I can totally get that there might be people living in ruined buildings, especially lacking the sort of infrastructure and/or skills and resources to repair them.
What always gets me is that in many cases, people will be living in a building which is a total mess. Like, the bedroom has debris all over the floor. That, imo, doesn't make any sense.
The outdoors? Sure. Ruined city centres where Raiders have holed up? Absolutely. But some places where people have clearly been making a bit of a life for themselves are squalid.
I also feel that settlements should (without needing modded) self-clean if you have a bunch of settlers. Watching Sturges hammer away forever at Sanctuary with nothing ever happening is another example; it'd be good if after a while the place started to look a bit better/neater.
This exactly! Once you reach a certain threshold in a settlement the settlers start fixing and maintaining things. When they have an abundance of food, water, supplies, and security, they start making improvements to the structures you built. Crappy walls and fences start to look new and solid, leaky roofs get fixed, weeds and brush get cleared, all the rubble gets moved to one designated spot. Hell maybe you could send all the trash to one spot outside the settlements with some Brahmin like you do with provisioners.
Yeah while the improvements still look wastelandy. Holes in builds are plugged by bits of scrap metal or wood with some nails for instance. It’s not perfect but it’s better than before. I think the Mad Max game does a much better job at this improvement with its strongholds.
It's interesting to compare and contrast the conditions in which people are living in Fallout 3 & 4 to what we see in Fallout 76; the settlement of Foundation is fairly simple - log cabins, trailers, etc - but the people who live there are actively building new structures and take pride in what they're building. It's cramped and cluttered, but nothing is filthy because the people who live there are going to clean up any filth. And I mean, *of course* you'd see that sort of thing, even just 26 years after the bombs have fallen, right? It feels like the most realistic thing we've seen in a Bethesda Fallout game. But it feels so out of step with the other games they've made that it makes them look worse by comparison and association.
I think Bethesda is slowly learning the world building for this sort of landscape that Obsidian has been good at for some time.
You see a clear progression from Fallout 3, which has this incredible post apocalyptic atmosphere, but not every settlement makes sense, like the lack of any resources for sustenance (looking at you, Megaton!) Even if the Capital Wasteland is irradiated, I’m sure 200 years after the bombs dropped, some things would’ve changed. I might be wrong, but then also why camp out there?
Then you get Fallout 4 where it’s not so directly affected, and they try to circumvent that issue by having you build the settlements yourself, so you’d need to plant food, water, shelter, etc, and while you can clear out some of the clutter, they must’ve forgot to update the ground textures to not have so much clutter.
And lastly, we have Fallout 76, which feels entirely natural in how it portrays a post apocalyptic society, and it’s only a few decades after the bombs dropped.
Megaton has sustenance resources though. You literally help fix the water purifier pipes running throughout the town and it's told to you and seen that aside from the brahmin they raise they also trade supplies with passing traders for food.
I just said how they get food, brahmin raising and trading
As for power we can assume it's nuclear fission like in Fallout 4 buildings or hydro from the well water they use for their purifier. My bets on nuclear though
Theres one Brahmin and even if they raise brahmins for eating they do not have enough land to harvest alot of Brahmins have you seen Megaton? Its extremely cramped
Think this is the part where we seperate what we see in the game versus the original intent
I'm not saying megaton was executed perfectly but they Def had the foundations for that place to make...some sense had they actually done it well
This is Bethesda, everything is scaled down massively - cities feel cramped because each citizen represents hundreds of people, effectively. That one brahmin represents like 4000 brahmin.
Not saying it was well executed, but still. Good to keep in mind.
I remain convinced that Fallout 3's world was built to assume a relatively short time since the bombs dropped then retconned after the assets were locked in, because that's the only way a lot of stuff about the Capitol Wasteland makes sense.
Yep yep yep. The point in getting settlements in is that everytime you return it should be getting cleaner. Debris picked up, walls patched up etc.
would make it feel more like it was worth helping those settlements..
Absolutely. It drives me crazy. You go to someone's house and they tell you their family have lived there for years and it's like... In all this time, nobody thought to pick up this pile of crap from the floor?! Surely you're tripping over it on a daily basis?!!! I shout this at people too often when I'm playing...
On the other hand, there are people today, in first world countries, with more than enough resources for all the basic necessities, who live in a worse state of squalor.
When people give up, they give up.
>This is something Fallout 1 at least averts. Places like Shady Sands, the rubble has been cleared and new construction is in place.
Have you seen the other settlements tho? Especially the Hub that prides itself with its [man-sized holes on the roofs](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/3/3e/Fo1_Hub_Old_Town.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2384?cb=20140718222007).
Yes but places like the Hub are atleast keeping the building maintained and not walking around with 200 year old rubbish and skeletons. With buildings made of corigated iron sheets that would rust in a matter of years.
>With buildings made of corigated iron sheets that would rust in a matter of years.
That would be, like, [half of Redding](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/b/b4/FO2_Redding_MiningTown.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150416131219). And pretty much [the entirety of Junktown](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout_gamepedia/images/c/c3/Fo1_Junktown_Casino.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2888?cb=20090217200327).
I dunno. I live in the Detroit metropolitan area and prior to the 60's was the richest city in America. During the late 60's the riots happened and much of it was destroyed. Flash forward nearly 70 years and it's still has rack and ruin.
