Sulphur on 7/3/2016 at 08:41
I ascribe it to FO3 being the 'first' game in the FO series for most people who became recent fans. You generally find when something's new and has an uncanny sense of brilliance to it, you tend to look at it in a manner that glosses over the imperfections. When a sequel arrives that does things better, it's lost that sheen of fantastic newness to it, hence can't really be as good as the first one.
I mean, I'm an example of that, possibly to my detriment: I'd hardly think anyone who played FO1 first considers FO3 to be better; if they did, I'd nod my head and thank them for being one of the contributing factors towards the existence of NMA.
faetal on 7/3/2016 at 08:49
I think it's a syllogism issue. We may not be talking about the Western RPG which has the best roleplaying, we could be talking about the best game in the Western RPG category.
Sulphur on 7/3/2016 at 08:58
But, then, clearly, it would have to be Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
Thirith on 7/3/2016 at 09:02
That's the thing though, faetal: I can imagine reasons why someone might prefer Fallout 3, but I can't think of many reasons why it should be a better game than New Vegas. The criteria I can think of are mostly matters of taste (setting, story, characters), and other than bugginess I find it difficult to come up with anything that FO3 does better than NV that isn't done better by other games that might be called RPGs. (Doing a quick Google search to find out what others say about this...)
Sulphur on 7/3/2016 at 09:07
In terms of game systems, as in, which game plays better depending on your outlook: subjectively, one place where FO3 has it better than NV is the fact that it's a low-stress walkabout where you get high-powered weapons before you can blink, and can cheese through anything the game throws at you by chucking enough ammunition around the landscape. It's a fast-food buffet, essentially, and you can dip in any time. NV and the rest require a certain amount of investment before you can reap the dividends, while FO3's remit is mostly instagratification.
faetal on 7/3/2016 at 09:09
Depends who is making the list. Many people might prefer RPGs to be heavier on the G than the RP.
I'm not qualifying the outcome, just speculating on the process.
Sulphur on 7/3/2016 at 16:21
In FO3, you get the Fat Man and a bunch of ammo for it pretty early on, along with millions of grenades and frag mines, as well as a metric shitload of small guns and rifles after you're through with a bunch of main quests. You're never exactly struggling to survive, apart from the opening couple hours where you might be stuck with just a 10mm pistol for a while.
Yakoob on 8/3/2016 at 00:38
I think FO3 got the award because it did 90% of the work and NV just built on that and polished it. Yes, NV is the better game, but FO3 was the more innovative at the time by bringing Fallout into a first person shooty mode. IMHO it also did a surprisingly good job of it too, at least as far as atmosphere and translating the desolate wasteland to 3D.
Yakoob on 16/3/2016 at 04:26
Hmm seems like half the titles are jRPGs where the "most content" translates to "most grinding." Meeeeh :p
Sulphur on 16/3/2016 at 04:35
Yeah, their metric seems to be primarily the total number of hours spent, without anything so much as a quality filter for the side-activities that pad out the length. The western RPGs aren't exempted from that either. 70% of DA:I is cheerless 'collect #number of [item]' which invariably means trawling a map of respawning enemies to kill them and collect the things from their vaporising corpses, or to spam the radar key every few inches of terrain to highlight the things embedded in it.
