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Fallout 4 v. Witcher 3: Which Did You Prefer?

Witcher 3 by far. Fallout 4 was such a forgettable experience for me and the long outdated engine and throwaway characters and writing don't do it any favours. I did like the exploration and weapon customisation, I'll give it that.
 
I'm finding it funny as hell how people that prefer Witcher 3 feel the need to also trash Fallout at the same time

In this thread it makes sense though. It IS a vs topic.

However, In all the other 1 million I hate f4 topics, the witcher 3 is always brought up. And they make it a point to shit on f4.

It's like, "no one asked you about the witcher 3 BTW" lol!
 
Witcher 3 by far. I don't want to insult Fallout 4 or its fans, so I won't put my distaste for the game into words. But Witcher 3 just took my breath away and far surpassed my expectations going in.

I'd go so far as to say it's probably spoiled me for all future RPGs to come, and will be the game to which I compare them. Fair or not.
 
I liked both a lot but definitely Witcher 3 for me. I don't even subscribe to Witcher 3 having bad gameplay either, I think its combat is genuinely great. I preferred its characters and story and really loved the quests/writing etc.

I was however surprised at just how improved the gameplay was in Fallout 4, I played it mostly as a straight shooter with a bit of VATS and it was fun as fuck. Fun world to explore as well. Some awful dialogue/quests but I still enjoyed actually playing it.
 
are you just going to go around passive aggressively laughing against anybody who doesn't agree with your opinion?

1. How do you "passively aggressively" laugh? I'm sorry, but Now I am laughing lol!

2. I already explained my opinion. But that dude made a comment I found funny. How do you not even play a game, but know it is better?. And "safely" say it?

C' Mon. Did I need to explain that, fam?
 
Witcher 3 hands down.

I'd give Fallout the edge when it comes to combat, Crafting, and exploration.

The story and writing in Witcher 3 is miles above fallout 4. The engine is modern, provides a smooth playing experience and gives off nice visuals.

I also prefer the dialogue system in the Witcher.

This is not to say fallout 4 is a bad game, I'm quite enjoying it.

I think we will look back at witcher 3 as a classic game of this generation, where as Fallout 4 will be forgotten as an average Bethesda fallout sequel.
 
Witcher 3 is a great open world RPG and Fallout 4 is a fun shooter/sandbox. Witcher 3 was a huge improvement over Witcher 2, F4 feels like a refinement of F3 with less emphasis on RPG mechanics and more on shooting. Both are fun, Witcher 3 is better.

But it's not really going for the same things anymore and aren't really comparable beyond a few general aspects. The shooting is better in Fallout 4 than Witcher 3. Fallout 4 has a better radio. Glad to have both.
 
Witcher 3 by a light year. Fallout 4 is good, but it feels like review after 120+ hours of Fallout 3. Which isn't Fallout 4's fault, but Witcher 3 is just the fresher experience to me.
 
Now that Fallout 4 has been released for over a month, I'm really interested in a discussion/comparison of these two massive 2015 RPGs.

Which one did you like better: Fallout 4 or Witcher 3?

I have a pretty strong opinion that I'll share later, but I don't want to steer the discussion from the start. Please only comment if you have played both games.

Some categories to compare:
- Main story quests
- Side quests
- Quality of writing
- Characters
- RPG mechanics
- Combat
- World/exploration
- Graphics

Please always be respectful when stating your opinion!

Off the bat, The Witcher 3.

But I'll go through each category in order to explain why.

- Main Quests: Hands down The Witcher 3. Just the overall pacing and satisfaction you get out of it is one of the best this year. Fallout 4's main story is only interesting when the goal is "Find your son." After that it becomes a jumble mess with the only good thing being you have 3 branching paths despite the endings being almost the same and weak. The Witcher 3 puts down a certain path but there are drastic choices that can be made and some choices affecting the ending in ways you would never think of. The writing is what makes it shine the most.

- Side Quests: Again, The Witcher 3. No competition. The side quests are the best that I have ever seen. Not in scope but in being engrossed. Every witcher mission you felt like a detective and a badass.

- Quality of writing: The Witcher 3. Want me to get a clip of one of the biggest moments of Fallout 4 and a early scene in The Witcher 3? Because the comparison isn't even fair.

- Characters: The Witcher 3. Starting get redundant. Triss, Yen, Dandelion, Ciri, etc are all interesting characters with history and own motives. If Bethesda made TW3 they would of made a character like Dandelion be a companion despite him having no reason to and him having his stuff to focus on. That is something I felt F4 does a lot and it bothered me. Why is this reporter suddenly following? Why is this detective following me when he has a business set up already? Just cause they "like" me. Characters are tools for the player in F4. Characters are characters in The Witcher 3.

- RPG mechanics: TW3. How is it that The Witcher has you playing a determined character, has a voiced protag, a dialogue system that sometimes lets you only ask two things, but still ends up having more choices overall. There is a cutscene for everything in TW3. You go into combat during a party and you lost? Fallout would have you restart. TW3 has a cutscene just to show Geralt lose. However, the crafting system is a lot more fun in F4.

