Honestly from the review arguments I've dissected and personally read bit by bit on Steam: Bethesda got stuck with a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario. People gave it shitty reviews because its not New Vegas, or "New Vegas did it better." Yet when New Vegas came out, complaints were that "It's just more of the same Fallout" and it only dissipated because Obsidian was the main player. Really I feel Fallout 4 has to reach expectations not even 3 or NV could obtain themselves, yet set.

Pretty much, yeah. If it’s not one vocal minority, it’s another. AAA publishers are doomed to hit this sort of critical mass eventually, and after Skyrim’s unprecedented success, the dominoes were all stacked. If Bethesda tried to cater to the hardcore market, they’d be slammed by the people who just wanted more simple adventuring; meanwhile if they tried to cater to the casual market, they’d be slammed by the people who wanted a deeper RPG system. They tried to meet in the middle, and that didn’t work either, because now both sides have a bone to pick–either the game is awful because the dialogue isn’t complex enough (despite it being far better, for the most part, than any of Bethesda’s previous games), or because the settlement building system is too convoluted and “the game relies too heavily on it” (despite it being completely optional).

A massive portion of the people shitting on Fallout 4 were fans of Skyrim–I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen people start arguments with “I even loved Skyrim, but…” or “Skyrim was amazing, but…” and things like that. And truth be told, Fallout 4 is a much richer RPG than Skyrim was.

But yeah, it’s exactly like you said. It was a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. That critical mass reached a breaking point, and shortcomings that normally would have been forgiven for the most part (as they were with Skyrim; there were lots of major complaints with it but the Metacritic store never dipped nearly as low as Fallout 4′s did) instead took a MAJOR hold 

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