Fallout 3 vs Fallout 4

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Oblivion is better than Skyrim. However Fallout 4 felt like a more serious attempt after their supremacy was challenged by Obsidian of all people.

Confusing, since with Fo4 they removed basically everything that people had praised in New Vegas. I never understood it - people are saying to them "we like Obsidian's writing and interpretation of the Fallout setting, please follow their example" and Todd turns round and says "you like New Vegas, huh? well, check this out!!!" and produces a shitty FPS with almost no relation to the Fallout setting and no semblance of Fallout-style quest design, miles further away from NV than Fo3 was.

Then people reacted badly, so they tried to mollify everyone with... an MMORPG.

You had "better" gunplay to answer to the Gun Nut stuff in New Vegas, but it was still arcadey instead of the (very) light simulationist stuff from the latter. Then the factions, more fleshed out companions (do you even remember you could have a black lady BOS paladin companion in 3??) more interconnected stuff. And maybe it's not from New Vegas per se, but the settlement construiction stuff is copied from a NV mod.

The thing is, Bethesda did a "we have a New Vegas at home" approach. I don't think F76 was meant to be a comment on New Vegas and 4, just them trying to create a Fallout mmo because TESO had been very successful (and still is).

 

[Ash]

Dont look at it either as a RPG or Fallout game but as a open world action survival game with some cool dungeons and ruined cities to explore.

I've tried basically approaching it as post-apocalyptic Far Cry, and something about it still made me bounce off it. I think just the enemy health bloat and the weapon mod system which didn't interest me at all. I'll have to try it again sometime but my impression of the game was so bad that it's tough to go back to.

The weapon mod system is literally the best thing about the game? For example you can take the plasma gun, which in prior FO games you didn't have much customization control over at all, mostly buffing damage only and a couple other stats (crit rate, reload speed), and can turn it into any archetype you want: plasma sniper, plasma SMG, plasma shotgun, plasma rifle, plasma pistol, plasma thrower, with choice of optics, legendary modifiers, additional tweaks to further alter it (e.g a fast plasma shotgun with wide spread, or a slow one with higher damage and recoil). there are mods on nexus also to take both the weapon and armor customization even further. One that lets you choose which legendary effect you want on your gun instead of waiting for RNG, but requires plenty of rare crafting materials to make in an attempt to keep it balanced and lasting. I typically grab the +25% rate of fire and reload speed one because I like fast guns, even if two shot or incendiary or whatever are better choices. then I apply the +10% movement speed legendary to at least 3-4 of my armor pieces and become a super speed god, but don't put it on any more armor pieces than that otherwise I'd be absurdly OP.

FO4 is basically a gun nut post apoc playground. The appeal is no longer which interesting characters shall I meet, what cool C&C will there be, what crazy location is next, but rather which gun setup shall I try next in surprisingly fun combat, how best to optimize my survival (survival mode is a must), and what cool locations will I find (there's a few).
It's a declined game overall but it has its moments and its strengths, unlike most Bethesda shit.

 

[Jacov]

Fallout 3 at least tried to be a Fallout game. It's lame and ugly, and stupid, but it tried. Looking back at it in retrospect, F3 was a decent attempt by Bethesda at porting SPECIAL from turn-based to action RPG. Yes, they've made mistakes and stupid decisions, but it was a good framework for future improvements. And New Vegas proved something worthwhile can be made with it.

FNV itself isn't perfect, but it improved the chargen by streamlining skills, adding traits and challenges. It introduced a bunch of good stuff: ammo types, faction reputation, disguises, skill-based crafting. It also had good writing and C&C.

Fallout 4 didn't improve on almost any of what F3 and FNV brought. Ammo types? Not present. Guns are boring and ugly, and there is almost no variety (but you can turn a plasma pistol into a flamethrower, very cool). Faction reputation? No. Disguises? What for? Skill-based crafting? There are no skills in the game.
Chargen and development are dumbed down tremendously. No skills, no traits, no challenges from FNV, perks are boring «+ to damage» or «you get more resistance when you stand still». Very fun.
The writing is atrocious, no C&C whatsoever, even visual style was changed from grimy gothic retrofuturism to colorful toy sci-fi.

Fallout 3 tried and failed. Fallout 4 doesn't even try. It's literally a hobo sim with guns. Shoot baddies, collect trash, bring it to base, repeat. It has interesting ideas (mainly power armor and weapon customization), but the whole game is just too bad.

 

[Ash]

You're playing it wrong if you think FO3 is better. But, it does depend on your interests.

