“I think fans debate what their favourite one is, which is understandable,” Howard says. “I think it’s great that you can have a lot of factions and the fans say, ‘Oh, I like one or two or three or four, or Vegas or 76’ now, and so I think that’s really healthy for a franchise where people can say which one is their favourite.”
I’m sure Todd’s head canon is that there’s more of a debate than there actually is.
No one is seriously pushing 76 in that discussion.
ive seen it. they are out there. its wild but its true
…
These are not serious people
oh theyre serious. 20k hours into the game, level 10,000. absolute madmen
76 is a fun brainless Fallout multiplayer. I’d rather have a real Fallout MP instead of 76, but I can’t lie and had over 100hrs of fun.
It’s absolutely fun with friends, we put in around that many hours and then haven’t played it much since, but for the $10 we paid. It was well worth it.
A lot of folks really live 76. And it’s the only game in the series that offers them what they like, so why wouldn’t they?
Dude, all the Fallout community is is debate.
We’re just doing our favorite thing: picking a side and trying to solve a conflict between multiple factions.
That’s… Wait. That’s the whole premise of all the games dammit.
Bingo
Bango
Bongo
Bongo bongo bongo I don’t wanna leave the Congo
im not sure what this comment is trying to get at, ive never seen a game franchise more debated than fallout. ive seen every game labelled as someones favorite, including that awful brotherhood of steel game
Just about any game is someone’s favorite, but that doesn’t mean there’s a lot of debate. Fallout 4 and 76 appear to have reached an audience much larger than the rest of the series’ usual standards for copies sold, so the sense I get is that if you’re calling one of those your favorites, you most likely haven’t seen most of the rest of the series. I think 3 and 4 get a lot of criticism that may go too far, but the long and short of it is that the consensus is that Bethesda’s entries are not among the strongest in the series.
that may be your opinion but ive seen people who love fo3 but cant get into new vegas, who love 4 but cant get into 3 or new vegas, who love 76 because its online multiplayer and therefore not as big on the single player entries. theres endless debates about it. you may think its consensus but its not as clear cut as you think
hell theres fallout 1 purists who think that game is the ONLY fallout game
I’ve been on gaming forums for a long time, and I honestly can’t recall a single time I saw anything resembling an actual debate that people might like 3 more than New Vegas. I have seen debates of 3 vs. 4 and New Vegas vs. 1/2, but I’ve never come across a debate between people who’ve played more or less the entire series and preferred Bethesda’s games. Maybe that’s you, but this would be the first time.
I’ve absolutely seen people who like 3 more than NV. Hell, I might be among them.
Well you folks have been pretty quiet for 15 years. What’s the argument for 3 over New Vegas? Or 3 over 1/2?
Well, take this for what it’s worth since I’m personally of the 1 > NV > 2 > 3 > 4 > Tactics/76 > BoS persuasion, so our preferences probably overlap and I might not be the best person to speak to why some prefer 3. But here’s my best take at why some people might genuinely prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas.
1. The world is more exploration-friendly.
Fallout 3 drops you near the center of the map, uses fewer invisible walls, and basically lets you run in any direction from the moment you leave the vault. Some of those design choices come at the cost of immersion and a clear sense of progression, but for players who just want to wander and explore, 3 scratches that itch.
New Vegas, by contrast, funnels players through a “racetrack” loop that eventually leads you to the Strip, then sends you outward to deal with the major factions. This structure reinforces the narrative pacing and supports the game’s strong story design, but it does reduce the sense of open-ended freedom.
2. Fallout 3’s dungeons are more extensive.
Most of 3’s dungeons are longer, more combat-heavy, and offer more substantial looting/scavenging opportunities, including bobbleheads and unique gear. While New Vegas has brilliantly written locations (Looking at you Vault 11), many of its buildings amount to one or two rooms, largely due to the game’s famously short development cycle.
For players who enjoy the simple rhythm of clearing out big spaces and gathering loot, Fallout 3 offers more of that classic “delve and scavenge” gameplay, even if its combat system is fairly “mid”.
3. The atmosphere feels more traditionally “post-apocalyptic.”
This one is entirely subjective, but many players feel that Fallout 3’s bleak, bombed-out wasteland better captures the classic “nuclear apocalypse” aesthetic. New Vegas has richer world-building, themes more aligned with Fallout 1 and 2, and a more realistic sense of a society rebuilding after centuries, but its tone is often more eccentric than apocalyptic. For some players, that makes 3 easier to get immersed in.
