I really never understood what the big deal with Bethesda is. I actually absolutely love Fallout I and II, and would really hope that a company other than Bethesda gives us Fallout 4, because the Fallout universe deserves much better than Fallout 3.

From my perspective, Bethesda is only really good in one thing: developing and designing a sandbox open world, period. Other than that, they really should give many other things to other developers. Animation is downright stiff, jarring, and unnatural in many of their even recent games, including Fallout 3 and Skyrim; for example, look at how the feet connect with the ground when walking & changing direction in Skyrim; it feels like a game animated 8-years-ago, which is very jarring when put together with the admittedly gorgeous fauna & world looks around. Voice acting of most of the characters is...just wrong, boring, uninspired. Bethesda only did well in voice acting for [some] characters when they started using some of the voice actors used in other games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. And finally, storytelling and directing just aren't Bethesda's strong points at all...something just feels wrong, bland, and uninteresting about all their stories.

I have never, ever finished a single Bethesda game until this day, and I finished hundreds of games, starting with old classics like Fallout 1 and 2, Diablo 1 & 2, Doom II, Warcraft 2, Grim Fandango, and the Secret of Monkey Island, through old-ish to recent-ish ones like GTA 3, Max Payne, F.E.A.R, Assassin's Creed, Gears of War, Uncharted 1 & 2, and Half Life, and all the way to the much more recent ones like Battlefield 3, Max Payne 3, Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2 & 3, Dragon Age 1 & 2, L.A. Noire, The Witche 1 and 2. I gave so many examples intentionally, to show how versatile my gaming has been and continues to be, although to a less extent as I've pretty dropped RTS from the "finishing" or "beating" zone for me; and to emphasize that I have [finished] all those games...played them from beginning to end and saw them through, and loved it almost all the time. But a single Bethesda game? No. Not a singe Bethesda game has enticed me to be patient with it until the end. And every time they release something new, I believe the hype & the visuals impress me, so I go and buy it, and regret it dearly when I realize that the game doesn't keep my interest long enough for me to finish even 25% of the story! If there was any real story there to begin with, that is. I spent hours in Elder Scrolls 3, but never finished or was curious enough to; Oblivion fascinated me with visuals, but that faded away too soon; Fallout 3 looked (AND sounded!) disappointingly a lot more Bethesda-ish than Fallout-ish, and again I couldn't persist. Skyrim...they game closer to a litte better storytelling in the beginning, but still...something is wrong with the directing, most of the voice acting, some of the animation, and maybe another element that I can't quite put my hand on.

I really wish that Bethesda leaves Fallout alone, and gives it to another developer & they only publish it. BioWare would give the Fallout world the storytelling & voice acting it deserves, but BioWare would do a sandbox open-world horribly as the graphics of the Mass Effect series can testify. The only studios that I can think of to give the Fallout world the production that it deserves, in terms of storytelling, voice acting, well-done animations across the board, and also beautiful visuals in an open world and without the problems that we saw in Mass Effect...are the Rockstar studios behind GTA 4 and perhaps Uncharted's Naughty Dog. These are the only studios that I can personally trust with the Fallout universe if I were a decision maker. Of course all this is hypothetical because Bethesda owns the Fallout TM now...but I just hope there are others out there who can understand what I'm talking about and eventually Bethesda gets the message, especially if a Fallout MMO is really planned (which would be expected frankly).