I don't know. I still haven't played New Vegas (saw it at a friend's house but still haven't gotten around getting time to play it), but this article basically complains about everything the Codex (or at least the old Codex, tastes seem to have changed around here) was asking in RPGs. I know it is the Codex way to complain, bitch and (if one is inspired and has nothing better to do in the afternoon) write a long post to explain why the article's writer is wrong, is a dumbfuck and should never write again.
But maybe the real issue here is that most people simply don't care so much about RPGs? Maybe what this writer is saying is: "Ok, Obsidian added all these features that lend themselves to a specific gaming style, but I really don't care about this style. I want the old Fallout 3's style which got me hooked up".
If I understood Obsidian's idea, this New Vegas game is trying to appeal to two different user bases, one being the people who liked Bethesda's Fallout 3 and the other being the people who liked Black Island's Fallout 2.And they actually seem to have succeeded in this endeavor. It seems that this game has sold a lot and, at the same time, seems to have been approved by most of the Codex. But is this really a sustainable situation? I mean, it seems to me that, if you have two different design priorities, then one will inevitably get in the way of the other.
Maybe I am just being stupid, I probably should play the game before commenting about it, but I do think it would be better for us if companies saw CRPGs as a niche genre separated from whatever Oblivion and Fallout 3 were. And I don't really mean to be elitist. It is just that this worked really well for indie PnP RPGs, and for the OSR movement, maybe it could work for us too?
So, what I am trying to say is that, maybe, it is a good thing this article appeared. And maybe it would be good if other articles pointing the differences in playstyle between FO3 and FO:NV appeared too. Because maybe then companies would see they can't simply make a game that muddles the differences between playstyles and cash in. Instead, they would be forced to cater to niches, with games that have a strong design philosophy.