I recall many flashing adverts for FO4 on Chinese websites and other places that also used imagery reminiscent of FO1-2 and lots of love for those games as well. I do not have proof on hand so you will have to take me at my word. Fallout however, is substantially huge in Russia, Classic Fallout especially, and specifically. Just from cultural osmosis and the evidence I've seen, it should be similar in China.
Let me make an argument. Fallout is a concept, and it's what you make of it. You as a consumer entirely have the choice to look away and simply pretend these new inclusions either don't exist or don't exist in your view of the franchise, in comparison to far more real incidents where rape would be more appropriate as a comparison than for a video game. You have your memories of the original games, the original experiences still exist. I remember playing Arcanum and loving it more than any cRPG I've ever played before. If just tomorrow, there was an "arcanum sequel" with FPS mechanics and loot boxes and such, and was nothing like the original, I wouldn't say it was "raping" the series, unless there was literally a poor woman involved in some horrific viral marketing campaign. The original still exists, 'unmolested'. Sequels are just additions, and the Bethesda Fallout games almost never touch the original canon. I would say it's far from "Raped", and I wouldn't use that term lightly, either, just for optics purposes.
On an aside about why I pointed out that phrase specifically though, is that I wanted to talk about this rhetoric and a little theory it reminded me of: I read through old Pete Hines emails from about 2002 or so around the release of Morrowind and remember him going off on a tangent at a bunch of people who posted on the BGS forums about Morrowind's lack of werewolves and other things, and also claimed that the series was "raped", and Pete got very angry about this, calling them crazy and deranged, with little respect for women. I imagine they barely considered those people in designing Oblivion based on just Pete's reaction. Now, that was in the early 2000's -- Imagine how sensitive Bethesda must be now, and imagine how they might've reacted to some of the craziness that happened pre/post-FO3's release, not to mention the legitimate rape threats sent to some of their devs, and that one thread from Duck and Cover that was deleted that actually was defending these threats as justified.
Besides just ignoring the criticism of old fans just based on the merit they might be a minority, they have all the excuses they want to ignore them just based on their rhetoric, and at that, the rhetoric of a few *radicals*. But it's still an excuse, unfortunately, to just throw out everything the cRPG community says about them or their games as just a bunch of "deranged psychos that take games more seriously than sexual assault". Definitely not the case... But as a pampered and sheltered-with-red-tape BGS employee, would it be that obvious that the old fans aren't just crazy, based on these events and assumptions?