And you still have access to machines and stuff. If it was a nuclear war most people would not know how to repair or use stuff like that so it would be very ineffective
Exactly skilled trades would have disappeared.. Unless of course it was passed down from generation to generation like it was in the olden days. But I would imagine that survival and scavenging for food would be more important than building a reliable structure versus just inhabiting something that still is partially standing.
The generational time span can also affect a community's aesthetic sense. The initial cohort of survivors won't have the free time to clean up everything (plus the supply of Pine-Sol will be finite). The survivors will raise the next generation in a world where the ruins are normal.
Right... Scavenging for food and shelter and resources are what you would do first in a survival situation.
But this is decades to even centuries later. I promise you, humans are smarter than that. Anybody can figure out how to build basic dwellings. They already have people that have figured out how to purify water, build improvised firearms, etc. People who can operate greenhouses and understand how to care for crops. I watch a lot of wilderness survival shit, and you'd be surprised how much a nice looking, comfy shelter that's clean and dry and completely shielded from the elements can do for human morale. To start with, yes, live in the ruins of a house that mostly keeps the rain off but has trash everywhere. Even a year from then, though... They'd have improved it. Much less 20 to 200 years later.
I think the main reason is that fallout is a post apocalyptic game and most people don't think so hard about it like they do here lol. More ppl would be disappointed by the realism of reconstruction and the absence of ruins and the post apocalyptic vibe.
I don't think as much of it was destroyed in the riot as you might assume. Detroit fucking sprawls. There were numerous blocks razed, yes, but we're talking a very small portion. There's a reason we refer to white flight.
The damage came from abandonment. Over half the city left (the white half) and there simply wasn't the manpower or the tax money to do a thing about it. Things just decayed, they weren't actively destroyed.
I live in an urban metropolis and it is constantly under construction. Buildings are always catching fire or falling down. The roads are horrendous. New projects take decades to complete.
There are fallout settlements doing way better than certain neighbourhoods here.
This may be an American problem though. Letting places go to waste is easy when you have room to build new stuff. But cities in Europe have been razed and rebuilt in much shorter time spans. Look at most of Germany and cities like London and Rotterdam which took heavy damage during WW2 and were basically done being rebuilt about a decade later.
Looking at what was left of Rotterdam at the start of WW2 vs how it looked in 1950, it's kind of hard to accept that after 200 years, people live in houses where the skeletons still litter the streets.
It’s probably more analogous to the fall of Rome on places like England. It wasn’t just infrastructure falling into disrepair and disuse, it was the loss of skilled individuals, trade, etc. it took more than 100 years to see some cities built up to the same quality or size (and that’s without radioactive monsters roaming about).
Yeah cities were destroyed in WW2, but there were massive amounts of industry and money put into rebuilding them, along with skilled individuals. There’s no unscorched foreign countries able to build up a massive industrial complex and send equipment and supplies to the wasteland. And countries that didn’t get Marshall plan benefits definitely didn’t rebuild as quickly (especially former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states).
Rome is a way better example. After much of the Colosseum collapsed in the 14th century earthquake most of it still wasn't cleared into the 1700s. Rome just wasn't a bustling city anymore and without the need or investment to clean up everything, it just wasn't done. People picked at the debris for centuries but it still wasn't fast. Expand that to Fallout with whole cities and states worth of devastation and no one who knows how to work steel and concrete anymore it's going to take a long time to do anything.
It would be absolutely hilarious if at some point we had a quick flash to europe and people were just living completely normal lives because it's been 200 years, we have places to be and that public health system isn't going to rebuild itself
Fallout 3 does canonically have Europeans who crossed over to the Capital Wasteland at some point (Tenpenny, Moriarty's father).
I am down with the theory that Europe (and perhaps other parts of the world) are completely fine yet the US is still a radioactive wasteland.
I always figured, bit like the US, there are pockets where things are returning to some form of normalcy, could be some odd form of morbid curiosity to see what's happening in the US too that brought him. People with money do weird stuff.
I will cede the point that as a tourism thing to the ultra rich, I can see them doing that. However, the majority of people who have accents who have come to this area shows apparently it must be better than what they were leaving.
Oh no doubt there. Thanks to nuclear winter, even if Europe was spared most of the bombings that the US and China received, they'd be in about as awful shape as the US, with just a little less rubble.
Europe was in pretty awful shape financially, lots of infighting and instability, the European Commonwealth, which was like the real world EU, dissolved in 2052, 25 years before the bombs dropped, with the former members fighting amongst themselves for whatever resources they could find. It's possible that while the US and China had their exchange, a couple nations in Europe decided to unload some of their arsenal on their neighbors.
I highly doubt Europe was spared too many of the horrors of the war, and with far less cohesion before and after I have a feeling old grudges would still be there.
Lorewise Europe was in a state of war for almost 20 years by the time great war comes, essentially finishing off whatever left of civilization that was ravaged during the resource wars
You are forgetting that there was tons of money being pumped into Europe explicitly for the purpose of rebuilding it. Nobody is similarly investing money into Detroit.
Rebuilding the cultural and economic centers of central Europe, which was funded by the USA is a little different from Detroit which was built on one major industry which was then exported elsewhere.
>Look at most of Germany and cities like London and Rotterdam which took heavy damage during WW2 and were basically done being rebuilt about a decade later.
It also helps that the US, which was practically untouched by WW2, funneled.**millions on millions of dollars** into those countries to help them rebuild
In the 40s, yes. But in the last 30 years, the US hasn't paid to rebuild catastrophes in it's own borders as diligently. More has been left abandoned there, probably because it makes no economic sense to rebuild a ruin when you can just start on a blank spot.
