I called New Vegas a predecessor. I meant successor. Oops. I'll leave the error for posterity.

Yeah, Ian was kind of a bonehead, but he was a good meat shield in a lot of cases. His IQ was probably almost as low as poor Dogmeat's.

Ian does have a kind of special place in the Fallout series, though, that being the first companion of the Vault Dweller, and hence players of the series. Unless you went about your business unconventionally. Because of that he probably died in almost everyone's games. That or he soaked up a lot of damage.

I think once I've put about 250+ hours into New Vegas there'll be a revisit to Fallout for the umpteenth time. My affection never changes.

My nod goes to NV in the NV vs FO3 match off. The story in NV is told almost entirely through the characters which admittedly make it feel disjointed as you can't see everything through character, only the character's point of view and the narrator is sometimes unreliable. It feels more first person.

FO3 is told through a combination of a danged good saga-riffic plot and an incredibly unified visual sweep. More third person and traditional. While I would marry either of them, I want to be buried next to NV.