Fallout 3 vs Fallout 4

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Is fallout 4 far harbor the best dlc in the fallout universe?

 

[Butter]

Is fallout 4 far harbor the best dlc in the fallout universe?

It's probably the best Bethesda-made Fallout DLC, but it's still worse than the story DLCs for New Vegas (even Old World Blues).

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Old World Blues is good but it feels so odd in the context of New Vegas, even though it has important plot details leading to Lonesome Road. Still, it could've been a separate game. It's like 25 hours long on its own, probably the longest DLC for New Vegas.

 

[9ted6]

Old World Blues is good but it feels so odd in the context of New Vegas, even though it has important plot details leading to Lonesome Road. Still, it could've been a separate game. It's like 25 hours long on its own, probably the longest DLC for New Vegas.

Disagree there, I don't even like New Vegas but OWB feels insulting. It's just nonstop jokes that aren't funny the first time and definitely not funny the 100th time you hear them set to a backdrop of bullet sponge enemies. It also makes no sense that this hyperadvanced basket of tech has sat untouched and unnoticed by the Enclave, the Brotherhood, and House for centuries. Of all the DLCs it's the one where Obsidian didn't give a single fuck and just phoned it all in.

 

[Lemming42]

The argument with your own brain is the only good part in OWB. The jokes throughout are absolutely abysmal though, completely laugh-free. Big MT is such a boring-ass place to explore too.

Of the other Fo3/NV DLCs:

Boring Steel - awful, a DLC so bad it retroactively ruins the base game by messing with enemy spawn lists. Only worthwhile thing it does is add some post-game C&C that nobody cares about
The Shitt - good idea, boring to play
Mothership Gayta - terrible. I don't even mind the aliens, it's just boring as fuck
Operation Wankerage - zzZzzZZzz
Point Fuckout - I like this one quite a bit, the shootout in the mansion with the crazy bastards breaking in is genuinely one of the cooler things on the Gamebryo engine, and the part where you get a lobotomy is amusing

Dead(bored of playing Dead)Money - good but the writing gets pretty tedious and pompous toward the end, and the fun pretty much stops gameplay-wise as soon as you get inside the Sierra Madre
Honest Sharts - some interesting story and a few good characters, Graham obviously and I like Waking Cloud, but fucking hell it starts to drag, I couldn't get out of that canyon quick enough
(Should have)Loaned Some(better writers for this DLC) Road - zZZzz, boring combat and listening to Ulysses voice Chris' meta-complaints about the Fallout franchise is unbearable

 

[Zlaja]

Getting materials for my little towns gives me more enjoyment than finding out where the fuck my son is

- Have you seen my son? A middle-aged guy.

 

[SharkClub]

Boring Steel - awful, a DLC so bad it retroactively ruins the base game by messing with enemy spawn lists. Only worthwhile thing it does is add some post-game C&C that nobody cares about

Amusingly, Broken Steel is one of the "good DLCs" of Fallout 3 that I see people mention, and the only reason that is ever cited for this is that it "fixes" the game ending at the end and not having a post-game to finish quests in and raises the level cap. In reality it is a fucking awful and retarded blockbuster sci-fi action movie conclusion to an already awful and retarded story. What's more is that the way it handles continuing on from the end of the final quest in the vanilla game is absolutely nonsensical. If you don't heroically sacrifice yourself then you get berated for having someone else do it even after spending the entire game doing the heavy lifting every step of the way, if you do heroically sacrifice yourself then you inexplicably live perfectly fine despite massive radiation poisoning that would probably make your skin start to slough off. It's common among the ever-shrinking fanbase of Fallout 3 to point at Mothershit Zeta and Operation Anchorage as the "bad ones" and Broken Steel and Point Lookout as the "good ones", with The Pitt somewhere in-between. Broken Steel really has more in common with Operation Anchorage than it does with the vanilla game, and I think everyone agreed even back then that Operation Anchorage was trying too hard to be a linear military first-person shooter campaign in the most dogshit engine imaginable for one.

 

[Ryzer]

Old world blues is a terrible DLC, filled with cringe reddit tier writing, among a stupid plot, main quest, and horrible re-skinned enemies. The only joy coming out of this is having content to do other than wandering in the boring empty dried-out open-world in new Vegas.

