wrong. here's why. i look at fallout more as a setting than a video game. its got its own rules, lore and tone. fallout 2 fails so hard at tone that its almost a parody of the original. new vegas is more in line with the originals vision for themes, tone, and story concepts. fallout goes way beyond just "how it plays" besides outside of combat new vegas did an amazing job at emulating an rpg. and besides combat was always fallouts weakest link.
No.
This is the part where you are wrong, the core of the issue upon which your logic is built and broken.
Fallout was, is and forever will be a video game, first and foremost. It was intended as such and created as such.
The setting in it is devised to support the game, not vice-versa (or rather, they were created simultaneously, but bear with me). That doesn't mean the setting is without value, far from it, but it is, along with the story, art, music etc. the secondary aspect. Primary aspect in video games is gameplay. That's why they are called
games.
You can go on and create a game with an idea to support a very specific narrative and that is fine, but unless that game has good gameplay, it cannot be considered a fun game. And game with no fun is a bad game (in 99,9% of cases).
If you are analyzing and comparing games from a narrative standpoint (and setting, lore, characters etc. would fall into this category), that is fair and in that regard I do agree that FNV is better than FO2, but the problem is, as I've pointed out, is that narrative and setting are never as important as actual
gameplay.
Besides, it is unfair to video games as medium to be primarily judged by their narrative qualities rather than gaming qualities. Games are a unique medium because unlike other art forms (I do consider games to be art, but that is irrelevant at the moment) they require the interaction and urgency of the player in order to fulfill their role - unlike a book or a film where you, while reading, are still a passive observer of a completed work.
Games are meant to be
played. Not read, not listened to, not gazed at - played.
To use colloquialism from PnP/wargaming communities, there is "crunch" and there is "fluff".
Crunch is the central aspect and mechanics of the game - that is how the game is played. Fluff, on the other hand, is what "fills the spaces" - lore and setting, characters, events etc.
Crunch also includes the basic elements of the setting - in this case a post-apocalyptic world (or a high/low fantasy, sci-fi etc.) and certain core elements of it (such as Mutants, Vaults etc.) but the finesse and detail fall in the realm of fluff.
Nonetheless, the core of the crunch, and therefore of the actual game, are its mechanics. And when it comes to mechanics and the core of the game, Fallout set a standard which FO2 followed. No other game in the series did. Some of the marginal, superficial stuff - that is, fluff - were done (way) better in other games than in FO2, but no other game was a proper sequel in its core.
You can play a game, including a (good) RPG without fluff, but you cannot play it without crunch.
And you, Graves, are focusing on fluff rather than crunch. And therein lies the error.