Can you really call yourself a Fallout fan if you love Fallout 4, honestly?

FTFY

 

Fan is actually an insult since it's short for "fanatic."

But part of the issue is that fans don't want to acknowledge you can love different things about Fallout rather than all the same thing. I think the goofy bizarre world of Fallout 2 is the absolute best and Fallout 1 was vastly inferior. I also love the pseudo-political commentary of the Enclave versus the Master.

Others love the colorful bizarre environments and black humor.

 

This is a two year old post, but it deserves a more serious response. The difference between Dead Space (just finished 1 and 2 the other day, love them) and the Fallout franchise is the fact the rights were sold to Bethesda from Interplay and the amount of time between 2, 3, then 4. Bethesda has very different design goals for their games as evidenced by the Elder Scrolls series. There is a pretty decent rift in that community too similar to Fallout's that started around due to Oblivion being Morrowind lite with nice paint.

The issue is that despite the smooth(braining) of the titles in their possession, people buy them in droves and Fallout 4 and Skyrim 25th anniversary edition are 100% guaranteed to be a generation's first step into the """RPG"""" genre so we are going to see Fallout descend even further towards Borderlands before it gets axed. This also may never happen and original fans will have to either accept that their game series is being completely dismantled or just complain ad infinitum. Thanks to the amount of time between the Bethesda titles and originals, they can distance their take successfully and thanks to the games being made for Bethesda fans, we can be neglected and the series progress without our input.