I was the World's #1 Fallout Fan for years. From 1997-2008 online, my avatar was Fallout-themed, my username was Fallout-themed, and my signature was Fallout-themed. I worked on FanMade Fallout with
DarkUnderlord, back when he used an animated .gif of the "UNITY" video screens from the Cathedral in Fallout as his avatar (or was it a hooded figure on a throne at the time? My memory is hazy). I made elaborate Fallout-themed "cinemagraphs" using captured still images of FO1 and FO2 game backgrounds, ripped sprites, and the actual text fonts used in-game, and animated little scenes frame by frame.
Then 2008 came, and Fallout suddenly meant something else entirely to the majority of people. No one would look at my avatar anymore and wonder what cool old game I'd taken it from; they knew, or thought they did. The Fallout aspect of my online persona sadly slipped into its cave, just like Puff the Magic Dragon, or a naked penis outside during the Finnish winter.
I've now spent nearly a decade since then watching the franchise be repeatedly raped, made to dance like a circus monkey, dismembered, cannibalized, and then reassembled into a mashed approximation of an intact corpse so that the process of raping, dancing, dismemberment, and cannibalization could begin all over again. New Vegas has been the ONLY official blip since then, although of course it too couldn't escape Bethesda's taint.
It's time to let the old soldier rest in peace. There's no sense in getting excited, no sense in getting your hopes up—it's futile. Fallout is a spent force with no future, or at least not one you want to be a part of, ironically appropriate given the game's theme.
Chris Avellone shouldn't be getting people's hopes up, either. It's cruel.