My uncle brough up like a whole bag of his games at one point, since he was moving states and wasn't able to bring his PC with him right away(don't remember the reason). Fallout 1 was literally the first CD i've grabbed from the bag... Rest is history.
FO3 was fun first playthrough. But the more I've sank hours into it, the more shallow it was getting.
My issues with FNV was literally not being able to install it for hours, and once it actually worked - it was crashing constantly. But once it was up and running I knew straight away it's miles...
I mean laser trope is pretty common for "futuristic" weapons.
Skill = damage is just somewhat of a lazy approach to balance everything around RPG element imo(they probably didn't want players to feel like missing literally every shot and getting pummeled at low lvl).