Let's talk about the Fallout series

[Digory Kirke]

Started at Fallout 4 and loved it!

[Delaios]

Being able to shoot anyone without any consequence because there is no reputation or karma system so noone cares ? Being able to wipe your own settlement, eat corpses and set signal to for more meat to gather with no consequences ?

And well, the plot surely is less linear because it barely exists. The main story is so poorly written that it almost overshadows how bad side quests are.

"Far more customization" - as long as you want to be male soldier who cares about his son, or female lawyer who cares about his son. The choices in character "builds" come down to what weapon do you want to kill bad guys.

And where the hell is NV railroading you with forced route ?

The Karma system was never any good in 3 and NV in my opinion. Unless you're gonna game the system you'll have a hard time becoming anything other than a saint unless you're playing downright evil (and absolutely illogical). In Fallout 3 disarming the bomb in Megaton is just common sense and should be karma neutral if you're being rewarded. The player might have a home there and it's a location that offers quests and plenty of vendors. In Fallout New Vegas you even got good Karma for killing Feral ghouls, which is just mind boggling.
I suppose any karma/reputation system is better than having no system at all. But Fallout 4 does have a set of followers that like/dislike different actions. Some general reputation system would be nice though. Say you fail a bunch of quests and NPCs (of that faction) would consider you unreliable.

There is more choice than simple weapon options. You can use the stealthy approach, the tank (Power armor) approach, VATS or drugs (slow-time drug offers a bigger game changer than drugs did in 3 or NV). With VATS you can even go with a high-luck option where you rely heavily on crits. All of those also work with a multitude of different weapons. From a combat perspective there are more options in 4 than in the previous games. The game does have fewer options of using support skills than the previous games had.
Having your son be kidnapped is a major downside of the main quest, I agree on that. It makes very little sense to NOT immediately go do the main quest after you emerge from the vault. Especially after the game immediately points you in the right direction.

About the route, doesn't going north at the start direct you into Deathclaw/Cazador territory? At low levels you won't really stand a chance against those and you'll have a very hard time avoiding them. But a lot of the "funnel feeling" comes from the map being basically a loop around mostly impassible mountain terrain.

[Arrashi]

The Karma system was never any good in 3 and NV in my opinion. Unless you're gonna game the system you'll have a hard time becoming anything other than a saint unless you're playing downright evil (and absolutely illogical). In Fallout 3 disarming the bomb in Megaton is just common sense and should be karma neutral if you're being rewarded. The player might have a home there and it's a location that offers quests and plenty of vendors. In Fallout New Vegas you even got good Karma for killing Feral ghouls, which is just mind boggling.
I suppose any karma/reputation system is better than having no system at all. But Fallout 4 does have a set of followers that like/dislike different actions. Some general reputation system would be nice though. Say you fail a bunch of quests and NPCs (of that faction) would consider you unreliable.

There is more choice than simple weapon options. You can use the stealthy approach, the tank (Power armor) approach, VATS or drugs (slow-time drug offers a bigger game changer than drugs did in 3 or NV). With VATS you can even go with a high-luck option where you rely heavily on crits. All of those also work with a multitude of different weapons. From a combat perspective there are more options in 4 than in the previous games. The game does have fewer options of using support skills than the previous games had.
Having your son be kidnapped is a major downside of the main quest, I agree on that. It makes very little sense to NOT immediately go do the main quest after you emerge from the vault. Especially after the game immediately points you in the right direction.

About the route, doesn't going north at the start direct you into Deathclaw/Cazador territory? At low levels you won't really stand a chance against those and you'll have a very hard time avoiding them. But a lot of the "funnel feeling" comes from the map being basically a loop around mostly impassible mountain terrain.

So what F4 has is moral system....that vanishes as soon as you decide to play solo or with dog. And then absolutely nothing will have consequence. And even with companions nothing stops your from getting back in their graces by doing something stupid. Like picking locks so piper will let you fuck her.
Old karma system made sense, because it was able to create vague feeling of being a good, or bad guy. And thanks to that, in random encounter with rangers they could either tell you to keep up good work, or point their guns at you. And as such with this fame, some characters would want to work with you, and some wouldnt.

