Oblivion compared to Fallout 3

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Parmenides

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Just want opinions on comparing these. I played Oblivion, but thinking of getting Fallout 3. What did you like in Oblivion that wasn't in Fallout and vice versa? Are some of Oblivion flaws gone? Are things in Fallout less repetitive than Oblivion? What did you like better?

That sort of thing... just want to hear about Fallout 3 comparison having known Oblivion.

Also interested in hearing about the modded experience too.
 
Likes:
Fallout 3's dungeons have more thought into them.
Fallout 3 looks slightly better.
Fallout 3's wait system allows the player to see the weather while waiting (very slight improvement over Oblivion's).
Quests are generally better.
DLC is better.
I think swimming underwater had better effects than Oblivion.
Robotic friends are good friends to have (requires a mod for this).
Quantum Nuka Cola.

Dislikes:
Bland landscape/textures, but that goes with the theme.
No peaceful walks in dense woods like Oblivion, again the theme.
Still same engine with only a few improvements.
Still horrible animations for player and human NPCs.
AI is about the same as Oblivion's.
VATS slowdown is super annoying. Luckily there are mods for that.
Still no waves for water.

Game has a strong modding community. Modding is quite similar to Oblivion so Oblivion modders don't have a difficult time transitioning to Fallout 3, and vice versa.

I found myself coming back to Oblivion after ~100 hours of Fallout 3.
 
The biggest turnoff for me with Fallout 3 is that there is next to no character interaction and most of the NPC's are shallow. The only town of any substance in the game is the first one you come across, the rest are just a clump of people. When talking to people, you'll find next to no depth to any of there character, there are only a couple characters that have any real appeal to them.
 
i think in oct there is a GOTY edition coming out, it will have fallout 3 but all the addons. imo the game is too new to have what 4 paid addons already?
 
I played Oblivion once and wasn't that interested in it after I "won" the main quest. Then I played FO3 and I wasn't even interested in the main quest until I nearly ran out of things to just go see...what's over that hill. The combat in FO3 is what I liked better than Oblivion. Once I had taken some time and getten some decent weapons adventuring was fun not tedious. In oblivion it always seemed like no matter what I did to improve my cahractor the dungeons never for any easier (mob leveling). I don't know if they took it out in FO3 or heavily modified it, but level 10 to 20 just seemed about right in FO3.

After having spent a lot of time on FO3 I've fired Oblivion back up and I'm finding that enough time has passed I have forgotten most of the stuff and by specifically not doing the main quest (and forcing myself not to level) I am having a blast. I just took over the theives guild at level 3 on normal difficulty.
 
I've been a Fallout fan since Fallout 2.

Still, I find myself going back to Oblivion.
 
dj_2004 said:
Fallout 3's dungeons have more thought into them.
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I'd say the same is true of the terrain.

And considering that you'll be spending pretty much the whole game either walking around outside or walking around inside, this alone makes Fallout 3 twice as good as Oblivion. I found Oblivion to be unbearably monotonous (just about on par with Daggerfall...); while Fallout 3 is still bound to heavy reuse of assets, it manages to inject some character into most places.

If you liked Oblivion, I'd highly recommend it. As previously mentioned, all five DLC packs will come with the GoTY edition, so you might want to hold out 'till October.

dj_2004 said:
Still horrible animations for player and human NPCs.
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I find this baffling... They were awful in Morrowind, and just as bad in Oblivion, and still just as bad in Fallout 3. Surely they can tell just by looking at them, or have at least read a few reviews...

The lead animator must be fucking the CEO. It's the only viable explanation. It's just incomprehensible that they'd keep putting up with it for any other reason. What they really ought to be doing is trying to poach some animators from Ubisoft Montreal (the guys behind Assassin's Creed and the last four Prince of Persia games).
 
I wish that they could have put more towns in Fallout 3 like Oblivion or the original Fallout games. I understand its a wasteland but they could have put more thought into it, Megaton, Canterbury commons and Big Town are so plain and dull.

Also the NPC interaction isn't quite as good as Oblivion imo. It seems rushed, Bethesda seriously needs to hire more voiceactors , using the same ones through and through really takes you out of the game.

Other than that I don't really have that much to complain about.
 
I liked Fallout 3 for the most part, but (in my opinion) oblivion is a much better game. There were a lot of things that irked me about fallout and pretty much stopped playing because of it. I may go back to it sometime in the future though
 
Thanks, keep the feedback coming! Holding out til GOTY might be good

qwerty30, what were those things?
 
I really didn't care for the Fallout 3 side missions. I really enjoyed the Mage's Guild, Fighter's Guild, Thieve's Guild and Dark Brotherhood side arcs in Oblivion and I never found anything that was quite as engaging in FO3.
 
