Fallout 3 VS Oblivion

The Game Room
1

Okay, so I’ve been playing Fallout 3 more or less non-stop for the last year. I waited a decade for it, and it’s everything I ever wanted. I have some quibbles with it (who the holy hell decided it would be a great idea for everyone on Earth to be able to run backwards, shooting with 100% accuracy, faster than you can run forwards?!), but overall it’s a great game and I have a dozen or so mods to fix what I think is wrong with it.

Couple of weeks ago I decided to start a new game of Oblivion for the sake of comparison. Right off the bat I realized one major difference: in order to make Oblivion playable, I have something on the order of 200 mods, at least 20 of which are just bug-fixers. Then I started to play.

First I made a stealth character. I hadn’t tried an “evil” game before, so I made myself an assassin and played her as an utterly ruthless murderer with a heart of glacial ice who takes lives without a second thought. One thing I noticed is that, given the game is all about trampling around and murdering a long sequence of people to take their stuff, there wasn’t much difference between the “good” and “evil” games. I also noticed that since the main quest in Oblivion doesn’t change based on your actions, it made absolutely no sense. “I am a black-hearted assassin with the cold, dead eyes of a shark… but let’s selflessly throw ourselves into a hopeless battle against the forces of evil, 'kay?”

After a while, the nonsensical main plot and the effortless ease of playing a stealth-based bow-wielder (100 bow + 100 stealth + ~70 chameleon = one-shot kills of almost everything in the game), I decided to start a new game with exactly the opposite character: a heroic – but not overly bright – thud-and-blunder warrior specializing in heavy armour and heavy, two-handed axes. I would steal nothing, and would refuse to sneak out of general principles. Suddenly, from being too easy, the game jumped into the realm of impossibly difficult. Facing two or more enemies means spending the whole time “reeling” from hits and unable to get a swing in; without magical skills I can’t enchant anything, and with the few soul gems I find “in the wild,” there’s no way to keep any magical weapons enchanted for more than a few swings anyway.

It’s been a just a week and I’m already annoyed and quite ready to go back to Fallout 3 with a new appreciation for its overall balance. Yeah “small guns” is overpowered and playing a melee character is a lot harder than it should be, but it’s still head and shoulders above the best Oblivion has to offer.

Now to install the “killable children” mod and do something… permanent… about Mayor McCreedy.

2

“Sithis is no Daedra, and dwells not in the realm of Oblivion…”

I justify the MQ as an evil character thusly; It doesn’t help the assassination or theft business much if the entire world is destroyed/placed under the rule of the Prince of Destruction. Either that or you can go with the ‘even evil has standards’ trope.

Oblivion gets a lot of unfair flak in my view; it’s a vast, epic, game that is as complicated as you want it to be. Compare it with its immediate predecessor, Morrowind (combat was…well, not good.), to see what a benchmark it set. It’s not perfect, and the levelling system can be exploited to high heaven, but Fallout 3 improved on those complaints.

I do miss VATs whenever I go back to Oblivion, though. But then I miss my horse when I play Fallout. Swings and roundabouts.

3

I haven’t played Oblivion in quite a while, but I vaguely remember a mod that changed the behaviour of the guards and townsfolk according to the evil or goodness of your actions … though it was buggy and not exactly logical (I hate it, when a clandestine murder in a forsaken alley in the darkest night seems to be known by everyone in the morning).

Oblivion heavily modded is a great game, Fallout 3 was better out of the box, but not challenging. I hope, the modders will change this soon.

4

It’s already been done, many times - not least by Bethesda themselves.

Despite upping the level cap, the DLC Broken Steel ups the difficulty by adding a load of enemies which are harder than coffin nails; Feral Ghoul Reavers. Super Mutant Overlords (with their tri-beam rifles, four shots and even my level 30 power-armour clad wanderer is toast), Albino Radscorpions. The most recent DLC Point Lookout is also towards the difficult side, enemies are much faster and stronger than what you find in vanilla DLC (where even a few deathclaws isn’t an issue at level 20).

5

Ok, first place, melee combat can be tough but is not impossible if you know what you are doing. Your first mistake is attempting to tank like that. You need to keep moving, avoid blows if possible, and block the oens you can’t. There will be stunlock now and then, but it’s still beatable. In fact, melee combat was too easy with a purpose-built character: block, hack hack, repeat until dead.

Second, the adventure plotlines go like this in terms of fun and quality and in terms of the rewards you get:

Dark Brotherhood -> Mage’s Guild -> Theive’s Guild -> Fighter’s Guild

With Knights of the Nine, they probably take second place and mvoe everyone down a chunk. That’s how it was.

