Well for that a little imagination is needed. Just like in the TES series and other Rpg's. Npc's are just supposed to be regular folk, they are quite weak and really not the adventurous types. it's really quite amazing that they even exist as everything in the outside world can kill them in one hit. Is it no wonder they never get to the grocery store?

On the flip side of that.

You'll travel to a town that is supposedly starving and not well defended.. yet you the hero can sift through their barrels and trashcans and find food, weapons and money. If you empty that container, in a few weeks it'll be full again with more food, weapons and money... yet everyone in the town still needs you to finish that quest where you find them four pieces of meat. (because that's apparently all they need to survive forever.)

You'll meet npc's that have braved the outside world and are supposed to be tougher and smarter than you that can train you to be as good as them.. even though you could kill them with a flick of your wrist.

You'll find raiders and bandits that have enough ability to take over some spooky dwelling but for some reason they haven't at all explored the area that they've set up base in and found the mysterious powerful treasure that simply sits on top of a pedestal or is in a box at the back of the complex.. Instead, they supposedly conduct raids on nearby settlements.

In every RPG there's at least one quest where someone gets you to defeat an enemy that they can't defeat... and then they try to kill you after you just defeated that enemy they couldn't.

Enemies in rpg's progressively get stronger and stronger because.. ummmm..

It's up to you the player to kind of pretend that everything in the world is feasible and makes sense.. because in reality. Nothing makes sense in any rpg.

Humans are petty, selfish, and self serving creatures. They crave power for themselves, and lack the foresight needed to see when helping others would help themselves in the long run. They are also superstitious, and will ignore rational thinking in favor of baseless paranoid delusions.

Its why,
-Even 170+ years after the war, Arizona "was a nasty place, so thick with raiders you couldn't trade with a town two miles up the road."
-Even 200+ years after the war, Utah is "not like the Mojave or the NCR - hell, even Arizona under Caesar is safer. You got raiders all over the damn place, tribes of degenerates that'll eat you as soon as look at you, regional warlords... the works."
-Major cities like Denver were left to rot, and to be infested with feral dog packs so large not even one of the mightiest post-war powers could remove them.
-Even during the time of New Vegas, the entire northwest is still considered wilderness, so utterly in ruins that even the broken and beaten Great Khans could forge a mighty empire out of its remains in a short time.

Humans are dumb, that California was able to rebuild as much as it could was a massively unlikely stroke of luck, tempered two messiah like people, aka the Vault dweller and Chosen One, forging the way for its success.

Those are largely flaws in Bethesda RPGs, not general ones. For example, none of those examples was present in Fallout 1 or 2 (except possibly the 'betray the hero' one, depending on how strict you want to take it).

Yeah. I sort of focused on Bethesda rpg's for those.. I was just making a comment about the fact that you thought food not being eaten as something to pick out as feeling unrealistic seemed like a weird thing to focus on when there are much obvious bigger things that all games share that nobody cares about.

Bethesda is making the right move here. The game you're describing has been made again and again (Fallout 1-3 & Tactics all fall under the "dismal and destitute brown-and-gray wasteland" umbrella), it's about time for Bethesda to really start adding to the IP. For them to make another game that's largely a rehash of the settings, factions and creatures that Black Isle and Obsidian created would be a huge waste of their creative talent.

In my opinion, Bethesda needs to kill off the Brotherhood of Steel completely in this game, and drive traditional Deathclaws to extinction. Both have become too obvious and boring as the go-to choices for "cool-looking faction" and "toughest enemy," respectively.

You're assuming a lot by saying that nobody cares about Bethesda's flaws in game design.

yeah not only that California have A LOT of internal problem, like corruption and other, is more a lot of ppl arent that happy with what the NCR become now and the only reason have expand so much is bc the number of ppl they are send to die on the expasions, and was one of the same reasons Cesar hold the NCR advance, bc number.

After playing NV and reading how much the NCR need resources, is possible if time keep passing that the NCR can collapse.

I'm not just talking about bethesda.. Every game. Leveling up, hp's, food heals, leveled weapons, stabbing/shooting someone in the face doesn't kill them, crouching makes you stealthy.. These are things we accept in all games.. but food not eaten in the grocery store somehow draws the line?

They're things that some people accept in all games. I'm not a particular fan of any of the things you mention (except leveling up, so long as that just makes the player able to do more things rather than increase damage output or HP). In fact, there are mods for all the post-Morrowind Bethesda games that removes all those things you mention (except leveling and the terrible stealth system that we're stuck with due to the inability to completely replace the AI with something more like Metal Gear Solid's).

So no, everyone doesn't just 'accept' them - and again you're talking largely flaws in Bethesda games, not all games in general (none of those flaws are in Metal Gear Solid V, for example).

As for why I mentioned the food and not those other issues I have with Bethesda games... because this is a thread about the setting, not about the game mechanics.

Im glad that the Capital Wasteland is as chaotic and down in the pits as it is. It gives a stark contrast to the Mojave, and it seems that The Commonwealth will be a middle ground between the two. Its about having variety. I plan to play these games forever, and if every game Bethesda released was in the exact same tone as every other in the series I'd probably like Fallout and TES a lot less.

Eh, I've learned to accept disparities between the setting and lore the narrative is based on, and the actual game world. They very well couldn't have filled all of their locations with ancient, inedible food or had the places stripped clean of valuables by scavengers decades ago. The biggest failure with Oblivion, IMO, was that it lacked the politics that make Morrowind and Skyrim's settings compelling, and it never actually felt like the Oblivion Crisis was a crisis aside from in-game texts and a few randomized conversations - but it's still a great game with interesting storylines.