Discuss.

Both titles are BEHEMOTHS of games. I think the gameplay in Fallout 3 was dumbed down quite a bit, making an easier learning curve than in Oblivion. Here are my pros and cons.

Fallout 3 Pros:
Easier to get into
Leveling system is easier
Guns with ammo
VATS (hands down, this feature kicks ass. I don't think I can go back to regular aiming)

Cons:
Too "easy" IMO
Some "perks" were worthless
Leveling cap at 20
story
wasteland environment just kinda sucked IMO
-----------------------------------
Oblivion Pros:
Stunning visuals/music
Bigger world
Better character skills customization
Magic and summoning (I know Fallout had followers, but IMO, they were more of a liability and would blow my cover)
speechcraft "game"

Oblivion Cons:
Too easy to get imbalanced while leveling up
Dungeons were similar/repetitive
very repetitive voice acting (probably a con for both games)


I know I left some stuff out, can't think of much. What I think Bethesda should do is merge the gameplay features from Fallout 3 with Oblivion's story/environment for the next Elder Scrolls. Get rid of the repetitiveness, enhance the world and put some more depth to the plot.

What do you guys think? Which game do you prefer and what would you like to see happen in the next Bethesda titles in these series?

[Edited on February 3, 2009 at 12:08 AM. Reason : ]

2/3/2009 12:07:54 AM

I was FAR more satisfied with Oblivion than F3, but I kind of feel like I went into Obvlision having no expectation and F3 having a lot.

I don't know if everyone feels this way, but as far as paralleling these games to cinema, Oblivion felt like a pet project or an indie film that kinda boosted a person into popularity, but then the second project was more of a "blockbuster" mass audience appeal kind of thing to attempt to really establish themselves... if that makes sense. I dont know, its just how it felt.

2/3/2009 12:20:35 AM

Fallout 3 was great, but I've spent too many hours on Oblivion to forget about it. Oblivion basically doesn't end, besides finishing everything you can achieve in the game.

When I'm bored I love to stack up on poisoned apples from fort farragut, sneak into peoples homes and put one in their pocket and wait for them to eat it.

It's just little things like that that keep me coming back for more with Oblivion. Fallout was definitely a good breather though.

2/3/2009 12:21:26 AM

super epic fail of fallout 3 was the ending and the lack of a "final boss". fallout 3 was very easy, i even kicked up the difficulty and breezed by it still. i felt oblivion was a little harder, and the final boss felt like an actual "boss"

2/3/2009 12:52:25 AM

I played Fallout 3 one and a half times. The first time as a good character, then I got about halfway in on a second playthrough as an evil character. On the second playthrough I did all the quests I didn't do on the first, hit level 20, and didn't see a point in continuing on. I had experienced the game.

It was fun while it lasted, but I doubt I'll pick it up again.

Oblivion was pretty good. I absolutely hated the way the leveling up process worked though. I finally got to the point where every encounter and ever dungeon was just a repeat of something that I had done hundreds of times over, so I shelved the game.

Both had their run, but I don't expect I'll ever revisit either.

2/3/2009 7:41:07 AM

F3 does feel kind of easy until you bump up the difficulty. Not only that most of the people that I know say its too easy play evil and just kill everyone and that's easy within itself. I played the game on normal, and I do feel like there was a little left to be desired in terms of difficulty, but the sheer randomness of the game and gritty atmosphere made up for it; the atmosphere of Oblivion can't even compare. Another con for me is that there should have been more quests to the main story and fewer side quest.

2/3/2009 8:32:58 AM

More quests in the main story arc I can see, but fewer side quests? Might as well keep them in the game if they are already there. The more the merrier, as it would just enhance replay value. Plus you can always ignore them.