 

[undecaf]

They’re both shit for the same, but also sime different reasons.

Shit is shit, no matter how you explain it.

 

[Just Locus]

 

[Gahbreeil]

If Fallout: New Vegas was actually done after Fallout 4, it would be a perfect game. I mean it. Some of the innovations in Fallout 4, and I don't mean the settlement building, you cannot do without after playing it.

So, play New Vegas first, Fallout 4 afterwards. The story and the dialogues of 4 are not too thrilling but it is an improved New Vegas in terms of gameplay.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Both are worth playing. FO3 has a lot better writing.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Both are worth playing. FO3 has a lot better writing.

Have you seen my dad? Middle aged guy.

 

[Doctor Gong]

The only good part of Fallout 3 is Point Lookout.

Fallout 4 does a great sin by locking the player into playing a specific person, and outside of the occasional fun mission I rather explore, do settlement building, and just poke around.

Fallout New Vegas is its own beast which I really enjoy.

 

[quaesta]

New Vegas is better because I can shoot everyone and I get bunch of guns. I just play that game like shitty Postal 2 and have a good time in it.

 

[Ryan muller]

FO4, far harbor is genuinely good, none of Fo3's dlcs are good

Aside from that, Fo4 atleast tried to add new things, Fo3 copy pasted 1 and 2 elements and completely destroyed fallout setting by making all went back to the age of caveman in which humans are living in cities made out of scrap metal built around an atomic bomb.

Both are retarded tho.

 

[502]

3 at least resembles an RPG on the surface level. The protagonist is James Middleagedguy like Martin Septim in Bethesda's previous game. It is for all intents and purposes Oblivion with guns. It's the Bethesda experience in a world that loosely resembles Fallout.

4 on the other hand is a whole lot of nothing with its "keyword" dialog system and mobile-tier systems. It was miserable and I've never finished it. Anything it's supposedly good at, another game is much better.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

3 at least resembles an RPG on the surface level.

That's the problem, fo4 is at least fun as a FO fanfic looter-shooter.

 

[Bulo]

if you do heroically sacrifice yourself then you inexplicably live perfectly fine despite massive radiation poisoning that would probably make your skin start to slough off

Double dose of Rad-X and regular use of RadAway. Worked in the Glow

 

[Falksi]

Coincidently, I'm just replaying Fallout 3 for the 3rd time now.

Won't lie, first playthrough I loved it. Yep, it watered down the originals, but it offered a nice immersive vibe with an interesting map, and the consoletard in me just loved blowing the shit out of things in VATS. A simple gimmick which carried the game a long way. Great soundtrack too.

Returned to it a few years after for an evil/alternative playthrough and it was shit. The game just doesn't lend itself to being evil (apart from Megaton's dilemma) and it became apparent just how much the game is weighted in favour of melee or small guns too.

But I'm really enjoying my current playthrough. I've gone neutral and small guns again, and I'm surprised how differently this playthrough is evolving from the first. As others have said, the main quest is shit, so I'm mostly side-questing it, but it's fun. It's way more interesting than Fallout 4, it's darker tone works far better, and it's humour lands better too.

Fallout 4 is just dire once you're outside the starting area. Even if you ignore the shit crafting and gay tone, the quests are SO fucking lame it's unreal.

I know it's -20 social cred on here, but I genuinely think Fallout 3 is a good game.

 

[Lemming42]

Retrospectively I think Fo3 was the last game where you could really feel Bethesda putting a lot of effort and love into the project - whatever people think of the end result, there are things in Fo3 that can only have been the result of a team genuinely trying their best, even if their talents might be judged harshly at times. You can really feel their excitement coming through in the quests and the variety in the world design.

I like Skyrim but it doesn't have the same feel, and Fo4 onward just feels soulless to me.

 

[Butter]

Retrospectively I think Fo3 was the last game where you could really feel Bethesda putting a lot of effort and love into the project - whatever people think of the end result, there are things in Fo3 that can only have been the result of a team genuinely trying their best, even if their talents might be judged harshly at times. You can really feel their excitement coming through in the quests and the variety in the world design.

I like Skyrim but it doesn't have the same feel, and Fo4 onward just feels soulless to me.

