I literally have no idea. I think I thought it must have been a mound of rubble or something. When I got a quest and had to go to Megaton I was like... ahh... that's what it was...



I remember feeling the same! Also, I find playing Fallout 3 and NV without any music, just the sound effects, made the whole thing SO scary! (OT, New Vegas, Vault 11 with no music... terrifying!)



I love moments like that! Ahh I kinda wanna return to Fallout 3 now... but New Vegas is my baby ATM haha

I prefer New Vegas in basically every way. The thing I like most is that the devs really understand firearms in NV much more than Bethsoft did in FO3.

You can use iron sights, there are different types of ammunition, and overall the weapons handle better. You can also reload your own ammo.

Not everyone in NV is a scavenger with no long term thoughts on how to move ahead. At least in NV there are factions who want to control the area and try to rebuild it.

I also thought that more or less all of the DLC in NV was more enjoyable and liked the addition of faction reputation.

The only thing I liked about FO3 more was that there was more to each individual area in FO3 than in NV.

A man after my own heart! I agree with everything. I don't understand why NV is rated lower in most places than FO3... NV is practically superior, but that's just my opinion.

Would have loved Iron sight in FO3, but I don´t care for the mods...

Yeah I thought so too but there are plenty of people who don't. I think that part of it may be the bugs encountered in vanilla New Vegas, they were pretty drastic and took a while to fix. It is worth mentioning that this was Obsidian's first time using this engine so I think they did pretty well and worked hard to fix the glitches.

People seem to have forgotten the glitches that FO3 had, some of which even broke the main story right out of the box. I had to wait a couple of weeks just to get through the story because when you meet a certain character and escort them to Rivet City, the quest breaks and the character doesn't open a permanently locked door when she's supposed to.

What I loved about Fallout 3 was that it was epic in a way no other game I played before or after was/has been. The collapse of Rock Ridge and crossing that bridge behind Liberty Prime go down in history as the absolute best moments in gaming for me.

True about the followers and the way they were done, but don't agree at all on the DLC - loved it all, most especially the first (Anchorage, although I know it wasn't popular with many) and last (Mothership Zeta, which I have yet to beat). I died more times in those two DLC's than any game in its entirety. Also, the additional easter eggs each DLC added used to be a trademark of Bethesda games - loved that game period!

I also loved New Vegas, with the exception of the game ending glitches that kept me from ever experiencing the Hoover Dam battle in any of the games I started. If they have fixed the issues now, I may go back and replay it. As it was, I pitched it onto a shelf and gave up after the third time all my saves were deleted and the game crashed. If it had any epic moments like Fallout 3 had, I never got to play them through and that was disappointing to me. Still, the game was Awesome while it did play. Never got to do a single DLC in New Vegas because every time I loaded one it crashed the game.

I didn't really like following Liberty Prime. I felt like it was stealing my thunder when it could have been a huge battle between the BOS and the Enclave troops, instead it was like an cheesy old killer robot flick.

I can agree that the DLC was fine but I preferred NV's DLC...it just felt more fleshed out. The first FO3 DLC really hoses you by not allowing you to collect several pieces of cool equipment that was used during OA. I used the Gary glitch in unison with the quartermaster glitch though and returned with tons of cool gear.

Following Liberty Prime across that bridge on the 360, with the controller almost jumping out of your hand with each explosion - I was screaming with excitement that I could barely hold the controller - yeah, Liberty Prime stole all the fighting from the player, but even just walking through the exploding cars and helicopters, pieces flying through the air and that controller jumping out of my hands - AWESOME!

I also used the Gary Glitch to come back loaded up with gear, had to make three trips using Fawkes as a carrying mule to bring it all back to Megaton. LOVED that DLC, but agree with you that we should have been able to carry more loot back without using Gary's body for it. I had to reload saves a LOT to finally cross over with it all because I kept missing Gary's head, he'd slip down somehow and the transporter would send me back before I could right him.

I replayed that DLC a lot, loved it! Any game that can kill me that many times so I can barely cross one segment of it - thumbs up. (which also includes the Deathclaw Sanctuary in New Vegas - when I finally made it across there alive I was like, "WOO HOO!" Shrieking and screaming - my husband doesn't game, I thought he was going to have the ambulance called or something, lol).

Yeah it is a difficult glitch, especially since it requires perfect positioning of the body to work and you don't get to find out if you pulled it off until AFTER you've put in 3 hours of work into the DLC.

