I've no need to watch the video, since I had a blast with FO3, so I already have the opinion that it's better than many people say.

It's not better than I think. I never hated it to begin with.

I did, however, rightfully criticize the gaping plot holes that the main story had, Todd Howard's innate ability to fail to grasp what made Fallout, well, Fallout. (Violence is funny!) Something he actually said, while failing utterly to understand that the over the top violence in Fallout was only a very tiny facet of what made the original games memorable. I will say that 3 did a much better job of properly conveying how menacing the unknown can be, and was much better in that regard than 4 was. Point Lookout was actually a pretty decent DLC and the best one of the 4 released, in my opinion. However, they also disrespected the bomb heavily, a trend that continues heavily to this day, something that the original rightfully always handled as an extremely serious issue. (For phooey's sake, you'd think that a world that had a giant nuclear war wipe the planet practically clean would have some serious reservations about the subject, but no...no. Atomic weapons are funny! An idea they have continued to reinforce with adamantium encased rebar.) They DID tie together SOME skills that could be considered extraneous.

But what they DID do well was create a wasteland that felt immersive, threw some interesting stories in, had a decent radio station, (although 3Dog can get annoying after prolonged exposure,) and remembered that some people like some actual roleplay in their roleplaying game, which is another reason why 4 got so much hate, because it was like they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Look, I'm not here to shame you if you like your Fallout as a brainless shooterlooter set in an alternate post apocalyptic 50s inspired universe, but I will say that there's a significant portion of the fanbase that can't and probably won't get behind that idea, aside from spinoffs. To them, Fallout is an RPG first, and an FPS second...and to me as well.

Its difficult to compare fallout 1/2 to 3 because of direction and technology. Old games where limited do to the times of the tech. As tech improved so did the games open up. It all depended on how creative the dev's where in making next gen games. So ya comparing old graphics to todays graphics pixels looks night and day difference. Current gen kids can't understand what us dinosaurs went through decades of gaming evolution.

My beef with Beth is long before Fallout 3. Its started with oblivion even possibly with the final works on morrowind when Todd Howard took helm of Beth. The original idea of oblivion wasn't what we got. But in those day that became the current trend. Lots of promises and a crappy product delivery. He removed content like details lore, story, RPG in favor of more graphics, shooter style mechanics, dumb downed RPG content for every sequel. When I preordered my collectors edition oblivion I knew I got screwed with the crappy game after playing it. I knew then Fallout 3 at that time of development was going to be ruined. I and others at the time made sure dev's herd our concerns and in that time many of our discussions where closed and ignored some even banned.

Back to Fallout series, Todd doesn't care about what original fallout fans want. He cares about making money using the ip to maximizes profits. So he dumbs down these game to target more diverse players instead of focusing on core fans.

Core fans suffer, Casual fans get an ok overpriced game.

This is my opinion so if you don't like it, Too Frekin bad. This is from many long years of being active in beth forum for 15 years and seeing the trends coming and going with many games over a 30+ year period.

Have a good day :P

Wolf

This is what I found wrong with it.

It's probably a good game. Just not what I expected from a Fallout game.

EDIT:
It's probably about how much you liked the first, and what you expect from the second.
e.g. I liked Blood and I liked Blood 2 (bugs aside...). To me, both were good games. But I can see how someone who absolutely loved Blood, would hate Blood 2. The setting just wasn't the same.

Here I strongly disagree since I think that those changes made the latter games inferior to Fallout 1 & 2.
In matters of coherence, both distinctions were essential and they added a better flavour to the games as RPGs.
Again, Energy weapons shouldn't have become available easily since they were developed late before the Great War, and because they were cutting-edge, I thought it was natural that they should be rare, and even scarce outside of cities, barracks or other military/police armouries, active vaults etc. Their research in Fallout 1 was side by side with the lore and quest progression to what happened right before and after the War, etc. They were almost literally "alien". The bad thing was that the skill was useless at the beginning but then, I feel it is understandable, because if going into the Wasteland with this skill, the character has to use other skills (support or other weapon skills) to survive.

In matters of RP, I strongly support the vision of Fallout 1&2 concerning those choices, where I understand the changes were made in matters of gameplay to avoid frustration for the player.

Precisely my thoughts! XD

Well, I think its a bold claim, since F1-F2 skills are in my opinion very flawed. Many skills are useless or made useless (throwing, traps, steal, first aid, sneak, gambling). I can go in detail to everyone of them, I made gambling specialized character who hoarded tons of caps, but it was boring to play; first aid tagged character, with skill restoring non-% of max HP value, which made it point wasting and useless after level 10; throwing with very little grenades/knives around etc. And ofc everyone's favorite reload-stealing, which was referenced by Interplay themselves in Cafe of Lost Dreams.

I think the same of small/big gun skill: theoretically big guns are obviously better, except if there are magic quirks added, like ability to score criticals/chain reaction/anatomy with small guns. Fallout 1-2 has such quirks, however they are not dedicated to small guns, so why someone should use small guns? Synergies could help: small guns could spread to all light-weight guns, big guns - to heavy guns, and energy - to all weapons that are energy based, regardless of weight or size. But synergies are not in F...