If survival aspects, challenge, combat, extensive gun/armor customization, exploration - FO4
If C&C in story events, quirky retards and...trying to be fallout and failing miserably - FO3. lol

Yes, FO4 doesn't try to be Fallout or an RPG anymore, because Bethesda can't do Fallout and RPGs. this is what makes it actually decent.

 

[Jacov]

You're playing it wrong if you think FO3 is better.

You can't play Fallout 4 wrong. There is nothing outside of the main gameplay loop for you to do. You either shoot-loot-craft or you don't.

It's the «gamified boredom», like someone said. You're just stimulating your brain to get a reaction, until you are fatigued.

If I'd want to play survival with guns, I'd play modded Stalker.

 

[Ash]

Nah. the defining choice of playing wrong or not is survival mode, which many wont do because they're pussies and it takes away their quicksaving cuckoldry (among about 50 other inclined things it does).

 

[Lemming42]

The weapon mod system is literally the best thing about the game?

That's the problem for me, I suppose - they objectively did put a lot of effort into the looting/crafting stuff, and I can appreciate that it's fairly in-depth, but I was hoping for the usual Fallout experience. I could tolerate Fo3 and FNV's bad combat because I was so excited by everything else they were doing (or at least trying to do), while Fo4 slightly improves the combat but strips away everything that held the appeal for me. The weapon modding system would be something I'd like as a bonus on top of a good game, rather than one of the central pillars of the game.

I remember thinking the dungeons were a bit shit too, and I'm saying that as someone who thought Skyrim's ultra-linear dungeons were mostly fine for what the game was going for. A lot of meandering empty spaces that didn't really have any clear ending or goal, sort of like Oblivion's Ayleid ruins. Everyone tells me I'm wrong about that though, so I'll have to give the game another fair try at some point.

Also the world was really dull, for some reason - I didn't mind going around mindlessly killing everyone in Skyrim because the world was gorgeous-looking and there was the usual interesting Elder Scrolls lore (albeit almost entirely in the background), but Fo4's Boston just had absolutely nothing that grabbed me, with the main plot factions being actively terrible.

 

[Ash]

FO4 does have some shitty dungeons but it has many good ones too. It's surprising because Skyrim has that largely 100% linear, one entrance circuit dungeon design for retards, but FO4's dungeons have much more diversity to them (though there is also many linear dumb ones too). Probably the best dungeon design in any bethesda game I played, though it does sometimes leave more to be desired. More notable though is overworld locations such as The Glowing Sea, Libertalia, or the maze of skyscrapers downtown - it's so dense, interconnected and multi-layered that objective markers are barely even helpful which is massive incline. You can literally go on random adventures across skyscrapers and abandoned highways, plazas, derailed train cars half hanging in the air, it's crazy by modern game standards. Hell it's even kind of crazy by old game standards.

To be clear I am talking about this place and surrounding areas. there's basically unmarked dungeons in the sky spanning multiple elevations, is how you can look at it. Sadly, there isn't really anything interesting up there in terms of quests or anthing, but there is plenty cool vertical and long distance combat, loot, beautiful sights, and platforming on rooftops and the like. It spans a sizable chunk of downtown. In fact there is a lot of verticality and optional rooftop adventures in a few dense urban areas, but it is most impressive downtown. It's quite cool.

 

[Jacov]

Nah. the defining choice of playing wrong or not is survival mode, which many wont do because they're pussies and it takes away their quicksaving cuckoldry (among about 50 other inclined things it does).

I played survival with and without mods. It's punishing and that is what makes it more engaging.
It should push you to play more carefully and always look for food/water/drugs, but there is just so much of this stuff lying around that you don't really need to sweat.

You can fix loot rarity with mods, and it will help: the game will become slightly more interesting. But after some time, when you have accumulated enough items, it will just return to the same old dopamine farming with added difficulty of replaying chunks of the game because you died to a molotov.

Again, if we are considering mods, I'd better play modded Stalker Anomaly with saves only on bonfires.

 

[Ash]

Numerous trusted sources have tried to steer me away from anomaly, with complaints about balance (economy, weapon design), lack of a campaign etc. thoughts?

And yeah, FO4 is basically dopamine farming that feels like it lacks a portion of its soul (namely in story and RPG aspects), and we all know that it can be something far greater. But it's simply more playable and consistent in quality than almost all shitty Beth games.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

You mention Little Lamplight, and that's what I'd consider to be actually "terrible" writing - it doesn't make sense in context, because they forgot to explain where the kids are coming from (though there's a sidequest solution in which you deliver a child to them, so maybe they take in orphans, but who fucking knows honestly).