Third, Yup, using enchanted weapons is a titanic pain. Either pick up the ability to steal souls or don’t bother.

Fourth, Yup, Oblivion is a little thin. It’s ironic, but the much less complex game of Morrowind actually has more depth to it (despite a vastly less interesting combat system). C’est la vie.

6

I feel that both games made concessions towards the Xbox crowd. Things were removed from the previous games in the prequels in order to appeal to a more casual console gamer. When Fallout 3 did this, they removed mostly extraneous skills like gambling and traps, and ended up making the game streamlined - it’s not necessarily worse than Fallout 2, just different.

With Oblivion, their changes ended up seeming dumbed down coming from Morrowind. Instead of having multiple guilds to chose from (10 regular ones by my count), you have four to choose from. The quests were somewhat improved (fewer kill rats/bears/etc.), but at a cost of choice.
Instead of having multiple skills, they are crushed into few categories (so the only types of weapons in the world are swords, blunt weapons, longbows and your fists?!? And axes are seriously blunt?).

7

It kinda makes sense to group them together, as maces, hammer, morningstars, military picks and axes are all weapons with a large weight on the end of a handle. It might have been better had the category been called “hafted weapons” however.

8

Does this mean, enemies are just harder to kill or do they also - and more importantly imo - react less stupidly?

It was already painfully surreal to pump a human enemy full of rounds from a meters’ distance and he just stood there and somehow kept on fighting.

Besides, was it just my impression or did sneaking not work properly? Sometimes, it seemed as if you could not stay hidden, sometimes, you could walk right into someone’s face without detection.

But that’s a minor point. What I really missed, was a good story, tougher decisions and a world that was believable beyond its appearance. The world looked post-apocalyptic, but society didn’t actually feel like it (unlike Fallout 2).

9

Both; in Broken Steel the AI has been enhanced significantly (or it might be patch 1.5, or maybe both). When blasting through The Enclave in their airforce base they were taking cover more effectively, chucking grenades, retreating when damaged, pinning and flanking your outnumbered ass, sniping from cover. Reavers will mess you up too. Hard to kill, hard hitting. Point Lookout’s Hillbillies are surprisingly smart too, especially compared with vanilla Fallout 3’s raiders; rather than standing there taking punishment like morons they run to the nearest tree, popping out only to cap you with their double-barrelled shotgun.

A few mods I use to up the difficulty; lethal weapons for the damage (makes headshots with pretty much anything automatically fatal), Mart’s increased increased spawns mod (very fun in the Dunwich Building) and buildings respawn so I don’t run out of things to kill.

Sneaking is a bit out of whack in close encounters, I only use it to get the sneak-criticals, then go for the kill.

I thought the opposite, society was a bit too post-apocalyptic. 200 years later people are still living in squalor in isolated settlements? It looks more like 20 years after the bombs have dropped.

10

Yes, I have to agree that I didn’t like the “everyone is still basically living on the squalid ashes of yesteryear”. I don’t mind some thing like that, but I really wish they had some more “living” things going on. The endlessly brown and miserable wasteland was just awful, and I eventually got everything lampshaded in my head about wanting to see where everyone got their food. Caravans should have been frequent, larger, and relatively safe - they would guide you to new places in the game. I have still not yet found Paradise Falls because the game does not allow me to ask people about the bloody location! Likewise for numerous other setllements. For some of them, this makes sense. Others… not so much.

11

The time scale is a little off. You will have a facility that has presumably been abandoned for decades, full of fresh corpses. I don’t know if every one is supposed to represent a failed explorer or what.

12

Disclaimer: I’ve only played these games on my 360. (Please direct vitriol to your mouse, rather than your keyboard.)

I played through Fallout 3 before moving on to Oblivion, and I have to say: Fallout 3 has spoiled me, as far as what I expect in a game right now. The game is just put together so well, I could play for hours and hours on end, without doing anything in particular (and I have!).

That’s not to say Oblivion wasn’t great, too, though. I just think that if I played Oblivion before moving on to Fallout 3, I probably would have held it in higher esteem. :slight_smile:

No joke. I remember my first encounter with a Feral Ghoul Reaver: after killing off some plain ol’ feral ghouls, I fired a few shots at what I thought was a Feral Ghoul Roamer. As the thing ran up to me it was intercepted by a Sentry Bot, so I figured it would be gone in a few seconds. After killing off another plain ol’ feral ghoul, I noticed that the Sentry Bot was still working on its ghoul. That’s when I noticed the Reaver part of the name, and was like, “WTF?”