Exactly. I don't understand why your inventory on your person has to disappear on the trip home, would like to have had that game on the PC and seen if that could be fiddled with to allow returning with loot (or placing a "Gary Hanger" inside the teleport so he'd be hanging in easy reach, lol).

I missed Megaton with my first character too. I almost always turn in 90 degrees and head left or right in any Bethesda game. I never entered the Imperial City on my first Oblivion character either.

Tsktsk. It´s a golden rule in any game to go to the nearest town directly to "re-group" and get equipment. Fallout 3 is no different

Rules are made to be broken, my man. This applies to video games as well as to life. If there's a "Golden Rule" of video games my brain is hard-wired to do the exact opposite.

I missed Megaton my first time as well. After leaving the vault, I turned around and looked back at the big hill it was built into. Naturally I had to climb up to see what was there. That led to a firefight with the raiders living on the raised highway that runs to the north. Of course you can never kill just one raider, so the next thing I knew I was at the end of the highway, looking down at the ground far below and wondering if I could jump down onto the wreckage halfway down. It hurt, but I made it. So there I was in the middle of the map, just wandering around.

GAAAAH! You must have put all your points into strength! I found myself on that bridge and kept dying and dying - it was loaded with Raiders. But when I finally got past the truck blockade I was blinded by a glitch in the fabric, missing textures or meshes that created streaks in the screen that couldn't be seen through. In trying to seek cover from getting shot to death I fell off the bridge - did not live through it.

I finally ended up swimming across the river below and then just drinking Rad-X as soon as I got my hands on some. (there is some in a sunken boat in the river)

(the same missing meshes thing happened in Minefield the closer I got to that back corner).

I generally agree with that, but I´m no savage. I do have standards, "my man"

So do I. That's why I don't immediately go to the nearest town.

I go to the nearest town after the tutorial of most RPGs because I overload myself with supplies that I need to sell during said tutorial.

Basically it is both because I need to unload supplies and also because I like to see the world.

I forgot about that. I always end up with tons of stuff that I need to sell asap. So there´s my main reason to immediately go to the nearest town, Pseron. Sorry I didn´t think of that before. I do, as you know, start new characters with alotta time in between and I tend to forget stuff that´s far away...

Most of my characters are the same way. After finishing the Oblivion and Skyrim tutorials my characters are typically hauling around a truck load of loot. If they go wandering around they cannot pick up anything else they find. The FO3 tutorial does not usually result in my picking up too much stuff, so it varies there. It just depends on how much of a greedy packrat whatever character I am playing is.

The FONV tutorial OTOH, got my characters almost no carry able loot. So they felt more free to wander. My most recent character used up all of her laser ammo in the tutorial though, so she had to go back to town to buy more.

I actually enjoyed that the NV tutorial was so brief. For one it allows you to start new games without having to run back through a massive dungeon or sit through a 4 minute cutscene that can't be skipped.

I hate those 4 minute cutscenes at the beginning of a game that cannot be skipped! Mass Effect 1's drove me insane, because once you created your character it instantly threw you into that long, dragged out scene, and you could not see what your character really looked like until it was over. That is when I would realize I did not like something, and had to start the game all over again, and again, and again, until I finally got a character whose appearance I liked.

On one hand I enjoyed FONV's brief tutorial as well. As you said, it did not waste your time, and quickly turned you loose into the wild west. You even had the option to skip out on it at any point if you wanted. But OTOH, I do love the tutorial dungeons in FO3, Oblivion, and Skyrim. For me they are an opportunity to get to know my character better, before they are let out into the world. So to me they are kind of like a meet and greet between my and my character. The loot they pick up is just secondary (but who can resist picking up all that cash waiting to be spent?).

To be honest, the brevity of FONV and Morrowind's tutorials is what makes them, in my opinion, the best I've evern played (with the notable exception of God of War II's tutorial, which was absolutely awesome); you're given the controls, you're given something to do and then you're booted out into the wider world and told; 'It's your adventure, go have fun in the big playground you have.'

Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Oblivion's tutorials were very good for the first run, but after that they quickly got boring. I was pleased that Oblivion and Fallout 3 had the option to rejig your character right at the exit, so you could start a new game and go straight into the world from then on, and I was surprised and maybe a little disappointed that Skyrim didn't give you that option.

Oh, I know. Made my Shepard on the assumption that they'd rebuilt his skull a few times. He now looks half-melted which was the plan, but he also has this scar on his mouth I didn't know about. His skin is fake dangit, he shouldn't have scars!

But Fallout 3 is definitely worse than that. The whole tutorial has these character-build bits scattered throughout but you won't get a feel for any of it till you're out of there. Also, you can't be a ghoul which makes me a sad puppy.

