Fallout Fallout 1 is the best RPG of all time that stood the test of time

[Black]

ITT: retadred fo3 apologists come out of their closet.

 

[Alkarl]

thought

Oh, boy, this would require hardware that you don't possess.

Bethesda devs think

:[citation needed]:

As for the rest of your post:

There is nothing to discuss about Fallout 3. It's the Fallout game a third grader would make if he read the cliff's notes to the first two.

Fallout 1 "Find the water chip" + Fallout 2 "Find the GECK" + barest of pandering and themes × lobotomy = Fallout 3

The combat is garbage, the story is uninvolving, and the world is green. So painfully fucking green.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Enjoying FO3 is like condoning rape of a mutilated, drugged up, forced sex changed innocent child.

There is nothing good left in that game from where it originated.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I'm finding talking about how Fallout 3 is a bad game in general and bad Fallout game monotonous. It's obvious. There's no need to create threads about it ten years after release, it's not a therapy session. Yet I see that most people are content with looking for a best way to write an essay about how shitty it is and it's boring. I want to discuss something else about those games and it's regarded as a thought crime. Also I think that Bethesda devs think of their games as world simulators or something, systemic games with a lot of story content. They saw it doesn't really work that well with Daggerfall and made Morrowind which has less of combat, smaller dungeons and more attention to detail. It stroke a good balance between what different people want. I think they regarded that game as basis for future games where you'll have better AI NPC interactions and bigger dungeons.

This is a thread about the original Fallout; nobody was talking about 3 until Swampy Merkin started shitting up the thread, then you jumped in. I felt compelled to jump down your throat because some of what you said simply wasn't true--not the opinion stuff, but facts. Like, you have just as much freedom to avoid the main quest in 3 and New Vegas. It's just that the main quest in New Vegas is a lot more relevant to the world.

There's tons of stuff to explore in New Vegas, too, it's just that you need to work for it. Rather than filling the world with skeletons in suggestive poses (although there are some of those) every ten feet, you have substantial content tucked away all over the map. Not just stuff along the main highway. Trek into the mountains and you find Jacobstown, which has some amazing content and even a companion. Follow the mutant radio signal and you get a cool dungeon and another companion. You can finish the game without ever visiting the brotherhood of steel, or the boomers, or the khans, or the powder gangers' prison. This is all side content that is nevertheless optionally integrated into the main quest.

I think this is really good design but it's something Bethesda shies away from because they make theme parks. And look, there's nothing wrong with liking a post apocalyptic theme park. I don't get very much out of it but I can see why some people would find it enjoyable. I just think it's lunacy to act like 3 and New Vegas are incredibly similar when those similarities are mostly skin deep.

As for skills - I think FNV didn't go far enough. There's far less combat in the game but most of gameplay improvements are about combat. Like most of crafting, weapon mods, most perks. The story and general direction assumes that most of RPG systems would interact with non-combat things.

I'm also not convinced there's much less combat in New Vegas. The ratio of combat to dialogue may be lower, but only because there are more people you can talk to. However, I think much of the combat is more meaningful: it's the difference between shooting generic raiders and shooting Vipers, or Jackals or Fiends. I know it was lot more satisfying to kill Cook-Cook the rapist or Violet the cannibal than a bunch of randos.

Many of the combat perks also have non-combat reactivity, like Sneering Imperialist. The skill system is for non combat interactions and in New Vegas it's actually put to use. I'd like even more of it, too, but this is a pretty stark difference in design philosophy vs 3.

 

[agris]

Swampy_Merkin why do u think ppl still r8 F2 over F3?

 

[ilitarist]

I felt compelled to jump down your throat because some of what you said simply wasn't true--not the opinion stuff, but facts. Like, you have just as much freedom to avoid the main quest in 3 and New Vegas. It's just that the main quest in New Vegas is a lot more relevant to the world.

There's tons of stuff to explore in New Vegas, too, it's just that you need to work for it. Rather than filling the world with skeletons in suggestive poses (although there are some of those) every ten feet, you have substantial content tucked away all over the map. Not just stuff along the main highway. Trek into the mountains and you find Jacobstown, which has some amazing content and even a companion. Follow the mutant radio signal and you get a cool dungeon and another companion. You can finish the game without ever visiting the brotherhood of steel, or the boomers, or the khans, or the powder gangers' prison. This is all side content that is nevertheless optionally integrated into the main quest.

