I meant like "off the bethesda leash" since this is supposed to be their re-imagining of fallout, but again I haven't played the game or read reviews so I dunno how much that holds up. I am definitely in the camp of reviews being just personal opinions of the writer and editor tho, so if someone says that they feel the game played it safe I'll just chalk that up as the viable experience of someone who's not me. I don't read reviews much in the first place, but if I find a writer who's tastes align closer to mine or who likes to think about games in a way that's close to how I think, then I weigh that writer over others, but like in general I don't really think of reviews as particularly influential to me.
like there's definitely ppl out there who have the "does this innovate?" lens when looking at pretty much every game and prioritize that over a lot of things, which is valid for them imo, I don't really think there is a right or wrong way to judge a game and I think the idea of objective reviewing is dum. I definitely don't think bonuses being tied to metacritic scores is good at all either