It's no secret that I harbor a great deal of contempt for Bethesda Softworks. Every game of theirs that I've played (Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim) has majorly disappointed me, usually feeling like a soulless shell of some better game that might've been (or in some cases, that actually is/was). That disappointment stems generally from a combination of their shallow world designs and repetitive gameplay, both of which tend to feel lacking in meaningful depth or interesting systems, all in worlds that are so big they wear out their welcome well before their playtime runs out. A chief criticism of mine, especially lately, is that they just don't feel like very good RPGs, and yet ironically they've been generally improving by progressively devaluing the RPG side of things.
Fallout 4 is, to this point, the pinnacle of Bethesda taking a step back and essentially deciding that they're not even going to try to make role-playing games anymore -- they're just going to make open-world action-adventure games. As such, Fallout 4 is by far the most "dumbed-down" (ie, "streamlined") game Bethesda has ever made, but that's a good thing I feel. These were already pretty simple, mindless games to begin with, and so now it's easier to appreciate these games for what they actually are, instead of pretending they're something they're not and then feeling disappointed about it. As a result, I actually kind of liked Fallout 4 and sunk an unfathomable amount of time into it (235 hours, to be exact).
And yet, despite all the time I put into it, and despite saying that I "kind of liked" it, there's still a lot that's critically wrong with Fallout 4, to the point that I honestly can't say it's a good game. Sure, it's pretty good for what it is (a Bethesda game, and certainly not a Fallout game), but the bar is so low with these games that being "pretty good for a Bethesda game" isn't really much of a compliment. It still has all the inherent problems of a Bethesda game, and somehow, some of those problems are actually worse than they've ever been. It's hard to believe that, while Bethesda's games have steadily gotten a little more polished and a little bit fancier with each release, they've never really evolved when it comes to the core game design (you could even argue they've actually devolved over time), while Fallout 4 stands strong as an iconic example of just how questionable and misguided Bethesda's design decisions can actually be.