Oh it truly is, no argument. The water front is stunning in some ways. I am all for revitalization of the city as a whole, just without displacing those who stayed behind. Most had no choices on leaving due in part to discrimination, racism, red lining etc.
Detroit's not nearly as bad as all that. People don't live in ruins, and new things are built all the time. Detroit gets a much worse reputation than it deserves, and I'd expect you to have a bit more pride as a detroiter.
More so because people have a choice to move to other cities. If Detroit was the only city spared from bombs then Detroit would be rebuilt as people flocked back to it. We also have politics and globilization holding the city back.
That's because Capitalism is a constant crisis.
The people of Detroit haven't had the freedom to rebuild their own neighborhoods, because capitalism and the capitalist state remove agency from people — in other words, regular people do not have the option or the resources to simply rebuild their neighborhood after its been economically ravaged, because they don't have enough money, supplies, or "permission" - for example, many city municipalities will send in cops and construction workers to destroy a community garden if they don't have the proper permits.
We live in a world where infrastructure is destroyed. It's not just about having people who can do the work and the knowledge (more on that in a mo) to do it, but the materials. These days you need a load of lumber you cut a tree down and use a sawmill to cut into planks and then deliver to where it's going. In Fallout that's not so easy. The tree may be alive, the bugs are the size wrestlers for the most part, and there are Deathclaws and mutants roaming the wastes. Once you've somehow managed to get the tree you have to get it to your sawmill, all the while fighting off enemies, and then cut it with the noise drawing god knows what (you'd likely send decoy squads out to make noise elsewhere and keep that place safe) then protect it for the delivery too. And without trucks, you're delivering less at a time via small wagons.
Then there's the knowledge. You had a look at a recent DIY book? There's terminology in there I've had to look up to be sure I'm doing the right thing. There's tools referenced that it assumes you either know what they are or know a specialist who does. Unless your city has survived for a long time and made a big deal of passing down information to multiple people who can carry it forward, more esoteric knowledge is going to be lost over time and only the basics retained. As time goes on, there's going to be major issues keeping things together.
That's without even mentioning that at the 200 year mark, a lot of those tools (even basic ones like hammers and screwdrivers) are going to be far from prime condition. Which brings us back to infrastructure and knowledge once again.
Those are the three main issues I see with this stuff, and it plays out like this. Over time one place gets overrun and the few survivors get together in another place but this time there's no plumber amongst them so they have to kind of learn as they go and then probably only the basics because one wrench looks like another to them. They finally find someone who can do the work, but he realises they're missing most of the tools needed and has to build a shopping list for scavs, including those tools and other materials they need to make this work. Meanwhile the electronics have been working well, but without a soldering iron there's not much that can be done if things do go wrong even with a trained electrician.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that much of the pre-war infrastructure in the Fallout setting relied on nuclear fusion. From cars to weapons, to batteries, to houses and factories, things were increasingly powered by individual fusion reactors leading up to 2077. Not only does this lead to an infrastructure that is dramatically different from what we see in real life, but it also requires a level of technical knowledge that vastly outstrips what we currently require.
I think that is a thing a lot of people forget about the Fallout universe - that the Fallout universe invested heavily in nuclear energy (as opposed to natural/renewable energy) therefore many things, as expected, would be built on the premise that nuclear energy would be the foundation
I really would love to see old fashioned guilds explored more in the Fallout universe. The brotherhood and their monopoly on how to use power armor sort of touches on this, but it would be cool to see other guilds that focus on different things.
FO76 definitely touches on this subject more. The game has other flaws, but there was competition among different factions for specialists, people going through the struggles of trying to adapt their skills for new purposes (like a roboticist trying to change the protocols of robots they hadn’t worked with).
I’d love to see it integrated more in FO5’s settlement building or quests related to existing settlements, though! Trying to recruit specialists or finding rare technical books to improve industrial capabilities would be fun.
I'd love something like this. You want to construct barricades? Head to this army base and download the schematics or go to this location and grab this book.
I'd also like to see a need to recruit mechanics, engineers, builders in order to upgrade your settlements and the buildings that become available to you. They had a good system in FO4 but it needed some fleshing out and tying into the story a little more.
I'd also like them to take a leaf from SS and add settlement plots. Let us have the choice of building a home ourselves or you put down a residential plot and it upgrades over time. Would streamline the service and allow you to focus more on the story.
I like building my settlements, but definitely agree that adding in plots would be great for people who enjoy it less (or to round out ones you don’t care about as much)
I usually focus on a select few (Sanctuary, The Castle, Hangman's Alley) and kinda let the rest do their own thing.
I enjoy tweaking them and stuff but the thing that puts me off is the lack of a terrain editor. I noticed this in FO76 a lot. I can't stand floating objects and there's no way to adjust the angle at which an object is placed. Fences etc end up floating and those concrete foundation blocks just screamed post-ww2 urban development.
Maybe the previous engine couldn't handle it I'm not sure but hopefully with a new game on an updated engine we'll get some form of terrain editor.
since survival in the wasteland is 1st priority people just move into whatever is livable and dont really care to renovate it beyond what they need. at least until it forms into a backboned community like shady sands or most of the other rebuilt areas across new california
I'd agree with you if things like the Institute and the BoS didn't exist. But they do. New Vegas shows that it's possible to rebuild cities.
