I feel it follows exactly the path of many primitive cultures (and some remaining tribal cultures in the world today). Tough, perhaps, for people in our far more secular societies to accept as "likely" today, but part of studying historical and pre-historical societies is to consciously set aside "what we know now".
Fallout 1 clearly went to great lengths to portray its world as a new "Medieval Age". From the feudalistic societies led by warlords, to the barter system economics, to the quasi-religious orders of "knights" in the Brotherhood of steel, to the heretical, spiritually corrupted cult of The Master and the FEV. In that same line, it's easy to see that a bunch of uneducated people scratching a living off the land would "deify" a figure of legend that happened to walk into their midst. Did the wife believe it? Maybe she did. But even if she didn't, the rest of the society clearly did. Welcome to celebrity. It doesn't matter who one actually is, it matters what everyone else believes one is. The individual has little to no say in this. Same for the kid. (I think, like most of the game, this was intentional, social satire.)
That's what I meant about the limited graphical capabilities. Hard to simultaneously create variety, subtlety, and a unified tone when the dev team is limited to basic color crayons. I can sort of see what you mean with the approach for certain things, but I'm sure art assets were rushed along at some point. I do remember feeling some of the assets were less polished than others. Nothing that ruined my day, though.
This I couldn't disagree more with. The first and second game were not taking themselves seriously at all. Constantly breaking the 4th wall, constant pop culture references, what I felt was a brilliant mix of in-your-face, Mel-Brooks-style humor with a very dark undercurrent. It was the same type of engrossing, absurdist experience as Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or Dr. Strangelove.
Take Harold, for instance. A mutant, who was alive pre-war, and had mutated to have a tree growing out of his head. And yet despite the ridiculous humor that was instantly engaging, learning about his past was almost a tear-jerker. Like Shakespeare, the game knew how to lift the player's spirits so they could drop it from a higher point in other parts. (Although, it's fair that not everyone will like such a style and approach.)
I feel the Bethesda games (while fun in their own right) completely missed where the energy and weight of the originals came from. FO3 did a decent job, while feeling a bit flat. FO4 totally missed the mark.
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