- Combat: Tie. Fallout isn't a great shooter. The Witcher 3 isn't a great action game.

- World/exploration: Fallout 4. It's the only thing Bethesda still does good. However the world in the Witcher 3 is better crafted.

- Graphics: The Witcher 3.
 
Fallout 4 by miles for the actual gameplay especially the combat. Witcher 3 may be prettier and have a better story but if I want a story I'll watch a movie. Witcher 3's gameplay and combat are dogshit.
 
Witcher 3 for me. I've had to take a break from F4 because I'm finding it all a bit tedious.

Now if we were talking Witcher vs Xenoblade....
 
I'm going to give the slight edge to TW3 because it felt fresher to me. This is a personal thing, because I couldn't get into TW2, and played FO3 and NV for way too long. If this wasn't the case I would probably go for Fallout. Moment to moment gameplay and exploration is much more fun in that game and ultimately that's where it counts. TW3 had nice story beats, but the padding in between was ughh.
 
Finished both, team Fallout for me. I just enjoy the exploration and the overall world/vibe a lot more. The Witcher 3 is a very well made game but it never truly pulled me in.
 
The quality of well... Everything in w3 is superb. Especially considering the studio size in comparison to the amount of dialog. Every side quest feels like a main quest.


I just found everything else to be so boring imo. Ex: Exploration should always be fun. It wasn't for some reason. It was such a chore. The combat has been talked about to death, so I won't do that anymore lol!!! But those two things mean the world to me. I love exploring.

I also couldn't relate to the MAIN character, Geralt. Like, at all. Ex: I don't feel his want for yen or triss. I am aware they have to follow a tightly woven story for the witcher, but I am more of the Create your own character type.

I wasn't feeling the music either except for one track: goto 3:03
https://youtu.be/ZXGfjjBdrzU


Beautiful. Matter fact, I take that back. I like that whole ambient track. The battle music isn't so good. Sounds like Xena, the warrior princess lol!

Oh and also the elixir/option/oil mechanic is stupid. Ex: I don't like the way when your oils run out, you are nothing. It is silly. I like gaining power that sticks. Permanent power. It feels less like an RPG in this regard. I realize you can play without oils etc, but then the question is: why even have them in the first place?

To have to apply an oil, just for it to run out again is just.... I don't like it. Like why even bother making it run out in the first place if it is infinite?
 
I only got about 20 hours in to Witcher 3 before I shelved it, waiting for the DLC to come out, but can already tell you it is far better than Fallout. The game world, story, quest design seemed far more compelling compared to Fallout's.
 
Witcher 3 is game of the year. And easily one of the best CRPGs ever created.
Fallout 4 is just bad.


BUT bethesda does open world better than anyone else, it's just more realistic and cohesive, and I understand the appeal of just going around exploring the world.
 
Witcher 3. It is a landmark in wrpgs, effectively combining cinematic and immersive story telling with a massive world full of character, and solid rpg mechanics.

Fallout 4 has a decent degree of freedom, I will give it that. But the game design felt stuck in the late 90s, early 2000s. The presentation is still very wooden and lacks vibrancy and life. I was not drawn into the experience at all. Which is a pity, because while I felt the same with Fallout 3, I really quite enjoyed skyrim. I suppose the setting and combat appealed to me more in that game.
 
Witcher 3 by a lot. I really like Fallout 4 but Witcher is better imo. Better story, way more interesting quests and Geralt is great.
 
I'm finding it funny as hell how people that prefer Witcher 3 feel the need to also trash Fallout at the same time
For myself, I "trash" Fallout because it saddens me that Bethesda, most financially successful RPG company if all time, regressed so much instead of improving. It's just disappointing.
 
Fallout 4 no question. I kind of agree with the sentiment that Witcher 3 is the 'better' game but all the same I loves me some Fallout. I've already put in an embarrassing number of hours and the mod tools aren't even out yet.
 
Fallout 4 no question. I kind of agree with the sentiment that Witcher 3 is the 'better' game but all the same I loves me some Fallout. I've already put in an embarrassing number of hours and the mod tools aren't even out yet.

Same bro. We can be embarrassed together.
 
I've played about 75 hours of Fallout 4. I think it's pretty great, but I could never be bothered to even finish it. I probably spent more time doing the base building stuff than I expected.

I've played Witcher 3 a total of around 250 hours and have just started messing around with the expansion recently after I did a Death March run.

I prefer Witcher 3.
 
Witcher starts good then you realize no fight is worth doing, you can stand within ten feet of an enemy and he'll just look at you. You could literally just shoot your crossbow for a half hour if you wanted.

If you didn't actually play The Witcher 3, why bother posting? Because this is some made-up bullshit right here.
 
I really think Witcher 3 is the better game in many aspects, I really like it. But I "managed" to get distracted and put that aside for other, smaller games (will pick it back up, though).

