In writing in RPGs, I will dock some points from Larian. Recently tried Divinity:Original Sin. The setting and the writing was so generic.
They solved this in Fallout 76. Can't be accused of having shallow characters if you put no characters in the game!
Then again, there was a large gap between trying Fallout 3/NV and Fallout 4, so maybe my perception changed.
Not quite. Fallout 3 was all Bethsoft, and Obsidian mostly did Vegas.
Fallout 3 has no big story twists, and clear good guys and bad guys. The main quest is entirely linear, with a large spectacle near the end, ending with a pathetic boss fight. Most everyone (except Dad and maybe 3 Dog) comes off as one dimensional with only one purpose in life. There are some cool side stories and places (a cave filled with orphans, and a mad scientist's escapist simulation), but I recall them being static for the most part.
New Vegas is complicated and more gray in comparison. Who's good or bad is murky. I don't recall any big story twists, but the characters had depth. Take for example, Caesar: I doubt Bethesda would have thought to give him a tumor. There's lots of powerful factions, which not only have stories, you significantly participate in them. The main story branches off into about 4 very different endings, something that Bethesda didn't do until F4.
Back in the day, I watched the Zero Punctuation review of New Vegas[0]. I remember literally everything he talks about! I drank out of that toilet!
one of my reactions to fallout 3 was that unlike the original fallouts, it wasn't funny.
I played Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 side by side. By the end of Fallout 4, I realized that I had been mostly playing the same game for 10 years (all of Todd Howard's games since TES4[1]). I almost stopped playing near the end. Witcher 3 is one of the best games I've ever played. Todd Howard has lots of work to do if I'm going to get another one of his games.
I'm watching Cyberpunk 2077 intently.
[0] They leave the "entertaining" ones in. It's usually up to modders to fix what they can. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112719-Bethesda-S...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Howard#Works