The loudest voices were never really the customer base to begin with. Why does everybody think Fallout is for them? I have no idea. None of my friends even played Fallout games in the past, not even the d&d/rpg nerd types.
B/c Fallout got Bethesda'd.
Since Fallout 3, it's no longer really what Fallout 1+2 were. F1+2 were hardcore turn-based/party-based CRPG's in a post-apoc setting, with a lot of characters w/ personality, decision-making and very nuanced stuff (in stories, narrative, decisions, etc) - you know, stuff Bethesda isn't really that great at.
Bethesda has really lost a lot of their decision-making, depth, and whatnot since TES III: Morrowind. It was even more mainstream'd with Oblivion, as it was even tougher to break the game and kill certain NPC's (in TES3, you could still break the game and kill Vivec or important NPC's, if you wanted - just make sure you kept old saves, in case you wanted to go back and play the game in a finish-able state).
Skyrim went even further mainstream w/ having the Radiant AI questing/dynamic system also added to the game, so that you had the illusion of "Not running out of quests" (even though most of those felt like typical MMO assortment of grindy fetch quests: kill X/destroy X/find X quests).
Basically, Fallout 3 became Oblivion with guns...but that (F3) was actually was decent w/ choices (still had good, evil, neutral, and sometimes special decisions per quest).
Fallout 4 became less of a RPG (except Far Harbor DLC), as it became more shooter-y, action-y, ARPG'y - and less decision-making (more like Mass Effect, with different shades of good...and maybe a few evil decisions here and there); which is pretty much what happened w/ Skyrim. FO4 took it further, basically merging the Perks and SPECIAL system - in which most skills now only have a few stars (like 3, 4, or 5) or maybe some others have 10 stars tops. With each game, Bethesda aimed more for the mainstream audience each time around.
Fallout 4's Far Harbor DLC felt more contained, more decisions, more shades of gray - probably due to people's reactions (i.e. the more hardcore FO crowd) from FO4 base-game, as Beth actually stepped their game up there (like they sometimes do w/ much smaller DLC's/expansions - i.e. go see Morrowind's Tribunal & Bloodmoon expansions; Oblivion's Shiv Isles expansions; and Skyrim's Dragonborn & Dawnguard DLC's).
FO76 became...well, it looks like a MMO-ARPG with the old "Kill X", "find Y", "go to Z", "do this a bunch of times" type of game and finally is no longer was a FO game - took 'em a bit to got there, but they did. NPC's are pretty much gone, too - which now...makes it more of a shooter.
I think why a lot of people (like myself) do love Obsidian's FO: NV is b/c it really felt like it took a lot of the great things of Fallout 1+2 (the stories, humor, nuanced stuff, choices, gray areas, narrative, personality, cool characters) and also brought with it the Bethesda framework/engine to the table (i.e. 1st person open-world shooter/RPG gameplay). To me, it (FO:NV) was the close-to-perfect mix of stuff that made FO1+2 great and FO3 great. They (Obsidian) somehow threw all of that stuff into a blender...and it worked; worked out great.
YEAH!!!
