The Bethesda games are the series now.

And? It doesn’t make the older games disappear. Bethesda choosing to go their own way instead of being faithful to the original games does not invalidate the fact that Bethesda, and by extension the show, is not faithful to the original and breaks lore continuity. As for my personal opinion on the matter I’ve accepted since Fallout 3 that the lore is fucked and doesn’t really matter anymore.

They’re exponentially more popular than the first two.

This doesn’t really shouldn’t even need addressing. This is something people say when they have no actual arguments. You’re comparing games that are literally a decade apart. No shit modern Fallout games are more popular than Fallout 1 and 2. Gaming in general is exponentially more popular than what it was back in the 90s. Diablo 2 is considered one of the best looters ever, it sold over a million units in the first few weeks and got a Guinness world record for it. Fallout 3 sold 4 times as many units in the first week. That should give insight into how unbelievably pointless your comparison is.

And popularity doesn’t mean good. COD is one of the most popular franchises in the world, nobody is singing praises of COD (at least not since the 1, 2 and Modern Warfare).