I thought FO3 was a much better, though buggier, game. I didn't care for the Oblivion 'Superman' style of game play where 1 man can do everything. Yes in Fallout 3 you could do everything but the storyline supported that and it just made more sense because of the equipment and science fiction elements. I'm a very traditional role player and don't think you should be casting arcane spells in plate wielding a 2 handed long sword, pickpocketing ogres and healing yourself all at the same time.
 
Parmenides said:
Are things in Fallout less repetitive than Oblivion?
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Nope. If you can't deal with repetition, then stay away from FO.
Repetition is what the game is all about. It's simply not entertaining anymore after the initial oh and ah has worn off (which happens quickly).
 
Fallout 3 is the most fun and most time I've had/spent playing a single game, excluding FPS mp games like COD4, on any platform. I definitely think if you like Oblivion, you will like FO3 since they are very similar being the same engine/developer/genre. Short list of things I can think up in a few minutes writing this post.

Good:
  • Almost exclusively non-linear gameplay, letting you do the MANY side quests in your own order. If you ever hear someone say FO3 is too short, they went turbo through the main questline and neglected to explore the world and find all the side quests.
  • A wide variety of character setups. You can be stealth/melee or sniper. I think Oblivion is very similar with just skill leveling, I'm not sure. Here, you get points every time you level that you spend in the 15 or so skills.
  • Perks. Some are cool, some are garbage.
  • Massive world. Do yourself a huge favor (I wish I did) and don't look at any maps on the internet. 50% of the fun of FO3 is the exploration of the wasteland and finding new stuff. Moreso, DON'T use the Fallout Wiki to look stuff up, it also ruins half the fun.

Bad:
  • Voice acting. Individually is great, but like someone said, limited actors and hearing the same voice, albeit slightly different tone, really breaks the immersion sometimes. Maybe they could have had some Bethesda staff read some lines?
  • Running animation when you're going diagonally is horrendous, but I rarely play 3rd person.
  • Very Hard isn't very challenging once you are level 20 with some powerful perks and high quality armor/weapons.
  • It has an end? This is one of few games I've actually completed, beginning to end. Normally, I get bored half way and move onto the next new game that's come out.

What draws me to it the most is its setting. It's not set it fairytale land with wizards and the like, this is post-modern with a mix of futuristic sci-fi but not overboard like Halo. It has GUNS, that use BULLETS. You use chems/drugs to heal yourself, not "Cast Heal."

The modding community is solid, and there is a few "essential" mods you should look into getting, like one that adds 6 or 7 containers to the house in Megaton (if you decide to keep it) and Fast V.A.T.S.

To OP, since you sound like you've played Oblivion, this might not be a problem, but when I firsted started playing, I didn't have much fun. I was new to the genre and hadn't played a real RPG in 10+ years. After talking to my friend a bit (he has something like 160 hours logged on his gamesave) I decided to make a new character and it was MUCH more fun, knowing the basics. The "tutorial" you get doing the intro to the game is good, but the main game is much more...overwhelming.

So yeah, a great game that I recommend for sure. If it's still half price on Steam, buy it for sure!

edit: I'm not sure what was repetitive in Oblivion as I didn't play it more than an hour, but never playing through FO3 did I ever go "not THIS again" doing the multitude of side quests. Besides killing people and doing their bidding then getting paid, what else is there? Start a band then try to hit it big? This is a FPS RPG, it sticks to its strong points.
 
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I was a huge fan of Fallout 1 and 2, and looked forward to #3, but thought it was a huge letdown. FO3 felt like a near carbon copy of Oblivion (which I thoroughly enjoyed) with a fairly lame post-nuclear storyline. I agree completely with those who pointed out the repetitive nature of FO3's quests and side quests... boring!! Maybe had I never played Oblivion I would have gotten more out of FO3. As it stands, to me at least, FO3 was a poor, somewhat lazy effort to copy Oblivion's formula.
 
I played Oblivion for quite some time (770+ hours) before getting my hands on Fallout3. Fallout3 wore out for me much quicker than Oblivion even with many added mods and DLC's.
I'm probably a bit bias towards Oblivion because my Girl friend is involved with working on many mods for the game and I'm the guinea pig. There are many times more mods for Oblivion, but Fallout will start catching up soon.
 
some of the side quests in fallout3 you couldnt do i think if you did some others first. also vats was an option ......didnt have to use it........though i liked it. even if you did some side quests the main quest was way to short. like others have said........could of used more towns to explore especially on the north west side of the map. everything seemed to be on the south side of the map or southeast side.
 
krameriffic said:
I really didn't care for the Fallout 3 side missions. I really enjoyed the Mage's Guild, Fighter's Guild, Thieve's Guild and Dark Brotherhood side arcs in Oblivion and I never found anything that was quite as engaging in FO3.
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Agreed with this. I just started playing Oblivion again, hopefully this time I can get through the main story. Oblivion was just such an amazing game because there was SO much more to it than the main story that I had too much fun playing through the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests, playing through the Arena matches, all the side quests... I barely got to the main quest.

