This is such a dumb statement. Being able to fuck off in a game should not be a hallmark of good design.
All of you said up to and including this has nothing to do with anything I'm talking about. It's similar to defending Megaton quest because explosion looks good and generates a nice wind reaction when you trigger it. You don't have to protect FNV from evil people who claim to enjoy Fallout 3 and infesting a spacesafe were you can compete in shitting on popular games. FNV is a superior game and has a better world, it is clear.
The point is it still has problems, including ones that F3 and many others hadn't. Being able to fuck off is not a hallmark of good design, it's a thing that FNV begs for. It attempts to build believable world but it's full of things that crumble and destroy any immersion or believably if you think of them on very basic level. In Fallout 3 you meet people who survive in a middle of nowhere and care about collecting bottles - yeah, you can no longer perceive it as a realistic simulation of anything. FNV still does it with things like basic self-identification. It's clear from a very beginning that Benny is an influential guy and you're over your head. The game has no explanation why I'd want to follow him except that it's a game about Vegas and I can't go directly to Vegas because everyone tells the only safe way is to follow main quest. F3 story wouldn't suffer much from forcing you to follow main quest, the world is already silly Disneyland, so you have some drama while the Genie makes pop-culture references around you. In FNV Genie is more tame (while still having a load of dumb stuff) and the world pretends it's sane, only the very basics of the story are rotten.
But this is a false premise. There is nothing forcing you to follow the main quest in New Vegas. You can wander around wherever you want to. It’s not impossible to go north from Goodsprings, you just need to be very careful to avoid the deathclaws and similar murderous beasties. When you get to Vegas, you don’t have to confront Benny either. Sure, the Legion camp won’t open up until you get the platinum chip and visit House, but so what? Other than that the map is totally open.
Fallout 3 gates plenty of content, too. For all that people talk about its totally open world, the more densely packed areas are actually split into separate sections and cannot be accessed except through the subway tunnels. You can’t just wander into the radio station, for example. You will always run into the Brotherhood when emerging from the subway there, you will always encounter a bunch of super mutants, etc...
The fact that taking the easy and obvioud route in New Vegas introduces you to all the factions in a logical way and periodically gives you hints about where Benny was going is a good thing (hey, it’s also just like 1 & 2). You seem to be arguing that everything in an open world RPG should be disconnected. To me, this defeats the purpose of building a game world in the first place.
I will gladly concede that 3 and 4 make better hiking simulators. That’s the one thing Bethesda is very good at. But if I want to stare at cool landscapes, I’ll go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or stroll through Central Park or visit my family in the suburbs. Wandering around looking at stuff should NOT be the main draw of a video game as games are meant to be played, not watched. This is one reason I find every Bethesda game deeply unfulfilling.
The other issue, as I mentioned before, is that the originals and New Vegas are great because they focus on post apocalyptic society. 3 guts that element. The smaller settlements are totally disconnected, except that you have a handful of people who’ll put Rivet City, Tenpenny Tower, Arefu and Canterbury Commons on your map. But go to these places and it’s like each one is self contained and practically hermetically sealed. This wouldn’t be so bad except that, other than Megaton and Rivet City, there are no sizable towns. IMO, this defeats the purpose of making an open world RPG. Even Skyrim has eight sizable cities. But in Fallout 3, most populated places of interest have 3-5 people and one quest.
Think about that: Bethesda created this world where you can walk around and stuff looks cool, but there is nowhere to go unless you want to kill raiders or kill wildlife. I expected 3 to be Oblivion with Guns, but Oblivion actually has a lot more going on in terms of towns.
Arefu was the first town I found after Megaton. I was dismayed: there were a few houses on a bridge and one quest with the cannibal kid. Then I went to vampire town to finish the quest and was equally letdown. So then I go to Canterbury Commons, which I’ve been told is this big caravan hub. Nope, it’s like four guys sitting in a diner. What the fuck? So I go to Tenpenny Tower and while there are more NPCs, finally, the only real quest is to let the ghouls in or kill them. In the entire game, only Megaton and Rivet City felt truly inhabited. Only they had multiple, sometimes interconnecting quests.
I’ve heard people say it’s a wasteland, of course it should be only sparsely populated, yet there are raiders around every damn corner and three large occupying military forces: the mutants, the Brotherhood and the Enclave. Every time someone talked about helping or controlling the people of the Wasteland, I found myself wondering, what fucking people?
It left me dumbfounded. Where the fuck is the content, I asked myself. Then I realized, the content is mostly just the landscape and killin’ stuff. But man, if your game is going to be mostly combat, you should really design a good combat system.
