have you finished it? i feel like developments were made to bring everything into Bethesda's vision, which was always very selective in which themes they ran with vs disregarded

No, not at all. Bethesda's games have a very different ethos and narrative bent than the old Interplay games. The old games are quite hopeful, they're about people trying to re-build a good world from the ashes of the old world, America is explicitly the architect of it's own downfall and destruction. The world building is vastly better; the world is actually full of emerging nations, tribes, villages, new cultures trying to muddle through and find a place in the world.

In the first game the ultimate antagonist is a person who has found what he thinks is a way to create a truly peaceful, just society where everyone will be unified, not under a single government, but under a radically new way of communicating with others that will flatten all differences and allow people to coexist without conflict. Unfortunately his methods are unacceptable, causing a great deal of harm. If your character is clever enough and you're observant, you can actually talk him down by showing him evidence that his idea won't work out. He accepts your evidence and gives up.

In the next game the player encounters former soldiers from his army who will actually articulate why they believed in his plans, what it meant to them, and how they felt when the plan was abandoned and the army disbanded. Some of them have become warlords and bandits, others have tried to continue the goal they believed in by reaching out to former enemies and building new communities.

These are, of course, the Super Mutants. In Fallout I, II, Tactics, and New Vegas they're people with goals, morals, beliefs, and complexity. They're the antagonists in the first game but they've got reasons and a goal that they think will make the world a better place.

And then in Bethesda's games they're just orcs, slavering cannibals with no real purpose nor any good narrative reason to even be on the East Coast.

The greater scope villains in Fallout IV are the BoS, who have gone from being monastic recluses devoted to protecting high technology from what they view as a world that will abuse it, to fascist, racist imperialists with a blimp. It never made sense for them to be on the East Coast in the first place as the organization was always very small and very isolationist. Both of Bethesda's versions of the Brotherhood - The noblebright paladins in III and the genocidal fascists in IV, are abrupt deviations from the original BoS that don't really make a lot of sense and are just there because they were part of the IP that Beth bought.

And the other villain of the story, the Institute? Beth couldn't even bother to come up with an explanation for why they were doing what they were doing. There's just no explanation for their plot. The Master was kidnapping people and dipping them in to FEV to try to create a harmonious society where everyone could be equal and enjoy a true peace. That's what his goal was, that's what his troops and followers believed in.

The Institute is kidnapping people, presumably killing them, and replacing them with synths because... uh... they actually never bother to explain it. They just don't. It's horrible writing. `

In Fallout II the Enclave, which is to say the United States Government, is engaged in a plot to use the FEV virus as a genocide weapon to exterminate every single "mutant" on the planet, which is literally everyone except members of the Enclave and vault dwellers who have never been exposed to FEV or radiation. How does the PC solve the problem? They shoot the POTUS in the head, merk the secret service, and nuke the last vile remnant of the United States, ending it's threat to the world forever.

And in Beth's games? The Enclave is just sort of around for no real explicable reason. Again, the Enclave came with the package so they just used them, no matter how little sense it makes.

Beth's games are a pale shadow of OG Fallout games. Beth's writers don't understand the setting or the questions it was asking. They're not interested in a new world struggling to escape the ruin of the old, rebuilding, exploring new kinds of societies, and bridging gaps between disparate people. Also, their POTUS was just a robot, whereas Fallout let you shoot an actual honest to god POTUS in the face which is just so based.

So that's the difference I'm looking for. I really don't like the narrative and plot of Beth's games. They're both lazy and badly written, creating a world that really doesn't make a lot of sense even on a surface level and is mostly a pile of silly gimmicks. The Interplay Fallouts were silly, too, but there was also a serious core on which the silliness was built. Beth's games are just silly, with the same kind of superficiality that Cyberpunk has.

New kind of guy; Guy who has only ever played the hacky Van Buren demo.