I think this article sort of misses the point.

FO3 isn’t a shooter - it’s a roleplaying game with guns.

If it had focused more on the shooter mechanics, it would’ve risked turning into a shooter with some RPG elements.

As an avid and long-time player, a lot of what I appreciate about FO3 is that, with VATS, I don’t have to be always on edge and focused on my own reflexes - I can relax and focus on roleplaying, and when combat happens, it’s more a matter of the character’s skill than my own, which is how it should be in an RPG.

And if I want, I can forego VATS and handle it like a shooter. And yes - it’s not as good that way as a dedicated shooter is, but I wouldn’t expect it to be, just as I don’t expect the racing in a GTA game to be as good as the racing in a racing sim.

Shit, id be happy with rpg elements on par with the Elder scrolls or Fallout.

Bethesda’s lack of shooting chops

I think that a better argument for VATS is that the Fallout player base, especially at the time that Fallout 3 came out, were fans of a series that had used only turn-based combat. They were not about twitch gameplay at all.

The reason a player buys more games in a series is normally because they like the ones in the past. A successful series builds up a pool of fans who like the sort of stuff in that series. If you radically change the trajectory of that series, you may not be putting out what the fanbase likes.

Yeah, the gunplay was pretty bad. I like the game more after cheating my guns skill to 100 so the bullets go straight instead of curving to miss because RNG says your attack misses. The problem with that was it also means the shots I aimed poorly would curve to hit because RNG says that attack should have hit.

I also found the graphics problematic. Not low quality, just so extremely bleak that its emotionally disturbing to play for long stretches.