And what quests can you fail ? The boring radiant "my daughter got kidnapped for 50th time" ones from preston ?

Ok, so lets looks over those "options".
You have option to use stealth "aka extra damage from stealth attack". Its it only use since its not like game has quests that actually require you to be undetected. And why wouldn't you choose to click Ctrl for extra damage...i dunno.
Power armor...why wouldn't you use item that is given to you from start ? I dunno. Its not like it has any actual reason not to. You can sneak in it as well as you can without.
Vats - aka pressing V button. Not that is a choice.
Drugs - aka using consumables is now a real choice.
Those aren't choices. Not in RPG style of game. Choosing what weapon you will shoot bad guys, in a system where you can just go for optimal build (since its easy to get, and half abilities makes no sense to take anyway), is as interesting as choosing a paint job on your power armor.

In F1 and F2 you have a trait that makes shooting all guns cost less action points in exchange of never, being able to use vats. This is a choice. One that from the very start impact your whole playthrough.
Going for 10 charisma and having 5 followers handling all combat for you so you character may not have a single point in any combat ability - this is a choice.
And going for full pacifist approach of sneak and speak - that is a choice.

NV doesn't route you into anything. It says you "shouldn't" do something, not that you "can't" do something. And reaching New Vegas as lvl 1 character with proper abilities is more than possible. Same how games like gothic told you not to go into forest or orc territory at start. Which didn't change the fact that it would be very rewarding to do so.

[Mirishka]

No mods, just the stock Game of the Year Edition.

Fallout 3 has a lot of issues with modern OSs. Remember, its almost 10 years old.

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Started at Fallout 4 and loved it!

I imagine that people who never played a Fallout game prior to FO4 would enjoy it quite a bit. But Fallout has a diehard fanbase and yeah... a lot of those people were sorely disappointed with it. Personally I liked (but didn't love) FO4. Its a solid 7/10 game for me, but I get why a lot of people don't care for it.

There's people doing open world games better than Bethesda at this point, its the modding that keeps them relevant. Sadly... they're trying to monetize/microtransaction that any way they can, so they're losing that goodwill as well.

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Haven't played any of the first two Fallout games so I can only comment on the other 3, all of which I've played in excess of 200 hours (each). Getting into the classic Fallout games (1 and 2) is not something I'd recommend because they haven't aged well at all. I tried playing a couple of "classics" that I hadn't heard of before and I just can't live without proper UIs and graphics that don't induce headaches (like System Shock 2 gave me).

Anyways here are some of my pros and cons for the Fallout games I've played:

Fallout 3:
+ interesting world
- meh story
- poor faction system
- very unstable (frequent crashes)

Fallout NV:
+ excellent story with high replayability
+ excellent faction system
+ some excellent DLCs (Dead Money in particular)
- fairly bland world (although it has some very interesting locations)
- somewhat unstable

Fallout 4:
+ settlement building (although very barebones without mods)
+ no weapon durability
+ streamlined crafting
+ very stable (only had 1 crash in 211 hours of playtime, excluding crashes due to mods ofc)
- severely neutered RPG options

Nice summary, though I'd like to add that FO3 also has some excellent DLC as well.

[Jastall]

The Karma system was never any good in 3 and NV in my opinion. Unless you're gonna game the system you'll have a hard time becoming anything other than a saint unless you're playing downright evil (and absolutely illogical). In Fallout 3 disarming the bomb in Megaton is just common sense and should be karma neutral if you're being rewarded. The player might have a home there and it's a location that offers quests and plenty of vendors. In Fallout New Vegas you even got good Karma for killing Feral ghouls, which is just mind boggling.
I suppose any karma/reputation system is better than having no system at all. But Fallout 4 does have a set of followers that like/dislike different actions. Some general reputation system would be nice though. Say you fail a bunch of quests and NPCs (of that faction) would consider you unreliable.