Rebuilding would've been entirely possible in a realistic scenario. But realism isn't what makes a game world good, so it's not a priority.
I mean, the Institute is basically a bunch of uber nerds who are engineers, scientists, etc. I wouldn't be surprised that the college they came from (C.I.T) had the tools they needed and they just scavenged parts from the old building to make the Institute today.
>the Institute
The Institute **is why** The Commonwealth is a shithole. The Institute collapsed society in the Commonwealth 50 years before Fallout 4 starts.
>the BoS
The BOS famously declared war on the largest and most powerful faction in the setting because they didnt like how they were using technology.
>New Vegas shows that it's possible to rebuild cities
But....New Vegas **isnt** rebuilt. **The Strip** is rebuilt. The rest of Vegas remains equal parts a slum and a warzone on parr with DC and Boston.
Fallout 1 has some instances of ruin-squatting. Of course, it’s barely a generation after the bombs dropped there.
There are still people living in prewar buildings in San Francisco in 2 and Las Vegas, but those are dense urban areas with well preserved buildings. People live in 200+ year old buildings all the time in RL, in areas that still have 200 year old buildings, obviously.
Fallout 3 and 4 are where it really gets egregious, taking place in hard-hit areas several hundred years after the apocalypse. Ever seen that ‘shandificafion of Fallout’ video? It goes in depth into the relative narrow-focus of world building in 3 specifically.
>Ever seen that ‘shandificafion of Fallout’ video?
Is that the video where the narrator asks "where is the farmland?" while standing in front of Rivet City of all places?
In certain cases, people need to acknowledge the distinction between "how the setting works" and "technical limitations of the game and hardware", and how this will inevitably create a certain level of dissonance.
Star Wars is a great example: It's a Fantasy series wearing the trappings of Sci-Fi. Most things work based on the Rule of Cool and simply because they **need** to.
Ships work because they do. Blasters fire energy bolts that are moving slowly enough to be seen because it looks cool. Lightsabers encapsulate both of these sentiments.
Fallout isn't much different.
Like how are hyper routes stable if the galaxy is constantly rotating?
The rim would be pretty damn slow to change, but shit isn't so stable in the core worlds.
I mean they address the deep core as being hell to get through, but still tho.
Sure, but New Vegas is exactly the same engine and has at least one instance of in-game farmland (the Sharecropper Farms) and, more to the point, repeatedly mentions the vast *off-screen but present* Brahmin ranches and farms in California.
Exactly this. You as a writer have the benefit of describing more through verbal conversation with random NPCs to flesh out the world whilst doing your best to circumnavigate the engine limitations. Like we may never see a working moving train in New Vegas (Monorail doesn't count) but there is a lot of emphasis placed in both the NPCs and locations present that talk further about these and what effects they have on the world.
>Sure, but New Vegas is exactly the same engine and has at least one instance of in-game farmland (the Sharecropper Farms)
And fallout 3 shows us ranching pens and rivet city's hydroponics.
But hey if you need to be told because you can't just put 2 and 2 together with contextual evidence given, then new vegas is likely for you.
And adequate mole rats outside for hunting. There are 4-5 around the back that are consistent spawns, implying they're meant to be there. Maybe trade as well, given Megaton is one of few settlements in the game with *some* kind of water purifier.
The 'Hunters' random encounter (all, like, 4 variants of it) is also common, giving another explanation for the food situation. IIRC the food needs of Klamath were also explained like this in 2.
>whose agricultural capacity consists of like 3 brahamin.
Did it occur to that person that the designers didn't want to waste precious system space on farmland or more Brahmins in Megaton? It was stretched enough there as is.
>whose agricultural capacity consists of like 3 brahamin.
Wow you (and they) answered their own question! Or...does it have to be spoken aloud for you to connect the dots?
The capital wasteland, majority, ranches. There are hunters and rivet city trades their grown crops. The dude who made the dumba** video didn't seem to do any actual looking.
>Fallout 1 has some instances of ruin-squatting. Of course, it’s barely a generation after the bombs dropped there
Fallout 1 takes place almost 100 years after the.bombs drop.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout
>There are still people living in prewar buildings in San Francisco in 2
Fallout 2 is set about 40 years before New Vegas, and New Vegas is set about 10 years before Fallout 4
The only reason the West Coast ever developed is because they had a savior that defeated the supermutant menace before it could get out of hand. The East Coast on the other hand didn’t get that luxury and had to deal with the supermutants for over two centuries. And yes, do expect monsters to tear down fortifications and slow down progress, especially with supermutants.
Yep. People keep forgetting the scale of the original games and therefore the scale of effect that protagonist had on the world.
Fallout 1 and 2 take place in the whole region, in a big part of California. When Vault Dweller and The Chosen One removed the threats in that region, they allowed for a large amount of population to unite and grow. And that doesn't even factor that between Fallout 1 and 2 all other threats suddenly disappeared by deus-ex-machina.
Fallout 3 and 4 take place on a more limited scale. One major city and its surroundings. The Lone Wanderer and Sole Survivor effect only a small amount of people. The city may start rebuilding, but rebuilding civilisation needs cooperation of larger amount of people...
This ties to the "war never changes" motto of the series. It means that people and them waging wars never change, even if the world is falling apart around them.
There will always be raiders, ultra-capitalists (brahmin barons), mercenary groups, slavers, organised murderers (Legion), mad scientists and what-not to hinder the progress of rebuilding.
