I do agree that Bethesda should have taken a timeframe much closer to the war. But I can easily write this off with problems on the east side, which simply haven't been told so far.

Jarmo pointed it out <span class="bold">It's not a well researched scientific future, it's a Wasteland/Mad Max rip-off. </span> and that's true for ALL Fallout titles except the very first one - you'll find points in all of them that aren't "realistic", starting with F2 and not stopping in NV.

Regarding plot holes. Play a female character in NV and follow Caesar's path. Can't say he managed to convince me that I'm the exception to his rule regarding womans and that this will stay after he achieved his great victory. But I accept if that works for you.
Upon entering his place, he not only took your weapons but also the Platinum Chip. Why is he ordering YOU to use it? He's planning to wreck the place anyway, so why shouldn't he send a squad of his trusted men down there doing so, now that he can open it?
But it gets even better.... after you returned, he's convinced you did your job as he heard the rumbling underneath the building. Bothering to send someone to actually check? Nope. Giving back the Platinum Chip to you (for what?), denying himself further examination? Yeap.
He wanted to get into that thing (for what ever reason), now he finally has the key, sends some stranger down and kindly gives the key out of hand again....

.... but apparently, that's quality writing by Obsidian. If Bethesda would come up with something like that, I'm sure they would be burned at the stake.

Completely disagree. F3 (and F4) is exploration heaven, while NV is much more linear. You can climb on any hill in F3, NV is choke full with invisible walls. Head from Boulder City to the Hoover Dam in a straight line and you run into a smaller stony section, which you can't pass. Toggle collision in the console, get on top of it, toggle collision back on and you're trapped.

... and drop the copy / paste argument already guys. Seriously. Yes it was an Oblivion thing, but not in F3 / F4 or Skyrim. If someone feels different, please check just the caves in NV and tell me where the variety is, apart from it's inhabitants.
Yes the Metro IS repetitive in F3. Because it should be. Please check any map of a metro system of your choice and add all the sub-systems and corridors not open to the public on to it. It IS boring, repetitive and confusing as hell, that anyone not familiar with it can get lost - that's just realistic, sry.
But anyone feel free to point me towards the metro where you get in on one station, exit on any other and feel "Wow. This looks different."

Super Mutants wandered eastward in F:Tactics.
FEV was developed by West Tek, the Enclave dug it out and modified it - who says the Enclave were first and samples didn't went "missing" and landed by Vault-Tec or that West Tek kept it's second biggest project in one place?
BoS on east coast - again, heading eastward in F:Tactics and working Vertibirds in F3 and NV.
Drugs not spreading and remaining a local problem? Now how "realistic" would THAT be?

How is that a viable point of criticism for F3, yet NV gets away with it?

Can't say I liked the knights in shining armor story arc either, but the discussion to open up the Brotherhood was done in Fallout Tactics with the minority supporting it, sent eastward. So yes, it actually DOES make sense Bethesda expanded on that thought.
Not to mention that Obsidian did the same in NV with Father Elijah and Veronica, only with a different outcome.

Pointed that out earlier, but here you go: West Tek created the FEV in their research facility (aka the Glow), the military moved the whole thing to Mariposa. It's established in F1 / F2 that the Glows FEV strain did not have the same mutagenic abilities as its counterpart at Mariposa.
It changed during F1 / F2 and was mutated by radiation, but can't have different results in other locations / circumstances / potential manipulation through Vault-Tec?

------
I have no problem with criticizing F3 on realism and past lore. But apply the same points to NV too, and accept that Black Isle was dumped by Interplay, which then sold the franchise to Bethesda. If / how / when and why Bethesda expands on that, is up to them - not because it was or wasn't mentioned so in F1 / F2.

To the wanna-be wardens of the Fallout lore, I'd like to end with a quote from NV:

Being a stupid player is not a fault of the writing. Nobody made you side with Caesar and if you didn't agree with him and yet sided with him anyway then you're the idiot. Not Obsidian's fault.

That's bullshit.
The whole game through, they've been pretty straight forward how Caesar feels about and treats woman. If you give the player the option to still go down that path, you'd better come up with a good explanation or solution and don't write it off in 2-3 sentences as if nothing changed - something that Bethesda gets blamed repeatedly, to not be capable of.