The implication is that it's mostly the teenagers having kids before leaving for Big Town, the game doesn't get too much into it because A) they'd have to model toddlers and B) the location is a big Lord of the Flies reference (a school was having an excursion in the cave when the bombs dropped) next to the location that actually matters (Vault 87, where the GECK is).

Fallout 3 is internally inconsistent about its chronology, with many aspects of the setting seeming to implicitly place themselves 2, 20, or about 60 years following the nuclear conclusion of the Great War, rather than the 200 years that is always explicitly stated. Thus the game simultaneously presents edible packaged food lying around in supermarkets (2 years), an abandoned attempt to de-radiate the region's water supply (20 years), or the backstories for Rivet City and Megaton (50-60 years or so), among many other aspects that contradict the supposed two centuries that have passed since the nuclear apocalypse.

Little Lamplight would make sense for a date of two years after the apocalypse, or perhaps slightly longer, with a number of children managing to survive in a cave after the adults supervising them on a field trip had been killed, while anyone turning 18 is sent away to another settlement (Big Town).

 

[Ash]

Internally inconsistent pretty much sums up every FO3 location. Given how whacky a lot of it is (Megaton, Republic of Dave etc), I don't think it is too much of a concern of the devs, and nor should it have to be. what matters is that the content is good and...well it's mostly not particularly. My best praise for it is "Good considering it was made in the worst period of gaming (late 2000s)" and "better than certain other absolutely awful Action RPGs (DX:IW, Oblivion, Skyrim, Bioshock)".

 

[Lemming42]

Little Lamplight would make sense for a date of two years after the apocalypse, or perhaps slightly longer, with a number of children managing to survive in a cave after the adults supervising them on a field trip had been killed, while anyone turning 18 is sent away to another settlement (Big Town).

True, but even if it was 2078/2079, they'd need to have learned of Big Town, sent people out to it, had people return from it to report that it's safe(ish), and set up the whole tradition of sending people off there. Surely you wouldn't come up with such a tradition if it was only 2 years after the war - you'd all have become pretty close by that point through the shared trauma of the whole experience, and you'd want all hands on deck to defend the place, especially after the teachers and parents left.

Big Town's even more bizarre of course, in that everyone there appears to be around 20 years old, despite people having been sent there for two centuries. It's especially annoying because, unlike some of the other major logical fuckups in the game, it could be explained with a couple changes - make it so that Big Town has some older people in it, have MacReady tell you that they replenish their numbers through whatever method (taking in orphans is my best guess, and lines up with the alt solution to "Those!"), and give some kind of explanation as to why the place is so unusually safe from raiders and super mutants.

Honestly I think Emil just watched the Star Trek episode Miri, thought "that's cool", and then the location got stuck at the concept stage until 15 minutes before the game was due to be shipped.

 

[Jacov]

Numerous trusted sources have tried to steer me away from anomaly, with complaints about balance (economy, weapon design), lack of a campaign etc. thoughts?

Anomaly is a sandbox in the way that you can customize a lot of stuff for yourself even without mods. Difficulty, loot scarcity, AI and all that. So if it's too hard or too easy you can always change settings on the fly or fine-tune them with mods. The overall design is good, but might require tuning for a more personalized experience.
Economy... Is a hard topic for me. I personally think hardest economy difficulty is too easy, but it might be okay for a newcomer.
Weapon design? It's alright. Pistols are a little bit on a useless side.
There IS a campaign, even three of them (and another separate one for an unlockable faction). However, you can always choose to just be by yourself and do your own thing.

The default package is good by itself, but it's only a gateway drug for a modded experience that actually elevates whole game to another level. Anomaly Gamma is probably the most popular mod pack out there. It improves and deepens most of the mechanics (gunplay, economy, crafting, etc.) adds a ton of good new shit, and the most important part — it's consistent despite being comprised of several hundred mods.

If you like postapoc survival you should at least try vanilla Anomaly and Gamma.

 

[9ted6]

Really stupid things like Annah ghost, talking plant, chess radscorpion etc are such tiny and inconsequential parts of Fallout 2.

Not really; San Francisco is absolutely terrible in both tone and content, and yet it's one of the most prominent endgame locations, and its influence actually stretches outside the settlement itself given that you meet Hubologists as a world map encounter. New Reno, which the game does its best to direct you towards (the tavern brawler in Klamath telling you about it, people in Broken Hills directing you there, etc) is pretty bad for the most part as well, although the alternate ways to kill the family bosses are a lot of fun.