2/3/2009 8:36:46 AM

Fallout 3 felt like a natural sequel to Oblivion. It had improved gameplay, improved story, improved visuals, improved atmosphere... they improved nearly everything. Unless one had a particular attachment to a specific gameplay element in Oblivion (maybe you fucking LOVED alchemy, or the ability to cast spells instead of the various spell-like weapon types, for example), I really don't see any reason to not like F3 better.

F3 was easier, though mainly just because it was more well-made with more refined gameplay. Neither game was difficult by any means... except for Oblivion's level scaling system, which did make things more challenging, but not in the good way (Ninja Gaiden 2 = good/skill-based challenging, Oblivion's level scaling = stupid and unnecessarily challenging). The story in Oblivion was completely cliche as far as medieval RPGs go, and they killed off the ONLY good voice actor and the only likable character (the king) at the very beginning. Fallout wasn't that much better, but at least many of its NPCs had one-dimensional personalities as opposed to Oblivion's no-personalities-at-all... and they managed to hire more than 7 or 8 voice actors, and the primary likable character (Dad) stayed alive halfway through instead of just 10 minutes in.

Oblivion simply wasn't a good RPG. It was an AMAZING open-world/sandbox style game, but many of the crucial elements to RPGs were either absent or completely terrible... these being characters, story, and dialog. Fallout 3 also wasn't all that great of an RPG compared to much of the rest of the RPG industry, but it was a much much better one than Oblivion, and also a better open-world game.

Oblivion did have the larger world in that there was more terrain to pointlessly wander around, but Fallout 3 managed to compact the environment into less wasted walking time and nearly just as much actual content (in terms of map locations, anyway). Each individual location also felt like it actually had a purpose as opposed to being just "oh, look, another generic cookie-cutter cave... i wonder if this one will have goblins in it, or ghosts?"... the F3 locations were relatively unique, except for the occasional barn-occupied-by-raiders, and most everything had some sort of gimmick to it or a quest/mini-quest associated with it.

I noticed that the original post has the "speechcraft game" as a pro... I and nearly everyone I know that's played oblivion considered that one of the worst elements in the game. It was terrible and had no actual connection to how someone might actually befriend someone else. It just added something else tedious to do, that you basically had to do before going to a vendor if you expected to get even mediocre barter deals. There was no fun involved, and it seemed added just to extend the play-time of the game... similar to the massively-empty environments that one could run across pointlessly.

Fallout's biggest flaw was the ending, and not being able to continue. And they're patching that out, from what I've heard. Oblivion did, after all, have two expansions, whereas F3 is in the stages of the first major patch/expansion.

Overall, Oblivion's biggest flaw (and it was a huge one) was a failure to answer the question "why should I want to?" The gameplay elements combat-wise were decent, but not really fun or exciting enough to carry the game on their own... they desperately needed a purpose to back them up. The main story quests were all right, and provided enough meaning to at least continue from the beginning of the game to the end. The various guild quests were also decent, be it the thieves, fighter's, mages, or assassins... they provided nearly enough purpose to continue to do them. But the rest of the content in the game, be it helping [completely unlikeable soul-less villager] or helping [completely unlikable soul-less villager #2, who is also an ugly lizard], or pillaging [generic cutout enemy cavern], served little or no purpose and didn't really offer much return, be it a sense of accomplishment or good equipment, or whatever. Even leveling up wasn't a good incentive system, since you could do it by just running around, or by casting self-hurt spells followed by self-heal spells while you run around.

2/3/2009 8:54:36 AM

Oblivion is great game its major faults in my opinion do not come into effect until you've played teh game quite some time and include

- Weapons and equipment upgrades max out to early. Approx level 25.

- While i understand the leveling system it really annoys me how simple every day trips from teh imperial city to Skingrad keep getting more difficult enemies. I think the game would have been better off had the developers capped enemy difficulty at various "early game" destination routes.

- All the Oblivion gates get annoying after awhile.

- The most ANNOYING of all is you should be able to save outfits. I find it annoying wandering through dungeons or the main map having to change up every piece of equipment to go from my "stealth / speed boosting" outfit to my heavy armor battle outfit. I think this was avaliable in Morrowind.