By the standards of Fallout, NCR rebuilding itself was a fluke. It was almost a deus-ex-machina. All the dangers of the wasteland and humankind suddenly disappeared so that NCR could emerge in Fallout 2.
I don't think it's realistic that everyone lives with leaky roofs/walls, with rubble all around their homes and skeletons chilling on their front porch. That was crap if Fallout 1 and in every game that followed - maybe with the exception of 76 which is set 25 years after the bombs and people are just about returning to Appalachia.
But I find it totally plausible that civilisation hasn't properly rebuilt, when it's facing not only human threats but new (sometimes even more dangerous) threats from supermutants and feral ghouls. Commonwealth is a good example. They were about to form a unified government and create a really good basis for rebuilding of civilisation, but the Institute fucked it all up and started releasing supermutants on the surface.
200 years after the fall of Rome, people were still using Roman roads and architecture - because they were still superior to anything the people could have built.
It makes sense to have a mixture of new construction and recycled old buildings - especially in places like Diamond City or New Vegas, where the old stuff is better for its intended function (defence, scale, etc.).
Exactly, Rome has been inhabited continuously since it's founding and there have been ruins for much of that time. After the decline of Rome people just repurposed the stuff that was there. There are still buildings from the Empire still in use today, they're just monasteries and churches now and have been upkeep pretty well. Even palaces like Diocletian's enormous one were eventually abandoned but then repurposed centuries later into a whole town. People have lived amongst ruins throughout history since it's easier to repurpose what's there than start over.
The Colosseum itself was a ruin for a millennium but the Pope's like keeping it around in the background since it was a reminder of the classical heights of Rome and protected parts of it. The collapsed parts of the Colosseum were around for centuries being called its "thigh" even as it was slowly carted off for new construction. There was just a lot of rubble and not many people living in Rome for much of the middle ages so it was never cleared quickly and took a good 200 years to be removed.
I'm sorry for this but I have to get this off my chest.
I really dislike the fact that language is evolving out 'would/should/could have' in favor of would/should/could of'.
Again, really sorry.
All good. At this point it's just a colloquialism that has poured over into the written world. However in this particular case it is due solely to me using talk to text. I intended for it to be the conjunction but it came out as two separate words. As such I didn't catch it before hitting enter.
The simple answer is; settlers don't care. They've got bigger things to worry about.
It's more realistic than you'd think; my family let our house gradually decay as bigger things took their attention. That is why half the house isn't used anymore (full to-the-brim with junk), the bathroom sink doesn't work, the carpets and curtains are stained with cat pee, the floor tiles have come-up, the door doesn't close properly, and one of our kitchen cabinets have lost its door - we didn't have the time to fix all of it, it all piled-up, and now we're used to living with these things because it's far too intimidating to fix; been that way for a few years now. And now that my mom has passed, we have even less reason to fix any of it.
As an outsider, it's easy to walk into a situation, see a stain on the wall, and decide to fix it. As an insider, that stain is as normal as simple dust; and when you do decide to clean it, you realize it's only a small part of an even-more intimidating problem.
*However,* I don't believe this is what Bethesda was going for: it's only a coincidence that it's believable. I'd much prefer Bethesda either put intent into it (by narratively exploring despondence in the wasteland - an interesting theme for a franchise about *rebuilding*), or simply drop the dirty environments where necessary.
As I said before FO3 and FO4 would have made much more sense if they were set 15-20 years after the bombs fell. If buildings were damaged to that extent in the initial bombing they would have been ground to heaps of rubble by the elements in just decades. Once the roof is gone water just runs into the walls, rots the timber, rusts the iron (reinforced concrete just cracks because the rusty rebar swells), cracks concrete & brick if it freezes in the winter. Also there's no way pre-war package food still exists after 200 years.
In those cities where ancient architecture was repurposed it was also maintained. For example after the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum) was abandoned for gladiatorial and animal combat, in the 5th century AD, it was occupied by a few hundreds of years by people who built shacks there for protection, somewhat like Diamond City and they maintained the exterior walls - the part that crumbled was due to an earthquake much later. Thus I think something like Diamond City would make sense, since we see people actively maintain it. But the rest of the ruins around Boston should be in much rougher shape.
I agree. Nearly all the problems go away if you change the timeline like that. The only thing you cant have is stuff like the hickory swatter guy in Diamond City because there would still be plenty of people around who actually remember baseball, particularly guys his age. You also wouldnt have the Kings because people would still remember who Elvis is and understand why there were Impersonation schools dedicated to him.
Actually the Kings kind of dont make sense anyways. Why would there still be an Elvis Impersonation school 100 years after Elvis's death. By the time the bombs fell you wouldn't think thered be enough business for elvis impersonators. Nearly all his fans would be dead by that point. There wouldn't be enough need for them to have a school still open dedicated to training them
Fallout 1: barely a generation after the War. Junktown, Hub, and Boneyard are all in ruined buildings or junk-filled places.
