what really blew me away in my second attempt was the contrast of waking up in goodsprings (engaging NPCs, establishes theme and setting, ideal tutorial mission right away) vs starting in the neighborhood (no one to talk to but generic robot butler, extremely empty houses, zero reason to keep going)
New Vegas was more difficult, partly because the perks skipped levels, & my first death was accidentally wearing some bad guys armor (cuz it looked cool!) and immediately being murdered by my allies because equipped items marked your status.
But there was an option to bang Benny and that was funny.
It matches the narrative at the time that the release was rushed & you saw it even moreso with Fallout 76.
At least they did a good job with the show...
I always think about how people talk about NV being old feeling or clunky compared to 4, but playing them back to back, I'm BAFFLED by that. Every decision 4 makes is so much clunkier to me (control, story, gameplay, etc), except 4 is newer so it's prettier.
by "second attempt" of course I mean a second effort to get more than a few hours into the game. I fell off again when I got to the gas station and
A) realized that crafting materials weren't shared across "settlements"
and then B) remembered how much of the game was a very bad basebuilding sim