Quote :

"Dungeons were similar/repetitive"

Truthfully compared to Mass Effect and Assains Creed I really do not think the repetitiveness is that bad. While the game does reuse similar "themes" and texture packs I really have not quite noticed the dungeons being that markedly the same.

[Edited on February 3, 2009 at 8:59 AM. Reason : a]

2/3/2009 8:57:04 AM

I thought NPC leveling in Oblivion was quite annoying

I know it "creates a challenge", but if I spend 40+hours leveling up my character doing side quests, I expect to to breeze through most of the plot line instead of having epic battles in the first gate

2/3/2009 8:59:04 AM

^I would have appreciated the challenge if the game had some sort of dodge move the character could execute, or some deeper level of combat beyond just "here's a big demon enemy with 10 times as much health as you, who can kill you in four hits, even though you're nearly level 30... go hit it with your sword until one of you dies... oh, and there's three of them."

It didn't normally get that bad in your average dungeon, but some of the demons that got thrown into the main quest line were a bitch.


[Edited on February 3, 2009 at 9:16 AM. Reason : v yes, they put them in the game, but they really weren't that useful or integrated well.]

2/3/2009 9:05:04 AM

Quote :

"had a purpose as opposed to being just "oh, look, another generic cookie-cutter cave... i wonder if this one will have goblins in it, or ghosts?"... "

I actually had more fun rampaging through random caves teh first month i played than i did trying to complete the main quest.

Quote :

"I would have appreciated the challenge if the game had some sort of dodge move the character could execute"

ummm...

you got a shield to block and once you get level 50 acrobatics you can dodge

[Edited on February 3, 2009 at 9:08 AM. Reason : a]

2/3/2009 9:07:19 AM

^ well, you can say that about FO as well...side plots are more fun than the main plot line

at least I thought so

2/3/2009 9:08:19 AM

^Agreed... but in F3 it's obvious the main focus was on those side-quests and random side-areas. The main story is... what, like 4 to 6 hours? I'd already logged 50+ hours of gameplay on F3 before I'd even attempted to go find my father.

Whereas with Oblivion, the main focus was obviously not on those random side-caves... then again the focus wasn't really on the main plot either... in fact I really don't know what they were trying to focus on with Oblivion... development of the main character's skills, I suppose... though even that was moot since the enemies got strong just as fast as you did... if not exponentially faster.

[Edited on February 3, 2009 at 9:12 AM. Reason : .]

2/3/2009 9:10:04 AM

Quote :

"though even that was moot since the enemies got strong just as fast as you did... if not exponentially faster. "

agreed.

I also thought the bow and arrow should have been stronger. Often it was not practical if even feasible to try and pick off enemies with a bow. unless i simply ran and shot which is not very practical in a cave/dungeon.

2/3/2009 10:10:10 AM

haven't played fallout yet. i have logged about 450 hours between oblivion, knights of the nine, and shivering isles, though.

2/4/2009 12:40:10 PM

all of these complaints about oblivion are true, but somehow it still is the game that i played the most (of all time) at around 80hrs. for fairness i did not include EQ.

the guild quests were fun and just doing them, a bit of wandering, the arena, and the main quest, i still managed to eat up 80hrs. I wasnt forced to sandbox for the hell of it.

after playing oblivion for so long, i couldnt play fallout for longer than 30 hours or so. i felt like id done that all before and it was similar enough to oblivion to make me nto want to. i thought the guild quests were more fun, as was the arena.

oblivion also probably benefited by the fact it was LEAPS and BOUNDS more fun than morrowind to me.

both were great games. if i could make any suggestion to fallout, it woudl be to agree that there needed to be more massive boss characters. the berserkers felt pretty epic to fight and i loved the robot at the end. id love to see more of that.

2/4/2009 1:00:21 PM