Was this made by the same people who made Fallout 3?
Yes, Bethesda Game Softworks with Bethesda Studios as the publisher.
so like, would this be a good first fallout game to play? the sandbox/building a town part at E3 really appealed to me
I'm considering buying this rather than jc3 for my birthday
Absolutely. The Fallout games...haven't aged that great. Technically-wise, specifically. Fallout 3 and New Vegas both require a good amount of tweaking and mods to get to a stable state, and the first couple of games are pretty rough around the edges by comparison (Fallout 2 also has a fairly large fan-made patch that I would say is required).
That said, we can't know for sure until November 10th. Here's hoping this one knocks it out of the park.