That's the point, it's supposed to be a blank slate. You are supposed to come up with a backstory for the character and respond to quests based on that character's backstory and personality, that's called roleplaying. It should try its hardest to make the character a blank slate because many people don't want unwanted backstory to their character.
It doesn't work if your character is part of said setting and interacted with ir previously. Your character should be part of the setting and if he isn't he can't be a real person, therefore, i can't take it seriously.
Theres a reason The nameless one in PS:T, the mai. Character at disco elysium and even the main character of F:Resurrection have some degree of backstory + some characters who will recall them within the setting. The reason being that they actually exist within the setting so even if the player have a reason to build a personality and an identity from scratch, the character isn't a ghost.
That's because the game doesn't have a dedicated antagonistic main force to go against regardless of choices, it's up to the player which one they want to go against.
And how are the NCR, Mr. House and Legion weak as antagonists?
Which is probably the main reason why it lacks a strong antagonist.
Also my god, if you think the NCR is a strong antagonistic force maybe this is self-sufficient as an answer to the question?
How does the Legion make no sense? They made perfect sense to me. Uniting everyone under one banner through brute force because the way the wasteland has been operating has clearly not been working. Is it extreme and in the real world they would be considered terrorists? Yeah, but the wasteland in Fallout is not the real world, it has a complete different context to our world.
Trying to make a huge militia consisting of 86 tribes in which all of their military force dress themselves in Roman customes and restrict the usage of firearms to upper ranks (most respected praetors), all based in a philosophy that wasn't supported by hegels and was only credited to him as a misconception which was born from the internet, even if the internet doesn't exist in the Fallout world? Yeah, i don't really buy the faction. They are very lucky the NCR is so incompetent
First, it's not a fact that it has mostly forgettable characters because i remember most of them. Second, i find most of them to be far better written than the ones in Fallout 2. the game you seemingly think it's better. New Vegas has overall far more consistent writing quality in their characters compared to 2 because Fallout 2 is inconsistent in its quality because of its rushed development.
You found arcade ganon better written than Myron?
No bark more of a memorable person compared to Jimmy jigged J?
Lily a better written super mutant PM than Marcus?
I actually have a bit of a hard time remember the other characters to compare. They all seem extremely bland.
I guess mr house is memorable enough. Boone is generic tragic char, Veronica is way too much of a dreamer to make any impression on me, most of them like to give you too much exposition on the player to make any effect on me.
Not much of a surprise as John gonzales wrote a good part of this game and knowing his work on Horizon:Zero dawn. Guy just isn't very good at writting characters.
Edit: Also, how is 2 better than 1? 1 is the better written, far more consistent in quality of the two. Improvements to gameplay and UI hardly make up for the inconsistent tone and writing quality in 2.
Tone is more consistent in 1. Consistently bland. Hardly something i would call much of a victory.
I have no idea why everyone have this impression that 1 is this super grimdark game, when this is only the case for the very finale.
In the main game in less than 3 hours i faced a group of self-entitled "thieves circle" who were a weird ass guild of thieves in which their leader had a quirky accent, got out of there and found a shady business man fighting a sheriff,etc.... Not even the raider encounter in the khan base was "bleak" per se. It doesn't make up for what 2 brings to the table
Specially when:
*quests are quite disconnected from one place to another and very few seem to have an impact in other areas of the map.
*Evil runs are almost impossible. You get way too much positive karma for doing the main quest stuff and barely any negative karma for siding with evil npcs. You NEED to go out of your way and murder entire settlements to get an evil rep. Which is pretty much a cartoon villain, the negative reactions won't work properly too.
*different ammo types don't work in Fo1, they all have JHP default values.
*despite the timer being there, most npcs tell what they know about the waterchip or other locations right away if you ask. If you try a highly urgent run you'll ignore all side content because the game is not as focused as you could remember. The lack of people asking you for deeds in exchange of information + the lack of people who outright would lie to the player character is one of the reasons the characterization is weaker than in 2.
*As previously commented, characterization is rather weak outside of talking heads.
* Karma ss the only rep system is a mistake.
*Lack basic QoL improvements obviously
*Companions are useless and shouldn't be in the game.
*Far too easy to even remotely attempt to be grim-dark
*Lackluster Weapon itemization with only 1 smg, 1 AR, 1 minigun,etc... Pistols mostly cost 5 AP which makes no sense for pistols in-universe and it lacks variety.
In fact, theres only 3 big guns in this game lol
* Almost no choice and consequence outside of Ending slides but i will admit that this is partially due to the removal of mutant invasion schedules post 1.0.
* Locations don't seem like real places due to lack of characters. They use far too many stock characters and theres almost no content in most locations, a bunch of empty structures and empty space either. Aside from the hub its quite hard to say locations were strong in F1 even if they were more thematically cohesive when looking from a macroscope.
*Lack of reactivity is quite notable here.
