Hi guys,

I'm playing with the thought of purchasing one of these games to distance myself a little from Skyrim. You know, having alternatives is always good. I've searched for a topic here but surprisingly I found none

Okay, I do know there is some sort of "cold war" between fans of both games out there, but since I only played the original Fallout once and I'm no too biased towards one or other style, I wanted some opinions from you guys, because I've always liked how things are put into perspective in these forums, no matter what topic is the conversation about. Some extra infos: I want to acquire the latest possible version out there with all essential DLCs, patches and mods. I watched Gopher's playthroughs Episode 1 for both games and I really couldn't decide which style appealed the most to me...

My initial thoughts are:

-F3 encompasses a modern post-apocalyptic style. Is more high-tech-ish but still full of ruins everywhere. I like that, but the game is a little older than NV and I don't know if with the proper mods would be the same as a more modern game.

-FNV has another style: is more pulp I guess. I'm not all that fan of it, but what I saw in Gopher's video I liked. In that video I could see better graphics and better effects.

What I want to know is if the storyline, replayability and immersion of both games are the same, saving graphical differences, or there are some gameplay deficits that are important in order to decide which I should buy.

If somebody thinks: you should buy both and try them and decide for yourself... well, that would be great but I don't have the time so I want to stick to one of them. Any thoughts would be very appreciatied. Thank you in advance!

It would be more than a pleasure to help you, Lum, but I'm afraid I never got into either of the games although I do own Fallout 3 and all the additional content including the guides etc. I was hoping for the same thing as you i.e. that it would prove to be an alternative to some of the other games I was playing. But I found, to my chagrin, that I'm not really into the post apocalyptic subject matter. Too depressing for my liking. I'm sure it will be a superb experience if you don't mind the subject matter. I've also heard good things about FNV but it still has the same problems for me.

Considering how cheap they are now why not give them both a try. If you intend spending the sort of time on one of them that you probably do with Skyrim it may be worth giving both a trial before you decide.

Thanks Victor! I really want to go only for one. I know I'll need time to mod it and so on. It's really a matter of time, not money. Let's wait for other comments and hope for an instant of inspiration

Get both of them.

£14.99 each, both with all DLCs on Steam. That's peanuts for a game that'll last you a veeeery long time. Just looking at the stats, I have 91 hours on New Vegas, one game. As for Fallout 3, no idea, but if memory serves it's something like 85.

It's "sad" but the more I read out there, the more I think these games don't exclude the other, but the other way around...

They're both great games.

A big difference between fallout 3 and fallout NV is that fallout 3 takes place in washington DC for the most part while fallout NV takes place in Nevada. So in fallout 3 you have a large city (and its surroundings) with many buildings to enter and explore while in fallout NV the cities are smaller and there is more wasteland.

I would say that the tech in both games is about the same, you have the same weapons, armor, ... (for the most part), the impression that fallout 3 is more high-tech is probably because it happens in the surroundings of what was once America's capital.

An advantage of fallout NV is that it allows you to mod weapons (add a scope, ...).

Replay-ability of both games is great, in both games there are tons of locations to discover and missions to do, in both games missions can have different outcomes depending on what you do. Both games allow you to play in different styles (you can be sneaky, use melee, energy weapons, normal weapons, sniping, exploring, ...).

I found the story lines in both games pretty good although I found that the new vegas story line was more in depth/ better.

Fallout 3 has a more post-apocalyptic feel in it (it is earlier after the bombs and lots of destroyed buildings) while in New Vegas, the world is more recovered from the bombings than fallout 3 was.

Fallout NV has indeed better graphics than fallout 3 but I'm sure that could be solved with the use of some texture overhaul mods and other graphic mods (they both use the same (crappy) engine).

Personally, I prefer fallout 3 because I love the post apocalyptic feel and I loved exploring the underground stations and streets of Washington.

There are also tons of mods for both games (check nexus).

If you plan to buy fallout3, do some research on it first because I've heard that it requires you to adapt some game files to be played on windows 7/8.

Both are great games and if I were you, I would buy both

Oh, and I haven't played them with DLC's so I can't give any info about that.

Thank you very much for your input Cha0zz!

Listening to Gopher's modding videos for NV and 3 seems to me, that quite a few important mods need the DLCs, so it's presumably better to acquire a version with them. At the moment I tend to F3, because of the environment. NV seems too "open" and the whole point is to try something different from Skyrim. I'll do some more research and maybe somebody else can add some insights of their own here and next week I'll make the choice.

Thank you again

Well for me I would definitely say NV. F3 hardly works with my system. I had to get GFWL remover, and then for some reason no matter what settings I have, it always runs in a window, and has frequent crashes, and steam does not even say I am playing it. New Vegas runs perfectly fine.

Plus, there are some features like weapon mods, reloading and recycling ammo, and just overall more additions to the game, and also has a bigger mod community I think.

I didn't think about incompatibility problems for a 6 years old game Thanks for the info MrPerson! There is a fix, as far as I could find, so that's sorted out

Regarding the other issues (bigger modding community and better mods) is absolutely good to know. Some plus points for NV then

I think the amount of mods available is about the same for both games.

On Nexus, there are 425 pages of files for fallout 3 and 448 pages for fallout NV, so that's not that much difference.

What I've noticed from Gopher's videos is that F3 character models look a little too old in the faces (less polygons/poorer textures). There are good mods for that, the same as for Skyrim?

Like this one? http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/20004/?

Yeah, very nice. So I don't need to worry about that. It bugged me a little, I must say

Pah! Even umodded, Falloutdipity looked immensely badass.

And that's unmodded? The game maybe, but that girl doesn't!