I had never played Fallout 3. My entry into the Fallout Franchise was Fallout New Vegas. And if you know anything about the discourse surrounding these games, the general consensus is that New Vegas took Fallout 3 and improved on everything that F3 lacked, including the classic RPG chops that Obsidian is known for but Bethesda has never really excelled at.
And I really didnt want that to be the case. Obviously it will always be somewhat unfair to compare a game to the one that came after on the same engine, being able to skip one of the most time consuming aspects of Game development. I really wanted to be able to say that whilst lesser, F3 had its own strengths and the world is big enough for both but good god did that end up not being the case.
Fallout 3 is just Oblivion with Guns, as they say. The long, dull, overlong opening that did not really even make me sympathise for any characters or a struggle or anything was pretty bad but on a first playthrough is even slightly tolerable. The character writing and quest designs seem so dull. The combat is awful, even worse than New Vegas and far too easy. This would be fine usually, the combat in New Vegas kinda sucks too but it had the good core of story and role playing to keep it interesting. I cant speak to the Super Mutants, they are all hostile to me, maybe they explain later if they have some sort of leader like the Master or Tabitha commanding them to shoot humans on sight but I will never know.
Time and time again all Fallout 3 seems interested is combat, combat combat combat. By the time I was 4 hours in in New Vegas I had helped repel a gang from a town, helped a rebelled prison and then double crossed them to ingratiate myself to one of the major factions, learned a lot about the man who shot me, flirted with a Gay quartermaster, gotten my first companion in the form of an alcoholic merchant, had some combat yes, in the form of the various expertly designed and placed gang ambushes and met Caesar's legion in Nipton, and their atrocities.
By contrast 4 Hours in in Fallout 3 I went through a long dull intro, reached Megaton, disarmed a NUCLEAR BOMB with 25 explosives skill, raided a super market filled with raiders for a wasteland guide (that quest was at least semi interesting), did a dull quest about some fire ants and spent fully 25 minutes trying to find the entrance to the stupid chevy chase district (oh silly me, of course you had to use a specific metro station) and everything else was just shooting at everyone and everything.
More than anything, Fallout 3 is far too wasteland-y for its own good. This is a world where the bombs dropped centuries ago, people should already be in the process of having rebuilt SOMETHING. Where are the farms? I didnt see any. "The water is irradiated, no crops would grow" then they'd all be dead mate, there would not realistically be enough blamco mac and cheese lying around for hundreds of years. Even beyond the incoherence of the world building its just DULL, a world filled with raiders, orcs, monsters etc without interesting settlements beyond a handful is a boring world. Its a world filled not with characters but target practice. And again, the combat sucks, so its not even compelling on the level that a Stalker Game would be (which even that had better RPing).
Ill admit I did not get very far, maybe this game has good things to offer but whatever they are, they're certainly not apparent in 4 hours of playtime, and I have much better things to get on with. What a slog.
Edit: Also worth mentioning the Bethesda brand Random Encounters TM. Unlike finely crafted combat encounters designed to be interesting and challenging you just suddenly get hit with a random encounter of three cows or radroaches or whatever, utter Filler
Edit 2 : In Columbo Voice : "Oh and just one more thing", this game has really insulting sound effects/melodies. Like when you leave the vault after the intro thats good enough on its own, but they dont trust you to feel that on your own so they add a cringe inducing little (I think its called leitmotif or something like that? might be the wrong term) jingle so you feel awe. A bunch more obvious, tell-you-how-you-feel sounds that insult your intelligence
And I really didnt want that to be the case. Obviously it will always be somewhat unfair to compare a game to the one that came after on the same engine, being able to skip one of the most time consuming aspects of Game development. I really wanted to be able to say that whilst lesser, F3 had its own strengths and the world is big enough for both but good god did that end up not being the case.
Fallout 3 is just Oblivion with Guns, as they say. The long, dull, overlong opening that did not really even make me sympathise for any characters or a struggle or anything was pretty bad but on a first playthrough is even slightly tolerable. The character writing and quest designs seem so dull. The combat is awful, even worse than New Vegas and far too easy. This would be fine usually, the combat in New Vegas kinda sucks too but it had the good core of story and role playing to keep it interesting. I cant speak to the Super Mutants, they are all hostile to me, maybe they explain later if they have some sort of leader like the Master or Tabitha commanding them to shoot humans on sight but I will never know.
Time and time again all Fallout 3 seems interested is combat, combat combat combat. By the time I was 4 hours in in New Vegas I had helped repel a gang from a town, helped a rebelled prison and then double crossed them to ingratiate myself to one of the major factions, learned a lot about the man who shot me, flirted with a Gay quartermaster, gotten my first companion in the form of an alcoholic merchant, had some combat yes, in the form of the various expertly designed and placed gang ambushes and met Caesar's legion in Nipton, and their atrocities.
By contrast 4 Hours in in Fallout 3 I went through a long dull intro, reached Megaton, disarmed a NUCLEAR BOMB with 25 explosives skill, raided a super market filled with raiders for a wasteland guide (that quest was at least semi interesting), did a dull quest about some fire ants and spent fully 25 minutes trying to find the entrance to the stupid chevy chase district (oh silly me, of course you had to use a specific metro station) and everything else was just shooting at everyone and everything.
More than anything, Fallout 3 is far too wasteland-y for its own good. This is a world where the bombs dropped centuries ago, people should already be in the process of having rebuilt SOMETHING. Where are the farms? I didnt see any. "The water is irradiated, no crops would grow" then they'd all be dead mate, there would not realistically be enough blamco mac and cheese lying around for hundreds of years. Even beyond the incoherence of the world building its just DULL, a world filled with raiders, orcs, monsters etc without interesting settlements beyond a handful is a boring world. Its a world filled not with characters but target practice. And again, the combat sucks, so its not even compelling on the level that a Stalker Game would be (which even that had better RPing).
Ill admit I did not get very far, maybe this game has good things to offer but whatever they are, they're certainly not apparent in 4 hours of playtime, and I have much better things to get on with. What a slog.
Edit: Also worth mentioning the Bethesda brand Random Encounters TM. Unlike finely crafted combat encounters designed to be interesting and challenging you just suddenly get hit with a random encounter of three cows or radroaches or whatever, utter Filler
Edit 2 : In Columbo Voice : "Oh and just one more thing", this game has really insulting sound effects/melodies. Like when you leave the vault after the intro thats good enough on its own, but they dont trust you to feel that on your own so they add a cringe inducing little (I think its called leitmotif or something like that? might be the wrong term) jingle so you feel awe. A bunch more obvious, tell-you-how-you-feel sounds that insult your intelligence