I've been playing the game since release and have thought about it as a whole.

The game feels like it was designed by several different designers. Is this supposed to be a serious game? A funny game? A silly game?

It's all of them and the game just isn't memorable with all these combinations. The world as a whole makes little coherent sense.

One moment you're bombing mirelurks using all these ridiculous weapons with the CHI CHING noise every 5 seconds, then two minutes later you're listening to a certain sad Chinese captain that wants to go home. One hour later you're helping robots with funny hats get a wooden ship to fly. It feels like the world is a random sandbox with isolated stories here and there.

Those moments are fun in isolation and I greatly enjoyed the submarine and Constitution quests.

The game just lacks a significant, central theme or atmosphere. Fallout 3 had a somber atmosphere of a destroyed world where everything is destroyed and bad, so it's our job to fix it (though it did have it problems).

Even though I found NV to be better, I see screenshots like this and I can see myself playing F3 as a whole again.

https://bbot.org/blog-images/fallout3-2-moved.jpg

For Fallout 4, there is just no drive or reason to play the game as a whole again. Sure, I'd love to play the Constitution quest again, but the majority of the game as a whole?

Sure, the game has many improvements over the past games. Better graphics, gameplay, more choices compared to F3, but it just doesn't have that innovation or quality that F3 and Skyrim had. I started a new character but it feels liek I'm continuing the first character.

Isn't being colorful just more fun than being monotonous?

And you're talking about side missions. I don't know what's your CHI-CHING weapon, but probably it's just a special joke weapon.

I'm really not sure what you're talking about... New Vegas and all of the other Fallout games suffer the same "problem"... and how is it a problem? It's an open world RPG, it can be all of those things - the atmosphere or "theme" doesn't have to be described in one word.

Freedom brings rewards, and death

Not sure if you remember the Republic of Dave, or Harold the Tree Dude, or the Kings...

FO3 and FO:NV had many of these same silly quests. I do sort of get that same sense with Boston, and I think its partly because everything is 10m away from something else. FO3 in particular had vast open areas with nothingness that might have given it that stronger sense of despair...

Thats not to say that Boston doesnt have character, Diamond City and Good Neighbour are by far the most character-full settlements Bethesda have ever delivered IMO (its too bad the latter is so freaking small).

how can you want to play the game on the F3 screen over this?:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/393299074087855662/0ECAB6DA0D47FDDF1D94316E5672B311DEB76E77/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside%7C2048:822&composite-to=*,*%7C2048:822&background-color=black

or this
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/650003524236765034/7BA79F6E74966FCFCC8041E89A38718EA6755170/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside%7C2048:413&composite-to=*,*%7C2048:413&background-color=black

or even this ^^

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/388795474452226223/01C850721D93804B2A1F10F2B37AA55D70E9CD01/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside%7C2048:576&composite-to=*,*%7C2048:576&background-color=black

it's the first game that has such an atmospheric game world with so many details <3

it may struggle on RPG elements and quest design compared to other games like Witcher,

but the open world is really an evolution of everytihng we've seen before in any other game

I think this is more about how the setting of Fallout 3 is one of it's greatest strengths than Fallout 4 lacing focus.... The setting of the Capitol Wasteland is going to be difficult for any game of this type to top.

Just for the record, I have never had any issues with incentive to play Fallout 4, so the OPs critic is not a universally accepted issue with the game. No doubt some players will not like Fallout 4 as much as earlier games (but I'm not sure that is worthy of a lengthy discussion here).