Can Fallout: New Vegas Make Fallout 3's World More Cohesive & Enjoyable?

[Bizzquik]

A funny thing happened as I started playing Tale of Two Wastelands for the first time: I couldn't wait to get out of The Capital Wasteland and into New Vegas.



I remembered how everything in New Vegas ties into itself somehow; very few quests are unrelated to the main narrative and/or its many factions (large & small).  It was that pull - everything affects something else - that kept me excited throughout my run back in 2010.



Fallout 3, by contrast, is more episodic.  On one hand, this form of questing can lead to more variety.  On the other, it can make each quest seem unnecessary - as they are unrelated to anything else.  A great example of this is The Superhuman Gambit ('Antagonizer versus Mechanist') quest.  Its enjoyable enough, but - to my knowledge - doesn't tie into anything later.  Ulimately the only barring this quest had on my game at all was in increasing my level (XP points).

Fallout: New Vegas does questing differently.  In New Vegas, many quests - even side quests - send you to a destination to complete an objective...where a character in turn gives you a new quest.  Take "Sunshine Boogie," for instance.  The Boomers sent me to Helios One to get solar arrays - and that dovetailed with the quest there.  Or take "My Kind of Town," which tasks the player with picking a new sheriff for Primm.  To complete the quest, I could simply give a robot new protocals...or see the game world, meet new people, and come back later.  In each of these two quests, the game world and its narrative are one.

The disjointed nature of questing in Fallout 3 annoyed me back in 2008 because the only sense of progression was in leveling up my character...and searching for dear old dad.  Moreover, the companions in Fallout 3 don't have a lot going for them, either; they're just...there...to carry stuff and shoot.  They may as well have been impersonal robots.





All this is to say I'm trying to find ways to tie Fallout 3 together with itself; to stop feeling so random and disconnected in its adventuring.  To this end, I'm bringing F:NV's character "Boone" and modded character "Russell" with me back to DC.  I hope having companions with me that I actually *like* will help make the experience more enjoyable, if still not cohesive.



Are there any other ways to make Fallout 3 feel like a more unified experience?  Perhaps there are more role-playing aspects to Fallout 3 that I've missed?



Would love any tips, etc.  Thanks!

[Bandy]

I don't know, I'm having a lot of fun with FO3 as a first time player, my only other Bethesda experience being TESV which IMHO was exceptional.  I cannot compare it to FONV, or FO4, but will soon. 

I overlook any issues with FO3 knowing that things improve with later titles as CPU/GPU power improved. It has its own charm for me because I commute into and work in DC.  While it doesn't mirror the region with high fidelity, it is close enough to recognize bridges I drive across and buildings I regularly walk past.  I get a very eerie sense when going into the Metro. 

I've heard people complain that DC doesn't have hills/mountains surrounding it, but in fact the first 'foothills' of the Appalachians (Catoctin range for one) is only 46 miles to the NW.  Consider that the Capital Waste map condenses the area for gameplay/resource reasons.

Enjoy it for what it is, an early game that sets the stage for others to follow.  Role playing is all in the imagination, rather than being spoon fed.

 

 

[Damianwolff]

Really depends on what you are expecting as a player, as the two wastelands offer very different experiences. To travel from the DC Wasteland to the Mojave means to go from Mad Max or Waterworld to Postman. 

The experience of Fallout 3 is expemplified in that moment when you leave the Vault for the first time, and see a burned out, empty landscape. If that moment alone grips you - you are going to have a good time in Fallout 3.

Does FNV make F3 a better game? In terms of mechanics - yeah. In terms of the story, the plots and the characters - it has practically no effect. I'm glad it doesn't.

One thing that can change your experience somewhat, tie Fallout 3 more together, is the Factions optional mod, which adds a reputation system with the different people of F3. I don't think it has been updated in a while, and it still needed some improvement last time I checked (Tenpenny's instahated you foreva if you stopped Burke's plan, but maybe that's the intention), but it is still worth a look.

[Bizzquik]

Thanks for the replies.

I completely forgot about the TTW_Reputation.esp plugin.... I have that installed!  That's exactly the kind of thing Fallout 3 needs.  I'm anxious to see how it works in its current state, and hope the team can find time to keep pluggin' away on its development.  (See what I did there?  ...I'll see myself out now.)

[RoyBatty]

TTW is in full on development right now.

[TAWM]

OP to be honest what you see as a strength in Fallout New Vegas I found to be it's greatest weakness.  If you don't care for the storyline in New Vegas...and I didn't and still don't to this day the whole trying to tie everything in together aspect in the DLCs and various quests ended up leaving me not caring at all.  While Fallout 3 couldn't have been better tying in the DLCs amd other quests to the main game...collecting and selling slaves to the Pitt directly, people coming and going from Point Lookout to the Capital Wasteland, being able to tell the outcast or brotherhood about the alien space ship and have them show up and that being it's own quest, or even getting the regulators to work with the Brotherhood of Steel with the Broken Steel DLC in helping either fight the enclave and/or distribute aqua pura. 

 

At the end of the day the DLCs and side quests being almost completely disconnected in fallout 3 vs all interconnected in Fallout New Vegas I actually perferred how fallout 3 handled things.  If you really don't care about the main quest line in New Vegas and hate Westerns New Vegas by itself is not a very fun game compared to Fallout 3 in my opinion.  The best part of New Vegas to me was Old World Blues.  Honestly I think Obsidian did a little bit of over kill in linking everything together in New Vegas.  A happy medium between the two would be better in my opinion.   

