Things that Fallout 3 did right!

That is why Fallout 2 was better, there was more personality in it.

 

That's not how it works [afaik], the skill system incorporates penalties that subtract from the percentile chance. One thing that Fallout was superb with ~was double edged rules for PC and NPC alike.

 

Gore bags.
Also Bethesda used a somewhat good idea for a not-so-obvious moral choice. You know, the one in which you get to side with an asshole or a guy, who wants to help an opressed group. But later it turns out, that that guy is a dick himself and the original asshole has a point. Using it one time is enough to make a point, but not enough to make money, so they used pretty much the same idea in both Tenpenny Tower (apart from that one idea, both the quest and the location have no good points whatsoever) quest and the Pitt.
Did I mention gore bags? BTW Gore Bags should be the name of Butch's new gang instead of Tunnel Snakes. I mean trying to form a gang in Downtown DC, he's gonna end up as a gore bag anyway.
And I kinda liked Sydney.
Gore bags.

 

It was good at making illogical and overpowered weapons *ahem* MIRV *ahem*

 

MIRV wasn't overpowered. It's ridiculously high power was balanced by the fact that it had no practical application whatsoever. It would seem Bethesda was particularly fond of making versions of weapons that shoot more than one projectile at once and calling it 'new'. You know, like: Metal Blaster, Protectron's Gaze, Tri-beam laser rifle, Captain's sidearm, Experimental MIRV, Paulson's revolver (how does that even work?).

 

I played the core game back when it came out so my memory might be so and so.
I did like to explore some of the places, pipboys design was good and some of the energy weapons and vaults designs were good. I remember there was couple of good quests too, like that tenpenny tower one thats been mentioned here already and that one that involved some android hunting. Addition of the radio with some old songs was nice idea.

Thats about the extent of it.

 

Exactly why I said illogical.

 

The only concept that came out of Fallout 3 that was relatively interesting was the idea of the Talon Corporation fighting for an unknown benefactor to recover something of old world importance.

 

I preferred New Vegas on the whole, but I still liked F3 - and, as has already been mentioned, the soundtrack was fucking incredible.

 

What Bethesda really did well was make a world that is filled with post-apocalyptic cliches. We've got a dead world, ruins everywhere, junk houses, radiation, radiation, radiation, raider infestation - all that stuff. And the impressive part is: people liked it, said it's got 'a post-apocalyptic feel'. Even though that tone is broken multiple times (like Tenpenny Tower, Superhuman Gambit, Mothership Zeta). Even though it defies logic. Even with the more sensible Mojave Wasteland, people claimed DC feels more post-apocalyptic. It's amazing.

 

Unless you were referring to the 50's music that was played on GNR, I found the soundtrack in Fallout 3 to be too generic and out of place.

Now that I think back, I will never understand why people think that Fallout 3 feels post apocalyptic. You left out Little Lamplight and Big Town.

 

TL;DR response:
Long story short, they think FO3 is a better depiction of post-apocalyptic setting is because it looks more like the bombs just dropped the day before even though it makes no sense even in the context of FO3 itself let alone the franchise's lore as a whole.

Slightly longer version:
Because FO3 was their first exposure to the franchise, they have no knowledge of Fallout lore, and it doesn't register that compared to the core region in the west, the Capital Wasteland had somehow been sitting in statis for 200 years (which also makes no sense if you just look at FO3 without comparisons), whereas those that started with the originals and have a better grasp of the setting's progression from FO1 -> FO2 -> NV can see how NV represents a more logically appropriate "feel" in the overall timeline for the setting... of course, and argument could also be made that the cultural progression of any post-apocalyptic society would probably look more like NV than FO3 after 6+ generations of time passing just since the very last vault (Vault 13) was supposed to have opened.

They also seem to think the random blurbs you find on terminals here and there depicting some pre-war Office-monkey's email somehow equates to "telling an interesting story that makes each area deep and unique" which at best amounts to the literary/gameplay equivalent of there being a different color of paint on the walls. Meanwhile, since the content of NV focuses more on how the world is moving forward rather than looking back on what contextually no longer matters, it somehow makes the setting feel less "post-apocalyptic".... I suppose it could be argued that NV is technically "post-post-apocalyptic", but that's just splitting hairs.

 

I think that FoNV does a better job than Fo3 to fit with the timeline, but IMO, even FoNV feel like going backward. When you compare with the Hub, San Francisco, Vault City, Shady Sands (NCR) or New Reno, or even some FoT cities, New Vegas seems pretty late, and everything around seems even more late. It was still disapointing for me that they going backward after so many years. I like to have a feeling of progression not a perpetual statu quo.

 

The thing is the feeling of post-apocalyptic wasteland in FO3 seems purely artificial to me. They just added some elements associated with post-apocalypse. Instead of doing some work and actually coming up with a wasteland that would fit in the world and make sense in the context of Fallout, they take the lazy design choice and toss us a handful of dead trees and psychopaths. It's the most simplistic depiction possible - one I would expect from a child or a Hollywood director. The only 'feel' I got from this is that Bethesda considers us morons, who need to have every idea shoved onto their faces and would get lost and confused if the game world offered some civilisation or vegetation.

 

Congratulations on being the first recipient EVER of rads from me. =D

Had nothing to say about your post, really, other than "much yes", so just wanted to point out the rads-giving if nothing else... XD

 

To be fair, Fallout 3 was supposed to be set 20 or so years after the Great War, not 200.

 

Wait, is this legit. It sure feels like it should have been, but is that true?

 

I thought about it some more and have one thing to add to the things i think F3 did right:

I liked that some of the loot belonged to people and they cared if you tried to take it. I didnt like the whole -karma thing though, especially when stealing from ... well... evil factions. It would have been really cool if instead there was a mark to your reputation that stated youre known thief if you get caught too regularly.

 

Except Bethsoft was too lazy to make a rep system.

 

I believe it's not. That's just what most fans who "wanted" it to be better than it is would believe for their own head canon. Bethesda from the very start always said it would take place 200 years after the war. From the moment they confirmed that they wouldn't be using any material from Van Buren and would be making the game from scratch, all the way to their first gameplay demo footage, they were always treating it like a "chronological sequel" to the first 2 games, so it was never intended to take place before either of them... regardless of how much the setting would have benefited otherwise.