Sarkus
3241
Depends on what you didn’t like about Fallout 3. If you didn’t like the combat system or graphics then I doubt New Vegas will overcome that. If you thought the story and characters were shallow, then New Vegas is a big improvement over Fallout 3 in those areas.
ShivaX
3242
Actually thats not completely true. They tend to just do more CND to your weapon. 5.56mm surplus actually does less CND iirc, or maybe it was .223 ammo (which 5.56 weapons use). The other one does more damage, but has like triple CND.
I think all the surpluses are different and its generally better to go with standard ammo, but stuff like .223 is actually really good ammo, though you wont get it in bulk like the surplus.
As someone who didn’t like Fallout3 I definately think its worth getting, though I’d get it on the PC for a variety of reasons. Its ambitious and big so theres a few bugs out there but mods and console access can pretty much solve them without much issue.
Let’s put it this way… Every where-house and sewer doesn’t feel like an endless maze with little payoff.
ScubaV
3244
Yeah I thought the story was trash, the characters bland, and the quests boring. I thought the combat system was pretty decent and the graphics weren’t bad, though the character models were awful. And definitely PC all the way! :)
ShivaX
3245
Then I’d get it.
The character models still have their issues. Most NPCs look passable, but making your character not look deformed takes some work, especially if you go with a female toon (beards can hide so much).
jpinard
3246
I love Fallout New Vegas. It’s been quite an experience.
nKoan
3247
In that case, yes, it’s worth it. Quests, factions and overall feel is much improved.
I played through New Vegas back to back. On a Fallout kick, I then loaded up Fallout 3 - and found it virtually unplayable, even with Fook2. The game’s got no soul, where NV is dripping with sauciness.
Jafisob
3249
I think the combat system is better in FNV. The iron sights and sniping with a scope is much better in FNV.
I would also love it if you could create a very large or very small character in Fallout NV (or 3 for that matter). I wanted to make a Mongo character, huge, dumb, strong, but while the stats worked out the model looked, well, just odd. 10 Strength and 10 Endurance…and a body that looks like Erkel?
crpgnut
3252
If you’re on pc, I think you can still use the command:
player.modScale <1 or -1>
The 1 variable will make you like a SuperMutant
Interesting; I didn’t think of the console to do that. Have to try, though I hope it wouldn’t bust anything else down the road. Worth a shot.
Delta
3254
I once made myself so massive in Morrowind that I couldn’t go through doors.
As someone who felt basically the same about FO3, let me add another vote of confidence – FONV is a superior experience. I was fresh from Mass Effect 2 when I played the original and the contrast in the quality of the writing was harsh. Also I think the progression of your character in FONV is handled much better - at least I don’t get the feeling that I’m essentially invincible too soon like I did in FO3.
Also, I don’t know if my character’s stats/perks have something to do with it (I’m playing essentially a goody two shoes, generally helpful guy), but looking at the dialog options I appreciate that the “evil” lines feel actually believable as in callous, uncaring etc, instead of FO3’s caricature of a snarky Internet kid twisting his imaginary moustache.
I bought FNV the day after it came out, got eventually to the town with the big fiberglass dinosaur, took a break, went back to LOTRO, and haven’t been back since. FNV never put its hooks in me, and nothing I ran into in the route to where I stopped did I find to be particularly engaging and motivate me to play more. I did play FO3 obsessively from start to end when it came out, then all the DLC.
I wrote a longer piece a while ago in this thread about my issues with the game and its presentation not long after starting it, and nothing happened since then that changed those impressions. I don’t get the remarks that FO3 had no soul and this one does; ISTM it’s the other way around. It is pretty obvious in FO3 that you are living in the ruins of a world destroyed by a nuclear war and that story is told exquisitely through the presentation of the Capital Wasteland. That’s not the case in FNV, it’s just a crappy place filled with hostile factions. Where’s my nuclear war? NCR, Caesar’s Legion, et cetera seem uninteresting and boring compared to the destroyed capital of the USA and trying to eek out a living in the hell that it became after the bombs dropped. At every turn in FO3 you’re reminded of what was lost. I don’t see that in FNV.
So, YMMV, I guess.
It’s been 200+ years since the bombs dropped. To me, FO3 always seemed bizarre in that it seemed like the bombs had dropped 20 years ago instead of 200 – especially compared to how things had been in Fallout 1&2. Even Junktown in Fallout 1 seemed a lot better off than Megaton or Rivet City. Not that I didn’t like FO3, or didn’t appreciate the “environmental storytelling” that Bethesda did (and I think they did better than Obsidian, to be honest), but their world did not seem nearly as alive as New Vegas’ does. Looking back, most of the characters and factions in Fallout 3 seemed to be there simply to serve a game purpose, no one really had their own agenda or goals, but in New Vegas, there’s definitely the feeling that almost everyone you run into has their own agenda and isn’t just there as a quest vending machine or to be part of the scenery.
Thinking about it this weekend, I can’t come up with more than 4-5 truly distinctive characters in FO3; I can come up with at least two or three times that many in New Vegas already, and I think I’ve barely played half the game – many of them are pretty minor too, like Fantastic or No-Bark.
Playing to NOVAC isn’t really far enough to really appreciate it IMO. New Vegas is a slower burn than Fallout 3.
Interestingly enough, I was playing LOTRO before New Vegas came out and haven’t gone back to LOTRO yet.
Without going into too much detail, I hate it when people call setting “story.” You like what you like, but call a spade a spade.
This is a good point, but with FO3 I was willing to hand wave that as the price of dragging the bad baggage of the FO storyline along with the good stuff. 200 years later, realistically, there’d be a lot less of DC left (as we should know from watching the World Without Us), but the years are a detail. Fallout shouldn’t stray too far from the War, or it will lose a lot of what gives it its unique place in games.
Post-atomic holocaust games and fiction have a particular appeal that center on the near instant destruction of our civilization (not a civilization, but our civilization) and the eerieness and poignancy of such loss. It’s a big memento mori and meditating on that is powerful medicine, satisfying in a way no other setting is (I feel weird using the word “entertaining” but it’s that too). Don’t take the nuclear war out of it. The sum of more interesting characters and clever plot lines are less than the loss of atomic apocalypse.
