10 Things Fallout 4 Does Better Than Fallout 3 & New Vegas

April 30, 2024, 9 p.m.

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10 Things Fallout 4 Does Better Than Fallout 3 & New Vegas

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Summary Fallout 4 introduced modern gameplay improvements, avoiding the performance and stability issues of its predecessors.

Fallout 4 often feels more authentic to the series' post-apocalyptic setting, with improvements to crafting and the introduction of settlement building.

The Commonwealth has many advantages over the wastelands of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, including better cities.

Fallout 4 was the first in the franchise to transition to modern gameplay, and in doing that came with major improvements to its predecessors Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Though the previous games in the franchise are still excellent in their own right, as time went on their flaws became more apparent. Performance and stability became inconsistent and ultimately brought down the arguably generational games. Fallout 4 avoided these issues as it aged while continuing the trend of successful games for the franchise.

Fallout 4 tasks players with exploring the Commonwealth in search of their kidnapped son. However, while navigating the historic wasteland of Eastern Massachusetts, four factions are in conflict for dominance of the region. The following DLCs were small side adventures around the wasteland, like the surprisingly difficult Automatron DLC, along with a brief trip to Far Harbor in Maine. Overall, Fallout 4 was a great step towards the franchise's move to the modern-day gaming ecosystem.

Related Fallout 4’s Free Next-Gen Update Fixes One Major Omission Fallout 4's next-gen update brings new weapons, gear, and decorations for players to enjoy while attempting to fix the biggest story absence.

10 Crafting

Crafting would likely be an important part of a game set in a wasteland, regardless of whether the RPG mechanics take priority. Fallout 3 had extremely limited crafting, only allowing players to craft a handle of gear from schematics that needed to be found. New Vegas offered more options like ammo, food, and medical supplies, but still felt lacking for the franchise's theme.

Fallout 4 did a massive overhaul and established the crafting system the franchise has adopted since. Different workbenches were introduced to craft specific items, which also increased what could be crafted. Armor and all weapons can now be crafted and upgraded with mods for special abilities. This finally added the wasteland survival feel to the franchise while allowing for gear to be further specialized to each individual play style.

9 Sprinting

What may seem like a small change is actually a huge quality-of-life addition. Fallout 3 and New Vegas were rather slow to navigate, which could make exploring feel like a slog. A side effect of this was both games' lovingly crafted worlds often got ignored in favor of fast traveling. Fast travel is a good option for long-distance and saving time overall, but putting players into a situation where using it feels like the only option leads to bad experiences.

Fallout 4's simple addition of sprinting, with a limited stamina meter, was brilliant. It fixed the issue of short to medium-range traveling feeling slow and allowed the broken-down charm of the Commonwealth to be taken in. Fast travel was still a critical part of Fallout 4's movement but was no longer the go-to method. Sprinting also impacts combat, allowing players to escape more easily or be aggressive.

8 Gunplay

Though gunplay is not the focus of the franchise, it is still a part that needs to be fun and engaging. Fallout 3 and New Vegas were the first in the series to move to the FPS style but came with issues. The slow movement made battles sluggish and often gave a huge advantage to the enemy. VATS was also a necessity to use, as firing outside VATs was extremely inaccurate, but with the time dilation mechanic having a stamina bar, it forced dull waiting moments during battle.

Fallout 4 boosted its gunplay in the movement and crafting additions alone. However, the big key was the accuracy changes for firing outside VATS. It turned the mechanic into a special boost that could quickly dispatch a powerful enemy rather than the only way to kill even the most basic wasteland monsters.

7 Animations

Fallout 3 used an old engine and New Vegas is famous for the lack of time the development team was given to make the game. So, while it is understandable the games wouldn't age well, the graphical quality is quite poor. The NPCs and landscapes are barely passable by modern-day standards. The real culprit is during movement where animals and characters are clunky outside any minimal movements.

Fallout 4 was a major improvement in this regard. It still needed some performance help from mods, but significantly less than its predecessors. NPC and enemy movement saw massive upgrades to feel more lifelike and at least look like it came from a polished game. Overall, Fallout 4 put more effort into making its graphics/animations age well enough to be acceptable a decade later.

6 Post-Launch Support/DLC

While Fallout 3 and New Vegas have the advantage in DLCs, general post-launch support for Fallout 4 has been much better. New Vegas is notoriously difficult to run on modern hardware, and it has remained quite buggy since its release. Fallout 3 remains similarly clunky, but 4 has found new life thanks to its next-gen patch, which improves performance on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, among a number of other changes.

