TOPIC Seven Reasons Fallout New Vegas is better than Fallout 3

• Posted by Paul July 16, 2015 - 789 views

  After running head-to-head for a while, Fallout New Vegas has pulled ahead in our poll to find our favourite Fallout game. That got me pondering the question ‘why’?

  So here are my Top 7 Reasons why Fallout New Vegas is better than Fallout 3….

  1. Better world map

  Bethesda specialize in ‘open world’ games. Or do they? Ever had that ‘you can’t go here’ feeling in Fallout 3? This is especially noticeable in the downtown DC area, with the city divided into small compartments via conveniently situated piles of wreckage blocking everywhere you can’t go. And having to plough through subways to get anywhere felt unrealistic and forced, and made me feel like I wasn't so much exploring a "world" as a series of isolated zones.

  The New Vegas map just feels more open and spacious, if only because there's not so much junk blocking your way! You can see right to the horizon, and there's far less crap constantly in front of you, grabbing your attention and making the map feel claustrophobic. As such it feels closer in style to the original Fallouts, where you wander to various ‘hub’ towns and locations on your way to completing the main quest line. 

  2. Better factions

  Factions in Fallout were really straightforward, being portrayed on a simple black and white axis, with obvious good guys and bad guys. And you have to work with the good guys to finish the main quest, with the only real moral decision coming at the very end.

  New Vegas, on the other hand, offers far more factions with no clear good guys or bad guys. There is a more realistic shade of gray with different groups vying for power and pushing different goals and ideals. There is tension and animosity between factions in the Mojave, with choices meaning that other options become unavailable, allowing for some interesting replay value.

  Siding with a faction in New Vegas makes a tangible difference in the world, with the potential for playing off one faction against another becoming a genuine role play option for careful and thoughtful players.

  3. Better (and more) quests

  Have you ever counted up the quests in Fallout 3? I did. And putting DLC to one side, there are just under 50 quests. No wonder you can sometimes run around in Fallout 3 for hours doing nothing! Compare that to Fallout New Vegas. Well, I gave up counting the quests when I got to 130….

  But its not just the number, but the quality of the quests that we have to consider. Many of the Fallout 3 quests are relatively simple and straightforward. Even the main, central quest for Megaton, where I decided to save the city from total nuclear destruction, was just a simple matter of "Get 25 Explosives skill and press E on bomb." Yeah, real in-depth stuff there! It's also pretty disheartening to note that around a third of Fallout 3’s  side-quests are generic "bring me X items" quests. 

  New Vegas, on the other hand, not only has around three times as many quests, they also tend to have more role-playing options attached to them, with more quests overlapping and conflicting with each other. Much like Megaton in FO3, one of the very first quests in New Vegas is to save a town or attack it. By choosing to save the city, you get the option to enlist the aid of the townsfolk with any number of your own skills like Barter, Speech, Explosives, Sneak, Medicine, and Science. Instead of just being a straightforward quest with a simple ‘either or’ outcome, there are numerous different ways to solve it, depending on how you built your character, which makes you feel more invested in it.

  4.Better Companions 

  Listen, I know everyone loves Fawkes, and its kinda cool to team up with a Super Mutant rather than trying to blast their heads off – but the fact remains that Fallout 3 companions are basically cardboard cutout dolls with very little in the way in backstory, personality or motivation. 

  Compare the bland and personality-devoid drones from Fallout 3 with the richly-rendered and fully-realised companions from Fallout New Vegas and its like comparing chalk and cheese.

  Take Boone. He is the New Vegas equivalent of Charon, but he has an actual backstory and a reason for his emotionlessness. He has an engaging story about his wife, he uses unique dialogue for certain events, he keeps track of how you act to the NCR and changes his disposition accordingly and has multiple endings. He also reacts properly with his environment, killing Legion on sight as any ex-NCR sniper should, and his perk gives him a uniqueness which actually makes a difference when accompanying you.

  5.Better perk implementation

  In  Fallout 3, you get a perk every single level. Not only does this diminish their value when you can pick 20 in total, but you end up picking perks that you don't want, just because you HAVE to pick something every time. Together with the "SPECIAL Training" perk and all the bobble heads, you can easily raise all of your stats to 10, on top of being able to get all of your skills very close to 100, which further defeats the whole "specialized role-playing" aspect of the game.

  For those with long memories let me point out that In the original Fallouts, you got to pick a perk every 3 levels, and with a level cap of 21, you could only pick 7 perks in total! Yes… just SEVEN. This made perks a really special reward for leveling up and force you to really consider the benefits of perks, knowing that you would have to pass on a lot of them. It forced you to role-play your character to specialize in certain fields. This offered a lot of replay value because you could build your next character in a completely different and unique way that would actually play differently. New Vegas gives you perks every 2 levels, which is closer in style to the originals and gives the perks a better feeling of depth and significance.  

  6.Better challenge

  Let’s be honest, for competent gamers Fallout 3 lacks in challenge. You can come out of Vault 101 , head to Springvale School and easily defeat a whole gang of well-armed Raiders with the clothes and low-level weapons that you emerged into the light with. Hmmm. 

  Now the "Hardcore" mode in New Vegas is not the perfect solution by any means - it feels kind of tacked-on, but it does add some more depth to the experience…

  With Stimpaks now healing over time, you have to be far more careful of what enemies you engage in combat, because you can't  save yourself by pausing and magically healing yourself back up to full health instantly. Same goes for curing radiation and broken limbs. In hardcore mode, your followers can die permanently, and so you have to fight a little more intelligently. Survival elements like ammunition having weight, which forces you to carry only a limited amount, and having to eat, sleep, and drink to stay alive add plenty of role playing depth.

  7.Better atmosphere

  Everything in Fallout 3 just feels so unrelentingly bleak, grim, and depressing. There are some welcome attempts at humor here and there, but its far from being a barrel of laughs! The capital wasteland is just a very oppressing atmosphere that felt kind of like the game was crying out "Woe is me!" as it constantly called attention to its super-depressing visual design and miserable atmosphere. I don’t suppose its an accident that one of the first –and still most popular Fallout 3 mods – brightened the skies, and replaced that perma-green vibe with something a bit more uplifting.

  On the other hand, the tone of New Vegas is far more in line with the originals, especially Fallout 2. The inevitable seriousness of the post-apocalyptic world is frequently juxtaposed with deadpan humor, bizarre situations, and upbeat atmospheres, which makes it a richer, more interesting world. The Mojave is also just filled with more color and life, as evidenced by the Vegas strip, so it feels more invigorating to explore. Add in the Wild Wasteland trait, which adds even more weird content and cultural references, and you’ve got something that can become positively freaky…

   

  So there we have my Top 7 reasons why I think that Fallout New Vegas is really better than Fallout 3 – written, I will confess, in a deliberately provocative style (in the hope that you will take me to task in the comments!) 

  Am I talking rubbish? Come on you Fallout 3 fan boys – prove me wrong!