All the isometric RPGs are very linear. You do act 1, then act 2, then act 3, etc.. What varies is how you complete them.
In the Bathesda style RPGs you can never touch the main quest and STILL play for 100 hours before you get bored. You can go in any direction. Some directions are 'level' checked by enemies, but you can sneak past them (e.g. death claws at the beginning in Fallout NV).
Games like BG2/BG3/Fallout 2/wasteland are much more constrained in what you can actually do. You have to clear the gob line camp to get to baldurs gate, etc.
The games are 'free' in very different ways.
I personally believe that the Bathesda 'freedom' of WHAT to do, with less choices in HOW to do it is much more RPG friendly than the on rails isometric 'freedom' which has very little choice in WHAT to do, just HOW you do it.
> All the isometric RPGs are very linear. You do act 1, then act 2, then act 3, etc.. What varies is how you complete them.
You can finish Fallout 1 in less than 5 minutes, skipping essentially all of the act [1], so not necessarily that linear. But even if we discount this specific case, isometric RPGs are not that different from Bethesda style RPGs in structure, it is that the latter have very different budget and have a huge amount of side quests.
That said, OP was speaking specifically of Fallout 3, and compared to the following titles, I find it was quite more constrained... lot of time spent in tunnels, areas that were off limits until you could cross a certain metro... Fallout NV and Fallout 4 feel more in line with the original games.
Yes, Fallout4 get a bad name because it followed the New Vegas masterclass, but it is truly one of the best Fallout, and the Far Harbour DLC is in my eyes the best atmosphere of any Fallout game i've played (never played Fallout 1 though). Fallout3 is pretty bad though.
The reason Fallout 4 gets a bad name is similar to the reason that Microsoft's take on Shadowrun did. You're taking an extremely iconic RPG title and turning it into a shooter. The reason companies do this is because shooters sell best on consoles, but it doesn't make any sense - you end up with a game that's 'too shootery' for Fallout fans, and 'too RPGy' for Call of Duty fans. Fallout 3 was already in a bit of a grey zone here, but Fallout 4 went well beyond the pale.
I'm a huge fan of the series but could never bring myself to play Fallout 4 because of this reason. It just 'feels' wrong, even if it actually is a perfectly enjoyable game. Kind of like I wouldn't want to play a Call of Duty RPG. Actually that might be kind of neat lol. I guess it's just because I'm more into RPGs than shooters!
But you're in a tiny minority. It's actually viewed as one of the best games of it's time.
You get that right?
Can you acknowledge that both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 would BOTH be chosen as some of the greatest video games of the last 2 decades? Unlike, say FO76 or Starfield?
I just don't understand the tiny, yet extremely vocal, set of Bathesda haters who constantly whine on about Gamebryo or 'real' fallout.
If it's so bloody good, why was Wasteland 3 fairly meh. There's your 'old' fallout. It was a mid-level hit. Entertaining, but not an all time great. If Bathesda is so bad at writing RPGs and Obsidian are so much better, why is Outer Worlds so utterly underwhelming and boring.
Like the actual evidence and reality is in front of your face. Making a great game is hard. Bathesda have done it multiple times. And Fallout 3 + 4 are somevof those great games.
If you don't like what they did with the fallout IP, just remember, you could have got another fallout brotherhood of steel.
Fallout 1 has in essence 2 arcs. Do one thing and then do other.
Fallout 2... Well you can just do anything the open world before final thing. Skyrim for example is infinitely more constrained, you have lot of pretty boring content to get to end...
I was more referring to the content of the story rather than the 'delivery' of the story itself, but like another peer mentioned the original Fallouts are even more open. Not only can you beat both the games in a few minutes (without cheating/glitching) if you know everything, but you can also similarly grab the best armor in the game, and so on. There are literally no constraints on you whatsoever besides knowledge that you (not your character) gains.
Where would you put Arcanum, then? It has a well-defined arc that you generally have to follow... but you can skip a whole lot of it if you just know where to go on the map.
Also, the only RPG I know of where a character sufficiently skilled in diplomacy can win the final boss fight by convincing them to abandon their evil plans.
All the isometric RPGs are very linear. You do act 1, then act 2, then act 3, etc.. What varies is how you complete them.
In the Bathesda style RPGs you can never touch the main quest and STILL play for 100 hours before you get bored. You can go in any direction. Some directions are 'level' checked by enemies, but you can sneak past them (e.g. death claws at the beginning in Fallout NV).
Games like BG2/BG3/Fallout 2/wasteland are much more constrained in what you can actually do. You have to clear the gob line camp to get to baldurs gate, etc.
The games are 'free' in very different ways.
I personally believe that the Bathesda 'freedom' of WHAT to do, with less choices in HOW to do it is much more RPG friendly than the on rails isometric 'freedom' which has very little choice in WHAT to do, just HOW you do it.