With Fallout 4, I can't bring myself to even try something else (even though there are some things tickling my interest). Every time I think today I am gonna play at least an hour of something else just to check how it looks on my new TV, I start the PS4, see that spinning circle beneath the vault boy and hop right back into the commonwealth. Consider me thoroughly hooked.
 
FO4 has got nothing on witcher 3.
but having played oblivion, F3 and skyrim, that did not come as a surprise.
 
Witcher 3 showed how to do open world, Fallout 4 reminded me how bad open worlds have been, so Witcher 3.

To fill in the criteria OP recommended:
W3 had impactful quests (both main and side) with branching paths that accumulated in interesting and meaningful outcomes that I felt I had been directly involved in. I would grow to care for characters even if I thought they were horrible at first and vice-versa, which is just great writing. F4 occasionally had moments but would instantly fall apart if you prodded too much. The few good characters always felt out of place compared to the rest of the world and it undermined them. The writing helped and hindered in both cases with F4 been a slew of rarely interesting side quests while W3 gave flavour text to even the most minor of quests that helped build the world.

Gameplay wise: it's amazing that a game with an established character from a book series and two previous games managed to allow for more role-playing while F4 gave a brief illusion of choice and then shouted "psyche, all roads lead to...". W3's combat was not great but had enough variety with how you could approached to make it interesting. It helped that a lot tied into being a Witcher. F4 became boring when the challenge vanished 10 hours in (higher difficultly > more rare weapons undermined the whole concept). F4 improved the combat (not saying much) but it still doesn't feel good enough to be a proper shooter and sadly so many other gameplay aspects were sacrificed to focus on it - the ones I always think of when I think of Fallout.

As for the world and graphics. I actually like the slightly cartoonish style F4 went with and never got the rampant outrage against it. Nothing major stands out to me but it served the game well. W3 had so many moments of wonder when exploring. Sailing around is still enthralling in a way I haven't felt since Wind Waker and I found myself fast-traveling very little, even near the end, because going from point A to point B always felt like an adventure. Every piece of the world backed up the setting and story. F4 had its moments but never really went anywhere with them. Things became forgettable and repetitive and I fast traveled everywhere: half because I didn't want to power myself up anymore and half because there was a 50/50 change I'd stumble across a side-quest I'd end up running away from because you cannot definitely say no.

Yes I'm being hard on F4, like I have several times before here, but it really bugs me because there are these moments of potential that are always always swept away within an hour. For instance there was near the beginning a feeling of STALKER survivalism when I first had to venture into Boston and felt under-powered, choosing my battles wisely, but an hour or two later I just mowed everything down and it became routine. W3 oddly didn't have me hyped (despite loving the first two) until I picked it up and every twist and turn had me wanting more. I still want more in fact - new DLC looks sweet. F4 ended after I ran out of mods to make the world ridiculous. I'm going to be annoyed if F4 becomes the standard for open world RPGs and not W3.
 
Witcher 3 was like extremely fine wine, Fallout 4 a cold beer on a summer day. Both have their merits.

Witcher 3 is in many ways the superior game: better story, characters, beautiful world, great voice-acting, fantastic music, the works. But Fallout 4 is just such an easy guilty pleasure to get lost in.
 
The Witcher in everything but gunplay.
Lel
Witcher 3 was like extremely fine wine, Fallout 4 a cold beer on a summer day. Both have their merits.

Witcher 3 is in many ways the superior game: better story, characters, beautiful world, great voice-acting, fantastic music, the works. But Fallout 4 is just such an easy guilty pleasure to get lost in.

Nice analogy. I agree with this, but still wish F4 felt less guilty in its pleasure.
 
It has to be the Witcher 3. I'm still slowly making my way through Fallout and finding it a bit of a chore due to the dull side quests, which is something the Witcher excels at mostly.
 
Witcher 3 bore me to death. I haven't given it a fair chance due to this.

So Fallout 4 for me. Far from being the "perfect" game I wished it to be, but I am enjoying it far more than Witcher 3.
 
Interesting thread considering what I'm going through right now. I bought Witcher III with my new computer earlier this year. The start of the game really dragged on for me so I quit playing about five hours in. Totally dismissed it.

I beat Fallout 4 earlier this month and I just have to say it was one of the most disappointing Bethesda games I've ever played. Compared to Skyrim it was a step back. They didn't do anything to evolve Fallout in anyway other than minor tweaks. It felt uninspired and I gave up on it after I beat the main story.

So it's break now, I have a lot of free time and I put a little more effort into getting through the beginning of Witcher III. First off, it's a beautiful game, beautifully animated as well. The world felt extremely believable and I'm totally in love with the mid evil vibes. I'm just so glad this game exists to save me the boredom of winter break. It's a much more interesting world to get lost in than Fallout 4.
 
Witcher 3 by far. I don't want to insult Fallout 4 or its fans, so I won't put my distaste for the game into words. But Witcher 3 just took my breath away and far surpassed my expectations going in.

I'd go so far as to say it's probably spoiled me for all future RPGs to come, and will be the game to which I compare them. Fair or not.

I could not have said it better. I feel similarly.
 
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