How do you feel about it? I got about 10-15 hours into it, loving it, and then I just hit this wall where I went: "I'm literally just playing Fallout 3." And so I stopped. Obviously that's not correct, but I felt like they abandoned so much progress that New Vegas made in how stories were told and how side quests were done. And as always, Bethesda games just lack scale. It's getting harder and harder to believe their worlds when the largest cities and so small and sparsely populated. I was keen enough to use my imagination before, but they just put no effort into hiding any of their faults and some scenes are just down right awkward. I will admit though that a certain Brotherhood introduction was awesome and unexpected.
Haha woops sorry Battlefront.
My thing is, I loved Fallout 3. I always did. New Vegas was an improvement, but it felt like more of Fallout 3 as well, but I didn't mind that. I don't mind it for Fallout 4 either for the same reason. Fallout 3 was just so good, but in need of some improvements. Both NV and F4 improved the areas where F3 was lacking. That's not to say they don't have their own issues or their own individual merits, but since they run on the same engine, they all have the same essence. It's the core feeling of these three games that I appreciate and enjoy even to this day. It's fascinating to me to see just how far a developer can take an old engine like the one they've used for most of their recent games. I appreciate and enjoy the experience because of all of those things.
That said, I love "creation" games such as these. Fallout, the Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Alpha Protocol, etc. They're all so fascinating and interesting to me that I think I give them more leeway than most people would in regards to their shortcomings.
Fallout 4 in particular has its issues, but I can respect it as something showing us that Bethesda is attempting to go bigger. They haven't ever really had the best combat in their games, but they're improving as a company. Unfortunately, we can easily see that they focus on certain areas while dropping others to an extent. The story isn't as compelling as it could be.
Game play wise, it is more of the same, so I think it eventually just comes to how much you yourself like the way the game plays. The added settlement game play was also well appreciated by me because it's so damn enjoyable. Some people wouldn't like it, but I loved learning what it could and couldn't do and how I could break the system to my benefit. Also, the game is built for you to make specific character builds, but that means experimenting over the course of multiple playthroughs. The game also reinforces multiple play through because the main story is relatively short and there's multiple factions.
That said, NV did do a better job than F3 or even F4, but that's because it was made by Obsidian. That developer has just as many problems with bugs as Bethesda does, maybe even more than they do, but they know how to create a compelling story. Alpha Protocol was seen as a complete failure of a game, but it's honestly one of my person favorites and it actually functions extremely well once you understand it. The game doesn't really help you out on the first play through, so it feels janky and messy.
NV in particular though, it just works. It's entertaining, its story is focused, the characters are interesting, the whole story works with itself. The world is also interesting and fun.
There's a lot of lessons for Bethesda to learn from Obsidian. F4 didn't really scare me off, but it didn't leave me fully excited either. I'm hopeful in regards to fallout 5, however. I think this will be the wake up call to the developer for them to make a new engine and then take into account the problems and the areas they need to improve. Right now, I'm content to keep playing more F3, whether it's in the form of F3, NV, or F4.