[brfritos]

@Tue

That depends of what you want from your game. If you want a combat fest zone, with compartmentalized quests that are independent of each other and 99% of the time don't have ANY influence in the game, FO3 is for you.

If you want a real RPG experience, where the whole game is interconnected, your actions reflect on this world and the emphasis is in story telling and you still have some combat, then FNV is better.

I like the later much more, but the important thing is the two games provide a degree of freedom to the player decide their actions.

 

What I really HATE is FO4. It does what you asked: try to be a shooter, glued with a RPG; tried to be small combat zones, interconnected with the whole world; tried to tell a story, but this story don't reflect in the world.

Is A PoS because it don't decide what it wants to be, a good RPG, a good shooter or a good story.

It doesn't succeed on either IMO.

Look at the guns for example. Everyone praises combat in FO4 and it should, because Bethesda don't have the most stellar reputation when dealing with. It's a huge step for them to be honest.

But in reality every weapon looks like each other in the end and you don't have a distinctive feel with each one.

No wonder that most mods are guns, even the animations are replaced, so each gun have it's own feel and strengths.

 

In FO3 Eugene and Vengeance are very different weapons. Eugene mows enemies slower than Vengeance, but at the same time it cripple their limbs, basically rendering them inoffensive. Vengeance on the other hand kills them very fast, but oh Lord... that thing eats ammo like it's candy! You have to carry TONS of EC packs. LOL

NV is the same thing, Brush Gun is different than AMR, that is different from a LMG, that is different from a plasma rifle, that is different from melee and so on.

In FO4 you suffer heavily in the beginning because of this, it doesn't matter what weapon you have, they are all weak.

It's a shame, because there are goods ideas in FO4, but they are terrible implemented.

 

And Bethesda needs to abandon this "wasteland feel" that plagues their games. Common, it's more than 200 hundreds years in the future, humanity should have progressed a little with things like basic sanitation, medicine, organized society and so on.

 

[Risewild]

[quote=brfritos]

 

Look at the guns for example. Everyone praises combat in FO4 and it should, because Bethesda don't have the most stellar reputation when dealing with. It's a huge step for them to be honest.

[/quote]

And it's always important to notice that the combat in FO4 wasn't even made by Bethesda, it was made by id Software (the same studio that brought us the newer Doom game... DOOM.).

[TAWM]

[quote=brfritos]

snip

[/quote]

The problem with New Vegas is your actions don't really affect the world much at all.  Fallout 3 is guilty of this to but New Vegas is just as bad if not worse.  In Fallout 3 you have three dog giving the news on Galaxy News radio about the decisions you make in the game and he comments on you based on your Karma.  If you nuke Megaton the game world does change by having TenPenny Tower open up to you with you getting to live their, Three Dog will comment on Megaton being destroyed laying the blame at your feet, your father will chastize you in Project Purity about it and if your wandering the wasteland you can get the Megaton survivor encounter where they attack and try to kill you for blowing up megaton.  Than their is the whole regulators chasing after you.

 

By contrast if you just decide to kill everyone in Primm for shits and giggles nothing will happen to you.  Since New Vegas doesn't really give a shit about your choices unless it involves the NCR, Legion and House.  Fallout 3 in a lot of ways has more connected world then New Vegas it's just not done via quest since not everything is tied up into NCR vs Legion in fallout 3 like it was in New Vegas.  They even carried that over to the DLCs which was a bad move IMHO. 

 

That's why I love Old World Blues and can't stand Honest Hearts.  Old World Blues is more like Fallout 3 in regards to how it does story by having it being separate but having somethings that tie it together with the main game.  Not only that but it had a twilight zone type feel to it and not the western feel of New Vegas which is a good thing because DLCs should stand out from the main game.  Honest Hearts on the other hand is essentially cowboys and indians and the main quest line it involves back story from the main game.  It's not different it's just more of the same.    

 

In reality what it boils down to in the way Fallout 3 and New Vegas handle things is really due to the setting.  In Fallout 3 it's about morality and making life choices whether to be good or bad.  In New Vegas it's really all about NCR vs Legion vs House.  For New Vegas it makes sense since the game is a western and you just have different factions fighting over who is going to be in charge of the area.  Fallout 3 is a true post apocolyptic game in that their is no real order and most groups don't really care what other groups are doing.  So what makes sense for New Vegas doesn't make sense for Fallout 3 and vice versa. 

 

As far as society being rebuilt after 200 years goes...look if your going to have brain dead moron tribals devolving to the point were they can't even speak English anymore as being perfectly acceptable in Honest Hearts and in the lore of Fallout series than nuclear holocaust still causing chaos 200 years since it happened preventing people from rebuilding to me is perfectly reasonable. 

 

[TAWM]

[quote=Risewild]

 

brfritos wrote:

 

Look at the guns for example. Everyone praises combat in FO4 and it should, because Bethesda don't have the most stellar reputation when dealing with. It's a huge step for them to be honest.

 

And it's always important to notice that the combat in FO4 wasn't even made by Bethesda, it was made by id Software (the same studio that brought us the newer Doom game... DOOM.).

[/quote]

 

Sweet!  I didn't know that.  I haven't played Fallout 4 yet but that is something I'm looking forward to now that I know id Software was involved.