Plus, the companions in New Vegas are so memorable for me then in Fallout 3. I doubt this is going to help you understand more, though
Probably not because I actually ignored them mostly because Fallout 3 handled ambiguity the same way Fable handled it... It didn't. People are either scum, secretly scum, or they have a heart of gold.
Ok that and I don't like people dying... So I never took companions. Which in Fallout 3 means I was a one man army.
Fallout New Vegas since I knew companions could survive anything, I took them with me... and noticed that maybe they were "too good". Though much later on (more then 2/3rds through the game) they sort of lack a balance as they either are terrible or too helpful.
Fable is probably one of the worst things to happen to videogames... not that it was a bad game, but that every single company out there noticed how easy it was to half-bake a morality system and that the average gamer is so stupid they will eat it up (no I will not mince words...). The WORST game for this is flat out Infamous where morality even gives you powers for no reason. Thus making moral choices less a choice and more "what powers do you like?", along with railroading your moral delemmas through the mindset of a four year old who cannot think of any alternate solutions other then "stand in front of pipe and drink the poison"
Fallout 3: "Your dad ran off, you find him, NOW YOU GOTTA SAVE THE WORLD! Even if you're an evil scumbag. For some reason."
What helped Fallout 3 was if you were already knew a lot of the world. Fallout 3 was actually quite a big deal and had a lot of stakes.
Yet in many ways that sort of shows its problem. Fallout 3 SHOULD have been a big deal that irrevocably changed things in the Fallout universe.
Fallout New Vegas reminds me a bit of Fallout 2 in that the major drive is revenge but as you keep playing it seems more and more petty. Yeah he shot you in the head and at first you feel somewhat motivated, but as you keep playing and you become the savior of everything and the kitchen sink, you kind of realize that your own problems and vendettas are just so meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Yet you know what Fallout 2 did? It had stakes to keep you going alone and an interesting mystery. Not "Someone shot me but I am fine".
Fallout 3's story was a bit too Bethesda for me
Well there are two companies that do bland uninteresting dialog the best... One is Bethesda and one is Bioware.
Bioware manages to make very interesting worlds with rich histories and proceeds to fill them with the most boring inane and ill-fitting people it can.
While Bethesda makes rather luke warm worlds and proceeds to fill them with equally lukewarm and uninteresting people.
Or rather... One makes games that would be amazing "IF" they could characterize better then a Quantic Dream Love Story and their gameplay was vastly improved... While the other makes games much better then their blandness really deserve.
It is why I'd consider the stereotypical Bioware game to be Jade Empire, a very interesting game that has a lot of great ideas... on the surface (Basically Bioware are the KINGS of set dressing). While for Bethesda I'd use Oblivion which is a fairly uninteresting boring copy pasted world filled with boring people doing their boring everyday lives and yet somehow is a better game then its immediate surroundings.