RaiceGeriko

When I originally played FO3... I didn't really care for it. It's been so long since then, so I have trouble remembering what it was that I didn't like about it specifically. But then I played it some years later with some mods. The mods didn't do much - they basically just enhanced the graphics a little, added some atmosphere, and provided me with a few things that moved to offer me personally a little bit of a more refined product. When I played it with these mods, I remember thinking about how much better the game was. In short... I just fell in love with it. Overall, what bugged me about the game originally, I think, was that I was unsure if the game was supposed to be a FPS/RPG or a 3PS/RPG. I was fine with either one, but in either scenario, but experiences were just lacking what other shooters provided. The FPS experience of FO3 was just... well... kind of boring without VATS. But VATS alone the combat did not make. It worked really well, sure. But it was never designed to be the only way to engage in combat. And the combat outside of VATS was just... kind of terrible. By that time, Call of Duty (the first game) had been released, and that franchise in those days was just brilliant. CoD brought something to the table that no other FPS had offered - Aiming Down the Sights. It was just something that as soon as you played it, you couldn't play another shooter without it again. This was something that bugged me about Half-Life 2 as well. There was just no reason not to have it as it provided you, the gamer, the ability to connect with the action like never before. FO3 didn't have this, and it really suffered for it. Add to the fact that there was no sprint feature and a few other QOL features in FPS's... it just always felt like a strange game that I couldn't enjoy. Third Person was even worse, and was a staple of most Bethesda games. The animations were horrendous. The general feel of your character running around in the world felt departed - like they were just floating or they were weightless. The aiming was off putting. At the time, cover mechanics weren't really a thing, but the way everything moved around so fast as if it had no weight... it was just an alien experience. Skyrim still has remnants of this weightless feeling, but it isn't nearly as bad as it had been in their previous titles. The mods I used addressed these features, and essentially gave me a more well rounded foundation for playing a shooter. After I installed these mods, I was able to enjoy FO3. And it was, for lack of a better way of saying it, brilliant. It's probably one of my all time favorite games. The world design was interesting. The world I was exploring was interesting. The theme of the game, sort of a 1950's retro-futurism after nuclear fallout. I'm playing through FO1 and afterwards 2 now, but FO3 nailed it in just about every aspect. The computers, the old tech, the building designs. All of it gave me the experience of this world and this setting, and I had nearly boundless avenues of exploration. The main story wasn't even that bad and became more and more interesting as you got closer to finding your father. It wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it was enough. Add to that all the side quests and themeparks thrown on top of the unprecedented level of exploration... it was a great game. New Vegas, to me, felt like they took FO3, gave me the Aiming Down the Sight mod (like they were really doing something special there); put me in a Linear Path World Map that rail-roaded me into all the major points of interests because they were all tied into the main story line; gave me zero interesting places to explore just because; half finished all the level designs (Vegas itself was so disappointing - it felt like the work of a one man mod team that only works on it on the weekends); completely altered the tesla-retro-futurism vibe of FO3, which ended up feeling like a game with zero direction and focus; and then put in a bunch of dialogue that was so good, it only proved to point out how bad everything else about the game was. That being said, there are some rumors running around about how FONV was created by the original team of the series. This is just wrong. There are 2 people who were in the production of FONV that came from the original team: Josh Sawyer: NV's Lead Designer didn't even work on previous FO titles. He was an employee for Black Isle that worked on Icewind Dale. He had nothing to do with FO1 or FO2. No one ever brings this guy up, though. Chris Avellone: This is the guy everyone talks about when they talk about how much better NV is than FO3 in every aspect because, "It was made by the original guy and is closer to the original vision." No. Chris Avellone was a Designer in Fallout 2. He wasn't even the Lead Designer - which means he had zero creative control. He had nothing to do with creating the concept of Fallout or establishing the vision. All of that grunt work was done and created by Chris Taylor in Fallout 1. Fallout 2 was Fallout 1: The Meatier Version. They could spend more time on the RPG aspects, because they didn't have to create everything else in the game. They were on easy mode when developing FO2, and it's the same thing with NV. All of the grunt work with the engine and tone of the game had already been established with FO3. So for me... New Vegas is not the better game. And it certainly doesn't get a free pass in any field just because 2 guys from Black Isle Studios - one of whom only worked on FO2, the other of which had never even worked in the franchise before - somehow were thought to be Fallout Gurus... when they actually aren't. Fallout New Vegas is a pretty terrible game once you get past the mystique of the celebrity creator and recognize that he didn't really propel the franchise into a level of mass fandom that hadn't already been established with FO3. FO3 isn't the perfect game. It's old by today's standards. But it was pretty damn good, if you ask me. New Vegas has some good things going on too. But it never reaches that feeling of being a proper flagship game. It feels like one really big mod that didn't quite hit the marks in the polish department. Its only real advantage is that it is very complex in story. People usually refer to this when comparing it to FO3. Except the issue is that half the time Bethesda was creating FO3, they were also retro-fitting the game engine with very intense changes and dealing with the concept of how to bring FO into a 3D game experience. not to mention building ALL of the art assets that make up 80% of what you find in NV. Obsidian gave a deeper game because they didn't have to do any of that crap. It's exactly why they gave a deeper story and characters in KOTOR 2 - all the hard work was already done. And it was even easier with NV, because half the stuff they added to the gameplay had already been built by amateur modders.