I’ve been playing fallout 1 and 4 recently and it’s astonishing how different these games are in tone...

molerats

I really liked Fallout 3 the first time I played it. But after playing NV I realized how uneventful Fallout 3 was and how it had barely any interesting characters. Also the writing in NV is much better.

I played most of Fallout 4 but stopped playing because I got bored. It felt like a mediocre FPS not an RPG.

it really does bother me how most characters in Bethesda's fallout games usually just act like modern people half pretending it's the '50s and the other half pretending it's post-apocalyptic
they're not believable characters in the world they live in

they do have a water purification system to be fair
idk where they pipe it in from though

>4 just seems a bit too cheery
Literally how?
There are dead people everywhere

youtube.com/watch?v=44SGl4ezWlQ
try this one for size

Episode 3 is one of the better Star Wars Films.

the prequels were and are garbage

The ambient soundtrack for Fallout 1 and 2 are top notch.
In fact, a lot of old crpgs had great sound design because they had to compensate for the tactile limitations that comes with isometric perspective gameplay. It's a perfect example of how technological limitations forces developers to be creative and enhance other parts of game design that are not normally considered.

I think that it's natural for the Fallout world to go from shattered to kind of cheerful, the same way it went from post-apocalyptic to post-post. It feels like a natural progression because everyone would want to move on as fast as they possibly could and start rebuilding again.