That's the problem with having a character who's motivations are controlled by the player. Your Lone Wanderer might have had an objection with taking the core from Rivet City while mine was perfectly fine with it and someone else's would have gladly went along with it and shot anyone who had objections to it. It becomes hard to continue to write for such a character when they are out of player hands. One thing that all Lone Wanderers had in common though was that they liked to wander around, loot things, solve or cause problems, and move on. So I don't mind the idea that the Lone Wanderer basically just kept playing Fallout 3 but left the capital wasteland doing so.
Making a game set in the capital wasteland again is its own can of worms. You have to establish what the Lone Wanderer did there and that means you make a save importer or Q and A session at the start of the game or you just make certain choices canon and non-canon and invalidate certain people's playthroughs. You have to figure out if Megaton is dead, is Tenpenny Tower full of ghouls, is Dave is still President for life. Fallout 2 avoided a lot of these problems by having the game take place in a mostly different places and revisiting towns from the first game.
I don't mind the endings for the main story being a bit linear and having resolutions that make sense its more for all the side stuff and whether certain settlements thrived or died. My ideal answer would be to have sequels take place in new settings and have the occasional nod or snippet of information about what happened in the last game. You could even have contradictory takes on the events of the game showing just how large the legend of the protagonist has become.
Say you have some characters taking around a fire about the defense of Big Town and how the legendary Lone Wanderer was there and taught the residents how to shoot guns before another cuts them off and tells them they were wrong and they actually saved the town by fixing the scrapped robots there. The third character around the campfire just chimes in and says they heard that the Lone Wanderer just took a super sledge to the attacking mutants.
Okay, here comes a bit wall of text, guess this has been in my chest for a while since playing F4 so why not use the chance to share it? Anyway...
I understand Bethesda probably didnt want to use repeated settings, but perhaps its the attachement I have for the Capital Wasteland (since F3 was my first Fallout entry and PS3 game, as Im sure it was for many others) but I honestly felt that, outside of the situation with Synths and The institute (that was foreshadowed quite a lot in 3 and a tiny bit in NV), the Commonwealth doesnt feel as interesting as TCW. Honestly, the few times that the current state of TCW is mentioned, Im honestly more interested in seeing it in 2287 than I am with the Commonwealth.
Part of me wished that they had a DLC or something taking place there (not entirely but maybe a small portion of it with the bigger and improved Megaton as the hub).
Also I was no fan of the current direction of the West Chapter of the BOS. I know the purists will cruxify me for daring to suggest that an organization so spread out like the BOS would dare to have a chapter that would start to actually question the higher chain of command back home, especially since the chapter back home is REALLY not doing as well as it once did (as showing in F2 and NV). I liked the duality between the BOS and the outcasts, so you still had the "OG BOS" somewhat in the game (with an entire DLC dedicated to them). I mean, the West Chapter had Liberty Prime AND Project Purity, they were possibly doing better than the California chapter ever did (Outside of aiding on defeating The Master's Army and The Enclave, the BOS didnt really do much to gain the people's favor). F4 kind of seemed to try to please purists by having them mostly back to their "All your tech are belong to us" ways but I dont think that it felt like a natural developtment. What I mean is that, I get it that Elder Lyons could have died of simple old age or something but it felt like Sarah
again dying right after felt very forced, almost like they were perhaps setting something up but never went through with it (and Im aware not all members of BOS were pleased with just handling purified water for free to the general populace but you would imagine they would either let it go or desert to the outcasts). Besides, Maxson always came off as an arrogant douche (not sure if that was their intention tho), guess you can say he became a "Mongo" (get it? Cuz he appears in 3 as a little boi), acting like he is hotshit when the BOS West Chapter is just as big as it is because of the previous elders defeating the Enclave (and using their tech) and "borrowing" Project Purity since its creators are either dead or left (and the son/daughter just didnt bother to actually have a problem with it). Also, again, its not confirmed but its theorized the BOS raided Rivet City to build their own Hindenburg (since one of the computers mention them "raiding a warship" of sorts and the only known to exist is Rivet City), again, not confirmed but it is a frightening possibility to those that grew attached to the location. So yeah, Im not a fan of F4's BOS, they felt fine as being a different and perhaps even benevolent organization that stood out from its original chapter ( I guess I prefer when different chapters of a single organization or group actually do bother to not be copy and paste clones that do and spew about the same thing).
Speaking about cities and towns, I will just quickly say that TCW, which was suppose to be way more destroyed than The Commonwealth, had more communities on it than the latter. There is only Diamond City and...kind of it, isnt it? There are other smaller ones, yes but they dont feel like I can affect them as much before...feel like they are just there and kind of it for the most part, now I dont know if thats because of the building mechanics or if they truly couldnt be bothered to make more settings.
...oh and of course, Galaxy News Radio is miles better than Diamond City Radio, sorry but Three Dog is still the man with the smooth voice that makes me less afraid of the dark subway tunnels. It all comes down to "personality" which I think F3 had a lot of it.
I honestly think it would have been more interesting to have TCW set 10 years later and then have a bigger map with new communities and locations that developted (since a lot can happen in 10 years).
Now I can write on and on about what I would have prefered plotwise but my point is to say that I think F4 kind of shat the bed in keeping me interested that much in the commonwealth (I still like it but I still think TCW is still the most interesting location, Im not comparing them to New Vegas's since they are way different given the distance but even NV kept me more involved than The Commonwealth). Perhaps it was a sign of Bethesda's stagnation, climaxing with the disaster that was F76...
I guess I can conclude by saying:
"Aint that a kick in the head?"
