Says the person who hasn't provided any evidence. Chill out, he's just giving his opinion.

I just ask questions. I see people claim something and I ask them how they reached that conclusion, to see if they can provide more details into the intellectual process they used. That sounds fair in my book. I do not yet see the part where I have to provide something; I'm not asking for a free ride but I do not often give one.
As for letting people state opinions without ever getting them challenged because they are "just" opinions, do you really want to go into that territory?

Unless they are going for 100% remakes, they HAVE TO evolve. Otherwise you end up with franchises that go stale.. and then people complain about that.
I'd be up for some remakes that just updated the graphics and controls, but that'd probably only work in some genres (such as adventure games).
Even if the same developers were continuing the franchises, they'd want to try new things (some of which would work, and some would not). Get a load of artists together and tell them they have to slavishly continue the same thing over and over, and you'd get pretty poor results.
Dungeon Keeper and Theme Park could probably work well today, but syndicate and populous would need some major reworking. But if they did it well then they could be awesome games.
PS/ lets not start another Fallout3 argument. Some love it, some hate it... they shall never agree.

You seem to be mistaking opinion and personal preference for unambiguous fact. Its like trying to quantify art or flavour, there's an inescapably unique and personal quality to everyone's interpretation of anything that... well anything thats not math basically.
In this case, Fallout 3 TO ME accurately captures the essence of the previous games in the series and uses them in a new type of game. This is much in the same way as Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast is as good an interpretation of the Star Wars universe as Knights Of The Old Republic or TIE Fighter are. They each use the licence in significantly different ways that FOR ME manages to evoke the feeling of a consistent universe.
In the case of Fallout specifically, I came fairly late to the party as I missed them in the 90s, it was a series I'd heard of and tried at a friends place but never found to buy. After many months of being a bit unimpressed by Fallout 3 footage, I decided that since I was bored I might as well get it if I could find it cheap but since it was the third I decided I should start from the beginning. I went looking for somewhere to pirate the previous 2 games, found GOG, said "woohoo, sod piracy!" and was us$18 poorer but 3 games richer.
I played them pretty much back to back and whilst Fallout was GOOD, it wasn't Ultima or Baldurs Gate level good, the interface was clunky, the game a bit buggy and unpredictable (a fine tradition that bethesda upholds), quests broke for no reason, the party AI was dumber than a box full of EA executives and while I could see why it was heralded as something new and great, I think it was over-praised.
Fallout 2 was clearly an interative development rather than anything revolutionary because it had ALL the same problems that Fallout 1 did, the most surprising and welcome addition (aside from the new story but that's assumed with a new game) was the fact that while they didn't fix the EA Executive Stupid level henchmen, it gave you the ability to push them the fuck out of the doorway so you didn't have to reload your save from half an hour ago because your ammo wasting backshooting gormless moron of a henchman had decided to pick the moment he was standing in the only exit from the room to have his 2 neurons fire and begin the 3 hour process of having the idea that he was blocking the only exit from the room and the PC might not be able to get out (that may be one of the longest sentences I've ever written).
Fallout Tactics was another case where a different game in the same universe was seen as a betrayal and shouted down before it got a real chance. And people wonder why we get nothing but safe predictable sequels! The gameplay in Tactics was absolutely excellent and whilst I'll admit the story was pretty crap and it deviated from canon (which doesn't bother ME in the least but I can't deny that this element of the bitching was accurate), it still felt Fallout TO ME.
In short, Fallout 2 and Tactics were both marred by significant problems, 2 inherited the sins of the father, tactics cast off one of the important elements of the series (the story). Had Fallout 2 been delayed a few years and had the Fallout Tactics engine with the Fallout 2 story, it could have been a genuine classic of the genre rather than a game that was "pretty good".
3 has basically continued the tradition of being an imperfect yet "pretty good" game set in a postapocalyptic wasteland which is all thats left after a paranoid 1950s style society with nuclear powered cars, robots and communists under the bed.
For a short summation: You don't like it, I do. Now we've esstablished that lets talk about something else.

Hehe sorry mate, was busy building this wall of text when you posted that

I could tell before that you like it and to be honest I did not care at all about that, since everyone is perfectly free of liking or disliking whatever they want without any need to justify it. That's subjectivity.
Saying that Fallout 3 is great and Bethesda did a good job to remain true to the story — and it is ironic they picked the weakest elements of the previous Fallout to craft theirs — threads on the realms of objectivity. And yes, objectivity is very much possible in the arts and other entertainments. I'd even go as far as to say it is necessary.
It is unfortunate I need to leave now because I wish I could address some of the other points you raised, but I'll be back. Still I appreciate the fact you want to discuss it.

