Yeah I loved Fallout 1 and 2 (and even BoS for that matter) but I was also hopelessly broke for most of the '00s in a sea of student loans and shit, so I didn't have a way of playing the new "FPS" fallouts until about 2 years ago when I picked up a brand new X Box 360. So I just skipped Fallout 3 altogether and started with NV. And then I abruptly stopped playing because I also have a GTX 1060 and Fallout 4 came out.

And so in hindsignt (although I never finished Fallout 4 either; I don't really "finish" TES and Fallout games, just play until I could easily defeat anything and eventually render the game unbeatable by enabling some mod) I think I like New Vegas more. I do like the darker story that comes with a Courier's line of work than a Dweller's, which is just vaulting until something inevitably goes wrong and the dark underbelly is exposed. In New Vegas, you're already in that world. Nobody trusts you and you don't have a story of a dead spouse and kidnapped baby to pad your image; you just want to know who left you for dead so you can kill them.

Anyway I don't know how much that alters the way New Vegas' NPCs would interact with you vs. Fallout 4's, but I would up in a few situations where I had to backtrack significantly because of someone I killed or didn't help from forever ago, or that time I was a Powder Ganger briefly. In Fallout 4 I accidentally killed Garvey the first time around and I still turned out joining the Brotherhood of Steel. I don't know, maybe there's situations where the game forces a linear path, but it's certainly not as easy to get out of a bad one like it is in Fallout 4. Plus a lot of dialog is actually funny and you can stick live dynamite in peoples' pockets.

(I mean Minutemen, not BoS. It's been a while..)

The Bethesda open world RPGs desperately need a "role play" option where you are no longer the sole hero of the world but rather can choose your role in the world. There's a MOD for FO4 I enjoyed that lets you start the game as a number of different "characters" (different starting location, equipment, stats, etc.) which is something I think that needs to be greatly enhanced in future series. Granted, doing this would mean the main story could not be as in-depth or personalized, but I think it would be cool to start FO5 as, say, a Raider leader or something and have the game reflect that somehow in faction interactions and NPCs and such.

(Oh btw despite playing on PS4 my settlements are really cool because I explained away the jankiness of Fallout's settlements as a side effect of the Institute teleporting in materials.

WHAAA? A lore-friendly handwave that actually kind of excuses how bad the building interface is? It's true! I sided with the Institute, then said "teleportation is a new science, so if it looks like I can't construct a square room properly, that is why". No one questioned me because I was the Director of the Institute and Bethesda takes story-disrupting events like becoming head of the bad guys VERY SERIOUSLY.

Also if your settlers all keep standing in corners staring ahead like they ran afoul of the Blair Witch, just pretend they have radiation poisoning!

Yeah over the years I've become more interested in listening to hour-long debates on whether Birdo from SMB2 was in fact the first Transgendered video game character, or this too I guess. And I couldn't stand for more than a minute debates on whether a real transgendered person could do a better job than Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club. Choose your battles I guess..

Isn't Yoshi an earlier trans character? Dude lays eggs.

This past week I've been falling asleep to his half-hour settlement tours. It's soothing.

"And over here we have a clinic. I imagine this is kind of a rowdy place, so I put a Mirelurk claw on the ceiling to show everyone the doctor means business."

I don't think Yoshi existed before Super Mario World, but looking at the list of Super Mario games (as well as the extended universe) I think I've played maybe 10% of them so I could be wrong.

you can turn up the difficulty quite a few notches.

I didn't like NV as a game, particularly, but it easily had the best storyline of any Fallout game thusfar, in my opinion, and definitely the most character and best writing.