A big issue with Fallout 3 is that big flashing arrow that marks your present quest goal..
I mean, come on.. No matter if you have visited a place on a previous occasion or its in the far end of the unexplored map, it
points directly on the spot/npc you need to talk with.. They could as well had given the npc's a big question mark over the head too..

It ruins the experience of exploring new places while gathering clues to where your objective might be hiding.. If that is the case..
I remember playing FO1 & FO2 and being puzzled by some quest, spending hours searching some areas.. Or trying to find them..
Just because a game goes first person, there's no need to ruin the rpg core of it entirely, looking at it in contrast to its many other flaws..

Yes. Some people will prefer Fallout 3 because of graphics (though in my opinion Fallout 3 was artistically worse than the first two), combat, voice-overs, etc., but I don't think very many people would say that Fallout 3 has anywhere near as memorable characters, interesting locales, or good writing (I'm convinced Bethesda hires monkeys to do their writing). The places where Fallout 3 shines feel recycled from the originals. In Fallout 2, for example, San Fransisco has a ship where a bunch of people are living, with a market and all, just like Rivet City. And Rivet City does nothing to distinguish itself.

There's a few very important facets of the original Fallouts that makes it hard to dispute that they're better RPGs than 3, if not better games in general.

First is writing. Intelligence checks don't sound dumb like they do in Fallout 3. You don't return to quest givers like Lucy West and have them not care about what you've been out doing for them. Asinine sects like the Children of Atom and the Underground are less common, though they exist, especially in Fallout 2.

Second is character specialization. Fallout 3 makes attributes much less meaningful. While increasing a stat to 8 in Fallout 1 or 2 would make a big difference most of the time, they're meaningless in Fallout 3. Having a 5 Strength and Endurance melee character is much easier in Fallout 3, though I guess combat is ridiculously easy in all the games. More important is skills. Fallout 3's skills are pretty well distributed, as there are plenty of places where you can use them instead of shooting your opponent. There could be more, but the originals aren't that much better about it. However, you can train nearly every skill to a high level of proficiency, and given how fast you level in base Fallout 3, that makes the uniqueness of your character feel limited. Skill books and bobbleheads makes this even easier, as does the 100 point limit. The 2x modifier for tagging skills is supposed to help guide the specialization of skills, creating an incentive for putting points into the skill, but Bethesda removed it completely. If the game were tweaked so that 150 or 200 was the cap, skill checks were changed appropriately, attributes were made more significant, there were fewer skill books, and bobbleheads gave less points/didn't exist, this problem would be much less substantial.

Third, the game doesn't have the sense of pay-off RPGs should. Given the lack of sidequests, most of the dungeons in Fallout 3 are meaningless, expect for a skill book or bobblehead for completionists. They're much more interesting and unique than Oblivion, but there's no reason to visit them. Without a quest attached to it, it feels like you're just looting a place. NPCs and dialogue build story to the unique locales in Fallout 3, and make it feel like you're affecting the world and helping the Wasteland recover, kind of like in inFamous. To be honest, Fallout 1/2 didn't have this problem because there weren't random dungeons everywhere. But they had quests to supplement, and open world exploration wasn't their aim. Nor should it be any RPG's aim. Open world exploration lacks motive and pay-off.

Finally, we have atmosphere. The other reasons may be more substantial gameplay-wise, but this is what I find to be most important. Fallout 1/2 might not be "immersive" as modern gamers have come to define it, but i would argue they are infinitely more immersive than 3. It doesn't immerse you as a character or a role, but immerses you into a post-apocalyptic world. Fallout 3 feels like a survival horror game. Fallout 1/2 feel like a post-apocalyptic simulator. You can feel the world struggling to reconstruct itself after a nuclear war. I posted my reasoning elsewhere and copy-pasted it here.

The world made more sense. No random cults dedicated to every little thing (vampires, tree people, nuke worshipers, android liberators...). No cities built around bombs for no apparent reason. No one who wants to blow up cities cause they're bored.

People in Fallout all seemed to be working to survive, even the Raiders, gangs, and such. In Fallout 3, people seem to have the surviving deal figured out, and seem to be living rather comfortably. Part of this is definitely due to the shift to first person. We see them, their facial expressions and actions, instead of imagining them as per fallout 1/2, but it's also due to what Bethesda's making them do. There's no farmers or scavengers. Fallout's quests were largely related to dealing with threats to the city/village, getting food & water, etc. Fallout 2 broke from this a little, but mostly in respectable ways, including factional conflicts and such. Also, the voice overs are cheery, compared to the more serious tones in Fallout 1/2.

Post-Apocalyptia. In Fallout 1/2, the closest cities were tens of miles apart. And when you were in those cities, they were broken. You could feel the despair. This is again partially due to the transition to first person. Fallout 3 feels busy and cramped.

Scarcity of ammo, etc. Fallout 1/2 didn't have very difficult combat, but it wasn't easy the way Fallout 3 is. Ammo and stimpacks litter the Capitol Wasteland, so the need to save bullets and run from fights isn't there. Since the game is real time now, you can't switch mid battle to a knife to save ammo, and it becomes difficult as developers to limit ammo. However, energy cells should still be made rarer. They were rare in Fallout 1/2, but I've collected 2000+ Energy Cells and 1000+ MF Cells in Fallout 3.

Exploration was very different in Fallout 1/2. Not necessarily better, though I believe so. It was much more focused on side quests than random buildings. Some of the fights in buildings is cool, like the Super Duper Mart and Capitol Building, but the random battles lack the reward and climix of quests.

I wrote this on a different forum. There's a few more reasons I had. A lot of the reasons are tiny things that add up. Overall though, I don't think Fallout really works in 1st person. It doesn't look empty enough. It's got it's strong points gameplay-wise, but doesn't capture what Fallout had.

people seem to have the surviving deal figured out, and seem to be living rather comfortably.

