Fallout As someone who loved playing Fallout New Vegas, is there any point in checking out FO3 or FO4?

[Stella Brando]

It's interesting, the difference between Fallout 4 and Fallout New Vegas. Obviously, New Vegas has everything you need in a role-playing game. If you wanted to learn what Fallout was, or what an CRPG was, you could just play this game. It has fine characters (Mr. House is great) and an interesting story. It has an under-rated sense of restraint, there's little Bethesda humour here.

Fallout 4 just feels so much more slick and approachable, however. Going back to FNV after F4 can take some getting used to. I wish there was an updated version that didn't revise the game, just improved the graphics. Maybe revive some content that was always meant to be there. I also like the base building in Fallout 4. I like any activity where I can just fuck around without worrying about what I'm supposed to be doing. I didn't play the game as a distraught parent, just as someone who had old world blues and wanted to create civilisation. Fallout 4 also has a nice big world to explore, while in FNV everything seems to orbit around the Lucky 38.

Playing a hundred or so hours of FNV always leaves me feeling fulfilled, however. It's like I've actually accomplished something. With pure Bethesda games, on the other hand, I always manage to clock hundreds of hours before becoming over-stuffed (yet also malnourished) and just quitting cold-turkey.

I kind of like how Fallout 4 will let you create a character and then see her interact with other people. It helps to give the feeling that you're guiding your character in this world. But I also feel like this play style isn't really Fallout. It's Mass Effect, or Dragon Age. This style also isn't Baldur's Gate (I'm looking at you, Larian)

I like how FNV managed to continue the themes of Fallout 1 and 2. It's like an old TV mini-series that covers a history of hundreds of years. Like Roots or Centennial.

In my mind the series works like this:

2077: End of the World

（2097: A Fallout Adventure —— Capitol Wasteland)
（2107: A Fallout Adventure —— The Commonwealth)

2177: Fallout: Vault Dweller
2227: Fallout 2: The Chosen One
2277: Fallout 3: The Courier

 

[damager]

Fallout 3 is speaking to a literate nation of science fiction readers who are familiar with this take on the apocalypse, having seen it in other formats many times. It's the classic 1950's apocalypse, a better world before it fell to nuclear war. It represents the fulfillment of the promise of technology to make the world a better place to live. Then this world got nuked. It's still pretty cool.

On my tombstone.

Dude funnily enough I have the same impression of F3. It's a pretty coherent game and for a Bethesda game pretty polished and smooth around the edges. I only played it as a Teenager though and never played the classics before than. So my hateboner was not enraged by them making a FP game out of it.

I did like Skyrim much less and F4 I would never touch. They went very downhill after it.