Can't forget how the Enclave, the crux of the game, are really shallow and boring with the exception of Horrigan, and pretty much everything to do with the non-military personnel is the same 90s republicans amirite? joke repeated over and over and over again. And then the whole foundation of the game is based on a magical old woman telling you you need to go on a quest in your dreams. It's a farce. They hyperfocused on the campier parts of Mad Max and then shoved in a whole lot of dated and unfunny 90s nerd humor and pop culture references and turned it into an apocalyptic D&D setting.

 

[adddeed]

Fallout 3 has way better atmosphere than Fallout 4.

 

[Lemming42]

the whole foundation of the game is based on a magical old woman telling you you need to go on a quest in your dreams.

Which is the joke, right? It's taking the piss out of the standard RPG plot that had been done to death by that point. Same for the Enclave, you're not meant to take them too seriously - they are mostly composed of caricatures, their whole plan is batshit, the fact they've lived on an oil rig for over a century is dumb, and Navarro is literally one joke after another, including a very funny one if you pretend to be the cleaner.

Not unreasonable to give up on it if the tone doesn't grab you, but it's still a good RPG if you meet it on its own terms (just like Fo3, despite what people say, and FNV). If you go into it feeling alienated by 90s nerd humour and meta-jokes then it's just gonna be agony from start to finish.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

The first Fallout was too overly serious, when Wasteland wasn't... Wasteland is practically a B movie sometimes. And Fallout was supposed to be the "real" Wasteland 2 for like 15 minutes, but still. Even in all the grim and serious tone of the game, you can beat it by basically saying "no u" to the master.

 

[Morgoth]

Fallout 3, it's not even a contest. Outside the bland NPCs and dialogues, the game actually felt like a world that respects the original creator's vision.

FO4 is basically Bostonfield.

 

[Camel]

Codex:
Oblivion bad.
Oblivion with guns worse.
Oblivion with guns and skill checks great.

 

[9ted6]

Codex:
Oblivion bad.
Oblivion with guns worse.
Oblivion with guns and skill checks great.

BG3 forcing everyone to be gay/bi and referencing reddit memes- this is such a painful decline.
Oblivion w/ guns and skill checks forcing everyone to be gay/bi and referencing reddit memes- you know, this game has some great C&C and interesting lore.

I guess there is something nice about 2 not taking itself so seriously, but I'd still put FNV over it all the same. I wouldn't call either of them a good game though, but they both have enjoyable moments.

 

[Camel]

BG3 forcing everyone to be gay/bi and referencing reddit memes- this is such a painful decline.
Oblivion w/ guns and skill checks forcing everyone to be gay/bi and referencing reddit memes- you know, this game has some great C&C and interesting lore.

I guess there is something nice about 2 not taking itself so seriously, but I'd still put FNV over it all the same. I wouldn't call either of them a good game though, but they both have enjoyable moments.

F2 is better than FNV for me but I don't consider New Vegas to the best Obsidian game. Arcade was a faggot, but not a flaming faggot since the devs tried to be tasteful in the past. The BoS lesbian is irredeemable btw and her voice actress Felicia Day is godawful.

great C&C

I think it's debatable if the ending slides can be considered as great C&C.

 

[Butter]

NV choice and consequence is more the fact that you have so many opportunities to use your specific skills and perks to solve problems. It makes different playthroughs feel significantly different because they all find different ways around the problem. The narrative choice and consequence is pretty lacking outside of ending slides (e.g. your choice at the end of That Lucky Old Sun has no ramifications anywhere during the game).

 

[9ted6]

BG3 forcing everyone to be gay/bi and referencing reddit memes- this is such a painful decline.
Oblivion w/ guns and skill checks forcing everyone to be gay/bi and referencing reddit memes- you know, this game has some great C&C and interesting lore.

I guess there is something nice about 2 not taking itself so seriously, but I'd still put FNV over it all the same. I wouldn't call either of them a good game though, but they both have enjoyable moments.

F2 is better than FNV for me but I don't consider New Vegas to the best Obsidian game. Arcade was a faggot, but not a flaming faggot since the devs tried to be tasteful in the past. The BoS lesbian is irredeemable btw and her voice actress Felicia Day is godawful.

great C&C

I think it's debatable if the ending slides can be considered as great C&C.

I agree, I was more quoting Codex like you were.

 

[Beans00]

If the gunplay in fallout 3 was like a 2.5/10, the gun play in fallout 4 is like 4/10 at best.


-> Both are shit for shooting stuff.