There is more choice than simple weapon options. You can use the stealthy approach, the tank (Power armor) approach, VATS or drugs (slow-time drug offers a bigger game changer than drugs did in 3 or NV). With VATS you can even go with a high-luck option where you rely heavily on crits. All of those also work with a multitude of different weapons. From a combat perspective there are more options in 4 than in the previous games. The game does have fewer options of using support skills than the previous games had.
Having your son be kidnapped is a major downside of the main quest, I agree on that. It makes very little sense to NOT immediately go do the main quest after you emerge from the vault. Especially after the game immediately points you in the right direction.

About the route, doesn't going north at the start direct you into Deathclaw/Cazador territory? At low levels you won't really stand a chance against those and you'll have a very hard time avoiding them. But a lot of the "funnel feeling" comes from the map being basically a loop around mostly impassible mountain terrain.

These are nothing but different approaches to combat which are available in every single Fallout game sans the beefed up Power Armor. The difference is that FO4 doesn't have stuff like Strength checks, Repair checks, Barter checks, Science checks and so forth when applicable, that allow you to solve quests in different ways. All you can build your character for is various combat styles, lockpick/hacking which you're going to do anyway, and upping Charisma which is the one important non-combat skill that survived the purge. Even the Luck and Charisma trees have several combat oriented skills. There's a handful of quests that allow for different solutions based on your choices or Charisma checks, but the vast majority are just go there, kill that. The faction system is also a downgrade from New Vegas, there's only 3 relevant factions (no, the Minutemen don't count) and your standing is more gated by quests than by your actions towards them.

Basically, Bethesda had an excellent template for a third-person Fallout game in NV. Had they done their various welcome gameplay improvements and kept the skill system as it was in that game, + better quest design, FO4 would have been great even if the main story was rather weak. They didn't so you end up with a shell of a Fallout game built around a Borderlands shoot and loot clone. Well I didn't wanna play Borderlands, I wanted to play Fallout.

And you can very well reach New Vegas at an early level if you know what you're doing. In my dedicated 10 luck gambler playthrough, I snuck through the pass above Primm at level 3. You have to kill a Deathclaw that always detects you, but that's where a healthy dose of mines and dynamite comes handy. Stealth Boys also allow you to bypass the road north of Goodsprings, for instance. Newcomers will have to go through the plotted line that introduces the world the first time around, veterans can sequence break if so they choose. I thought that was good design to be honest.

[Afrospinach]

I thought that was good design to be honest.

Yeah the journey in NV was good.

You can complete fallout 1 in 5 minutes of REAL time if you know what to do.

[KOMO1211]

if you don't feel like really playing through 1 and 2 I would suggest downloading a trainer and still playing through them once. its fun on beast mode to just murder everyone in your path and you can still enjoy the setting and story and art etc. To me its really the small touches that the new Fallouts don't have that separates them. there was a lot of little stuff to figure out like weapon upgrades, different ammos, all the pip boy art (see below) the description of the guns when you would right click them in your inventory and stuff like the text exposition that comes on screen and in your message box among some other stuff. I love the new games as much as the old though. so to me you cant go wrong with any of them

[Sigxy]

I sense a lack of "Fallout Tactics" on this thread. What, never heard of it? Well aren't you lucky!

[Arrashi]

I sense a lack of "Fallout Tactics" on this thread. What, never heard of it? Well aren't you lucky!

Well it is a spin-off, so no surprises here. And it wasn't that bad, its just that it was worse clone of jagged alliance. At least it wasn't brotherhood of steel.

[KOMO1211]

I sense a lack of "Fallout Tactics" on this thread. What, never heard of it? Well aren't you lucky!

FO tactics is ok. leave the poor guy alone.

[Sigxy]

It was alright as a spin-off I guess, yeah. But it doesn't feel like it would've been a huge loss if it didn't exist!

[KOMO1211]

the deaths of interplay and sierra are the saddest among history.