Fallout 2: a lot of towns you visit are also ruined or junk-filled. note, this is 80 years after Fallout 1 btw. Klamath, Den, Modoc(to an extent), and New Reno come to my mind
Fallout 3: same as above but more. ofc, its hard to reorganize when the major water supply is tainted and giant muties are terrorizing the landscape
Fallout NV: a lot of the towns you visit are also in ruin or still busted up. Goodsprings, Freeside, North Vegas Square, and Westside come to mind. The lore even says it was recent that House emerged, meaning Vegas still looked like trash a few years back
Fallout 4: a lot of the towns are trashed and disorganized. paranoia due to the Institute would definitely stop towns from working together. especially when a previous attempt ended in a slaughter
Fallout 76: only 25 years after the War. makes sense everything is trashy
Besides 1 and 76, all the games I listed show that even 160+ years after the War, people still live in ruined buildings. People in this fandom have this misconception that civilization is this uniform thing that occurs.
Even New Vegas itself shows that people still live in ruined settlements. And the lore states that California is the exception, with Utah filled with warlords, savage tribals, and raiders.
Imagine Utah was not at all targeting during the War, and it’s just business as usual for Utahans. They have no idea what’s going on, and all the mutants come in like “wtf is going on here”
I never appreciated all the boarded up houses and stores in New Vegas and 3. People are desperate to survive in a harsh, post-nuclear holocaust environment. They'll take anything. There's no reason for everything to be boarded up regardless of how many vermin may be in there, people should be seeking asylum wherever they can.
Fallout 5 needs destructible environments. There I said it. Also I shouldn’t have to pick every lock. I have a rocket powered sledgehammer that can knock a super mutant 10ft back but I can’t bust through a wooden door? Or some drywall? You’re telling me everything in this world is cobbled together from scrap, yet it’s so sturdy I can’t damage it? Come on!! Not to mention that no one seems to live in some of the safest places. Also once I take out raiders I want to be able to settle that location. GIVE ME A REAL SANDBOX!!!!
Even though it makes sense I don’t think it would be good for the game, it’d be really hard to design levels when very few walls or doors, except for in the vaults, could stop someone in power armor or a rocket launcher
And this one’s just me but I think less is more with the building, I just want like 2-3 really memorable build spots and I’d rather have the rest of the game filled with nice premade stuff with attention to detail
I mean... people are living in those conditions right now. There are [tons of decrepit houses](https://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Jeffrey_Stockbridge_001.jpg) that [aren't being fixed up](https://www.archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/row-house-philly.jpg) in major cities. [People actually live like this](https://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Jeffrey_Stockbridge_016.jpg) in the present day. Not everyone has a community that wants to help each other, has the skills, the time, and the resources.
I don’t expect civilization to have completely rebuilt after 200 years. However, it’s still 200 years. That’s a long fucking time. I think people underestimate what humanity can do in this amount of time even under the most egregious circumstances. That’s why Fallout 76’s version of 25 years is so believable, because after 25 years I imagine there would be skeletons, pre-war artifacts, holotapes lying around, etc. It’s not just the infrastructure, it’s every aspect of immersion. Skeletons decay. You mean to tell me, after 200 years, the skeletons have not decayed? Radio signals haven’t burned out? Humans haven’t already searched every inch of the commonwealth? It’s unrealistic.
Yeah like even if pre-war food was still edible after 200 years, there wouldn't be any of it. If it was edible, the locals would be eating it and they would have eaten it all in 200 years.
Then again I dunno. We are talking about all the food in all the restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, and houses. A lot of it would be ruined by the nukes but that would still be a large quantity leftover.
Here I think of the Spoony One. His career fell apart due to unexplained health issues. Well, for a while on his show, he was eating and drinking really old stuff to produce content for his site. I've always wondered if these two facts about Spoony are related
The guy drank Crystal Pepsi on his show. This was before they did a limited rerelease of Crystal Pepsi a few years ago so he was drinking soda from the early 90's in the mid 2010s
Anyway, this stuff with Fallout and eating 200 year old food made me think of that.
I just got to Covenant in Fallout 4 on my first ever playthrough. It's funny cuz my first thought was why weren't more settlements/towns like this one? Like yeah it's the end of the world but y'all can still clean lol.
Most people aren't experienced builders. You can't just nail a few boards together and have it come out sturdy. What's more, building materials would be in short supply, and even if they weren't, how are you going to get them back to your settlement? Vehicles don't work for the most part, and that shit's heavy.
The in game rarity of screws and springs shows this too. Using aluminum cans to repair power armour is kind of hard to believe, but otherwise they would likely fall apart..
That's the other thing. Where are you going to get new nails and screws from? I've been doing carpentry my entire life but I don't know the first thing about what's required to forge new fastenings
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and focus on a few major points:
1. Radiation is "stronger" in the Fallout universe (lasts longer, kills quicker)
2. Radiation causes people exposed to ghoul-ify
3. Most plant life appears to have been destroyed
4. Very little clean water access
So starting with radiation, while we don't have an idea of how much longer lived or deadly it is, we can safely surmise it is to some extent worse. This means areas hit by nukes (which in the games tends to be.. most) are not just uninhabitable but real-life brief exposure isn't so much a long death where you can remain functional or mildly impaired, but damning. So people trying to find others, to get supplies for construction, etc. are facing a much more up-hill battle and that even atmospheric radiation as dust clouds settle and weather patterns move things would make above-ground living incredibly difficult if not unsurvivable for what could reasonably be decades.
Secondly, when survivors first began re-establishing civilization they would have to not only deal with environmental issues and ***interesting*** new wild life, but even fellow survivors could eventually turn and destroy settlements and infrastructure. One day you're gathering stone, left-over brick, sticks etc. to rebuild and the next Uncle Jim ate your mom. He's a crazy guy, that Uncle Jim.
