I played Fallout 3 when it came out, and just got bored with it fairly quickly. It’s got that Bethesda vibe where everything is great at first, but then you start to get further into the game and everything starts to seem copy+pasted to make the game artificially larger and longer. Is it like that at all? I see it mentioned as a great game all the time, but I also saw that about 3 when it came out.
As far as what you’re concerned with the world being samey and boring, it’s definitely a way more varied and interesting. There’s a lot more cool landmarks and visual storytelling to find, and I think the spirit of the game is more in line with Fallout 1 & 2.