They could have given a good explanation or come up with a solution that you made Caesar see woman as more than just for breeding as a consequence. They even had the option to have you still end up with a slave collar around your neck in the ending screens, falling for his words - which would have been nothing but consequent.
Instead you end up with a golden coin, regardless of what other options you picked - that. doesn't. make. sense.

The whole plot hole still exists regardless of how you handle things, playing male or female. You always end up in Caesar's camp, he gets the chip, hands it back and sends you down to trash the place, you seal it up again upon leaving and can keep the chip.
You either kill Caesar or he's giving you the chip back. Frankly put, he's never been depicted in the whole game as THAT gullible.

Tactics was, in its time, universally lambasted for being non-canon. Even while 3 was in planning, it was said that Tactics was going to be ignored, for being non-cannon. You're not helping your argument by saying "Tactics did it first". Same applies to your repeated use of Tactics as a reference later on. Don't get me wrong: I liked Tactics, sort of, for taking FO1-2 combat to the next level, but it felt as out-of-place in the Fallout universe as 3.

Excuse me? NV gets away with it because it's set in the *same area*. WTF was Harold even doing out on the east coast (yeah, I'm sure someone came up with a half-assed explanation for that as well)? Scorpions are not nearly as common in the northeast; they should've picked something else to be a common nuisance. At least they didn't bring the intelligent deathclaws over as well, like they did with Tactics. You might see Enclave, given who they are, but the Brotherhood was an isolated tech hoarding cult, barely expanding out in FO2. Using the Brotherhood in Tactics and beyond is just lazy: looking for a strong government or organized cult of heroes ("the good guys"), and assigning that task to the Brotherhood because it fit their mold (granted, FO2 was already softening up the Brotherhood they depicted in FO1, but not to that extent). If there's one thing that's entirely out of place in the FO universe it's "the good guys".

Disclaimer: I have not played NV yet, but I have played all the FO games that preceded it.

This argument is so stupid. Let's look at other games.

"I don't understand, I can kill everyone in Megaton, yet Moira Brown still is so happy to see me! Shouldn't she refuse to help me now that I've blatantly killed half the town?"
"I blew up Megaton, yet Moira Brown survived because she has a questline for me to do! Why should she specifically survive simply because it locks me out of a questline?"
"I sold people into slavery at Paraside Falls, why can I still help the slaves at the Temple of the Union, shouldn't the game tell me that this doesn't make any sense? Shouldn't the game specifically stop me from doing this?"
"I was been born outside the vault, and I've been told this, but I'm going to poison the drinking water anyway because reasons. They don't need to give me a good reason to side with the Enclave. Shouldn't the game stop me from choosing this ending because it could never make sense at all, ever?"

"I was a really bad guy and I killed Bruma, but I cleared off my bounty so everyone forgot about it! Shouldn't the game prevent me from being able to conduct business in Bruma after slaughtering all their friends?"
"Shivering Isles as a whole makes total sense with the main plot of Oblivion. Nothing about that seems weird about a game where you spend 80% of it fighting Daedra and sealing them away but now I want to be one today. Shouldn't the game prevent me from downloading the expansion if I played the main quest?"

"I was a mage in Dragon Age 2, but shouldn't the game prevent me from siding with the Templars at the end?"

"I went through and was anti-aug the entire game, should Human Revolution prevent me from suddenly choosing the Sarif ending? Shouldn't the game stop me? Help! The game's not making enough choices for me!"

The game shouldn't shackle you to do things a specific way. The game is about choice. If you make choices that don't make sense, it's not the game's job to explain that for you. The game allows you to be a moron who doesn't make any sense, something, evidently, you've taken it up on.

Caesar is surrounded by people who follow him without question. He's smart enough that everyone believes what he says as fact. He doesn't believe his dogma himself either, he's not bound to them. He just preaches it because he sees this as the way society needs to be. These are things the game explains quite well, and many times, you know, if you're not a thick headed moron.

Your arguments are pathetic, and that's how you should feel.

Alright, I'll leave Tactics out of the equation then and stick with 1 and 2.

Supermutants as described before - FEV developed by West Tek in their research facitily, secured by a military contingent for fear of international espionage, shortly afterwards moved to the Mariposa Military Base. (all established lore, see West Tek research facility > Background).
We know that the two west coast FEV strains (Glow / Mariposa) changed due to radiation.

