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this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
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I think that misses the point of the series though, or at least 3 and 4. The point is that you become the god that saved or destroyed the wasteland. You become the legend for the next generation.
3 and 4 are genuinely the low point of the series and misinterpreted a lot from the original games. New Vegas was a lot closer to the original games. Yes, you can do heroic or terrible things, but I saw the franchise as very much an exploration of human nature during a time where people needed to scrounge and rebuild to survive. In the old games, resources are scarce and you have to make ethically gray choices. There's not enough to go around, genuinely.
That's 2/3 of what has been released this millennium. At this point it's what the series is.
And yet, New Vegas is widely considered the best of the 3D Fallout games. A more complex experience that makes you make tough decisions, that makes for a better RPG and a better story.
It's considered the best by those that like it, New Vegas is very much a cult classic.
I don't think that's really the case. New Vegas is constantly praised online, even on something like metacritic, which I take w/ a grain of salt generally, the user scores for NV are notably higher than 3 or 4.
That's generally how cult classics work. You see praise for The Big Lebowski because those that don't like it mostly ignore it.
New Vegas consistently has a much larger player count than 3 on steam charts. Fallout 4 and 76 do have more, but it's still impressive given it's age. NV has an average player count of over half that of 76. I think it's popular enough that calling it a cult classic isn't really reasonable.
Totally up front I'm just a big nerd and I don't mean any of this with any hostility, I mean we're talking about a game. I just find it difficult to wrap my head around how, even limited to Fallout 3 and 4, you drew the conclusion that Fallout's themes are about "you become the god that saved or destroyed the wasteland." Yes, in 3 the main quest has you either fixing or sabotaging project purity, and the game's "moral" choices are typically extremely black and white. So much of the game, however, presents more complex ideas and scenarios. It represents so many communities struggling to survive in an inhospitable land, like in Megaton where people are desperate enough to live in a town surrounding a nuke. You don't become a god and either save or destroy the wasteland, individual choices in individual communities leave either good or bad consequences for those people. 90% of the actual game isn't this one big "save the world" plot.
Or in Fallout 4, you're constantly being asked somewhat more difficult choices. Like joining the Brotherhood of Steel being common in players who played 3, only to be presented with the choice of what to do with Paladin Danse when he realizes he's a synth and you're ordered to kill him. Or choosing whether to make use of "the sight" by providing that lady with drugs against the wishes of preston garvey. An entire element of the game's mechanics revolve around building up settlements and creating the infrastructure to house and protect people. There's so much commentary on human nature in these games, and in the stories they tell, y'know?
Spoiler tag please.