That's ok. I'll forgive you. But Jedi Outcast was objectively terrible (cos i say so). ;-)
More seriously, objectivity in the arts seems impossible to me. To appreciate art you have to accept it and effectively "meet it half way". You also have to have no preconceptions (almost impossible in itself, and a problem for many with bethesda it seems).
While it might be possible for someone to objectively review something, that person would have to be so spock/robot like that no one would trust their views... and those views would be worthless.
I guess i could write a computer program to objectively analyse game's parts... but a game is more than a sum of it's parts.
I've played games with bad story, bad graphics, average gameplay, dumb ai, etc.. and loved them. I've played ones that ticked all the right boxes... yet left me unmoved.
In some games a particular flaw frustrates the hell out of me, in others i can easily overlook the self-same flaw.
Objectivity in arts misses the point. (and someone looking for bad (or good) will usually find what they're looking for).

It rather does, pretty much everything I've read about various forms of art can only agree on one solitary thing, that the goal is to create an emotional reaction in the audience. As long as we're each unique, there can be no realistically objective stance on anything artistic
Bethesda being involved was actually the first reason I had resistance to Fallout 3, not from the "=! Interplay =! good" stance that was the majority opinion at the time but because I played Morrowind. You know how sometimes you think that someone is going out of their way to aggressively and comprehensively piss you off? I got almost that exact feeling with Morrowind only it was with boredom so I didn't expect anything really different and I was very happy to see that FOR ME that preconception was incorrect.
See also: OMFG! Digital Pornography in Mass Effect!!!!!

Perhaps you were unaware of just how much EA's resurrection of the Tiberium and RA franchises upset the established fanbase? EA closed Westwood much to the outrage of all C&C fans. Its something EA have never been forgiven for. No one who was a fan of the original series was interested in giving either game a fair go.
However EA did everything right and what they delievered was a true sequel to both franchise's with astronomical budgets with flashy HD video and Joe Kukan was back as Kane. Once the original hatred had died down and people had actually played the game they found it to be extremely enjoyable.
By mentioning I was a fan and proving that It tells you that I was one of the people with the knives out ready to hate the games. I didn't in fact I love them. People who complain that the games are not competitive due to balance forget that the C&C franchise is about fun. This is something that Westwood themselves forgot with many elements of C&C2.

