Much bitching has occurred about the ending of Fallout 3. Not the ending of the story per se, but the ending of the game itself. Oblivion didn't end, so why should Fallout, people ask.
It's right there in the story.
Oblivion is all about maintaining the status quo. The world is doing just fine, except some horrible evil is trying to bust out and mess up everyone's fun. As the Foretold Hero of Legend, your job is to stop it from busting out, so everyone can continue living as they have. You're an old-timey Ghostbuster, and your proton pack is a medieval weapon.
Everything's already happy, see?!
Fallout 3, on the other hand, takes place in a completely broken world. If you do manage to find a silver lining somewhere, you're probably going to use it to make a weapon.
You could say it's a bit of a...fixer-upper.
As you cruise through the Capital Wasteland, you leave a trail of seriously-affected lives behind you; an entire town literally wiped off the map, one of the few safe buildings around, infested with zombies are just a couple of the things you can do. When you do reach that final conclusion, whether you choose good or evil or whatever, the world is irrevocably altered for better or worse. Further, the changes aren't minor. Your actions have the potential to affect countless lives.
So, after you bust that nasty ghost in Oblivion, you've saved the world and it exists, unchanged, for you to waltz around at your leisure. The only difference, is everyone calls you "the Champion," like you just won a boxing match.
The ending of Fallout 3 might be compared to Star Wars, on the other hand. You've blown up the death star and killed the emperor--or joined him, bwahaha--things might still suck, but they're very, very different. Things all over the place will start changing immediately. This just wouldn't work in a game. Part of the fun of Fallout 3 is feeling like the things you're doing are affecting people. To take that away would cheapen the ending and, honestly, everything that came before it.
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