I'm going to bet that everyone that says "all sports games are just a copy every year" don't actually play any of them. I'm not a big sports fan, but I've been playing football games (along with just about every other type of game out there) since... well at least the NES, though I think I played some of the older versions like Atari and Intellivision later. I don't buy them all, no even close, but the progress they've made in what you can do and how is obvious. They may not change the basic mechanics of the game but they change the way the game plays all the time. They are popular because the sports they are based on are popular, not because "they've been dumbed down so anyone can play them." Not knowing the right types of plays to call in the right situation will get you handily beat and there is no "best play" every time. Though they have taken to giving recommendations because every people to watch the games regularly don't necessarily know what is actually going on.

They put the effort into making the games better every year because there is market demand for it, not because "people will buy the same game year after year."

As for reworking the original Fallout games like they did for Shadowrun... that is Wastelands 2. Which I still think is a better Fallout 3 than Fallout 3 ever was.

As for the actual gam at hand... no idea. I've tried multiple times and I've just never been able to find a Bethesda game I enjoy. As much as I liked the Fallout setting, it just seemed to have lost it's charm when put in the hands of Bethesda. Their storytelling also never pulled me in enough to want to finish any of the games, maybe they get better but they lost me before that point.