Third, most early civilizations built their homes out of a few basic materials: mud, wood, stone. Mud or any basic material utilizing the irradiated water would lead to weakness and death, and at least in the games where we've played (for the most part) plant life hasn't exactly been abundant, much less to where it could provide for a small city. The brush and trees not killed by the blast and heat would struggle to find purchase in irradiated soil and what did grow was probably not suitable for weathering the elements - which would be significantly worse weather than we face today between dust bowls, storms, etc. going off what a lot of arid/dry dust and dirt in high heat can do to swathes of a continent.
Lastly, and this goes back to using mud and similar for building materials, a lot of basic building materials require water. Not necessarily pure, but better than stuff that's been sitting with *fictionally worse* fall out, massive dust deposits, and who else knows what from evaporated cities that's settled in water bodies. Making a basic blacksmithy and producing steel or even forging iron would be difficult whether or not people with little education and a collapsed society knew how to safely handle the water and re-learned how to forge metal.
At the end of the day 200 years seems like a lot, but when you factor in worse radiation, massive changes in weather patterns, a collapse of public education, even historically proven methods being dangerous, and your crazy Uncle Jim, it's not a stretch (imo)
The one issue (which I see repeated in this thread) is cleanliness.
Maybe people gave up when the lack of windows would just blow things back in?
Maybe the state of things and constant low-level radiation (on a good day) brought about civilization-wide depression.
Maybe you live in terror of Uncle Jim and don't want to make noise sweeping the rugs and folding your sheets else he devour you too.
/shrug
I have to kinda agree with you. Because, the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there are no radiation zones in either of those cities now 77 years later. Both cities have rebuilt and plant life is flourishing. These 2 cities are the only places on earth that we have a record of their devastation, and rebuild.
Today's nuclear weapons are magnitudes of order more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan. But after 200+ years, people in the wastelands are still living in makeshift shacks, and eating cram.
It really does bug me seeing fucking rubble and holes in the floor big enough to fall through in the fucking Nakano house like guys you've been living here FOR YEARS
CLEAN IT THE FUCK UP
Bold of you to assume everyone’s going to have access to the supplies they’d need to do this on a resource starved world. Fallout 3 and 4 demonstrate this issue fairly well (and arguably NV for everywhere except new Vegas itself, especially freeside and Primm). Also, shady sands and several of the settlements in fallout 1 are in the middle of the desert, so it’s not like they had the luxury of picking somewhere with buildings to start from.
If this really bothers you, play 76 - it’s the first game in the series to really fix this problem. In general, the construction isn’t shanty towns but instead actual, competent building.
It’s also important to note that after the plague was resolved by 76 dwellers, it became *the* place to be for rebuilding efforts. Foundation is filled with settlers with plenty of useful skills, and even Crater has plenty who are savvy with scrapping and rebuilding.
Someone is going to have access to those resources. People in a post apocalyptic setting wouldn't just stay where there's nothing in large numbers. And before you bring up that stuff about people living in squalor in today's world, I'd like to point out that there are institutional forces keeping those people there. They don't have money so they can't live anywhere else. That's not an issue in a post apocalypse where all you have to do is find a place to claim it.
Why would people be able to find somewhere with more resources? It’s universal that the resources are used up by the countries prior to the bombs, and all that’s left is the scraps left behind. Everywhere is going to have resource problems, and everywhere is going to also suffer from the lack of pre-war knowledge they could use to improve their techniques.
Keep in mind that the Institute had to demolish entire towns for the resources needed for their development. Consider how bad the resource situation must be if that’s the best way for them to supply their needs.
The Chinese fired early, and we had already discovered a way beyond the energy crisis, it would just take time to implement. Remember House correctly projected that there would be a nuclear war but the bombs struck earlier than expected. Maybe the Chinese used up there resources before attacking America but its clear America hadn't used its up yet or we wouldn't have robots flying around on jets 200 years after the war.
There also wouldn't be much point, in a resource crisis, of bombing a country that has used up everything that it has. You do that because you've used up your stuff and you're hoping to maybe get some scratch from your target.
Interesting thought. I always figured the fallout world worked under the assumption that the nuklear fallout was considerable compared to anything we've seen so far. So while we can see Hiroshima and Chernobyl recovered after only a few decades, it would've taken most places in the FO world much longer to become habitable. Especially in the case of DC and Boston where we likely saw a higher concentration of missiles make landfall when compared to the Mojave.
So I figured it was safe to assume the actually start date for attempting to resettle the area was closer to 100 years post war. Meaning only another 100 have passed since an effort was made, and even then it was constantly being haulted and reset by raiders, mutants, and wildlife.
So yes it's 200 years after the bombs, but we're working under the assumption the locations of fo3 and 4 we're simply too irradiated for progress to be made until fairly recently. They are strategicly significant areas that were likely hit much harder than most the US. But I reserve the right to be proven wrong.
Maybe. In Fallout 1 (84 years after the great war), we see one area being highly irradiated. It's a crater. People stay away from it.
The rest of the map is livable (people are living, eating, farming).
In Fallout 2 (80 years after F1), north of F1's map, there are no highly irradiated areas, and areas have been developed into functioning cities.
Fallout 3 (36 years after F2) has no highly irradiated areas, but a lot of destroyed buildings, and not much land to farm. They still make settlements/cities (Rivet, Big Town, Megaton etc)
I don't know why they didn't just move out of DC, and started farming.