On the other hand, FO3 was the complete opposite for me... went straight through the main quest, because all the other side quests just didn't seem too interesting. I did some hear and there, but usually it just wasn't as entertaining. I also haven't gone back to the game after completing it. Maybe I will when all the planned DLC's are out and I've finished with Oblivion/other games.

IMO both are definitely worth playing, but overall Oblivion was more engaging.
 
I wish that Fallout 3 had something akin to the Dark Brotherhood side quest arc. That was so engaging for me I actually liked it so much that I beat that arc before doing the main quest. Oblivion was much more engaging for me but Fallout 3 was ok I just didnt think that it was near as good as Oblivion was.
 
Parmenides said:
qwerty30, what were those things?
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For the most part it's just minor annoyances. Character animations are horrible, the level cap was low which is perhaps my biggest gripe, once you beat the game you were done (this has been fixed in one of the DLC's), the environment is very bland (I understand their need to make it post-apocalyptic but they could of mixed it up a little bit), the characters for the most part just felt very stale and uninteresting (I never really felt compelled to help NPCs like I did in oblivion).

The weapon smithing in the game annoyed me too for some reason and the weapon textures look like ass.

These are a few of them, although like I said.... I will probably pick it back up in the future and finish it. Oblivion suffered from a lot of the same problems, but being how old of a game it is, it never really bothered me. I thought FO3 would of been more polished than oblivion was
 
I think Oblivion is better as far as depth is concerned, however, it was too deep for me so I enjoy Fallout 3 more. Every time I play Oblivion I never get past about lvl 15 because I get too busy in my "real" life and can't be bothered spending so much time working on my virtual life in Oblivion. Fallout on the other hand I really got into, just starting another character now.
 
Tudz said:
I think Oblivion is better as far as depth is concerned, however, it was too deep for me so I enjoy Fallout 3 more. Every time I play Oblivion I never get past about lvl 15 because I get too busy in my "real" life and can't be bothered spending so much time working on my virtual life in Oblivion. Fallout on the other hand I really got into, just starting another character now.
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You talk about it like it's an MMO :eek:
 
I suppose I will be a voice of (some) dissent and say I prefer Fallout 3. Oblivion is a great game, no doubt, but the story never grabbed me long enough to play for more than a few hours in. Fallout 3 had me from beginning to end. I even loaded up a save prior to the ending (360 version with none of the DLC) and started doing more side quests. Their is some very interesting stuff going on out there that you could easily miss. Started a new game planning on being evil, but got distracted by all the other games that got neglected during my first play through!
 
I find both of them to be classics in their own right -- they definitely share things like engine and fairly similar basic mission structure, but I think the combat mechanics, setting, story, campaign, etc. create huge differences that could polarize players to prefer one over the other. I however love them both!

Both have sucked away countless hours of my time, and with all these new content packs for Fallout 3, I think I'm about ready to start it up again.
 
I really enjoyed both games, The only thing i could say that one had over the other was that oblivion seemed to have more stuff in it to keep you playing for 100's of hours. Fallout's Side quest's were just that, little side missions. Whereas Oblivion's were like mini campaigns.
 
I really wanted to get into both games, the same thing happened with both.
I started playing, and found myself completely bored. There is absolutely nothing driving you to complete and move forward in the game. They rely completely on the players own sense of exploration.

Personally I need some better story or characters to get me to be interested with such a slow paced gameplay.
 
CalQdeX said:
I really wanted to get into both games, the same thing happened with both.
I started playing, and found myself completely bored. There is absolutely nothing driving you to complete and move forward in the game. They rely completely on the players own sense of exploration.

Personally I need some better story or characters to get me to be interested with such a slow paced gameplay.
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You mean you like to be taken by the hand and dragged through the storyline? I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I love the Call of Duty series, but it's not as if it's hard to find something to do in either of these games either...
 
Citizen86 said:
You mean you like to be taken by the hand and dragged through the storyline? I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I love the Call of Duty series, but it's not as if it's hard to find something to do in either of these games either...
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I agree, I never found a shortage of things to do. I can definitely say that Oblivion in the beginning felt a little overwhelming in that it really didn't tell you *anything,* but within five minutes you've found a bunch of quests to lose some hours in. Fallout never gave me that feeling.