For the record, I still personally believe New Vegas is the stronger game. (Outside of “atmospheric reasons”) Most of the things Fallout 3 excels at are also done just as well (or better) in Oblivion and Skyrim. But what New Vegas does well, player agency and narrative depth, is something very few non-Isometric CRPG games even attempt, and even fewer do it even half as good. So comparing the two within their respective genre “spiritual siblings”, NV is a exemplary title within its peers, while 3 is kinda just “one of the post Morrowind Bethesda” games (where Skyrim seems to reign as the champion).
Still, Fallout 3 delivers the “meditative, exploration-driven gameplay” that Bethesda built its reputation on from Oblivion onwards. For players who fell in love with that formula (especially those who entered the series with 3), New Vegas can feel like a departure from what they enjoy about the series.
And honestly, that’s one of my favorite things about Fallout: every game is a departure from the last. Fallout 2 shifted the tone dramatically from Fallout 1. Fallout 3 reinvented the franchise entirely. New Vegas reworked 3’s skeleton into something more narrative-focused. Fallout 4 emphasized crafting and building. Fallout 76 went multiplayer. No matter which game is your favorite, each one brings something unique to the table.
Anyway, I could talk about this stuff until the actual apocalypse, but I’ll end it here. But hopefully this helps explain why some people genuinely prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas.
I think it’s just new Vegas stans are very vocal lmao
As someone else who prefers 3, I think that it’s more fun to explore and generally has a better atmosphere. New Vegas has better writing but the world feels empty. 3 more fun to actually play. Honestly, I’d probably take 4 over NV for the same reason.
1/2 I haven’t managed to get into. At all.
ETA - I was also never really interested in the wild west as a setting, so NV has a bit of an uphill battle from the start.
Not quiet at all. Lots of people loved 3. I’m old enough to remember when NV was the red headed stepchild of the series. I don’t think you’ve picked up on the fact that New Vegas is a cult hit. It didn’t become “everyone’s favorite “ for close to a decade at least after its release.
“What does FO3 have over New Vegas”? Well at the time New Vegas was regarded as a cheap knockoff of FO3. It didn’t do much to innovate from FO3 and played like more of a Fallout 3.5 which people resented. It also had a less bleak and more “Zany” tone to it than FO3 did which people weren’t a big fan of. Also by that point Bethesda had a bad reputation for releasing buggy games and NV somehow managed to be buggier and more broken than any Bethesda game had been, and what’s worse is it was never even to this day fixed as several major components of the game remain completely broken without fan patches.
I honestly prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas slightly. It has better level design, vaults, and the world feel more alive.
I just tend to stay quiet about it because people get really toxic when you say anything that could be seen as a criticism of New Vegas.
ive seen it quite a bit. but i think 3 fans are too busy starting up another character to bother with debating 😂 definitely a quiet crowd but not totally invisible
I’m not saying Metacritic is the end-all be-all, but it does confirm the most commonly held opinion about the popularity of the modern games. You may think that there is a real debate here but that just isn’t the case. 4 and 76 are pretty firmly the less well received of these games.
Tactics was fun.
Agree but I wish it was more like the newer XCOM games.
Makes you think of what could have been, if they’d done the new Fallouts as tactical/Turn Based RPGs, rather than first person shooters - although the new Wasteland games do a pretty good job of filling that niche.
Idk, The Elder Scrolls’ fandom debates a lot too. There’s still people fighting over whether the Stormcloaks or the Empire were right in Skyrim, or whether Morrowind or Oblivion are the best in the series
the civil war questline, even in its unfinished state, might be my favorite in any game due to the sheer amount of debating about it 15 years later
“Look guys! 16x the detail!”
“Oh good its shot at 24 fps, just like on console launch!”
Wow and hardly any loading screens.
despite all the shit I’m still playing my bethesda games…well, only new vegas and elder scrolls but still
I’ve recently come around on Fallout 4 - although it does need a massive mod list to make it good.
Does he still carry the guilt from the metacritic fiasco?
That’d assuming he ever had any guilt over it
guilt about what exactly?
well avellone claims obsidian was so poorly managed even if they got the bonus it wouldnt have helped the devs at all, most likely going directly to the obsidian execs pockets (same execs who denied more time on the game)
je sawyer blames himself for not focusing on playtesting and bug fixing until way way way too late in development
so im not sure why todd would feel guilty about it at all. obsidian still got paid in full and the fans got a great game out of the ordeal (after they fixed the bugs at launch)
They never fixed the bugs lol
believe it or not the game actually ran worse than it does now (unmodded)
like, you couldnt even play the game
Oh yeah I’m aware of that. It’s just that foundational game mechanics are still broken to this day lol. Like the game never really reached a polished state, without mods.
theres still a door to a shack that is like a 50/50 chance to crash your game everytime you enter 😂 and its part of a quest
Obsidian is one of the better dev houses
And found out filmset scenarios are filled with tricks that make it seem one thing to viewers whilst being something else, just like 3D worlds in games.
