I think the fact that we had dungeons in Fallout 3 is a very clear sign that everything is upside down. And another sign that corroborates that one is the fact that very few people are actually able to point that specific design flaw out, or at least talk about it.
Dungeons are a specific design feature, in fact, they are a genre-defining feature of dungeon crawlers, a genre in which, of course, and as we all know, Elder Scrolls always fit in.
Again, of course, as we all know, Bethesda doesn't really understand anything about design. Or it would seem so, given their incapability of designing Fallout 3 without dungeons, a feature that is kind of the complete opposite of everything Fallout always stood for.
Having heard this, most people, including Bethesda, will start making excuses, citing Troika, citing Tactics, citing trends, citing inconsistencies in the original titles. That's all very nice, and that's all very ok, and they may even be right. After all, Fallout was never a perfect game to begin with, in fact, it has many flaws (which, unfortunately, and by the way, have rarely, if ever, been worked upon in other titles). But it doesn't change the fact that people are not able to discern clear design elements as dungeons in Fallout 3 as a nigh complete alien element to the series. I'm not even talking about Bethesda's ability to do the same. And if they were reading this, I'd tell them all once again I'd quit my job RIGHT WAY and seriously consider admitting myself to a psychiatric rehabilitating facility if I worked at Bethesda. I don't consider ANY of their workers worthy of admiration. None of them have reached any kind of quality standard with their recent games, despite what people may say or think.
Design.
Sure, Fallout 3 wasn't a COMPLETE design failure, it had some good elements. Guess what? They are basically copy paste of previous games, and selective copy paste at that. So, for me, Bethesda's design is a total failure, Bethesda's plot, as Crni Vuk rightly pointed out, is a near total failure, Bethesda's writing is a complete and utter failure, sound engineering is actually average, but subpar when compared with decent AAA titles, their soundtrack is aggravating in most occasions, with some occasional bright spots, level design is catastrophic, voice acting is terrible, game balancing is nowhere near where it should be, being formulaic at best. Formulaic is also the artistic direction, ridden with inconsistency. Formulaic is the perfect adjective though, and that's not good at all. The game engine is badly optimized, but that would actually pass if the graphics were any good, which they are not. Remember: many polygons doesn't equal good graphics, and Fallout 3 is basically many polygons.
Worst thing is, and, again, as Crni Vuk pointed out, people are not able to detect these obvious flaws, which, if you ask me, are actually not that common in AAA games. They lack the critic drive a worthy gamer should have. I think that's why... no, that is actually why may gaming site is aimed at creating discussion, making people think for themselves by giving them near absurd perspectives or the gaming industry (well, I'm not very sure we're delivering it as we should, but still). That is also a fault from the journalists' side, and it's a very obvious one. They don't care, they only care about their revenues, and they translate from how many people read their shit. And the more their shit goes in the direction of the mass market's opinion, the more people will read it. It's a vicious cycle that can only be broken, apparently, by this economic crisis we're facing. People start having less money to spend, they start being more critic, they start pirating more, stupid companies (i.e., those who don't understand the concept of cost cutting) start going down and intelligent companies either breed because their games were good to begin with or their cut prices, which is likely to lead to the increase in the quality of their products (see upcoming Need for Speed titles to see what I mean).
I may be being a tad optimistic here, and I'm definitely being boring as hell, so I'll stop.
Well, it's always a possibility.
