Van Buren wasn't exactly the backbone of FNV - they took some elements from it here and there, but the overarching story was mostly distinct. (The biggest thing they probably took was setting it in the southwest.)

FO4 isn't even Fallout anymore. They took out most of the RPG elements (deep character customization, meaningful dialogue, etc.) and turned it into a shooter. It's a really good game on its own right, but I wish they hadn't called it Fallout.

Separate (edit: and more interesting) story, better writers, and less fan-service (or so I'm told).

All that said, 3 and 4 are still quality games. There's nothing all that wrong with "Oblivion + guns" in my view ;)

They "look" the same, but difference as big as between "Fallout Tactics" and "Fallout 1 / 2".

Obsidian Entertainment are very good at few things that turn original games into the cult: world and locations lore, characters and storytelling.

What do you mean by "look the same"? If it's really just graphics, well yeah, the engine is more or less the same, but they are quite different games.

As someone who prefers FNV:

FNV is a lot grittier and fits better to earlier Fallouts that way. It leaves the player more choices (more companions, more decisions in quests that influence the story, just more stuff to do) and IMHO tells the grander story. Great DLC stories. Hardcore mode helps against the RPG-typical issue that the player character turns into a demi-god the environment doesn't react properly to.

It has a few more potentially game-breaking bugs, which is annoying, and you can tell that they planned for more content that they weren't given the time to finish, most other critiques IMHO apply to both games (graphics aren't great by modern standards, at some point you look to hard at the world and immersion just breaks, enemy AI and other mechanics don't help in that regard)

That said, you can get them for 10 bucks each with DLCs, so if you have the time it's worth trying both.

As others have pointed out, New Vegas has a better main story. In fact not only the story of Fallout 3 is a bit "meh", but if you stick to the main quest, you can finish the game pretty quickly. And tunnels. Lot of metro tunnels

That said, you can wander around the wasteland and find a lot of nice subquests and hidden nuggets. In this regard, F3 really looks like Oblivion with guns, since in my opinion that game had the same exact issues (lame main story, beautiful side quests).

NV's DLCs are also better in my opinion.

I had the same reaction (having played FO3) when my friend kept going on about how NV was so much better. I picked it up on a sale and had to agree. I can't pick a single "smoking gun" but in a way it's a "death by a thousand cuts" sort of thing: incremental improvements everywhere that, as a whole, add up to a much better experience. Color, atmosphere, lore, quests, etc. According to steam, I have 100 hours logged in FO3. I have 240 in NV.

Fallout NV had a superior narrative and more complex characters. The writing was superb and often times hilarious. Quests were much more engaging and thought-provoking and could be resolved in novel ways and didnt fall into the WoW trap of go here, kill baddie, collect reward. The choices were also non binary. Decisions in Fallout 3 often had you pick between a selfless saint or a psychopathic, mustache-twirling dick, while NV offered shades of grey, similar to the Witcher 3. Also like the Witcher 3, when you made decisions, there were actual changes in the game world and the consequences were often unexpected. And the DLC's foe NV were amazing, especially the sci-fi themed one.

To be fair, Fallout 3 had a more immersive environment and atmosphere. It captured the setting and feeling of a post apocalyptic world. You dont feel as compelled to follow the game's questline... exploring the world was more satisfying. Bethesda and Rockstar have a penchant for making games where you can have so much fund just walking around.

I often times wish that a colloaborarive rpg between comapnies could be made. Obsidian would do quest design, CD Project Red would do the writing, Bioware would do the voice acting and character design, FromSoftware would do the world-building map design and lore, Platinum games is responsible for gameplay, Square Enix would provide the music, Naughty Dog handles graphics and motion capture, Blizzard would do the QA, Bethesda would do the mod kit, and Valve would be the publisher....

I thought F3 was a pretty good "reimagining" of the originals, in terms of adapting the mechanics for modern audiences (especially VATS), and the visuals were spot-on.

But it lacked the quirky humor and characters that were part of the originals just as much, as well as how the world reacts to your build and actions.

I remember that if you set your INT stat in FO2 low enough, basically EVERY character in the game treats you like an idiot, making most of the quests impossible to finish normally. The exception would be a "village idiot" NPC, with which a normal character has limited dialogue options, but a low int character can have an erudite conversation... FO1/2 are full of touches like that.

It is admittedly much harder to program this flexibility in a fully voiced/animated/scripted 3D game, but NV came much closer to capture this aspect of the originals.

I don't have the link handy, but there's a good Youtube review that compares the two games. One thing that stood out from his comparison was how Obsidian put in farms with livestock and crops to show where food came from, while F3 didn't have anything like this.

The F3 world is built around points of light. You've got Nuketown, the aircraft carrier, the Brotherhood fort, the Towers etc, but they're operated by different groups that don't really interact with each other in a meaningful way.

NV is built around a narrative world. The NCR is coming from the west, the Legion is coming from the east and New Vegas represents a third powerful entity. Almost every settlement is defined by their relationships to these groups and it brings the world together.

The gameplay may be similar but the worlds are very different.