Even among Fallout devs there was disagreement. For example, a good chunk of people would agree that both Sawyer and Avellone have a good idea of what the franchise should be, but their ideas are contradictory. Sawyer is going for post-post-apocalyptic, while Avellone wants to do more recently post-apocalyptic. There isn't just one definition for Fallout. And that's just on the story side of things. Among both fans and developers there's disagreement as to how the games should actually play.
Those details are merely technical, and superficial compared to mechanics like roleplaying elements. Tim Cain's design philosophy for Fallout 1 he penned those years ago wasn't something specific like Sawyer's and Avellone's vision of whether going back to post-apocalyptic or not, but something more grand and cover a larger scope than those details. The difference between Sawyer-Avellone and Bethesda, however, is that Sawyer-Avellone DO stayed true to Tim Cain's vision when they made Fallout: New Vegas and its' DLCs.
Though I think there is a right and a wrong notion of what Fallout is or should be, the world of Fallout is bigger than just a handful of people's visions for it (and I would argue, the specific plotlines of each game). The devs who are being treated like the founding fathers of the franchise, whose decisions are apparently tantamount to the drafting of a constitution, were being creative when they made those choices. They just wanted to make good games by focusing on storytelling. Trying to keep Fallout 'traditional' in terms of results *and not* methods is the wrong approach to making a quality Fallout game (and I would argue the games themselves demonstrate as much). So, the execution is important as Soto is saying.
Care to elaborate further with what do you mean by that? I understand what you were trying to say with previous sentences. However, my arguments wasn't about a matter of 'keeping things traditional in terms of result'. It's about 'not fixing what's broken' or even 'not changing something that's just right/perfect'.
Because those design principles Tim Cain penned for Fallout 1? Those are perfect. They
are the method. That's why I wholeheartedly disagree with Ben Soto's sentiment that "Everybody has a slightly different idea of what a Fallout game should be.", because everybody's slightly different idea of what a Fallout game should be doesn't matter when Tim Cain has already laid the core design principle for what a Fallout game should be with those 5 main points written down on the design document. Soto then went on to state that Sawyer and Avellone is the example of devs having clashing idea on 'what a Fallout game should be', except their different ideas are something rather superficial because they don't try to change or remove any of the Tim Cain's principle. naossano's point was actually about that, hence why he mentioned Fallout mods like the TC ones, like Fallout 1.5: Resurrection. Because damn, those mods adhered to Tim Cain's vision, while Bethesda doesn't.
However, the concept is important as well. The franchise needs to stay true to itself, as well as to the fans (or at least be honest in advertising), because these are crucial aspects of the right method. I think the broadstrokes are fairly obvious (e.g choice, consequence, distinct builds, cynical, satirical, 1950s retrofuturism + a Mad Maxian post apocalypse), even if the amount of wiggle room is debatable.
Although Sawyer and Avellone has their own idea of what a Fallout game should be in that regard (post-post-post-apocalyptic vs. post-apocalyptic), I'm actually more interested in what would Tim Cain would envision as the future/sequel of Fallout, or at least a successor to it. Since I've talked about design principles and all that jazz, I will mention that some of the Old Bloods sees that Arcanum is more faithful to Fallout than the nu-Fallout game. And that's what I'm talking about, because Arcanum was made by Tim Cain, and Tim Cain's vision for Fallout sticks all the way to Arcanum. The question now is, is it the same with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines?