From F3: the east coast strain came from a Vault, so must have been put there pre-war. The Overseer's terminal mentions all the data coming from sources like Mariposa, West Tek and Vault-Tec.
We have the source, a believable point in time and believable culprits.
One might see this as half-assed. But those I'd have to ask why? Because it's done by Bethesda or because it wasn't established in F1 / F2? If it's the second, NV should get the same treatment or we're talking about serious bias beyond any logical reasons - aka Bethesda sucks, Obsidian can do no wrong. A mindset I can't accept.

Both Deathclaws and Rad Scorpions are pretty much the apex predators of that time, with no real enemies. So it's plausible for them to expand over the whole country and beyond.

Yes, I don't like the story arc for the BoS in F3 either. Though as much as they've been isolationistic, there's always been guys among them wanting / trying to change that, even just a bit. See Sergant Dennis Allen.
Since you haven't played NV - you probably shouldn't check the possible endings for the Brotherhood. But several apply a rather expansional approach.

Addendum: yes, in hindsight Bethesda could have done a lot better with F3 - absolutely correct.
Yes, they could have changed to a much more different setting, without Rad Scorpions, Deathclaws, Super Mutants and Brotherhood of Steel. Maybe it would have been a better game, but I doubt that.
What I DON'T doubt is, how the reaction from gamer side would have been. "Not even Super Mutants or Brotherhood? How is that even a Fallout game? They should have done their own take without slapping the Fallout brand on it, as this has NOTHING to do with Fallout anymore." - see Prey.

I stated it clearly in my first post: I've emphasized it, just in case you missed it. Now stop beating around the bush and address the mentioned plot hole with the chip, since that was what I've countered your argument to begin with.
Or as a counterproposal, you stop claiming "giant plot hole in F3" as long as you manage to close your eyes for those done by Obsidian.

Sorry, you're right. People with unrealistic expectations would've still complained. Arguing this further doesn't really add to the 3 vs NV discussion anyway; I only replied because your arguments were indirectly defending FO3 vs. FO1-2 as well. While I do feel they could've changed the bestiary balance (FO2 introduced new beasts and factions and reduced the numbers of super mutants and BoS, so why couldn't FO3?), I agree that it wouldn't have necessarily improved the game.

Oh, and I guess my point about scorpions being more a west-coast/desert thing is invalidated by the fact that these are apparently supposed to be emperor scorpions (an African species that shouldn't even be in the US except maybe as illegal pets).

And I told you that the game is not designed to ensure that you don't play like an idiot. You are so desperate to create alleged plot holes where they don't exist. Whereas the entire plot of Fallout 3 doesn't make any sense at all, and no matter how much you flail up and down and scream and cry about how siding with Caesar on a female character is a fault of the game designers, you will never reach the same level of real plot holes in Fallout 3.

Once again, for the last time. Doesn't matter if playing a male or a female character - upon entering Caesar's fort, you automatically lose possession of the Platinum Chip. You now have two options:
- kill Caesar to get it back.
- getting sent down to the Securitron Vault by Caesar, regardless how you intend to handle things down there (pro-Caesar, -NCR, -House or -Yes-man).

Caesar lacked the key to gain entrance. Now that he finally has it, he hands it over and sends you down. Not his most trusted men, nope. Someone he basically knows only from hearsay and a 5 minute chat in person.
Once you head back out (again, regardless of how you did down there), the place gets sealed up again with the removal of the chip from the console. Caesar blindly trusts in your doings, as he doesn't sends someone to check, nor demands the chip back, giving the key he wanted so much out of hand again.

Fallout 3 has plenty of invisible walls too. A lot of buildings that the player character should have more than enough space to jump into (i.e. a storefront with the doors and/or windows busted out), based on how they are visually represented in the game world, he/she can't enter, because invisible walls prevent the jump from going through (and because those buildings are not actually programmed to be "enterable;" they are just misleading visual fluff).

Similarly, a lot of small rubble piles in Fallout 3 that the player should be able to jump over, he/she can't, because invisible walls prevent the jump from succeeding.

And probably the most glaring example of invisible walls in Fallout 3 also happens in many, many different places: if the player goes too far in a direction that the developers don't want him/her to go, then invisible walls block the player from going any further, and at the same time, an immersion-killing HUD message pops up that says something like: "You cannot proceed any further in this direction. Please turn around."