I don't see how you can say it's a fact and not an opinion that you can avoid main quest in FNV and F3. I just can see it when everything when Fallout 3 is a sandbox with the possibility to shut down main quest (you can cut it off until you stumble upon it accidentally) while FNV is a classic RPG that is all about completing the story. It's a clearly different structure requiring different approach. And the premise of that story is flawed compared to later Obsidians reimagining of similar plot in PoE2 and Tyranny, as well as previous Fallouts, and in that it's similar to Fallout 4 which uses a story suitable for a traditional RPG but in a sandbox game.

You've listed just a few places not directly connected to the story. Jacobstown is a sinle city you won't have to visit in a connection to main quest. You have couple of dungeons, three of them are vaults and one is that mountain in NE. Of those only Powder Ganger Vault and mountain in NE is something you have to explore to find, everything else is given you in a quest or with a radio broadcast or placed on your way to Vegas. Ignoring boomers, the brotherhood, khans is possible only when you're doing a very specific playthrough, and even then you'll get quests to go there. In Bethesda's games you have a much bigger world and the main quest is placed on top of the world instead of world being built around it. It's a theme park. NV is a better theme park but it's the one you're guided around.

I'm also not convinced there's much less combat in New Vegas. The ratio of combat to dialogue may be lower, but only because there are more people you can talk to. However, I think much of the combat is more meaningful: it's the difference between shooting generic raiders and shooting Vipers, or Jackals or Fiends. I know it was lot more satisfying to kill Cook-Cook the rapist or Violet the cannibal than a bunch of randos.

There's more combat in New Vegas if you only follow main quest cause it's longer. DLCs make it better as they add some challenging encounters. You don't have random encounters of any sorts when you travel, so in FNV you can safely walk back and forth once you've cleared the path so you do less fighting in the area. Killing named characters is more satisfying, yes, but there you're talking about getting a contextualized few murders in a good story, doesn't make combat itself better realized. Enjoying it is like getting a short sensual sex scene in a movie with well realized characters as opposed to Fallout 3's non-stop orgy with a Pizza delivery plot. Anyway, FNV has less combat in general, and it's also less challenging in general, so all those toys remain unused.

 

[Matticus]

I have my opinions about fallout 3 and beyond, but I admit I don't have much business ranking those games as I have played little of them. I played through the fallout 3 intro sequence, killed some vault security guards, exited the vault, hiked for a while, went into an abandoned supermarket, killed some raiders, and quit the game and never started it again. Aside from that intro being in my opinion an abomination, the game felt like complete departure stylistically and gameplay-wise from the originals and it's just not what I wanted. And I think that experience soured future first-person fallout games, including F:NV. Perhaps I was too quick to judge, but my interest in the franchise has remained exclusively in the 90s.

 

[laclongquan]

Fallout 3 has open world, you can play without following main quest. Fallout New Vegas is all about the main quest. Almost every quest in FNV is tied to main quest. You can't enter half of settlements without being reminded of main quest. You can't explore the world because there's nothing to explore and beef gates suggest you follow the main quest.
FNV requires you to be a vengeful madman or turn off the game. F3 allows you to explore open world. You can imagine yourself or any character you can imagine in shoes of F3 hero and act accordingly. In FNV you have to follow plot because it's a game and you just have to follow quests.

This is wrong on many level

1. I can totally ignore Main quest in FNV. Sure, the design of its open world mean we sooner or later will meander over the Strip. That however doesnt mean we need to complete MQ or advance far at all. I completed the DLCs several times over. I restart the main game several times over. Nothing force me to advance the MQ so I dont bother (farthest is the cannibal quest stage). FNV's plot is good, but I like to wander all over the desert too~

2. There's a shitload out there on the desert to explore. I prefer the south part than the north, but YMMV. Specifically, there's a mountainous point where multiple raiders respawn so I like to return there every few days to harvest them. Or the cave near the super mutant respawn point near the Nipton area. I also like the Legion/nCR hidden safe houses because it's pretty central and make it easy for me to base out of them. Whenever someone say there's nothing to explore in FNV, that means a stupid noobs who never play FNV would say.

 

[ilitarist]

laclongquan I see few people have argued for this position with convincing argument. I'm probably wrong and missing something, even though I played FNV many times.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Can you complete F3 if you ignore the main quest? If not, then your "but i can roleplay that I ignore muh father" is up there with this "roleplaying":
http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Roleplaying

The only thing you said that has any value is that the NV character has more background already defined than the one if FO3.
I don't really care either way. I'm not interested in making up life stories in my head that have zero impact on the game.... like your "lol i play someone who doesn't care haha".

