wolfman1911: I wonder if you ever played fallout 2? I ask because that was the game that I have dubbed buggiest ever. Mind you, I never used the fan patches until now, so that might be why I thought F2 was buggier than say Temple of Elemental Evil or Arcanum. I know on Fallout 2 if I tried killing someone using planted dynamite, it would cause a BSOD unless I was on another screen when it went off, and sometimes even if. I've never had any big problems with New Vegas though.

WTF: One thing puzzles me. Some people here seem to think, that Skyrim engine will be great & bugfree piece of software, and next Fallout must use it. How do you know Skyrim's engine is so great when the game didn't came out yet?

Musashi1596: Chances are it will be buggy. Most likely not to the catastrophic extent of the current engine but still likely to be buggy. However, the one thing I've taken about it from the recent Skyrim footage is that it looks good, damn good. And that's far more than the current engine can boast at the very least.

bevinator: Having played 1+2+3+NV, I really feel like in many ways, the Fallout games are split into two separate series.

FO3 feels like a direct sequel to 1, with plot elements from 2 mixed in. The feel of the game, the atmosphere, the setting, just really hits the FO1 vibe for me. That's my favorite thing about 3, really. I enjoy it, but it makes me want to play Oblivion instead. FO1 is dark, gritty, and nasty. Nothing is clean and shiny and well-constructed. The closest things to a "clean" place were Adytum, which was a despotic warzone, and the Cathedral, which was only happy and pretty above the surface. FO1 also wasn't trying to be funny. There were a lot of moments of dark humor, but nothing that would really make you laugh out loud (except for the crashed alien ship which gets me every time). There were a few pop culture references, but they were mostly subdued and not glaringly obvious.

For FO2, however, a lot of the design staff had changed from the first game. In many ways, FO2 didn't really "feel" like Fallout to me, even though it LOOKED like Fallout. The main character, a backwater tribal, can easily master computer hacking at early levels despite growing up in a village hundreds of miles away from the nearest source of electricity. Many of the cities were clean, bright, and even had uniformed police! They looked like they were stuck in a pre-war time bubble or something! Civilization was back in full swing now, just with fewer resources. The pop culture references were rampant and jarring, and the game felt like it was trying to keep me amused, rather than appealing to my darker nature. It was an awesome game, but it almost felt like it was set in an alternate universe from the first.

As mentioned above, 3 FEELS more like a sequel to FO1, even if it plays like a totally different game. The quests are simpler and more linear for the most part, the combat and NPC interaction are very different, but the atmosphere is the same. It's after the end, and the Capital Wasteland hasn't really begun to rebuild like the West has done. The whole place is brown, practically everything is busted, everyone hates each other, just like the first game. It didn't really feel like a Fallout GAME, but it definitely felt like you were living in the Fallout world.

To me, NV just feels like FO2++. There's bright shiny cities, powerful armies, organized governments, lots more greenery, and the like. The plot and the quests were more complex than 3, but nowhere near as complex as 1 or 2. It felt (more) like one of the original games, but the setting and the atmosphere were all off. It's like all of the stuff that bothered me about FO2 (compared to FO1) turned up to eleven.

My two cents.

Dhuraal: What's wrong with the current graphics that Oblivion/New Vegas/FO3 sport? They look good enough to me. Just because everybody else has bumped up graphics to needless levels it's now crap if they don't look just like that?

Musashi1596: While there are far worse out there the graphics are hardly impressive. Character models are decent, but textures are generally pretty poor.. Especially when you consider how much they are recycled.
Of course, graphics don't make the game, but they can't really be said to be impressive in this engine. I genuinely prefer the graphics in Fallout 1 and 2. It's obviously not as technically impressive but I find them easier on the eye.