Iv heard alot of dinosaurs say that FO is all about the rebuilding society process, so that the bleak wasteland feel doesn't fit in to the FO timeline as its 200 years after the war.

Well it doesn't really make much sense if it's in the west near the NCR who is expanding and rebuilding. Fallout 4 would be taking place at the very least 40 years after Fallout 2. In Fallout 2 the NCR capital (former Shady Sands) is basically rebuilt and somewhat thriving. I believe the canon for this is the NCR have expanded probably taking over all of California and is rebuilding and pushing it's influence further out.

Now if the game takes either away from or on the edge of the major factions then it will most likely not be completely rebuilt and you can still get somewhat of a bleak wasteland. I say this because it appears from Fallout 3 that if it's not the major factions from the west then society is basically incapable of rebuilding...

I'd say it's Post-Post-Apocalyptic. Fallout 1 was probably the end of true Post-Apocalyptic, and society was well on its way to recovery by the end of Fallout 2. Everything is really fragile though, so it would be really easy for society to collapse again if they want to go there. The war between the BoS and NCR could easily destroy the NCR if the BoS in a move of desperation unleashed some kind of FEV bombs. That would be a decent way to take a step backwards. The remaining NCR would destroy everything they rebuilt in an attempt to stop the mutants, and the BoS would just take it slow and try to regain control. That would be a great time and place to introduce a new Vault and start the next game.

agree i dont want to keep jumping into the future or the rads go byebye. Bounce around the world (mostly the us) first and show how the war effected the areas. Plus i dont want huge uber gaint mega factions either where one to four new united states pop up, should be more like europe 600 to 1399 where you had a lot of tiny to small nation states to kingdoms/republics that claim much more land than they actually control. Factions like Caeser Legion would go Roma brake aparting part under its own weight and Generals wanting to be the Caeser, as for the NCR i for see (with the courier or house as Canon) the Republic breaking apart in a civil war following the path of the us. Oh and there is no way Oregonians/Cascadians would let no Cali rulers rule over them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One place i wouldnt mind giant factions would be India or SE asia.

I'd rather not just jump around the world, I want previous factions to show up in newer installments along with the new factions, and we can't just keep dikeing around in 2281, we need to move forward, or backward, and I'd rather move forward a decade or two with each game. That's not too much or too little.

I personally feel that FO1 feels more post-apocalyptic than FO3 because it deals with problems grounded in reality. From killing a local crime lord to finding out what happened to a missing caravan to even taking care of someone's canine problem FO1's more "structured" representation of a post-apocalyptic wateland was more compelling simply because the issues it dealt with were real or at least dealt with real life problems. At least they were more compelling (and drew me in more) than some quest involving diving into a vault for a violin or crippling myself for no reason at all.

Compare the Hub in FO1 to Canterbury Commons in 3. The former actually felt and looked like the trading capital of the wasteland while the latter was well....small, underdeveloped and had one (pretty ridicoulous) sidequest involving superheroes. Canterbury had alot of potential .

Agreed, FO3 towns where pretty lack luster for there apparent purpose.

My point was that I wanted to see something like that but it isn't really plausable 200 yeasrs after. Fallout 1 was 90 years, 2 was 150+ not sure though.

Well honestly people were in vaults most of the time after the war so they haven't had that much time trying to get civilized. And also nuclear blasts would destroy most outside life and radiate most water on the planet, so being civilized would be very hard. You would need constant protection and constant flow of money to survive. And if a society has all this in a post nuclear war wasteland, they will REALLY fight for it.

I like fallout the way it is. Screw wide spread civilization! I don't want another grand theft auto or saints row, I want fallout!

I have to agree. Seems like so many people are bent on completely changing it to something else. Why not just improve what's already good. I'll probably get hit with the flamer for this but, I honestly don't get why 1 and 2 even come up so often. Obviously people really liked them back in the day, but it's like trying to compare an iPhone to a CB radio. I'm sure they were fun at the time... But it's like night and day.

I assume that you mean Fallout as Fallout 3...... Anyway if the timeframe is kept at the current point, it would make little to none sense if civilization wouldn't be present. And one of the biggest fallout themes is rebuilding the world.

No, that's no excuse.

The people outside Vault 101 never got into a vault, they have had 200 years to built that hunk of junk.
Plantlife does not go bye bye by radiation, look at Chernobyl, after some plants died off the rest thrived in the radioactive glow.
And water, rain, is not irradiated, it's not hard to take a bunch of buckets and place them out in the rain to collect water.

Well, we do know that radiation in Fallout follows it's own particular set of rules, that aren't really applicable in a real-world scenario...

But agreed - there were plenty of people outside of the Vaults who survived the War.