Fallout 4's Automatron and Far Harbor DLCs may not remain as beloved as Fallout 3's Point Lookout or New Vegas' Old World Blues, but they're still significant and compelling content additions. However, Fallout 4's greatest post-launch addition compared to its predecessors is the Creation Club, which has allowed mods to come to consoles (albeit in a limited capacity on PlayStation platforms). The modding scene for Bethesda titles is always robust, and the ease of use with the Creation Club is even an extra boon on PC.

5 Brotherhood Of Steel

One of the most popular factions in the franchise is the morally gray Brotherhood of Steel. However, they are largely absent from New Vegas, minus a small sect that is wiped out by the player regardless of the ending. They are more present in Fallout 3, but this is a sect that is split off from the rest of the faction and focuses heavily on military standards. Though these are both interesting stories to explore on their own, they fail to connect to the usual status of the Brotherhood.

Fallout 4's BoS, led by Arthur Maxson, is a more engaging group and more accurate to their lore. The BoS are supposed to be a semi-religious military group that follows their own rules. That is immediately present in Fallout 4, as deciding to side with them includes eliminating two other factions. This kind of brutal treatment, but rewarding loyalty to the player, gives a more accurate view of the BoS while showcasing how they affect the world around them.

4 Faction Relations

Factions and managing player relationships with them is one of the key components of Fallout's RPG system. In Fallout 3, the factions can be largely left alone, minus the Enclave and whichever is chosen to join. New Vegas took this up a level and made the factions intermingle more. Often, choosing one faction meant a handful of others would have to be eliminated. Other times they could be recruited and brought under a bigger faction for more might.

Fallout 4 followed this trend and, while not allowing the factions to work together, forced bigger decisions. This is because deciding to join any of the four factions ends with two other factions needing to be eliminated. This forced players to think about which side they wanted to join and the fate of the Commonwealth. While Fallout 4 had fewer factions than the previous game, each one had more impact to compensate.

3 NPC Programming

Something that drastically changed combat was improvements in NPC programming. Fallout 3 and New Vegas had very basic coding that made enemies uninteresting. The difficulty usually comes from boosted stats or the poor accuracy present in both games. While Fallout isn't meant to be a game with large-scale tactical battles, the lack of some tactics makes the combat feel like filler rather than a key part of the series.

Luckily, Fallout 4 was able to upgrade its programming to give combat variety. Human enemies would now actively take cover and force higher accuracy or aggressive movements. Wasteland monsters also saw improvements that had them use their special abilities more, evolving them from single-minded, melee-heavy annoyances. Overall, while these improvements could feel like the bare minimum, they helped greatly improve the franchise's combat along with other additions.

2 World Design

Though not the largest upgrade, Fallout 4 did see improvements to world design. Fallout 3 and New Vegas were mainly empty wastelands or basic cities that had little impact. Both did have the outliers of their main cities, Washington D.C. and Vegas, which felt true to their origin. Outside those two, both games could have been anywhere in the country and still felt largely the same.

Fallout 4 did an excellent job of capturing the entire feel of the historic Commonwealth now turned into a wasteland. Diamond City, once Fenway Park, is an eye-catching main settlement while the ruins of Boston lie in the backdrop. Outside the main city, the famous Freedom Trail and Bunker Hill can be explored. Even two of the factions play into the history of the region. Overall, the Commonwealth is arguably the most decorated and cared-for map of any in the Fallout franchise.

1 Settlement Building

A feature that no Fallout game had before was settlement building, and it proved to possibly be Fallout 4's best feature. This allowed players to create settlements and fill them with NPCs. These settlements could then be upgraded to be a passive income for Caps and locations to always find traders. At worst, this system was a fun way to create bases in an extensive system that was only further expanded in DLCs and the Creation Club.

This system was so popular that it even carried over to the multiplayer-focused Fallout 76. In this, the system was even further improved and has now become a staple for the franchise. Though Fallout 5 is likely a long time away, if the next game in the franchise follows the same gameplay themes as the rest, settlement building will be an important system with even more upgrades.

Though Fallout 4 can often feel like a dark horse in the Fallout series, being the first with modern gameplay and some controversial decisions, it still proved a boon. The systems that it introduced and improved on set the foundation for the future. That is why it is important to remember Fallout 4 for what it does better than Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.