There are no romances.

There's too much romance in every movie, tv-series and games now a days.
It's starting to get annoying.

Romance is one of my most hated features an RPG can have.
I find them incredibly cheesy and atmosphere killers, often they seem to be little more than a sensitive teenager's dumb romantic fantasies .
They can turn a potentially epic story into a teen soap opera.

In general, writing in RPGs becomes of the lowest quality when the game turns emotional... these writers just can't handle stuff like that

Romance is in fact a reason for me not to buy a game, even if it's optional.
Having the option to either destroy my game or miss a big part of it, is not an option I would care to have.
(or maybe I'm just dead inside )

(though I bet abnaxus' wasn't actually serious)

Lately, I've also been wanting to see an RPG company like BioWare or similar write a romance with an evil NPC in mind,

They have! especially Bioware.
From the top of my head I remember Viconia from Baldurs Gate II and Evil Aribeth & Nathyrra from Neverwinter Nights: HotU... there must be others.
They were as bad as the rest, only with a bit more of an s&m quality.

Fallout 1/2 might not be "immersive" as modern gamers have come to define it, but i would argue they are infinitely more immersive than 3. It doesn't immerse you as a character or a role, but immerses you into a post-apocalyptic world. Fallout 3 feels like a survival horror game. Fallout 1/2 feel like a post-apocalyptic simulator. You can feel the world struggling to reconstruct itself after a nuclear war.

To be honest most of the things you mentioned are not really due to it being 1st person, but rather design decisions which are a consequence of commercializing the game (making it appeal to a greater market) and poor animations.
It's kind of sad how many games come out these days where lip synching and facial animation are so lacking.

Romance is one of my most hated features an RPG can have.
I find them incredibly cheesy and atmosphere killers, often they seem to be little more than a sensitive teenager's dumb romantic fantasies .
They can turn a potentially epic story into a teen soap opera.

Romance? When I want romance I stop playing my game and walk up the stairs to bed. If my hubby want's in on it, he arrives.

I can't convince anyone to like games for the reason I like them. I enjoy searching a room as if I am there. I don't enjoy seeing two rooms from a birds eye view because well...I'm not a bird. Whatever floats your boat I guess. I am much more pleased with FO3 being FP and believe with all my heart that I would have enjoyed FO and FO1 much more if they had been FP and RT. :shrug: That's not to say I didn't enjoy them, but I like the direction Bethesda took with FO3.

Here is the thing about that though... IMO both styles are equally fun, and equally valid. Bethesda's games do a great job of depicting how you would see a room if you were there ~ but...

This is a hallmark of the TES series of games, this is not a hallmark of the Fallout series of games, and shouldn't be shoe-horned into them. It was never the need or intent, and it was possible to do Fallout as Beth did Daggerfall or Red Guard. Fallout's world may interest many, but the game seems not to interest many TES fans; and not surprising, as these are different series for different audiences. IMO it is wrong ~not legally , but in every other respect, wrong to gut an established series and stitch it back together for a disinterested audience, in a way they would find palatable. That's what Spin-offs are for.

*I've a Question... Would you have cared if the game you have had been named other than Fallout #3?
I expect the answer is 'no', and I'd think it likely that most fans of the current game would equally not care (especially since a good number of them had never heard of Fallout 1 or 2).

Well, you see...I played Fallout long before I played anything TES and I wished for FPP and RT when I played them. At that point, being a dumb old and not a geeky type, I didn't even know they could do FPP and RT but I longed for a game that could make me feel as if I was part of a movie and being part of it I could change it or interact with it. If I were a smart lady with skill that it took, I would have been trying to figure out how to do that with Fallout way back then prior to having ever played a FPP game and that would have seemed to me like the direction to take. Little did I know at the time that I would end up finding that perspective in an RPG with Morrowind which caused me to discover Daggerfall and I loved them for that reason. It did not change that I thought Fallout was an awesome game but it did make me long for Fallout to take that leap into that perspective. IMO, it would be the right thing to do.

Romance is in fact a reason for me not to buy a game, even if it's optional.
Having the option to either destroy my game or miss a big part of it, is not an option I would care to have.
(or maybe I'm just dead inside )

Daggerfall and Morrowind are great games in their own right, but Fallout was never intended to be like them. I thought it would have been a great experience had Fallout 3 been a spin off, but Fallout 3 is heralded as a sequel. As a sequel Fallout 3 fails on many accounts. This doesn't mean it's a bad game, or that your opinion isn't valid at all, but story and setting aren't what define sequels in the video game industry. If Fallout 3 were called "Fallout: D.C." a lot of us miserable old timers wouldn't have had any problems with it from a sequel perspective; I'd still have some issues with the presentation and mechanics myself, but those things aren't related to Fallout 3's designation as a sequel.

Fallout 3 should have been an isometric game with a turn based function (and possibly a real time option like Van Buren was going to have); not a first person game that places way more emphasis on combat than its predecessors. This doesn't mean that what became Fallout 3 couldn't have existed; it just should have been called something else allowing Fallout 3 to be a proper sequel. TES and Fallout are both great series' much like Civilization and Command & Conquer are great franchises. Does this mean that the next Civilization should be a small scale RTS with an emphasis on tank spamming?

Well Bethesda making Fallout 3 like TES is a double edged sword because it gives the implication that they don't have the creative talent to develop anything but. There's also plenty of development houses that were tasked with developing sequels in established series', and did a great job without coming across as 'copy cats'. Like I said before, in this industry its expected that sequels play like their predecessors but with improvements. Fallout 3 as is, isn't an improvement because it doesn't resemble its predecessors at all.

I don't think anyone considers Fallout 1/2 perfect, by the way.