It seems most people prefer Fallout 3 over NV and I don't understand why. F3 isn't even a real rpg in my book. It's more of a shooter. FNV is a real rpg, and the best one ever created in my book. I hate the plot of Fallout 3, and have only played it through once. It's horrible writing that shows lack of understanding about the fallout universe.
What's wrong with shooters? It's really far more fun to play than a game where I just wander about talking to people. FO3 was just RPG-ey enough for it to be great. As far as I'm concerned the best attribute about either of them is just exploring.
Play NV again. I found it much more engaging. Your decisions are more varied, and they actually matter. More voice actors makes for better immersion.
Meh, the voice acting never really mattered to me. Matt Perry did a great job, and it was nice having Col. Tigh around, but I miss Three Dog and Richardson on the radio. Of course, I'm sure most of the voice acting work was done for the companions, but that's an awful choice. In like half the world, having companions with you is a pointless liability. They're little more than mules.
I don't understand the "hollow" criticism, since New Vegas felt much more alive than FO3. It feels like they've kinda gotten on with life since the apocalypse, while in FO3 it feels like the bombs fell 10 years ago, not 200+.
Yeah, the time lines for a lot of that stuff is odd, to say the least. Though I'd say you can make a good canon argument in the form that D.C., as the US capital, was going to be hit a hell of a lot harder than Vegas, which we're told mostly escaped the fire.
It does bother me that there is food and, of all things,
wine from before the war. If there was wine that had been lying in a rubble pile for 200 hundred years, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to drink it.
Also, what the hell are these people eating? NV does a better job of handwaving this issue away than 3 did, but it's still bizarre that we don't see any farming or ranching happening. Especially on the Boomer base, given that they have large amounts of defensible land. Presumably these people must have gotten by before NCR rolled into town. This criticism goes well beyond the Fallout universe of course (where it makes little sense in the first place). I'm really hoping GW2 will at least bother to show a lot of farmland, even if we're never forced to visit it.
I could understand your preference for urban decay over desert/rustic thing FNV had, besides places like Freeside.
The subway tunnels at least had the advantage of being surprising. Half of the New Vegas seemed to be just animals wandering in the desert, or raiders around some building. Climb any hill and you can see what's going to happen to you for the next hour or so. Best stuff in either game always happened underground.
Freeside was cool I guess, but was there really anything to do there? After 2 full play throughs, I found that all I did was run back and forth through the town, occasionally hitting a homeless person with a sword. Westside was better, but still not a lot to do there.
Well, just talking about the vanilla version, FNV has much better trait/perk balance. It's also cool that you can realistically do energy weapons in the early game now
The trait balancing I'll give you, particularly with the combined plus/minus life choices or whatever those were called. Still I couldn't help but feel like I could absorb three full clips of bullets before ever being in danger. Meanwhile if anyone hits you in melee, 75% of your health would go. Made no sense.
Also, I feel like each team missed an obvious balance choice: energy weapons as things that you realistically wouldn't get till the mid game, but were necessary for harming people in power armor. My salvaged M4 carbine probably shouldn't be able to tear through that stuff. You can keep energy weapons against un-armored targets, because they were cool as hell, but it should be required for fighting powered opponents.
My biggest problem with Fallout 3 was the Brotherhood of Steel being the "good" guys. It made no sense to me. I think FNV got it right. I was always bothered by the fact they took technology, and kept it from others. I don't remember that much of Fallout 2, but I think they were like that there too. And despite what you said above, about Fallout 3 being so "bombed out", I still felt like the Brotherhood organizational structure was too developed in F3. ...
Anyways I still feel like FNV is a true rpg with actual choices. You aren't forced to follow the Brotherhood and their misguided philosophy. I don't like the fact they think they are god, and others are unfit to handle technology. And I dislike the military organizational structure. How are they even that different from the Enclave? I don't even think you can side with the bad guys in Fallout 3. No other factions like FNV had. The number of factions is what I liked most about FNV.
The goodness of the Brotherhood did seem overdone, even to someone who hasn't played the previous games. Though I'd say their explanation of Lyons choices and the subsequent Outcast stuff was well done, if a little cheesy.
Personally, I'd really love to see a game set in Greater Boston where the android building Institute and the Western Brotherhood are both trying to crush one another, and being apathetic jerks to everyone else. And if they could avoid the situation where the player becomes the single saviour of all there is to know. I know it's a video game, but it's such a cliche. Why can't I just be one small if influential part of a much wider process? Definitely avoid the NV situation where you can wind up running the whole city. Any ending such as this should end with the untimely death of the player.
I also think they had a pretty cool "bad guy" with the Roman themed legion. I thought they were the coolest bad guys I've seen in any rpg I can think of. What's not to like about Roman themes?
The slavery mostly. They were just so hilariously bad there was no possible sympathy for them. If you want a game with bad guys you can actually get behind, check out Freelancer. That game did it so well.