[Delaios]

/snip

I completely agree on there being a total lack of something similar to fame. But you can't be serious in saying that the follower "reputation" is worse than the old karma system. Especially if your argument is that it is easy to game the system. You could easily just bribe your way to a good karma standing by donating to church or giving a bunch of water to a homeless person. You could even get traits to reset or swap your karma completely.

I think you can fail some miscellaneous quests, like failing to save the ghoul (?) during the Silver Shroud quest. Maybe the radio guy can die while on questing you, not sure. But it was more of a suggestion on how they could implement a basic reputation system, along with other RPG essentials like faction standing and even a morality system (still think that karma was poorly implemented in 3 and NV).
Would have been great if they kept a system like they used in Morrowind. Factions wouldn't grant you a higher rank if your skills were lacking, they also wouldn't trust you with their greatest secrets a few quests in. And none of the factions would really seek you out as blatantly as they do in the later games. Sadly the RPG aspects of Bethesda game seem to be getting more shallow as time goes by.

Because I haven't played Fallout 1 and 2, I can only compare gameplay options with the ones available in Fallout 3 and NV. From a combat perspective Fallout 4 is better than the other two, simply for having actually serviceable combat outside of VATS, as well as a few different VATS builds (most usable with a variety of weapons). I'm not really seeing much that was available in 3 and NV that isn't available in Fallout 4, combat wise. I agree that Fallout 4 is really lacking in non-combat options. It does feel like your only option is to kill for most quests.
And yeah, being able to sneak in power armor is just ridiculous. Having a set handed to you 15 minutes into the game is another mistake. But apart from the quest in Concorde I've never used power armor during any of my playthroughs. Really start to dislike the sounds and visuals after a while, and having to play with essentially a timer (power core) is really off-putting when you just want to take it slow.

I never said that it was impossible to go north at the start. It's just heavily disincentivized (not sure if that's a proper word). But because of the mountain ridge in the middle of the map, I always felt like I was broadly moving in a circle most of the time.

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Nice summary, though I'd like to add that FO3 also has some excellent DLC as well.

Yeah, somehow forgot that while doing some editing.

[Kathandira]

So I've never played any of them. I want to, but I'm not sure which of the series would be best to start out with.

Are they fine as stand-alone games individually, or should they be played chronologically to understand it all?

Are the older ones too clunky gameplay-wise and not worth playing? Should I just get the newest one?

I would say for the sake of entertainment, play in this order.

Fallout New Vegas (Most fun)
Fallout 4 (Medium Fun)
Fallout 3 (Least Fun)
(By no means are any of them NOT fun)

If you want to play for story, then play them in order. Personally, I love the story and the hidden lore.

[Linri]

i tried really hard to like the fallout series but it never seems to have captured my interests enough

although 4 was pretty neat, i didnt get to play it much aside from at my sisters house with her boyfriend

[Cosmic Janitor]

3 and 4 are more compelling in regards to exploration and world building, new vegas is the better RPG for the most part. The original games (1 and 2) are nice RPGs with a great attention to detail, but they are an aquired taste to say the least.. All in the series are hamstrung imho by trying to make a ridiculous premise work and ensuring that they never make any progress overall to keep the 30s to 50s charme aliive while trying to serious in some parts while doing the splits to and being ridiculous and over the top funny in other parts. I enjoy playing through each entry, but all in all I'm more of a fan of the elder scolls series, even though that one is sadly dead in the water thanks to the garbage MMO :/.

[dope_danny]

I imagine that people who never played a Fallout game prior to FO4 would enjoy it quite a bit. But Fallout has a diehard fanbase and yeah... a lot of those people were sorely disappointed with it. Personally I liked (but didn't love) FO4. Its a solid 7/10 game for me, but I get why a lot of people don't care for it.

I find it very comparable to Final Fantasy 13 and 15. If you never played the rest you dont know what step downs they are compared the earlier games. Plus a lot of people have the mistaken perception of 'older game=worse game' and you can't blame them when they have no frame of reference from personal experience. It just means they have more interesting things still waiting for them to play.

