The history of Fallout as a franchise has all the trappings of a spiritual epic, replete with false messiahs and long persecution. Those who still hew to this strange religion are quick to call out Bethesda's many crimes, but they have no idea what Bethesda intends to do with Fallout. No-one does. The forums must have gone up for a reason, let us hope we will soon have genuine facts to discuss.
From the forum itself, there have been numerous polls about what elements are preferred for Fallout 3, the results have been interesting.
How do you think the plot should be ?
Mature, Morally Ambiguous, Where Right and Wrong are just a matter of POV and morals with decisions that are personal and have consequences. [120] - 96%
Epic, Save the Wasteland ! The Big Struggle of good against evil, raiders against towns, mutants against humans... [5] - 4%
Black humour in F3?
No! [6] - 4%
Yes! [147] - 96%
Should Fallout 3 use enemy and item auto scaling?
No, absolutely no auto-scaling! I want my character to actually feel like he/she is improving! [384] -95%
Yes, bring back Oblivion's auto-scaling so that my character never truly improves! [21] - 5%
What perspective do you want Fallout 3 to be?
Old Perspective (Classic) [65] - 75%
First Person [9] - 10%
Close Third Person [13]- 15%
Turn Based, What do you want?
Turn based! Keep it classic, keep it Fallout. [250] - 70%
Real time! [36] - 10%
Real time with option to pause, ala KotOR. [45] - 12.5%
Don't care. [27] - 7.5%
Minigames in Fallout 3?
Yes/it'll be great!/not like Oblivion at all/you stooge! [27] - 16%
No. Absolutely not. [141] - 84%
Considering that the polls represent the largely silent majority, who don't become involved in the raging discussions on the forum, there is a clear preference towards the elements of the origial Fallout games.