When I saw the Sentry Bot fall, and the ghoul came running to me, I knew I was about to be pumping my body with loads of stimpaks.

13

Sounds good, ** Mr. Kobayashi**; maybe I’ll do a second run in a month or two. FOOK v2.0 looks like a must have as soon as it is done and Martigen’s Mutant Mod already is. But when I look at the mods available, nine months after the initial release, I doubt that we will see as many fascinating additions as there are for Oblivion. The modding community for F3 seems to be smaller and … less enthusiastic (then, I might be mistaken or spoiled by my previous experience).

You know, I had already forgotten that is wasn’t meant to play a couple of decades after but much, much later; but then, like you said, cities, terrain and the communities we visit make even less sense.

Do you know if projects similar to Better Cities and the Unique Landscapes Project are going to change the look of the world to make it appear more diversified?

I am pretty sure, I missed a lot of locations too. One I’d have loved to find, is Rockopolis, or rather its remains. I also failed to find the alien ship, that other players talked about … oh well, maybe the second time around.

14

[spoiler]Getting the soul-stealing sword “Umbra” makes using enchanted weapons a lot easier.

Also, enchant your weapon with weakness to magic, weakness to an elemental such as fire, and finally enchant it with the same elemental. Have several weapons, just daggers will do if you need to save weight, with different elemental enchantments. then when you encounter something that already has a weakness to fire you can pull out your sword that is enchanted with weakness to magic, weakness to fire, and fire. The enchantments build on each other and you’ll be hacking the health away from your foe in quick time. Use Umbra for the killing stroke if you need a soul.[/spoiler]

15

Niether are actual mapped locations, so they will never show up in the pipboy. Rockopolis is rather hard to find, but it’s in a cliff near the western border slightly south of the mid-point, IIRC. The alien ship, which will yield you the best weapon in the game, IMO, is in the NE quadrant of the map, near the middle of the quadrant. There’s a road bridge close by.

Paradise falls will actually show up in your map, though. One of the denizens will mark it, but I don’t recall who.

16

Rockopolis is quite easy to find - just head due west of Smith Casey’s garage until you see the bunting. The crashed ship is a bit harder, but is roughly due north of the power station north of Minefield.

I’ve added mods to Oblivion and Fallout 3 extensively, hadn’t really noticed any great discrepancy between the quality of mods myself. Perhaps because the GECK didn’t come out til a few months after release?

Not sure any mod can change the feel of the game that much - it’d be a colossal amount of work.

If people are struggling with Oblivion’s enchanting, here’s what you can do. Bump up you mysticism skill by spamming a cheap ‘on self’ spell. Then buy a decent soul trap spell to cast on an enemy you’re about to finish off. If you don’t have Azura’s Star (essentially a reusable soul gem) you’ve got a big disadvantage - give anything to Martin but Azura’s Star, it’s one of the most useful items in the game.

17

Head west of Greener Pastures Disposal site. It’s the irradiated dump site in the NE, south of oasis. When you get near the ship, you add a radio station.

18

To find a crashed spaceship…

Hint 1:
Find Minefield (a quest goal, which can be done early on)

Hint 2:

Go north of minefield. There’s a road that leads in front of a power station. Follow it north

Hint 3:

When you get close to a broken bridge, you should pick up the distress signal. Turn it in in your Pip-Boy. As you go North and South on the road, you will quickly establish the limits of the signal. Pick th estrongest spot and go West.

Hint 4:

The crash site is slightly radio active (no more than 6 rads/second) and it drops off quickly.
Once you are listening to the radio, being irradiated and moving more or less west and up-hill, you are very close to the ship.

And a comment:

Once you find the ship, the alien has been thrown out the front of the ship. There is an alient blaster to pick up, and (I think) 12 ammo packs for it. The packs glow in the dark, and are easier to find around dusk. Pick 'em all up, because you can’t buy any replacements.

19

Thanks for the directions, guys. I was in all the areas you described but still missed the honey. :smack: Oh, well.

1920s Style “Death Ray”, did you play with the Mighty Umbra mod?

The battle against the sword was more than half the fun of wielding it; I scrambled a victory against you-know-who and decided to do the role-play approach and take the modified version, although it was far too early in my career – that made the following fights far more difficult, i.e. gratifying.

20

No, I played the Xbox360 version so no mods.