Depends which Ultima you are talking about, because the serie started as dungeon-crawlers then got into the innovative "simulated worlds", some letting you more or less explore and others being very plot-driven, while the later episodes are more action-oriented. And even then it also depends what aspects you compare to Fallout's, because if most Ultima gave you some living world and nice ways to interact with it, the narrative was pretty linear and even if you could wander a bit away from the road, it still led you to the same place. Fallout on the other hand is the first game to really give choices and consequences to the player, with multiple viable ways to advance the narrative, and do it in a non-linear fashion. Add also some skill and attribute checks and you got options that get restricted to only certain types of characters, which helps to provide a different game if you replay with another kind of character. Sure, many other games did that after and it is now expected to find these elements in a modern CRPG, but Fallout for the most part did them better and/or mixed them better. Plus it also offered a somewhat realistic post-apocalyptic setting, which was — and still is — a breath of fresh air when compared to all the generic fantasy games the genre is filled with. Fallout was hardly popular when it was released, but gained respect through the years for a reason.
As for Baldur's Gate, it came one year after Fallout and brought nothing new to the table. What's more it used a quite comfortable generic fantasy world and art direction, had a non-interesting plot and characters, some annoying real-time with pause combat, and mostly boring exploration. To its defense, some of the dungeons are pretty good though and it is easy to get into it, and the fact that it looks pretty do not hurt, but overall it's a average game, definitely not as innovative and original as Fallout.
What exactly is clunky about the interface? I agree that the inventory is clunky, but the rest has all the options conveniently available after a click or two, with a keyboard shortcut for pretty much every of them. It is also very easy to get the information you want; the character sheet is one of the best I have seen in a CRPG.
I did not encounter many bugs, or even broken quests for matter, after the last patch, nothing of the game breaking or obnoxious sort anyway and never really heard that Fallout was a very buggy game — unlike its sequel, though the final patch solved most annoyances. Not sure what you mean by unpredictable though.
The AI isn't very smart but then again Fallout's strenght lies not in the combat but rather in the ways that it allows you to bypass it. Still, this area of the game could have been better, I agree.
Funny you say it was heralded as something new and great, because as I said before it wasn't. It received some praise at release but it did not achieve the status it had now until a few years passed, while a lesser game like Baldur's Gate enjoyed great critical reception right from release.
It did inherit many of the traits of the original, good or bad, but also failed on many more levels: the somewhat realistic setting got turned into a theme park with elements that do not belong in a PA setting; too much lulz and popculture references; greater emphasis on combat while it was a weak point of the original; it got more quest than the first game but most of these are of the fed-ex and obnoxious variety; story and characters, especially villains, were weaker; etc. It had some good, and even very good, use of skill checks and overlapping quests, with some sweet choices and consequences, such as New Reno, but these did not fit to the setting and were too anchored in our own popculture.
Simply because it's easy to see during previews that some people just can't grab what made Fallout great in the first place. And I'm not even talking about the gameplay but the setting. BoS acting as wasteland police? Furry deathclaws? Beastmasters? Nigga, please!
Because they sell. But what does it have to do with Fallout: Tactics?
It had the potential to be great but it was brought down by poor and linear level design. It shines in levels like the second one, where you can approach the objective in different ways, but most of the game has your squad follow only one path through the level and that's just boring. Jagged Alliance 2 came out two years before and has excellent squad tactics gameplay, without even getting into the strategic elements that FO:T doesn't have. Even X-COM combat, which is still very good to this day despite its age, has more variety than FO:T where you always know that this enemy will wait for you around the corner. As it is, it is a nice squad tactics lite game with Fallout elements, but that's about it.
Except the exploration of some parts of the game, I still fail to see what's pretty good about Fallout 3. The story takes the weakest elements of the franchise, like the Enclave, has some retarded characters — an frivolous shopkeeper who wants to publish a book in a post-apoc world, need I say more? — some retarded writing — consider the infamous "I'm looking for my father, you know, middle-aged guy" or "[Intelligence] So you fight the good fight with your voice." — stats with little impact, or another version of the post-apoc theme park. Notice that except the first point, nothing has anything to do with the game being Fallout or not, though Bethesda certainly picked up where BIS left with Fallout 2 and the lulzy content. In terms of the Fallout franchise itself, it is basically composed of one very good game with a coherent setting and the rest is filled with "wouldn't it be cool if" content, with varying degrees of quality of gameplay around it.
If it's just about liking or not, let's. If it's about quality, something immanent, I think we can keep going a bit more.
It is very much possible, and necessary. Without any sort of objectivity, if all is subjective, then nothing has any meaning and we should all go sit under a tree and wait until we die, because what's the point of doing something if no action has meaning?
A good critic will place his personal bias away, because like and dislike have no place in critical thinking. Ironically enough it takes some sensitivity as well as logic to appreciate a good work of art, see how it communicates, how it does it differently from other works, what might make it more effective than another at this, etc. If everything is worth the same, then there is no need to push the boundaries forward and try to innovate, because all we do is doomed to be the same as what had been done before.
If objectivity is impossible, how can you claim that story or graphics can be bad?
Total objectivity doesn't exist, and that's why we can, and should, debate things but only if we are on the same level. Using only emotions is particularly worthless because emotions are fickle and very personal, which means that someone else might feel totally different emotions than those I feel in front of some work, or I may even feel different emotions at another part of my life due to some events. You can't build anything on that ground because it's not stable at all. The moment something is objectified, it will objectify everything else around it, giving some stable ground for comparison and discussion. But that requires some bit of work and thinking, something not everyone is ready to partake in.
Even lesser art can potentialy create a reaction in someone, because we are indeed different and come from various background. But does that make this lesser piece of art good? The primary function of art is communication and you can quantify how good or bad a piece of art does it. Simple exemple: if in a movie a character do something unbelievably stupid for no special reason — something the horror genre is very famous for — that's bad storytelling and it makes you care less about him because it is obvious he is only following the plot, but if a character acts in a believable way, people will probably care more about him because he will drive the plot forward. It's a lot of stuff like this that can help to critically appreciate something. In the end, it might not make you like or dislike something, that's based on emotions — and I have no problem admitting that I like a lot of crap! — but it allows you to separate greatness from mediocrity, innovation from stagnation. I'll even go further and say that I strongly believe that the more one avoids great works, the duller his senses become and prevent him from appreciating great works.
Ah, so you are a spokesperson of the people. Everything is clear now.