You got some massive pink glasses on, Blood Piggy - I won't reply to every point you made but FO1&2 made a lot of the same "mistakes" as you call them including unrealistic radiation, copy & paste designs (I mean, come on, you got to have balls to accuse FO3 from cell design when FO1&2 had identical locations all over the place). FO1&2 had plenty of illogical sequences as well (a ship that still works after so many years just by plugging in some parts? The designers must have been high as a kite).
You seem to be massively blinded if you consider FO1&2 to be far superior - Fallout 2 had a serious issue with random criticals for example which meant instant death based on LUCK. You can't do much worse than THAT to be honest. And combat was a big part of the game so this flaw constantly popped up. Any game where you're unable to defend against immediate death deserves a slap and it's only because FO2 made up for it in other areas that I have not slapped it silly.
I do agree that the skills have changed but to be honest, I find this positive. Fallout 1&2 made the massive mistake of being nontransparent. Fanboys often forget this because they know those two games inside out but the truth is that assigning skills in FO1&2 was just guesswork. Next to the random criticals, it's the one thing I really hold against it (and against many RPGs actually). Some skills are potentially invalluable but end up being useless. I really dislike having to pick skills at the start of a game without knowing whether they'll be worth it.
I do realise some changes in FO3 may be considered 'dumbing down' but when you make the move to 3D and FPS instead of turn-based combat, there's bound to be changes that make certain things better and others worse. For me, the turnbased combat was flawed in the first place (see above) and the combat that replaced it at least didn't piss me off every few minutes.
Mods may very easily smooth over parts you don't like anyway, which happened to Oblivion too so look around if you dislike certain parts - there's enough Fallout fanboys that may have made mods to accomodate you.
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