Generally, open-world games with a large variety of dialogue, quest and storyline options often result in an overall lackluster plot. Skyrim was a great example of this. The storyline is, overall, shallow and your actions feel largely meaningless. Siding with one army or another merely changed which uniform you would see on the guards within towns and effect a few quests. It was all lacking any real depth. However, with all the DLC install, the storyline for New Vegas feels very complete and actually has quite a bit of depth. Friends of mine complained, but I merely say that, firstly, they played it without the DLC installed (Lonesome Road offers a great perspective on everything, I feel) and that they weren't thinking enough to realise what it all meant.

What I am worried is that, with Fallout 4 likely being made by Bethesda Game Studios (as with Fallout 3) and not Obsidian, is that the plot will subsequently become lackluster a la Skyrim. What do you think? Leave your opinions below!

Skyrim has too many storylines and that might be why it ended up being shallow. The main quest was a step up from Fallout 3's though...

It's funny, because people argue to me that the storyline of Fallout 3 was better than that of New Vegas. I wholeheartedly disagree and, in my opinion, the storyline of Fallout 3 was pretty weak. With such an amazing world, it pains me to play Fallout 3 because of an overall weak plot. But, back on topic, Skyrim doesn't have too many more storylines than New Vegas, which has an abundance of quests - many resulting in two or more different endings.

It certainly does.

The only other game I can think of is Morrowind, which is nowhere near NV.

New Vegas, and the DLC in particular are head and shoulders above the green spaghetti against the wall that was Fallout 3.

I liked the storyline of the game (NV was my first FO game; I actually went in backwards order - NV, 3, 2, 1), but I'm apparently one of the few who liked FO3 better and likes Bethesda better as a dev. I don't know, I just don't care too much for Obsidian/Interplay and their FO games as much as I do with Bethesda, thus I'm happy Bethesda is doing FO4.

I have the same worries. That Bethesda plays it safe and puts all their chief focus on building a visually stunning world accompanied by an array of superfluous sidefeatures to strengthen the simulation feel - rather than giving the storytelling and mechanics related reactivity the attention it deserves (and requires in order to be good).

I never played Interplay's Fallout because I prefer the first-person perspective of Bethesda's titles. The overhead turn-based nature of the original wasn't interesting to me, as much as I'd like to experience the story itself. As for Fallout 3, I prefer New Vegas over it, but I always liked Obsidian's RPGs - especially Knights of the Old Republic 2.

With media attention on Fallout 4, I really hope they get a new writer or take a precedence on the story. The Fallout world is so interesting and it really speaks about human nature. New Vegas is the perfect RPG (almost), in my opinion. Besides some slight weak points, it's great. A good story, combined with branching options, an addicting level system, interesting characters...it's brilliant.

I don't think it's so much about their writers being inherently bad (well.. it certainly seems they are given the recent trackrecord), but them not giving writing and narrative structuring nearly enough attention. They're not Obsidian that's for sure, but I'd like to believe that if they bothered to try, they could come up with something actually interesting (that's a big if though).

If Skyrim is any indication of where Bethesda's writing is heading, I wouldn't get my hopes up...

Hopefully they'll at least learn from their (rather egregious, in my opinion) mistakes in how they handled FO3's storyline, and give us a 'proper' ending rather than a complete farce that ends up being retconned in one of the DLCs.

I'm not (getting my hopes up) - I don't believe they will change their "protocls" much (if at all), their way just seems to be profitable enough to not bother . Just speculating some reasons on why their writing is less than stellar, and how (potentially) they could improve if ever inclined to.