Yeah, I'm not going to go as far as Falksi calling it good, but Bethesda clearly put some effort and passion into Fallout 3. Skyrim is where the cynical, soulless design rears its head, and it has only become more overt in Fallout 4, 76, and Starfield.

 

[Falksi]

Retrospectively I think Fo3 was the last game where you could really feel Bethesda putting a lot of effort and love into the project - whatever people think of the end result, there are things in Fo3 that can only have been the result of a team genuinely trying their best, even if their talents might be judged harshly at times. You can really feel their excitement coming through in the quests and the variety in the world design.

I like Skyrim but it doesn't have the same feel, and Fo4 onward just feels soulless to me.

Yeah, I'm not going to go as far as Falksi calling it good, but Bethesda clearly put some effort and passion into Fallout 3. Skyrim is where the cynical, soulless design rears its head, and it has only become more overt in Fallout 4, 76, and Starfield.

I think it being "good game" comes with the caveat of:

1) Accepting it's a console RPG, not an actual RPG.
2) Getting off on the VATS gore
3) Playing it in the way the game naturally channels you to.

So on reflection, probably more of a case of "it can be a good experience, if played right and in the right mindset" than actually being a good game itself.

Tons of games are like that now tbf. Pillars of Eternity is so channeled towards Cypher it's unreal for example.

Hence why, again, the 90's & 00's were so much better. I still can't decide who my favorite Final Fight character is to play as after over 30 fucking years! lol

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Aside from that, Fo4 atleast tried to add new things, Fo3 copy pasted 1 and 2 elements

Before Fallout 4, my criticism of Fallout 3 was it was mostly a horrible mismatch of Fallout and Fallout 2 set in a place where none of what Fallout and Fallout 2 had should be - and the only thing they came up with on their own was completely out of place in the setting.

Fallout 4 flips that. Fallout 4 is mostly shit Bethesda came up with that doesn't fit the setting at all with a liberal dose of shit from Fallout and Fallout 2 that shouldn't be on the East Coast.

The big problem with Fallout 4 is that Bethesda also decided to completely wreck the character system in Fallout, which also severely limited their ability to design quests with skill checks. Their new perkskills system in Fallout 4 basically limits you from a scale of 0% to 100% to a scale of 0-4, and even that is limited by the way attributes are handled. There's very little flexibility when it comes to having your character build influence the way you handle quests. Even worse, the dialog system even limits that further.

Retrospectively I think Fo3 was the last game where you could really feel Bethesda putting a lot of effort and love into the project

That would be Morrowind.

 

[Lemming42]

That would be Morrowind.

No, I don't think so. I think they were very excited to make Oblivion, even if people's visions were constrained by Todd pushing for LotR-style elements and more action-y mechanics and quests (the latter of which was also the case for MW).

In both Oblivion and Fo3 you can really feel the graphics and sound teams giving it their all, and a lot of Fo3's writing is clearly the result of Emil (and maybe others, idk how many writers there were) really trying to write something they thought was cool. A lot of it's weird and off-the-wall, but in a way that feels firmly like the result of people trying their best and being thrilled with what they were making - the reason stuff like Tenpenny Tower and Oasis stick in people's minds are because they're striking ideas with memorable themes and unique visuals, even if you hate those themes and find them ill-fitting for the setting.

The world designers were clearly having fun too; there's a lot of little easter eggs and hidden out of the way things that you just don't really get any equivalent of in Skyrim and especially Fo4/Starfield. Stuff like the "fuck you" door and the Rube-Goldberg machine are just the result of designers having a lot of fun while making the game. There's also areas like the mine-laden street in DC - obviously the result of one of the designers just thinking "I wonder what the biggest explosion you can actually have in this game engine is", and the culture in the company at the time being upbeat and creative enough that Todd allowed them to put it in.

Skyrim, which I like, is the first game they made where it feels like a lot of the content's there more because they just felt like it "should" be there, rather than because anyone involved actually wanted to make it. A lot of quests are generic, some (but not all) dungeons lack anything unique, NPCs often feel quite dull and lifeless and adhere to generic tropes. None of that is the case in Fo3, where quests are always based around big ideas and characters that Emil clearly enjoyed writing, whatever you personally think of his work, and the game feels anything but generic.

Fo4 and Starfield feel very generic and derivative by comparison, and everything in their worlds feels perfunctory in a way that oozes a real lack of passion.