FALLOUT 3 V. OBLIVION

Oblivion with mods is so much fun. I've sank countless hours into that game. That said, vanilla Oblivion wasn't amazing, but it wasn't awful either.

However, I only beat the main quest in Fallout 3 (and the Eden thing), then proceeded to cheat a bunch using the console.

Oblivion by far.

If Oblivion was a person I'd want to punch it in the face. Yay, characterless acres of forests and dungeons that all look the same and have exactly the same stuff to offer!

They both suffer from the exact same strengths and weaknesses. They are both massive, incredibly detailed worlds that... aren't detailed enough, strangely. I prefer Fallout 3 because I prefer the post apocalyptic setting, but this is my major gripe with both (also I suppose a little more FO3):

"Oh wow, what is this? Some sort of secret radio broadcasting tower? Awesome. Hey, it's giving off a signal, neat. Oh, a secret door! Wow this is amazing! Hey an issue of Guns and Bullets and a Mini-Nuke! OK, I turned off the signal. Now what? Nothing? WHAT?"

Fallout 3 gives rewards like a Platformer would give rewards. "Hey, they found a secret. Give them some ammo for their best gun." Great. This is an RPG, there should be story rewards, things that work themselves into the game somehow. NPC A interacts with NPC B fifty miles away. There is none of that in FO3 and Oblivion.

Bethesda is great, but at the same time they kind of suck. They work so hard but always end up not working hard enough. They also have terrible art direction. I've put a lot of hours in Oblivion and FO3 and really enjoy them both, but the thing I come away with is a feeling of nearly-achieved-greatness-missed.

Kudos to them for putting so much work into their games, but I can't count how many times they have totally missed an opportunity for a really interesting quest or story segment that they have set themselves up for.


This is a really awful post, but I don't want to rant too much so I haven't been overly specific. I think, perhaps, the biggest let down is the lack of closure. After I beat Oblivion I literally felt no different than before I beat it, despite the work I had put in. Even once I realised the gravity of it all, the only thing I felt was "Oh, there's no more."

Maybe it's a problem inherent with open-ended worlds, but there is just some sort of let-down associated with the story, which is in its ideal form the end result of all that level-building in side quests, just petering out.

They are both great and they are both such a letdown at the same time. Also, Bethesda needs to farm out their entity animation, seriously. They have terrain down (again, there is no artistic value to it but it sure is green/browny grey) but the animations are so abysmal that they totally ruin immersion. Look at Modern Warfare's animations; that is what a game is capable of. Most of the time in Falloblivion it doesn't even look like you're in any way interacting with the game world in any way despite running around hacking things to death on it.

Oh well *shrug* I guess Fallout 3 is better because it doesn't have a shitty magic system.

I wish I could try some of those mods, but I'm playing on my 360 since my computer can't run psx emulators without crashing.

Speaking from my experience with both games unmodded, I prefer Fallout 3. Granted, they are very similar. Maybe FO3 had the advantage of taking place in a real world location (D.C.), but the locations feel a lot less arbitrary than Oblivions scattering of towns and dungeons.

I enjoyed both games, but they both suffer from becoming ridiculously easy. In Oblivion, I never had trouble mowing down any enemy that came my way with an enchanted broadsword that restored my health as I hacked away, and in FO3, once I got to the Enclave, I contented myself with blowing away everyone instead of listening to their instructions. At least there were instances where I was actually scrounging for ammo or stimpacks.

The Pitt was very disappointing. Even more so since I'm actually from Pittsburgh and the Pitt wasn't very much like Pittsburgh at all, especially compared to Fallout's DC which is pretty damn accurage.

Double post, sorry; it was totally my bad this time, although you really shouldn't be able to hit submit twice for the same post and have them both go through!

I only scavenged for food and toilet water in the beginning because the game was really difficult for me at first (endgame I have like 300 stimpacks). Especially when you don't know the ins and outs of combat. I remember the first time going into the supermarket and dying. A lot. At this point in the game I had a pistol and maybe some random melee weapon, so I planned a route of attack after dying a few times. I'd sneak past the first few guys and kill the guy with the hunting rifle first. Yeah I could have ran, but it's much less time consuming attempting to get through a place the first try rather than run, heal, go back into said place, repeat. Didn't the monsters respawn too?

I got really good at combat outside of vats, but that's because my weapon skills eventually got to really high levels. But yeah repairing armor sucked. I'm sure there's a mod that makes it so armor doesn't degrade but I'm done with the game now so too late. :(