Busted windows can't be jumped through - switch to third-person view and you should see why. That and the rest of your examples you'll find in NV too, be that a design-decision, engine-limitations or something else. But you'll have a hard time finding something like I described between Boulder City and Hoover Dam in F3.

And yes, if you wander too far off the map, F3 tells you to head back. Something you'll likely never experience in NV. Why? Check this map of NV.... you see how almost all of the area is walled-off at the edge, with the exception of 4 roads leading out.

Don't get me wrong - NV is in a lot of ways better than F3 was. Be that the storyline (though babyeating roman baddies wasn't a good idea), the questdesign, NPC personalities, choices / consequences.... but exploration I'll have to disagree anytime.

Fallout NV is one of my favourite games, warts and all. Never leaves my HD, too. Fallout 3 was good one-time experience on brains-off mode -- it's just like every Bethesda game ever -- very pretty and really dumb. I'm not eloquent enough to offer anything than "LOL" to people who think FO3's plot holes are totally equal to NV's plot holes, but since this thread does not seem to be allergic to TL;DR, here are long, excellent series on why Fallout 3 is really, blisteringly el stupido.

I've read Shamus excellent blog-postings about it, several times actually. And yes, he's (mostly) right.
He also makes an excellent point at the end of his series, which you seemingly missed, so I quote it here for you: I'll give you also the (likely) reason for it: a lot of his (viable) criticism works for NV too. The following examples are all from Shamus first page of his serie:
- They completely misunderstood the humor, replacing ‘dark comedy’ with ‘goofball situations’. - examples: Black Mountain Radio or the complete Old World Blues DLC.
- 200 years after a nuclear war, people aren’t going to be forming greaser gangs. - Great Khans, Vipers, Jackals.
- In Fallout 3 people still dress the same, stores still have Old World food on the shelves, the old machines still work. - same in NV, despite that they grow food.
- Nobody has made any new music, culture, customs, clothing, or tools. They haven’t even swept the dang floor. - same in NV.

Once more, F3 deserves a lot of it's criticism, no doubt about it. But if I take all the criticism brought up here and check NV for it in an unbiased attempt, it suddenly doesn't look so good anymore. I agree that NV will still be better in a lot of ways, be that the main-plot / - storyline, NPC personalities, quests and so on.

But goddammit, the next claiming F3 lacking in realism since it's 200 years after the war, but NOT having a problem with working soft drink machines in NV, should get his head checked against the next wall - repeatedly.

I did not miss it. Neither did I miss context you ripped this quote from, allow me to post few parts I find important: And to complete the first quote: In other words, Fallout 3 stupidity has nothing to do with New Vegas. It is its own (gloriously stupid) entity, and would be such even if New Vegas did not exist. Still people love jumping into discussion about Alice's hairstyle with arguments that Bob's dog sucks. Humor is very subjective thing, but I found both OWB and Black Mountain Radio quite dark and very much in tone with Fallout 2 (I think Shamus Young holds "too goofy" against Fallout 2 and here's where I strongly disagree). But then, I didn't have problems with goofy Moira's quests either. In fact, I found them one of the best parts of F3. Also, the goofiest part of New Vegas was Wild Wasteland perk and it was optional. They're not greaser gangs. They're just gangs. And forming gangs comes naturally to human societies, always and forever. Plus, Khans and Vipers are from F1. Imagine you've been hired to do a sequel to the very successful, loved both by critics and audience game that also was very profitable -- all that despite of its nonsensical setting and writing capable to melt brains with its stupidity. Do you:

1. Raze everything to the ground, sweep the floor and on the clean slate build your own vision of the game which, however, visually (and partially thematically) does not have much in common with the game you were hired to do a sequel in the first place?

2. Roll your eyes, then roll your sleeves and work with what you inherited, minimizing stupidity wherever possible? Wrong! New Vegas made plenty of new culture and customs, also imported some from F1 and F2. The whole game was about the conflict between new cultures because of their clashing customs. New Vegas had soft drink machines problem because F3 introduced it. It's not "NOT having a problem with working soft drink machines in NV", but "shrugging off the inherited stupidity because the other components of the game are so good".