Back in the day FO3 was technically impressive and exploring made it interesting for me. But I do find it boring these days.

You haven't played Fallout 1 for a long time then. Because humor is almost non existent in F1.

Each time I try Oblivion or Morrowind I start with a lot of energy and have a ton of fun, but somewhere during the 2nd or 3rd day I get too bored to continue. But I've never had that problem with FO3 in any of my playthroughs. Unlike Morrowind and Oblivion I don't detest the leveling system, and I found the enemies scaling to your level far less noticable.
Agreed though that Fallout 2 is the superior game.

@dtgreene: Fallout 3 had the same mechanics Oblivion used when it came to taking damage meaning that power armours didn't stop low calibre bullets like they were supposed to. Thankfully that was somewhat fixed in Fallout New Vegas with the introduction of DT (and not just DR).

Fallout 1 was a lot more subdued whereas Fallout 2 went with the in your face, zany and campy Pythonesque type of humour.

Tell me that finding the Stealth Boy in the fist Fallout wasn't funny, I dare you! :)

That's not what I was referring to. I was referring to how the game decides whether an attack hits in the first place.

Morrowind and Fallout 3, while they look like first person action games, do not actually play like such. When you attack an enemy, the game rolls dice in the background; if you get a good roll, your attack hits, otherwise it misses. This is why, in Morrowind, if you have low skill in a weapon type and keep swinging at a mudcrab, your attacks will (mostly) keep missing, even though the mudcrab is right there. (To put it another way, it's more like the way Fallout 1 and 2 determine whether an attack hits.)

Oblivion (and, to my understanding, Fallout New Vegas) are different. When you attack, if your weapon collides with an enemy and the enemy doesn't happen to be blocking at the moment, the attack is guaranteed to hit, just as you would expect in an action game; the only effect of skill here is to determine the amount of damage you do on a successful hit. (I note that the block mechanic is what you would expect in an action game; you hold a button (or key) to block, and if you're attacking or casting a spell, your block is cancelled during that time.)

Incidentally, under what I consider a reasonable (possible) definition of RPG, Morrowind and Fallout 3 would qualify, but Oblivion and Fallout: New Vegas would not, just because of this mechanic difference.

I love the humor in Fallout 2. The totally bizarre events that happen randomly in that game that seem totally out of place.
You're just cruising along in your car when suddenly you run into the the Guardian on the Edge of Forever. You go in and decide to start fiddling with the water chip in Vault 13, causing the first game to happen.

Or you run into the Monty Python knights (can't remember if this was in the original game or the restoration project) and they give you directions to the GECK. This, shortly after you trick the Keeper of the Bridge of Death into exploding.

Fighting in the boxing ring, only for Mike Tyson to score a crit and bite your ear off.

God, there's no game like Fallout 2.

I definitely agree 100% with the thread title. I'd add that Fallout 3 is mind-numbingly boring.

There is no point having an "open world" when that world is hollow & meaningless & full of nothing other than the same few environments & enemies copy & pasted ad infinitum millions of times.

I don't have hardware good enough to run Witcher 3 yet, but when I do, I'll be massively disappointed if its "open world" turns out to be a meaningless, extremely repetitive copy & paste fest as is Fallout 3.

Have to slightly disagree. It took a long time before I could appreciate some of the parts of FO3. For me the exploration of the DC downtown area was an absolute blast. Going from underworld to the national museum, congress hall (or whatever it is) and exploring those delerict buildings really managed to give an immersive game "feeling".

What I didn't like was the quests and black and white decisions. It just feels rushed, as most things Bethesda does. For me one of the worst parts was when you find your father again and can feed him a whole lot of bullshit about what happened, except the truth. Combine this with only 20 quests in the game and is meh. However, I never found it mind-numbingly boring or anything like that.

I tired of the game mere minutes into the first DLC; a total waste of €40 for them :-( Still have not returned but always plan to, one day.

The Knights were in the original game. ;)

Back in 98 I was really annoyed by Fallout 2, I loved the additions to the game (and the depth!) but the tongue in cheek humour verging on self parody was a bit much.

If you really enjoy that sort of humour in games then you should have a look at Divinity Original Sin.

Just brace yourself then because while the Witcher 3 is good it's certainly not as good as most people say. My advice to you would be to set your expectations a bit lower so you won't end up terribly disappointed when you'll decide to pick it up.

and has a world just as hollow as FO 3. Seriously, there is very little difference between them. One has more sand then concrete.