 

[Bladeract]

too short, too easy

 

[mfkndggrfll]

FNV is objectively worse than F3 on pretty much every single aspect. Weaker writing, lesser exploration value, simpler quest design mostly fedex, worst MQ, less polish, weaker level design, worst skill check system.

I'll never get tired of watching these kids riding the bandwagon of hate against F3 while praising FNV.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

watching these kids

Lookit Junior here.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

FNV is objectively worse than F3 on pretty much every single aspect. Weaker writing, lesser exploration value, simpler quest design mostly fedex, worst MQ, less polish, weaker level design, worst skill check system.

I'll never get tired of watching these kids riding the bandwagon of hate against F3 while praising FNV.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

FNV is objectively worse than F3 on pretty much every single aspect. Weaker writing, lesser exploration value, simpler quest design mostly fedex, worst MQ, less polish, weaker level design, worst skill check system.

I'll never get tired of watching these kids riding the bandwagon of hate against F3 while praising FNV.

Is all I need to fish in these waters.

 

[norolim]

Turn based or RT (you choose) tactical game based on FO. It is NOT a RPG. Think of it like XCom.

Excellent. I actually wanted to play an X-Com-like game after Fallout 2. I looking for something that would fit that purpose.

Fortunately, they also managed to notably improve the AI. This resulted in much better pathfinding and more interesting combat. I must admit, I was rather amazed when I noticed enemies picking up and using stimpaks and weapons of the fallen combatants.

I'm pretty sure they were picking up weapons in F1 too, don't see how it makes for better combat though. AI seemed the same to me too the only difference in combat was that in F2 there were much bigger battles and more enemies on average (which isn't necessarily a good thing, I would argue that more often than not it's a bad thing). Also, due to insanely long time limit stimpacks are redundant, you can just rest to heal. By the end of F2 I've had like 500 stimpacks, 200 superstimpacks and quite a few these other stimpacks. And with the ability to use as many of them in single turn as you like you're basically immortal (although some critical shot could always end you).

As I said, enemies may have been picking up shit in FO1. I just didn't see this behaviour - might have been bad luck. And it definitely makes combat more difficult. You can't relax when you kill the one dangerous armoured unit in a group, because a lame cloaked Hubologist can pick up his Pancor and shoot you in the ass with it. The problem with the stimpaks is true for both games (despite the time restriction in FO1). I finished 1 and 2 with approximately 200 stimpaks, but I used them as an additional currency. Also, in both games you can easily be killed in one round with a few well placed normal hits, when fighting a group of enemies. This changes only late in the game or earlier when you invest a lot in Endurance (or if you cheese and get a power armour early in the game). Another thing I noticed in FO2 was that enemies used Aimed Shots much more efficiently. I got my limbs injured a couple of times. This never happened in FO1, but again, this might have been due to bad (good) luck. So this is why I am of the opinion FO2 combat is slightly better than FO1. I openly admit, the difference isn't big and my impression might have been affected by chance.

Character progression offers more choice due to additional perks although I felt there were way too many skill books in the game.

In F2 many new Perks were just dumb, e.g. "mysterious stranger". Instead of removing the most stupid ones from Fallout 1 they've added even more stupid/redundant ones. As for skill books, in F1 there were also enough books to reach the maximum level (91% or something like that) so nothing changed in that regard.

Mysterious Stranger was also available in FO1 and it was even more ridiculous 'cause it didn't scale. I liked FO2 perk system more, and definitely didn't mind the fact that some were a bit stupid or useless. I don't like my RPGs too balanced .
In FO2 you can buy skill books from many vendors ad infinitum, because they restock them. With enough money, you can max all skills, that have books associated with them, without spending a single skill point. My impression was, this wasn't the case in FO1 - books were much rarer in my last playthrough. Maybe I just didn't look for them thoroughly enough, if you say they were so readily available. I'm pretty sure vendors didn't restock books regularly, though.

The plot is just serviceable again, but it's longer and more detailed.

It is longer I'll give you that but it's way worse than the one in F1 IMO.

Matter of preference. Both plots are pretty basic structurally. FO1 story is rather uninspiring and cliché, FO2 is more tongue-in-cheek - both only serviceable in quality. I prefer FO2 in this regard, because, as I mentioned, the side quests complement the main plot in a much more effective way. I especially like the whole power struggle triangle involving New Reno, NCR and Vault City, which also affects smaller locations, like Redding.

