make some valid points and you give me a differing perspective. So I will agree that it's all a matter of perspective, what you do or don't enjoy in the games all comes from what you expect from the series. And while I absolutely love Fallout: 3, more so than New Vegas, I really want to play the first and second Fallout's simply so I can better understand the world that the games are set in. So here's one to ya bro, you got a sweet blog and one more fan.

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    1. Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad to hear these articles aren't just perceived as angry rants.

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  4. I was literally the only person in my school who said Fallot: NV was awesome, and Fallout: 3 was adequate. Faced a lot of shuns for that. Now I have no regret!

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  5. Perhapes you could do an article comparing NV to Skyrim someday? That would be an interesting read.

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  6. Totally agree, I really hope Bethesda takes off of what Obsidian did and goes that route. Your post flawlessly points out all of the reasons NV is better than 3.

    With the direction they went in Skyrim, I'm quite wary about their next game. Skyrim cut out so much content, rp options, spells, unique items, decisions, etc. Grrr

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  7. I hope that IF they make a fallout 4, they dont use this horrible, HORRRIBLE jump sound.. that and the derpy programming from obsidian ruined new vegas for me

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    1. It's not "programming" you fool, its a bad sound recording.

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    2. What horrible jump sound are you talking about? are you retard kid??

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  8. Fuck crapcom and re6October 12, 2012 at 9:58 AM

    crapy programing was bethesda work, what obsidian do was all the core gameplay and dialogs, the rpg system some moding, maping graphics, etc and put it in the fallout 3 engine that is a bugfest, they should have a better engine because the one they use from oblibion to skyrym is very cheap, leaving that aside i enjoyed both games but vegas is far better, there is no contest, its like comparing a fiat to a ferrari...
    ps: sry for my english i know it is flawed

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  9. I completely agree, FO:NV captured the spirit of Fallout far better than Bethesda ever could with FO3.

    Also this is literally the best summary of New Vegas I've ever read: "Whereas Fallout 3 was basically just "Oblivion with guns," New Vegas was Fallout 3 with Fallout"

    Kudos my man, you nailed it.

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  10. The melee combat is divided into Melee Weapons and Unarmed, and they each have their own little weaponry. Unarmed is very limited, having a few different types of Knuckles and the Power Fist, which is basically a robotic glove made to increase the impact of your strikes, but also have the advantage of not needing a weapon to be used. All other weapons like knives, baseball bats and Super Sledges are covered by the Melee Weapons skill.

    The effectiveness of a certain type of weapon comes down to the skill level and perks related to it as well as the condition it is in, so make sure to keep your weapons repaired on long journeys.



    Fallout 3

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  11. Fallout NV crashes and has twice the loading times. It's a bad product in terms of software and much worse than the predecessor. Sorry the rest is hooligan talk.

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  12. If not for the crippling bugs seen in the first month of release, NV would have gotten a much better reception. So it went that the entire first month people weren't talking about the insane amount of quality role playing, better world/quest design, better writing, but instead people were talking about how horribly broken NV was, which is a damn shame. I'd like to mention that Bethesda was in charge of QA, not Obsidian, so the game's biggest failing falls solely on Beth, not Obsidian, who did their job exceptionally well. If Obsidian is guilty of anything here, it's being too ambitious. For shame!

    On top of this, there's that well known controversy that Beth was going to give Obsidian a bonus for a certain Metacritic score, which they missed by 1 point. Hmm, kind of hard to get a good score when you release their game with game breaking bugs. Had it been their own game, (had they given a damn) I imagine Beth would have pushed it back.

    There aren't many things I let bother me when it comes to video games and opinions, but this is entire sad tale is definitely one of them, NV is absolutely better, and Obsidian got the shaft. The fact that there is even a discussion shows the underlying issue in regards to the state of RPGs in this industry, people can't even remember what an RPG is supposed to do. Honestly, I can't even believe we need to have this discussion.

    FO3 getting a good reception just comes down to them being a bigger company, and the video game sites/magazines can't risk pissing off one of their highest paying advertisers. We're talking millions here. It's hard enough to keep these sites running with sufficient advertising, just ask GamePro, who handed out good reviews left and right before they finally tanked.

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  13. An insightful comparison and an enlightening one on why New Vegas can be argued to be objectively better - which in some areas it certainly was - , though you did seem to be drifting into subjectivity at some points, such as with the comparisons in the environment and the game's beginning, which are more down to personal preference than one being better than the other. This was also prevalent when discussing how it differed from the originals. While this is certainly something worth discussing and shouldn't be ignored, it doesn't necessarily make it a bad game (though it may do if the sequels are supposed to tie in with the original games, such as when the story occurs across multiple games)

    However, it seems that when people argue which is better, they are sometimes just arguing which they enjoyed more, which isn't the same thing. Some people thought Fallout 3 was better because it had a greater 'wow factor', so New Vegas had less of an impact on them and thus they didn't enjoy it, whilst others enjoyed New Vegas more for its greater RPG elements and depth. You can argue that New Vegas is superior in many areas and people who prefer Fallout 3 would probably agree with you but it doesn't change the fact that they didn't enjoy it as much as Fallout 3. For people who never played the original Fallout games, Fallout 3 didn't seem out of place. For them, New Vegas may have seemed more like a development of Fallout 3 which added nice features but overall wasn't the experience they were looking for. An objectively good game doesn't necessarily make an enjoyable experience - if you're not into racing games, then no matter how well a racing game is made, you won't like it, though that is an inexact analogy.