All this talk and the new DLC is making me itch to start it up again...
 
I got lost in Oblivion and had a hard time remembering what I was doing. The quest tracking in Fallout 3 is better, or I just paid more attention because the story was better. I gave up on Oblivion pretty quickly (same with Farcry 2, which was much the same) but I played Fallout 3 all the way through and bought an expansion.
 
This is a tough one.

I'd have to say Fallout 3 because it's leveling system is vastly superior to Oblivion's. Also, Oblivion's combat gets extremely boring after awhile, while Fallout 3's only gets very boring :p
 
I may be the only person that played Fallout 3 before Oblivion. I only played Oblvion because I heard it was similiar. IMO Oblivion is a better game. The guilds you become involved with are nonexistant on FO3, which is a shame because they add so much depth. The side quests just feel less submersive, like your only doing them because they are there. Oblivion makes you feel like you are part of something bigger.

Oh, there's nothing at all like the Arena quests in FO3. They dropped the ball big time on that. Plus they won't fix the Tenpenny Tower glitch which really makes me lose interest in it.
 
I LOVED Fallout 3 without any mods whatsoever.

I hated vanilla Oblivion, and the only thing that made it playable was the OOO mod plus a custom leveling mod.

Quick list of differences:

1. Fallout 3 has a MUCH improved leveling/stats system. Oblivion's leveling system is archaic and confusing by-comparison. I will be happy to provide a point-by-point breakdown for this bullet point, but I warn you, it will be as long as the rest of this post. Suffice it to say, the leveling system in Oblivion is geared to make your life a living hell just to gain optimal stat bonuses with each level-up. In Fallout 3, you just pick the stats you want to upgrade, pick your perk, and you're done.

2. Fallout 3 added VATS, which changes the whole feel of the game. While VATS is mostly useful for snipers, it can help you turn the tide in any battle. In addition, real-time combat feels smoother tan Oblivion, and the melee animations are way better.

3. Fallout 3 has an auto-leveling system for enemy NPCs, but it is MUCH simpler than Oblivion, and much less aggressive (you'll notice that the type of encounter changes roughly three times over the course of the game). I found myself hating Oblivion's leveling system for two reasons: 1, you can do almost ANYTHING in the game at level 1, because everything scales. 2, if you screw-up and don't level combat attributes, the enemy NPCs will auto-level their combat stats and overwhelm you after a certain point in the game.

4. Have to agree with one of the previous posters, the dungeons in Fallout 3 have more logic and purpose to their layout, even those that are not subway tunnels. Many of the dungeons in Oblivion had no soul, or else had a layout so obviously designed to maximize your walking around time that it felt childish.

5. NPC animations and voice actors in Fallout 3 are SO MUCH BETTER than Oblivion. Yeah, they still suck, but Oblivion is so much worse. I tip my hat to Bethesda simply for their attempt to remedy the problem.

6. I felt that all modes of combat were well-balanced in Fallout 3. You could do the guns thing, the melee thing, or do surprisingly well with hand-to-hand combat plus all the hands perks. In Oblivion, you have worthless combat skills like Blunt, Hand to Hand, Marksman (why, tell me, does a sneak shot from an arrow do less damage than hand-held weapons? Is it a sneak shot, or is it not? It just cheapens the weapon, which is already painful to use in combat against fast enemies). The only things worth using in Oblivion were Blade and magic.

7. Fallout 3 has an enticing story with a letdown ending, which I though was significantly better than Oblivion's poor offerings. Fallout 3's story is well-paced and excellent to follow, and only lets you down near the end. Oblivion, on the other hand, is incredibly boring and predictable, not to mention ungodly repetitive (how many times do I have to go to and from the Cloud Ruler Temple, arrgh!)
 
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The biggest problem with Oblivion (the reason I stopped playing) was that monsters leveled at the same rate you did. Meaning there was very little reason to level up. It was highly irritating to see simple Bandits wearing deadric armor and weapons. Because you couldnt get any more powerful, it made the game dull as there was no sense of accomplishment or achievement.

This was fixed in Fallout 3. Making it much more entertaining.
 
people who dont like oblivion are usually the dumb ones, sad but true, you can see it even in this topic
 
addomino said:
people who dont like oblivion are usually the dumb ones, sad but true, you can see it even in this topic
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Borderline name calling. If you liked it, that's your opinion. If someone else didn't like it, that is their opinion. Calling someone dumb (which doesn't mean what you think it does, look it up) for having an opinion that differs from yours is bad manners at best.

Consider this a polite warning. ;)
 
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