After that, my opinion is more neutral. What I saw of it was quite charming really, but the world felt constrained and samey when you go towards the old city center. I've also never been good at first person shooters and melee is definitely less capable than in Oblivion which put a bit of a damper on the fun. I never got too far I'm afraid. And my current laptop refuses to run beyond the main menu.


Edit: I like Morrowind's tutorial the best since it exactly gives you the feel you should have. A prisoner dumped on Vvardenfell with no clue or goal beyond building a new life and if you want to make some money, could you deliver this package?

Oblivion's has the downside of heavily frontloading all the plot into it and the rats breaking through the walls bit never made sense to me.

Skyrim's is quite similar to Oblivion but just a tad better in my opinion. The cutscene is nice the first time around and Bethesda knew people would want to skip it the second time around so it autosaves for you (as a real save, not one labeled auto-save) the moment you pop off the wagon in front of captain tryhard and Hadvar. They again frontload the big bad, but at the time it feels more like a random rampage from Godzilla than a "the world is doomed but you go save it by doing these things. Also, I die now."

And finally, having an npc to yell the tutorial at you makes it more immersive than having a sudden pop-up of 'instead of stabbing this rat, try throwing a fireball at it!'

If anything, Skyrim's tutorial only falters in the overly linear castle-part and the lack of a remake option at the end. At least Riverwood is optional.

Whoa, what??? I had no idea Daddy James changes skin color depending on which race we choose at the beginning.

Of course, I've only chosen Asian (Cho Zen Wan), Hispanic (Marge N. Overra), and Caucasian (Major A. Holl) as pure 101 beginnings. Vicious (Af. American) was started via the Alternate Start-Roleplayers mod. I think unless somebody chooses a black person at the 101 beginning, the difference with James's skin color is not noticable perhaps.

On topic, I love Fallout 3 of course. I don't know if I've ever said this before in these forums, but I would never have tried it if I didn't learn it's set in and around the D.C. area, which is where I live and grew up. I always assumed it was a game in which there is some sort of constant war going on, which didn't sound fun to me. Once I learned it's set in alternate universe of the D.C. / Maryland / Virginia area, I had to then try this game.

At least try it. If I hated it, that's fine. $20.00 down the drain, no biggie. But since it's set in the area I live, I figured I'd at least love to see what Bethesda did.

But I did not expect we begin literally at the beginning of our characters' lives. Or that the game is packed with humor, especially the G.O.A.T. and other portions of the opening tutorial had me rolling. And it doesn't end there. Especially during my early days with Marge and Cho, I'd spend so much time just laughing. At all the silly '50s-era ads which promise how great life is, even if you're headed into a Vault, it's like the Vault-tec folks wanted potential vault-dwellers to feel comfortable about what should be a horrible thing. Stuff like this makes me crack up. Even though it really shouldn't, I suppose.

There's the stuff NPC enemies say, which is just as funny sometimes as in Oblivion. "It's go time!" ... "Like shootin' fish in a barrel!"

The possibility for roleplay is also just as varied as it is with Elder Scrolls. And the game has also struck me with other emotions as well as laughter. When I left the vault for the very first time for instance I actually cried. Because I was seeing my homeland all torn up.

Having started playing again after a fairly long break from the game, I have a few notes.

1. I am enjoying the hell out of the atmosphere. From the dusty wasteland, to the gloom laden interiors of crumbling buildings, and the utter darkness of The Metro, the atmosphere is just on point in Fallout3. Fallout4 may have better graphics and some interesting mechanics, but it doesn’t have as much to offer in the atmosphere department, IMO. I had forgotten just how much that impacts my playthroughs.

2. Weapon/armor/clothing degradation is just too rapid for my taste. Not a problem if you are playing on pc because you can mod this to be slower or nonexistent. I definitely think removing it was a good move in Fallout4, though honestly, I wouldn’t mind it being a thing if it were slower. I just went from Megaton to The Mall running the first leg of “Following in his Footsteps� and “Galaxy News Radio�, and man, continuously having to repair my gear annoyed me a bit. I’m not sure if a character that didn’t have a decent skill level of repair would even be viable in Fallout3. Sure, you can pay people to repair stuff, but that would burn through early game caps pretty quickly.

3. I remember the Metro being a lot worse than it is. I actually enjoyed wandering around down there this time around. Poking around in nooks and crannies and finding Chinese assault rifles and such is pretty satisfying.