And finally choices & consequences... damn.

I must admit, it is better in that department. If you're so impressed with this though try playing Age of Decadence (or FNV, although it's way worse than AoD in that department).

Oh yeah, I forgot about AoD. It's on my backlog, waiting on my virtual GOG shelf.

Anyway, it's all a matter of preference. For me, if you sum all the aspects of each game FO2 has more value. If my judgement was affected by nostalgia, I would probably name FO1 as the better game. But I always try to keep nostalgia out of the equation.

 

[ilitarist]

As I said, enemies may have been picking up shit in FO1. I just didn't see this behaviour - might have been bad luck. And it definitely makes combat more difficult. You can't relax when you kill the one dangerous armoured unit in a group, because a lame cloaked Hubologist can pick up his Pancor and shoot you in the ass with it. The problem with the stimpaks is true for both games (despite the time restriction in FO1). I finished 1 and 2 with approximately 200 stimpaks, but I used them as an additional currency. Also, in both games you can easily be killed in one round with a few well placed normal hits, when fighting a group of enemies. This changes only late in the game or earlier when you invest a lot in Endurance (or if you cheese and get a power armour early in the game). Another thing I noticed in FO2 was that enemies used Aimed Shots much more efficiently. I got my limbs injured a couple of times. This never happened in FO1, but again, this might have been due to bad (good) luck. So this is why I am of the opinion FO2 combat is slightly better than FO1. I openly admit, the difference isn't big and my impression might have been affected by chance.

The beautiful thing about Fallout 1 is its systems support much bigger game. There's basically only one place where you'd care about radiation but there are doctors who can heal it, items that can help with it and so on. Limited number of combat encounters means that you can be a relatively peaceful character in a more or less natural way - in any other Fallout game you'd have to use metaknowledge to not get involved in conflicts. This also means that you can use unconventional methods to fight the fights you have to fight, like hoarding grenades and liberally using them when you have to. This allows for more natural unique playthroughs. With the amount of combat you get in FNV and even F2 it's unlikely you won't notice mechanics like dropping weapons and limb damage.

This, of course, may mean that your mileage may vary significantly, like in your case.

 

[Swampy_Merkin]

lol I get literally tired trying to read my previous posts defending FO3 vs NV. I'm not conceding that NV is a better game....of course it is to those who enjoyed it more. I just personally enjoyed FO3 more.

But yesterday I finished my replay of FO1, and, as per the title of the thread: I can confirm that it is "the best RPG of all time that stood the test of time."

It was great. I fucking loved every minute of it after 20 years or so. I didn't remember how to beat it; I had to figure it all out anew, and I loved it.

I also really enjoyed Fallout 3 for its atmosphere....kill me.

 

[Swampy_Merkin]

Honestly though...FNV vs FO:3 fanboyism is the most played out and toxic superficial bullshit in all of gaming. And I officially retire.

FO1>FO2>FO3>FO:NV>FO4.

IMHO

Done.

 

[Swampy_Merkin]

Or I'm just a mouse that prefers the East Coast cheez to the West Coast cheez.

Biggie 4 lyfe.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

I think what's happening with Swampy_Merkin is something to learn from.

More interesting is why might a men like Fallout 1 but hate New Vegas? It is because Fallout 1's game design is that damn good. It is a respectable and tasteful mouse trap where the main feature is the content itself and that content even keeps explorefags captivated.

This doesn't mean Fallout 3 is a better mouse trap than New Vegas. It means when playing Fallout 3, the bait is all different for a different mouse by a very different trap maker.

People hate NV because it is objectively garbage. The writing is on par with F4 and the quest design similar to F2. Yes F1 is so damn good and FNV is so damn bad. The game offers no exploration value, not in the world building, not in the terminal entries, not in the NPCs, nothing.

The world also isnt even credible. You try to get soldiers to go defend a settlement but they cant afford to send more men yet they could afford to build a giant 50 feet tall statue made of garbage. Some people enjoy dumpster diving to search for treasures or interesting stuff, those people play F1 or F3. Some others enjoy dumpster diving just to swim in garbage, those people play F2, FNV and F4.

 

[laclongquan]

mfkndggrfll I see what you had done there and it's simply adorable.

 

[Alkarl]

This doesn't mean Fallout 3 is a better mouse trap than New Vegas. It means when playing Fallout 3, the bait is all different for a different mouse by a very different trap maker.

Traps are gay?