Hmm I see you're in the habit of making of uneducated assumptions. Well I guess I'll take the time to tell you I've played all of the Fallout games (minus BoS) and enjoyed them all (somewhat less Tactics). My point was that when all you do is take something and boil it down to it's simplest parts, then it will ALWAYS sound boring. So let me rephrase:
Fallout: We need the water chip or we will die! oh shit there's a bigger threat out there, go kill it! (or in one case join it)
Fallout 2: We need the G.E.C.K. or we will die! oh shit there's a bigger threat out there, kill it!
Alright, let's look at them in full, shall we?
Fallout 1 is the story of an individual born in a Vault, a vast underground bunker that protected his ancestors from nuclear fire. This individual must venture out of their sheltered community to find a replacement for their water chip, the only means for them to live; as plot hooks go, that's a pretty big one. The player is given an actual time limit on this imperative mission and as they travel, they are introduced to a post-apocalyptic society trying to rebuild from the ashes of the old world. Everything in it is connected, and everything has a reason to exist; their quest eventually takes them to Necropolis, where the first tangible presence of a greater threat reveals itself.
The Dweller is given a new mission; not only to save their Vault, but the entire Wasteland from the Master's Army, preserve the blossoming flower of civilization from being trampled over by the misused inheritance of Pre-war America. Interesting dialogue and frequent skill checks make sure that every build matters and, eventually, the player comes to confront the Master, a being as monstrous as they are sharp, and destroys them (or joins them). They then return home, only to be told that they can never be part of the community again; they have changed too much. Banished, the protagonist wanders off into the wastes, exiled from the very community they gave everything to protect.
Fallout 4 is the story of a Vault Dweller from a seemingly parallel dimension, where none of the implied social unrest of the first game seems to exist in pre-war America. You're a male veteran (and perhaps begrudgingly allowed to be a female lawyer) whose family is sheltered in a vault just as the bombs go off over Boston, showering you in radioactivity (which travels at the speed of light). You are tricked into being cryogenically frozen by the staff and some 150 years later are unfrozen by the descendants of a faction who have no real reason to exist (given how they couldn't possibly have the resources to build all they have underground) to kidnap your child for reasons that I have already evidenced as being stupid (seeing as you were showered by the aforementioned radiation, so if anything you're the most contaminated person this side of the Glowing Sea) and witness the assassination of your spouse.
There's a number of reasons why this was pulled off worse than Fallout 1's intro, but for now, I'll just say it's an equally big plot hook.
60 years later, you are unfrozen by your now-elderly child so that you may join him in the Institute. He does not send an envoy of any kind nor does he guide you in your journey; rather, he hopes that the disoriented and recently unfrozen pre-war veteran/lawyer will be able to survive the harshness of a wasteland that inexplicably looks like the bombs had just been dropped in the past ten years despite it being over 200 since the Great War. He then expects you to navigate your way through a city that is filled with bandits, rapists and rapist bandits to reach a settlement which inexplicably exists in the middle of hostile territory so you could then rescue and recruit an old discarded prototype of his which had, unbeknownst to you, become a detective; this is followed by the murder of his other parent's assassin and hoping that you would somehow figure out a way to scan his memories and discover how the Institute agents get in and out (teleportation).
Finally, this charade is brought to a close by his staggeringly correct prediction that you would recruit the help of one of three people in the entire Commonwealth (two of which are backyard tinkerers) who can replicate the device by using a chip obtained by killing one of his most dangerous field agents and take it to an exile he wasn't even sure was alive; this concludes with his presumption that you would survive this batshit insane plan to teleport using experimental technology, get inside the Institute and that torturing you with the sight of your own son as a child would not cause you to immediately murder him. Now done with the happy reunion, he expects you to unquestioningly join the side of the faction you've been fighting your whole stay in post-apocalyptia (because yes, he has been sending agents after you for no real reason) and murdered your spouse so that you can kill all the surface dwellers and take over the Institute once he dies of cancer, despite the fact that he didn't even know if you were apt to do so in the first place.
Some honorable mentions:
- Atom Cats using experimental Power Armour nobody but the BoS has;
- The Institute infiltrating cities for the very specific purpose of fuck knows;
- Being forced to commit wanton slaughter of at least two factions;
- The Kid in the Fridge (easy target, I know) surviving for 200+ years with no food or water;
- If synths are meant to be slaves, why do they have free will? Was that intentional? If not, how do they develop it?
- The Gunners being a merc group that attacks on sight with basically no real M. O.
- Cabot House is a whole other can of worms, but I'll just put it here in case I need it for future reference.
