>>723960575
The reason people are FO3 apologists is literally because it was their first Fallout game. People forget, Fallout 1 and 2 only sold about 900,000 copies combined. It was a super popular and influential franchise that the majority of fans had never actually played. And most of those fans were going off third hand knowledge of the setting and story, at best; a random screenshot in the early '00s online, a friend of a friend who had actually played it describing one small part, etc.
So, when those "fans" get to finally play their first Fallout game, made by a development team who was every bit as ignorant of the setting as they are, they think, "Oh, yeah, this is obviously what Fallout is supposed to be! I am a true fan!" Now they have to ignore all the Bethesda jank that actually isn't charming at all, they have to ignore how nonsensical the entire world building is, they have to ignore how all the lauded choice and consequence is actually non-existent (even for a Bethesda game at that time) because they are invested in this idea that they are Fallout fans, and it can't be that their first Fallout game was actually wrong in some way.
As an example of how wrong both the Fallout 3 apologists and Bethesda were wrong and clearly never played earlier Fallout games. The '50s retro-futuristic aesthetic was introduced into the world very shortly before the apocalypse, this is why in Fallout 1 and 2 outside of some official Vaultec products it doesn't actually exist anywhere else in the world; it was a humorous but cynical commentary in the first games on manipulation. In Fallout 3 you would think there had never been anything but the '50s retro-futuristic aesthetic, because every building, piece of clothing, vehicle, etc has that aesthetic. But the new fans, who don't even know they are the new fans, don't know better and now think, "This is what Fallout always was!"