[Gadzooks]

And yeah, being able to sneak in power armor is just ridiculous. Having a set handed to you 15 minutes into the game is another mistake. But apart from the quest in Concorde I've never used power armor during any of my playthroughs. Really start to dislike the sounds and visuals after a while, and having to play with essentially a timer (power core) is really off-putting when you just want to take it slow.

I have a love/hate relationship with power armor - I love the concept, the look, the design, and the functionality of it, but it's too easy to get - and it turns the game into easy mode, even in survival. My last run through, I purposely did not use it - I collected it as I found it, and stored them in a warehouse in Sanctuary. I think it should be the reward of a really hard questline, because it being so stupidly easy to get - you can find two pieces just walking around, one is standing next to water, one is underwater on the shore of a lake.

Another issue with F4 is you get too powerful, too fast. Once you reach level 40 or so and start unlocking certain things, everything except bosses is a one-shot. Power armor just makes it stupidly easy. Running through with no power armor and having to make distinct choices in what my character wore made the game last a lot longer, and get more interesting. I loved the opening of Nuka World, the Guantlet is probably one of the hardest fights in the game. (The mechanist boss and the boss in the metal foundry come to mind) Far Harbor was also well done - it was the first map where I felt nervous running around, and the mobs were tough fights, and you had to make important decisions about your armor, for the radiation - unless you go easy mode in a tin can.

Again - not against power armor. It's just too easy to get, and it makes the game too easy.

[endersblade]

I have a love/hate relationship with power armor - I love the concept, the look, the design, and the functionality of it, but it's too easy to get - and it turns the game into easy mode, even in survival. My last run through, I purposely did not use it - I collected it as I found it, and stored them in a warehouse in Sanctuary. I think it should be the reward of a really hard questline, because it being so stupidly easy to get - you can find two pieces just walking around, one is standing next to water, one is underwater on the shore of a lake.

Another issue with F4 is you get too powerful, too fast. Once you reach level 40 or so and start unlocking certain things, everything except bosses is a one-shot. Power armor just makes it stupidly easy. Running through with no power armor and having to make distinct choices in what my character wore made the game last a lot longer, and get more interesting. I loved the opening of Nuka World, the Guantlet is probably one of the hardest fights in the game. (The mechanist boss and the boss in the metal foundry come to mind) Far Harbor was also well done - it was the first map where I felt nervous running around, and the mobs were tough fights, and you had to make important decisions about your armor, for the radiation - unless you go easy mode in a tin can.

Again - not against power armor. It's just too easy to get, and it makes the game too easy.

I think my absolute number one issue with PA in FO4 is the power core. These things have survived hundreds of years, but you drain through them like they're almost dead already. If power cores functioned like this when PA was made, I can't see the technology ever getting off the ground. Even a normal engagement would require you to carry around several cores just to survive. And from a realistic perspective, did they replace their own cores on the battlefield? That's like a snail out of its shell in the middle of a salt mine. So what, they'd return back to base every ~20 minutes or so when their fucking cores ran out? That makes PA have probably the shortest Area of coverage than any other heavy weapon system ever used. Completely worthless. And what about the tech required to MAKE the cores? I would imagine they weren't cheap to spit out.

The game just does a bit of handwaving as to why the cores don't last very long. It's just stupid. It's a retarded gameplay mechanic, one that I ALWAYS turn off when I play, and I hardly ever use PA anyway. Just when I do, I don't want the freaking core to die while I'm in the bottom of a damned dungeon.

[Jastall]

I sense a lack of "Fallout Tactics" on this thread. What, never heard of it? Well aren't you lucky!

Tactics was fine. I couldn't possibly play it now that I've played XCOM which is the same thing except miles better, but the combat and how soldiers changed based on their race was cool and I loved my APC. The opening cinematic with R. L. Ermey was pure gold.

Also the mechanics of Power Armor in FO4 were good. I loved the feeling of weight and power it conferred, but it was too easily accessible. It shouldn't have been handed to you literally at the end of the first plot missions. Kills the sense of progress.