About energy guns, have you done serious energy builds? In stock F1-2 laser is useless, as it comes late and when it appears - most carry metal armor, metal cancels 80-90% of it or have very high HP. Plasma is okay, but comes also late or early and blocked - and electric is an excuse because using just plasma is boring (still very nice animations). In late game, if sniper+high LK+better criticals are picked, gun choice does not matter much.

Now, if energy weapons would really kick HPs like you said, then yes. But they don't! Only really late game they do, but late game gives perks that make them not very relevant. The FNV added some perks to boost efficiency with small arms, which upgraded its usefulness. But its still somewhat funny that pistol could be as deadly as a minigun. xP

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

I give you a better one.

Play Fallout 3 and find yourself!

Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk.

By the way GOG, are we ever going to see spoiler tags around here?

Watched the whole thing...Jon's video that is.
"Fallout 3 was big and empty enough" - you've no idea how empty...
"...a great success as a sequel to the classic Fallouts" - no, it's not.
Either he fails to notice the obvious issues or sweeps 'em under the rug, I can't say for sure. To each his own, I guess.
To sum it up: [Intelligence] So you fight the Good Fight with your voice.





You can't fix bad writing. That's the rotten core of the game. It touches everything from characters to dialogue to world design and all things in between.
200 years have passed since the Great War, yet there are resources around every corner, in every blasted place, be it 'major' settlements or a tent in the middle of nowhere. These people can't be bothered to clean up where they live at least. Most of them serve no purpose. They have no jobs, no hobbies, no activities to speak of. You'll never see a Megaton inhabitant outside the town scavenging. There's just a single brahmin eating what appears to be dirt. And above all, a bloody bomb in the middle. Instead of rebuilding/developing Springvale for instance, they chose to build a town around an undetonated atomic bomb.
Let's ditch this town and see what else the Capital Wasteland has to offer. Rivet City, a settlement developed inside an aircraft carrier, which according to falloutwikia is the largest, most developed and scientifically-advanced settlement. Were they even trying?
Arefu, a shanty town of sorts built on a collapsed highway and terrorized by vampires. Big Town, a small settlement (hah) inhabited by complete morons. Little Lamplight, where kids rule and those over 16 are thrown out - "No mungos allowed!". Evergreen Mills, raider haven with a Super Mutant Behemoth trapped in a cage. Canterbury Commons, a small town which has become a constant battleground for two costumed "super humans"...The list could go on.
This is a joke. Not much else.
As Dr.Atomic put it a while back... this isn't Fallout, this is Fallout: The Theme Park Version

Haven't watched the video.

That said, as a Fallout fan, Fallout 3 is a disappointment. Does some things right and is a better Fallout game than certain titles... but still a disappointment.

Judged purely as an open world RPG and their next game after Oblivion (which is what I'm luckily able to judge it on)... BIG improvement.

New Vegas takes the cake as the best first person open world Fallout title though. I don't see that changing anytime soon based on their current trajectory with open world RPGs (more like open world action games at this point).

Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

I actually hadn't seen the video. Which is a shame - I had a blast watching it and it's going to cut the post short, since it covered a lot of the sentiments I would express and a lot more eloquently and concise to boot.
In my book Fallout 3 is one of the best games ever made (the best, easily, once you throw mods at it) and it's in large parts due to the points raised in the video, especially the way the map is structured and all of the small implicated stories, most of them hidden or up for interpretation. The basic narrative is simple, yet you dig a little deeper and you find little things. How for example the inhabitants of Megaton, the seemingly plucky underdogs and apparent good guys during Power Of The Atom, are actually a bunch of bastards. You look even deeper and see hints in the scenery, for example when you scavenge through Minefield and find a bedroom in one of the houses, two skeletons embracing on the bed and as loot two syringes of morphine on the nightstand. The game is full of these moments and it constantly paints this savage picture of humanity's worst aspects on the canvas of the former inhabitants of this world's final moments of despair - only to present you with a beautiful vista every now and then, like the scenic overlook after Vault 101, reminding you how utterly temporal and ultimately inconsequential you and humanity really are.

The game certainly has its shortcommings, I wouldn't want to deny that. But the journey to the bullshit ending is one of the most beautiful desolation I've seen in gaming and a fitting sequel to Fallout.

Fallout 3 was made for a different audience. If it hadn't been called Fallout 3, I never would have even wanted to buy it. The fact that a member of that audience thinks it gets unjustly maligned does not surprise me, nor does it do anything to change my mind. NV, being a successor to 3, still caters mostly to the other audience, although apparently not enough to garner it good reviews. Thus I don't agree with some of the points in the "Garbage" video, either. Arcanum was a better successor to Fallout 2 (and not just because it had a similar engine and look). I need to finally stop caring about Fallout, but it's really hard to ignore my favorite 2 games of all time.

I watched it a while back while putting chairs together. I found that he often cherry-picked examples of the game offering the kind of roleplaying people found lacking in it. Also he kind of tosses aside the poor writing by focusing on overall storytelling, which wasn't the real problem. The problem was dialog.

That said I do agree in general that Fallout 3 is a fun game. It's just not as well written or RPG focused as it should be compared to 1 and 2 (and now New Vegas). Some people can get over that and play it as a fun but derpy open world shooter while others will always hate it for not being what they wanted it to be. Same for Fallout 4 honestly.

Requisite link to the first part of Shamus Young's five-part breakdown of some of the many failures of the game's setting, story and characters.