Okay, here's my response to Vergil's logic breakdown.
1. New Vegas is my favorite of the Fallout games because it blends action, story, characterization, and choice together in a great combination. It's basically making the best of the old games (characterization, story, choice) with the best of the new (shooting, environment). However, New Vegas can't really be the model for the best Fallout game because it feels like it is a post-post-apocalypse game as humanity is dealing with warring nation-states versus struggling for survival and scavenging.
It feels like the "ending" of the Fallout world in the same way Red Dead Redemption was the ending of the Old West. The lawless anarchic period of the world is over and it's becoming civilized, which is not without its cost.
2. The Pew Pew Pew Cat image is a half-jest as while I love the gunplay element of Bethesda's fallout, it's not the entire summary of my love of the genre. It is, perhaps, why I gave Fallout 4 a 9 out of 10 even though I feel it's inferior to Fallout 3 and New Vegas in virtually every single way. It remained entertaining even if I kept thinking it could have been done better if they'd only tried harder.
3. Fallout 2 isn't my favorite of the Fallout games not because of story, which was very very good and the choices, which were amazing, but because New Vegas had the advantage of 3D environments and better gunplay. I feel it's a better FALLOUT game, though, because even though a bunch of city-states have arisen, it's very clear things are very possible going to collapse at any time. Redding is going to have a Race WarTM, the Enclave can wipe out everything, tribal civilizations are being raided by the colonialists of civilization, and Vault City is basically like Rome in that it justifies slavery via its civilization.
Basically, if NCR were to collapse, I'd want it to collapse back into Fallout 2.
4. One area I do think Bethesda has over the original games is their Old World Blues. While they can overdo it, I feel the original games do a poor job of making it seem like the nuclear war was a horrific tragedy that robbed humanity of a great number of things. The timeline and treatment of the war make it seem like it was a good thing for humanity to nuke itself since the Pre-War world was such a shithole. I think Bethesda does a decent job of showing the immense loss and tragedy of the world being nuked.
I'm laughing at you because I have a different opinion to you.