I had a lot of fun with Fallout 3. It's a pretty-close-to-ideal distillation of the modern Bethesda formula (I guess Skyrim would be the ideal). Basically, you're presented with a wide-open world where you could go anywhere and do anything. That's probably the best way to approach the game, really: as a sandbox. And with mods, the fun is potentially limitless.

The Capital Wasteland is visually quite striking. I will admit, however, that I didn't find it as compelling a location as, say, the Mojave Wasteland. The experience in Fallout 3 is much more centered around the player: you're the star, and the world revolves around you. New Vegas, on the other hand, is more centered around the setting. There are bigger players than you, and you're all part of an even bigger system that you can change but never quite escape. I personally prefer this, but that's just my opinion.

What's more important is that Fallout 3 demonstrated the viability of the franchise. I played the very first game in high school, and the second game in college. In both cases, it was fairly difficult to find other people who knew about the game. Now, you can buy Fallout merchandise at mainstream clothes stores, which is not something teenage me would have ever imagined. Plus, New Vegas wouldn't exist without 3, so there's that, too.

Fallout 3 is on my list of game to import Blood Raven into in the near future. Not sure when, but it has been on my mind for a while now.

I could also do without the item degradation. Not just in Fallout 3, but in Oblivion. It just get tedious after while. In Oblivion I have learned to hotkey my repair hammers, and just repair everything after every fight. It does not add to the experience. It is just a chore that makes me tired of the game sooner than I ought to be.

Khajiit-- Yes, the atmosphere is great. Another thing which adds to atmosphere is the way everything is so haphazardly slapped together in this game. Looking at Megaton, or any raider camp, Beth really got creative. Concrete cinder blocks here, with half-broken metal scaffolding there, and so on. It's all put together in such a way that the world feels sort of temporary. A solution is needed. We need a wall, for instance. Well, we can't go to Home Depot (there is no Home Depot), so what's the next best thing? What have we got on-hand which we can use to build ourselves a wall?

Maybe I'm weird but I like the weapon/gear degradation, and have chosen not to mod this out. It makes the world feel quite fragile. Something would be missing if this were suddenly gone.

Then again, do real guns fall apart so quickly? I have no idea. Probably not....

I don't have much experience with guns (I used to go trapshooting with my dad), but I doubt it. A lot of games with weapon degradation mechanics tend to exaggerate them to raise tension. Guns do need maintenance, but they typically don't fall apart that quickly. Maybe the radiation messes them up?

As Well Tempered mentioned, guns do need maintenance. As long as a gun is decently maintained (cleaned, oiled) it should last for a long time. I guess maybe your head canon could be that between the harsh environment of the wasteland and maybe the ammo gaining some terrible corrosive qualities with age, guns just wear out faster. This wouldn’t explain why a sledgehammer would break after bashing up 100 lightly armored Raiders though.

Real guns do not fall apart like they do in the Fallout games. Nowhere close. And standard upkeep does not require scavenging parts from other guns. Just wiping it clean and putting oil on it to prevent rust.

It seems to make sense if you figure the guns are pre-war and have been laying there forever. Though in that case, it may be somewhat questionable for them to work at all.

Exactly. I was trying to come up with a way to excuse item repair as basic maintenance, but with the whole cannibalizing like items to repair a given item, I just couldn’t. Doesn’t make sense any way you slice it.


Indeed.

When I made a special assault rifle for my Lone Wanderer Cho (who lives in The Citadel) I did boost its Durability (whatever that stat is called).

Because I figured here we have THE Citadel, which I assume has some sort of access to better materials, better scematics, whatever. Maybe they've retrieved FBI archives and other classified documents, whatever. So in that case, I did make his gun last longer. I also added a respawning "Gun Cabinet" which adds a new Citadel Assault Rifle every 3 days. I figure those Scribes or whomever are constantly working to improve my character's Lone Wanderer experience, since he IS the only one who actually goes above and beyond in most cases.

But for the average weapons we find in the Wasteland, those are all mutts. They're piecing crap together with crap. I know nothing about guns, but as Clavier says, they do need frequent maintenance. That's the angle I like preserving, even if degradation speed is a bit untruthful.

It is a bit annoying that they degrade so quickly, otherwise I don't mind it too much actually. Game gotta game, you know? Adds some tension as mentioned as well as something to always be wary of. At least it makes more sense when armor degrades as it constantly takes hits and always needs repair.

Game gotta g4m3!

I wonder where Badda-Tish (OP of this thread) is. Always fun to bump a thread which was made in the early days of this site ...