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  14. I only pray that Fallout 4 keeps the DT system and special ammos. The modders will take care of the quests and followers.

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  15. So, with Fallout 4 being announced now, and the trailer (and Todd at E3's stage spiel) showing clearly that Bethesda haven't learned a damn thing, are you going to be doing a new post on that soon? I'd be interested to hear your opinions on it (and I'll likely be writing a post on it myself as well).

    I actually wrote a short story more or less the day of the reveal (just before the trailer went up) that illustrates my own beefs with Fallout 3 and Bethesda's approach in general, if you're interested in a read:

    http://archiveofourown.org/works/4062571

    New Vegas is in my top 5 games of all time, love it (and still play and mod it even now), I'm immensely sad to see one of my favourite franchises falling into mediocrity like this. Thanks, Bethesda :/

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  16. MUH ATMOSPHERE!!!!

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  17. All I have to say is Fallout 3 won game of the year for a reason.

    The only award that Fallout New vegas won was "most wanted game of 2010".
    (Obsidian can thank Bethesda for that.)

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    1. Don't confuse popularity with quality. Fallout 3 is an inferior RPG and an inferior Fallout game. The only reason it was so well received is because a lot of people had no previous experience with Fallout, which made Fallout 3 a revelation for them and gave them false expectations for what a real Fallout game SHOULD be.

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    2. EXACTLY everything you have said here i completely agreed with. F3 appealed to those who didnt play the originals. This is one of the reasons why I think of F3 as a spinoff rather than a Fallout game.

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    3. EXACTLY everything you have said here i completely agreed with. F3 appealed to those who didnt play the originals. This is one of the reasons why I think of F3 as a spinoff rather than a Fallout game.

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    4. The originals-where playing a 'diplo-sniper' and exploiting the Action Point system was the key to victory? Where a fight with 2 followers against 6 rats took forever as each SLOOOWLY used their allotted APs?

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  18. New Vegas had factions telepathically knowing that you killed a few of its members in an isolated corner of the map- apparently word travels fast out of Deadwind Gulch, maybe by those ravens that came down to peck at the corpses.

    New Vegas also had the NCR magically knowing what I was talking to House about in the Lucky 38-the place where a bug from the Followers was found and disabled in a few seconds. Of course, they also had the Courier talk to Yes Man on the street in front of the casino, where any number of people walked by.

    As for the ending, why weren't the effects of nuking both factions at the end of Lonesome Road shown? Why was working with Elijah a Game Over? Why doesn't any of the technology from the Sierra Madre or Big MT affect the game in any way? Surely I could go to the NCR and say "Here's a machine that transmutes bits of metal into food, ammo, chems-whatever you need."

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  19. You should not forget that NV has a lot of Van Buren content(the real planned but never released Fallout 3 from Black Isle) so it definatly is the one and only Fallout 3 for fans of the first 2 :)

    Especially the Old World Blues DLC was total "Van Buren" content realized in Fallout New Vegas!!

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  20. Agree! Did Fallout 3 had a possibility to get past a boomers artillery? I really doubt about that!..

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  21. Reading this (and crying) after playing Fallout 4.

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  22. After fiuishfin New Vegas I have to say, the quests are some of the best I have ever seen in a video game. The White Glove Society cannibals quests, the quests where you have to sneak in a Death law filled quarry to deliver charms, the Loyalty mission for Cass where you have kill 2 prominent origanisations of the Vegas, the quests where you have to send Ghouls to space, I can go on and on. So sad to see Obsidian never getting the proper budget or time they deserved.

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  23. "The world map is far less cluttered
    In FO3, I often felt like I was surrounded by barriers."

    New Vegas has awful map filled with invisible walls and linear paths. For example, the only path available in the beginning is southern. Basically the only path for the first half of the game is a conterclockwise path to New Vegas. F3 map is much more open and free.

    Honestly, Nick, screw you and your analysis. You're just a biased PC fanboy, completely unfair because you love one dev team and dislike another. A half of the arguments are made-up and just plain wrong. Screw you, u Obsidian fanboy.

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    1. Löl, who really believes that Fallout 3 is better than NV is not to be taken seriously anyway.

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    2. "New Vegas has awful map filled with invisible walls and linear paths. For example, the only path available in the beginning is southern."

      And this is just straight up false. You can literally go straight north to Vegas if you want. It'll be a much harder path, but it's possible. There are also things to explore to the east before you hit an impassable mountain range. Just because there's an INTENDED path doesn't mean you have to follow it, or do it in its exact linear order. The path gives FONV a more structured design which allows for more interesting sequence-breaking, and as I recall the only invisible walls are on the very edges of the map and on the mountains.

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