fallout: new vegas has some of the best writing, stories, and world building i've ever seen in a game. unfortunately, i've only gotten to experience these second hand.
the gameplay feels like they copied an existing engine (which they did) without knowing what features they were working with, so it ends up playing horribly. you have to spend three hours installing mods to get it to not crash randomly, even though it still will.
i do like how getting to new vegas has two options; actually listening to npcs and following their directions, or going straight to the quest marker and getting your ass kicked. that's fun! everything else sucks. too bad

Fallout 3 single-handedly revitalized one of video games' (at the time) most underrated RPG franchisese ever.

And for some reason, a lot of people hate it nowadays. How did we get to this point, though?

Well, losing faith in Bethesda Game Studios is arguably the biggest explanation behind people having a... recently newfound dislike against this release. The lack of RPG mechanics, stat management that's deeper than HP/AP, a less-important SPECIAL system, an easier/less tactile game overall... these are all totally valid things to dislike. For many, they are concessions, things lost in the exchange between having a new fallout yet having it be made by a game studio that had started showing intent to appeal to the widest audience possible.

On the No Mutants Allowed forum, the first-ever Fallout-centric fansite, thousands of fans of the first two entries into the series were pissed the-heck off. Yet for some reason, I cannot wholly understand why.

BGS wasn't some sort of faux-RPG-company when they announced their acquisition of the Fallout brand. Morrowind was a widely beloved game at the time! And it is also by no means a beginner-friendly RPG... incorrect handling of character builds can mean the end of a run in that game. And Oblivion, while certainly including a rather... bizarre leveling system, it's stat-boost-at-level-up system that forced players to fit into their chosen class at the start of the game wasn't anything like Skyrim's extreme open-endedness. So what gives? I dunno... I do not have an answer for that. Guess just oldheads getting mad at change.

What about the content of this game and the reaction it received at release?

Well, thankfully for myself and millions of other gamers (15 million to be exact), Fallout 3 ended up being an absolutely phenomenal video game. In terms of exploration, atmosphere, lore, player experience, and its perk system, there was so much to love about this game. In tons of ways, Fallout 3 is the quintessential beginner's RPG. It's this and Skyrim, folks!

But that doesn't mean it wasn't without criticism. For one, many people lambasted the horrificly basic main story of Fo3... while no Fallout game really featured a drop-dead tearjerking narrative by the time of 3's release, the lack of multiple-solutions to main quests, or just quests in general, ruffled the feathers of many. The absence of Tim Cain's design philosophy is incredibly apparent with this game!

But does that bother me? Not really, at all, actually. If you take this game and its brother, Fallout: New Vegas side by side, you start to see where both of these games had their strongest sides show. Fallout 3, as I previously have mentioned, features one of video games's most transportive, unfriendly, dour, depressing, and immersive overworlds. The Capital Wasteland, for lack of a better description, is terrifying.

And it may be because I have lived in DC for quite a bit at one point in my life, but seeing the city proper of DC and the broader Maryland/NoVa area interpreted in retrofuturist post-apocalyptic fashion was jaw-dropping. Sure, hate this game all you want for its lack of open-ended quest solutions and janky gunplay, but Fallout 3 handled the transition from 2D into 3D so faithfully and expertly that it's ridiculous if you choose to ignore this accomplishment.

With Fallout 3, Bethesda proved they were (at the time) the masters of creating video game open worlds. I mean, the four-track-run of Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim is pretty much unbeatable. Out of all these games though, my favorite world remains to be the Capital Wasteland.

And even in Fallout, as much as I love my New Vegas and Fo2 California, The Capital Wasteland, to me, is the pinnacle of the series. Exploration, man. It's what makes Bethesda games... Bethesda games. And on top of an innovative perk system that brought the wittiness and unique nature of the Fallout series into 3D, unforgettable goofiness, and post-apocalpytic antics that have yet to replicated, Fallout 3 is a masterpiece. One of Bethesda's very best...