@"ahyuser001" I always thought that the vagueness of your character, and the nature in which he/she is introduced was better storytelling because like you said, it lets the player write the story. With the tie in at the end of Lonesome Road I feel like it tis your beginning and end togther. Allowing you to create your everything in between.

I think Fallout 3 works for TTW in that sense, I like being from the vault but by the end of New Vegas, you've lived in this guys shoes for hundreds of hours, decades of his life right through to the end. But in vanilla Fallout 3, the Vault intro and nackstory is very limiting.

I've only ever tried an alternate start mod with fallout 4, and due to how main character centric that game is, you can imagine how well it worked. Once i'm done with my current playthrough I'll probably do an alternate start, maybe just pick random and see where I end up.

I have to agree with you there Ahyuser, that is what makes Fallout New Vegas very good in my opinion, as it does allow you to roleplay a character rather than it be you playing a character's story.

I know people would bring it up, the original Fallout's where you played a character's story where well written, similar to the Witcher series (I never have gotten round to play the series.)

@Voyevoda1 I am talking about it from the perspective of conventional story writing. Writing a vague character with a story that is all over the place that doesn't have a definitive conclusion to the plot would produce a bad conventional story however it also allows someone from the 3rd party, ie the reader/gamer, to run their imagination and add into the story which is essential to role playing.

You could say that in order to have a good RPG you have to write a bad story. I am not necessarily saying that writing a bad story in a game automatically makes it a good RPG however you have to break certain norms in story writing in order to create an excellent role playing experience.

@"ahyuser001" yeah to that extent I would agree with you. Imersion, realism and role-playing comes from the player buying into the world that the game exists in, the plot and narritive comes afterwards.

RPG's prsent themselves in very different ways. One of my favourite ways to feel part of an RPG is that my decisions matter, the consequences of my actions ripple throughout the game world and the world is changed in someway by these choices. When you give the player choice, but the outcome is the same then it is just the illusion of choice. Fallout 3 is more guilty of the illusion of choice rather than actual choices. The ability to choose a faction, backstory and allegiance are more in lione with actual choice and consequence. Fallout 3 often feels like an expansive RPG but with blinders on.

I would say the Fallout NV would best for roleplaying since the only thing that gives you the hint of what was your past was the Lonesome road dlc and the rest is just blank memory so you can build up anykind of backstory you want

While Fallout 3 your character will be remembered as the vault dweller and the rest of the story is just laid out

@"Jcramos" The titles the game gives you are unavoidable. The Courier title isn't cool in itself, but what you make these titles mean is what gives them weight.

The sole Survivor was a terrible title though, all of them are brilliant except that one (The Chosen One probably being the best)

@Voyevoda1 The title isn't cool? Bruh we're the goddamn MAILMAN!! and we can blow up factions to the damn void if we wanted lmao.

Jokes aside, i think the title is kinda neat in the way of the setting we're put into, i mean, the wastes and all that, at least in this game we have a reason to be the errand boye.

@"The Rabid Dog" I didn't mean to say that it wasn't cool, but in our understanding of what a courier is, mailman isn't that intimidating. The open endedness of the title give you room to make the name have a different meaning.

If you're a bitch pacifist courier who kicks about in a lab coat not shooting at anything. Then its not that imposing and never was meant to be. If you're some grizzled merc/bounty hunter who kills for thrills or caps, then courier doesn't seem so belittling.

@Voyevoda1 I mean, just look it from a "bizarre" standpoint, of all titles or names, who could've thought a mailman would come up to you and blow your brains out for some blue star sunset sarsaparillas caps?

@"The Rabid Dog" " I'm the mailman, i'm here to deliver death. Sign here, ya bitch."

You can make fun out from anything. Mailman is vague enough.

Aye, basically this comic sums up the Courier character no matter how you play them, and is quite true.

As for the others, I agree that "The Survivor" is a bad name, F1 gave us "The Vault Dweller" though, but I see that as Albert Cole's story myself.

@"McKaby" That is amazing

The Vault Dweller is classic as it comes though, The Chosen One probably still takes it.

NV offers more opportunities for your invested stats to engage in situational interactions, there's more varied characters with a lot of interesting quests most of which have multiple approaches. Just take the opening town quest to see the full scope of all the options you have access to.

One is an iterative sequel of the other -
The question kind of answers itself.

IIHawkerII wrote:

One is an iterative sequel of the other -
The question kind of answers itself.

Not necessarily, we do have Dark Souls 2 as an example of a sequel not really living up to the standards set by the previous installment. I think something similar happened to happened in the Dragon Age series too?

gakusangi wrote:

IIHawkerII wrote:

One is an iterative sequel of the other -
The question kind of answers itself.

Not necessarily, we do have Dark Souls 2 as an example of a sequel not really living up to the standards set by the previous installment.  I think something similar happened to happened in the Dragon Age series too?

Not necessarily, New Vegas, Darks Souls 2, Dragon Age 2, Bioshock 2 were all made by differet people from their predecessors. It's not about living to the standars of their previous installment, all these games mentioned were radically different from the original games because of the people involved in making them changed alongside the fact that the intention behind these gams were also radically different than the originals