Saltiness said:
From what I understand of TES, it's been progressively "stream lined" and as such more of the little things (example: alternative endings in Daggerfall) are kicked to the way side for vaunted radiant AI, a pretty graphics engine and Mr Stewart doing a voice over. Also keep in mind that Daggerfall was over 10 years ago... Mini games. Level scaling. And that's from someone who doesn't really care to follow the development that closely.
That's a completely valid point, things do change. I don't always think it's a bad thing (maps with waypoints, level design that doesn't look like a 10 year-old's work, and better inventory management, for example), but I feel that Bethesda took the truffled foie gras of Daggerfall, and made it into a spicy chicken sandwich with Oblivion, all while wrecking the balance of the game. What I always really liked about the Fallout series was that if you were a clever little boy, you could beat both games barely firing your gun at all, Daggerfall less so, but it provided more options than just charge in, guns a-blazing. The side quests in Oblivion (especially the Mages Guild and Dark Brotherhood) retained some of this quality, but without a combat oriented character, the main quest was impossible to finish.
So I guess all of this sums up by saying this: if Bethesda keeps on its quest to streamline its games for console users, I think Fallout 3 will be "teh sux0rz." That's not to say I won't buy it, what substitute do I have? No console game is EVER going to ship with an instruction manual of more than 30 pages (and that's a stretch), so RPG's can't have 14 hojillion skills like in older PC and pen and paper games. While this makes games easier to play, it also makes greatly diminishes the variety of in-game challenges. If the only problem to solve comes in the form of "where can I find a bigger gun?" the game loses my interest. I think this can be solved with better balance and better writing. If the writers create problems with both violent and non-violent solutions, both the old school PC dorks and the console twitch players will be happy, but for this to work, the balance must allow both play styles to flourish.