Is Fallout 3 really THAT bad?

[devious goon]

So recently i got back to playing New Vegas, and i was thinking about buying Fallout 3. But i've seen lots of people say it's trash. Can somebody explain why the game is so bad?

[Afterblowme4/20/69]

Continuity of lore from the original Fallout games is one issue individuals have with Fallout 3. I think it's an okay game, but I feel that New Vegas has an overall better gaming experience if you are trying to decided between the two games.

I think there are a lot of ways that this question can be answered and you will probably get several different explanations. I suggest buying Fallout 3 on sale and trying it for yourself. You may end up being pleasantly surprised.

[Bansheebutt]

The main problem is it seriously retconned a bunch of lore (that bethesda didn't even write) in order to fill out a bestiary and provide identifiable White Knights of Goodness and Dasterdly Doers of Evil for the purpose of their non-sensical plot.

Ignoring the fact it's called fallout, it's a fun action-adventure game.

[Chevalier of Possums]

Fallout 3 is my favorite game of the series so far.

[Kirby]

Fallout three is more fun imo, especially once you add a few mods xD

[talgaby]

As a game, it is incredibly fun. But if you try to actually care about anything that involved writing, like plot, dialogues, or– gods forbid– the lore, it is terrible, like most TES games.
As a first-person dungeon crawler and looter it is damn good though.

[Gralzeim]

It's a solid game. Yeah, so the plot doesn't mesh perfectly with some earlier games, but Fallout 2 didn't mesh perfectly with Fallout 1. And Fallout Tactics didn't mesh with Fallout 1 or 2 very well either.

I wouldn't really say they retconned a 'bunch of lore' though. Previous games didn't make a mention of the east coast, which left it wide open for interpretation.

It's still a Fallout game, as much as Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics are Fallout games. And yes, some folks say anything that isn't Fallout 1 isn't a Fallout game. Oi vey.

Is it the same writing as the original? No, but that doesn't automatically make anything since Fallout 1 non-canon. (Fallout 2 wasn't from the same team as Fallout 1, even)


The only reason people complain about Fallout 3 is because the story doesn't perfectly mesh with the original game, which to the minority of die-hard old-school Fallout fans is heresy.

[Vita, Mortis, Careo]

Fallout 3 really is that bad. It was not canonically faithful. It was not faithful to gameplay. It was not faithful to the GURPS-inspired system. From top to bottom it was a massive failure; a true abortion of a game. Interplay hit hard times, basically had a fire sale on their IPs, Bethesda snatched up a legendary IP for cheap and then turned it into an Elder Scrolls clone. Beth-drones love it, of course. I personally can't stand the game.

[OH]

It's not "BAD" it's just aged poorly

[Vassago Rain]

Yes.

[Delta 1038]

Gameplay wise? I'd say it's pretty good and the level design is fun which is Betty's strong points. Writing as previously mentioned, not so much.

[Maki]

The main issue I have with Fallout 3 is that it lacks gray morality. It boils down to a battle between good-versus-evil with no subtlety or nuance. As a result, I personally felt more pigeonholed into playing a particular role, rather than in New Vegas where your actions will invariably tick off somebody, so you might as well play the way you want to play. In New Vegas, no one is absolutely right. You are frequently forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. And this makes your decisions more thought-provoking and important, rather than "good path" or "bad path." You can have your own goals in mind and use the factions against each other to achieve them.

Some people obsess over how the game breaks continuity with the previous games. I don't really care about that, but I do think the overarching themes of Fallout 3 - patriotism, colonialism, romanticized efforts to rebuild the country, etc. - are too "East Coast" for my tastes. And it will probably be even more hamfisted in Fallout 4, since that will be set in Boston. To me, New Vegas' wild west spirit better embodies what a post-apocalyptic America would actually be about. In that sense, it's interesting how it's probably a reflection of the two development teams' physical locations, with Obsidian in California and Bethesda in Maryland.

Also, it's shameful how Fallout 3 was basically left to die by Bethesda. For a game that came out in 2008, it's in pretty deplorable condition compared to other games from the time which run just fine. It has poor compatibility with current Windows, forcing players to rely on fan fixes just to get it to run. New Vegas has its share of issues, of course, but at least it runs out-of-the-box. Mostly.

I liked Fallout 3 in the time I played it, many years ago, but there's no doubt in my mind today that New Vegas is the better game. The one thing Fallout 3 arguably does better than New Vegas is the Vaults themselves. They are, put simply, more memorable. There's more of them, for one, and the twisted self-contained stories each one contains are quite haunting and well-told. Vaults are a bit downplayed in New Vegas, although Vaults 11 and 22 are great examples and places like the Ultra-Luxe help fill in those gaps.

[Vassago Rain]

Originally posted by Delta 1038:

Gameplay wise? I'd say it's pretty good and the level design is fun which is Betty's strong points. Writing as previously mentioned, not so much.

Gameplay wise, it's worse than bad.

[Bansheebutt]

It managed to maintain the attention spans of teenagers with xbox 360s at least.

[Vita, Mortis, Careo]

And despite all of those platitudes Howard and his team went on to butcher Fallout canon and reskin the game as an Elder Scrolls clone. It was and is a deplorable action meant to cater to action-oriented gamers. And so the soul of Fallout was sacrificed on the alter of the almighty dollar.

[NeuralKitsune]

I think is a good game, so good that I could't easilly get into FONV. I felt really imersed into the game, loved some characters hated others and so on. I was always thinking how this place was before the war, how people lived.. it reallly catered this apocaliptical feel. But that was when it was first released and I couldn't care less about FO1 or FO2. Now it's an old game, the movements are jerky, the textures are poor, and it still stuttering even on powerful machines. Of course you can mod it, but it will break the first time experience. Other aspect is...well.. it is not a FPS game, so luck counts and it annoys as hell.