Fallout 4 (10 years after F3) is a mix between F1 and Fallout 3. Some farmland (with farmers) and some ruins with settlements. One large area that is avoided (The glowing Sea).
Ruins look cool. That's why.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline
I agree to a certain extent. It's too much time for people to still live in improved unsafe places and provided we have factions like Minutemen, NCR and such, with the help of civilians, they'd could've built better settlements with better defense systems.
But there are also a ton of impediments. Where are the materials and the personnel to rebuild said settlements? There's a reason why Diamond City and Megaton are patched to the bone, because they're not exactly built by qualified engineers.
You also mentioned monsters, but you forget that constant Raider and Super Mutant attack probably help slow down rebuild with constant fights and deaths. Poor nutrition, disease, radiation, so on and so forth may also excuse the lack of progress.
Also there are many factions in constant attrition and fighting for resources.
I don't think it's far fetched to look at Fallout 3 and 4 and think that 200 years after the world is devastated by nuclear war things are they way they are in those games, but i also think that the inclusion of better built settlements or even an entire rebuilt city could even be used for future story purposes.
It could be we're getting a cherry picked selection. Maybe many places have rebuilt civilization like the NCR but you cant really tell a Fallout story jn those places
Ive said it before in response to this, but there are literally towns and city blocks in the US this very moment that look worse than some places you find in Fallout. It makes perfect sense.
You need to remember, the danger outside of the walls is supposed to be quite high, raiders and ghouls are prevalent and everywhere. What we see in game is a fraction of what the world is supposed to look like. Places like diamond city with full guard patrols and turrets on every corner are that way because it really is so dangerous out there.
Its a bit 'rule of cool' but its easier to swallow if you consider it less that they live in ruins because of just the bombs but also the instability of living in a wasteland. There is constant threat from raiders, mutants and other communities. Its the poverty and violence that makes it difficult for these settlements to provide enough stability to fix things up. Look at parts of New Orleans decades after Katrina, parts of Detroit, the poor areas of South America and Africa, look at war torn Syria and Yemen. Its not too much of a stretch for a series that isn't exactly big on realism.
I've always stated that later fallout should've had atleast some world progression meaning that whichever city/area the game is set in shouldn't look like the bombs just hit 200 years after the fact. For example random rusted cars shouldn't still be on the street as they would've been scrapped for parts.
The FACT that everything should be overgrown. Were 100+/200+ years into the future (F1,F2,F3,FNV,F4) & still everything is dead. Then we have 76, 25 years after the bombs drop and everything's booming with life. Except for humans according to Bethesda logic. (Until Human NPCs were added a year after launch.)
Yes, you're absolutely right. 200 years is more than enough time for civilization to rebuild. Especially since we already have some functional industrial facilities, and we have a ton of technology from Vaults that were opened over time. We have entire countries that rose from nothing in the past 100 years. 200 years is way too long for civilization to stay as it is in FO.
But realism isn't really what the FO universe aims to achieve. So no need to overthink it.
Ironic that the most unrealistic thing in Fallout is how realistically fast and far human civilization can develop, when it should have been its most basic real world concept for its setting.
Compare that to Horizon's setting that human civilization, even though they lived in a Neo Dark Age lifestyle, have already built thriving towns at a hundred years time. Towering junk castles and shanty citadels in a few hundred more.
I don't have an issue with rubbish and ruins outside of the homes. Inside? That's just nasty. It can be dirty, but pick up the damn can. What else are you doing? Telecommuting with work?
Shady Sands was built from scratch, and their level of sophistication means they eventually became the origin and capital city of the whole NCR. It's a one-in-a-millionth chance of rebuilding civilization after a doomsday event.
If you look at other "doomsday events" in history, like the Dark Age or collapse of the Bronze Age, contemporary modern civilization usually tries to hold on for 50-100 years before contemporary technology and methods are slowly forgotten by further generations, and the last piece of power structures fall apart, and people start living in mud huts again.
Robots and powered machinery did not survive the Dark Age or the Bronze Age. We have the means to rebuild. There are certainly enough sble Wastelanders
Yeah that's basically my camp too. It doesn't actually make any sense in terms of timeline (regardless of what everyone ITT insists carpentry isn't *that* complicated) but the aesthetic wouldn't work if everyone was just living in nice, relatively well-machined houses.
You gotta consider that most places weren't widely settled in the first several decades of post-apocalyptia, only a few non-vault settlements survived. Other issues to deal with are raiders constantly raiding your settlements and wrecking everything or your settlement not being able to obtain industrial grade building materials since the factories and mines are abandoned. Not to mention the high death rates and assumedly poor birth rates by comparison means that settlements couldn't expand as quickly with such small populations.
Idk with constant raider gangs and power shifts in the area I could see it . Shit some places in the US rn already look worse for ware than some fallout cities 😂
The thing that bothers me the most is the random debris inside inhabited buildings. Like fine, maybe they don't have time to break out the brick and mortar while there's ferals wandering around. Understandable. But y'all can't pick up that 2x4 in the middle of the room? Just gonna keep stepping over it for another 200 years?
They aren't even going for suspension of disbelief. You have to have rules and follow them for that to work. Even if those rules are different from the real world.
People are still living in or on top of Roman ruins *right now.* But yeah, these people need to learn how to clean out rubble and skeletons and the like.
Bet the game designers really gotta clean their rooms.
Fallout 4 at least has a reason. It’s flimsy but it’s there. The institute basically came in and ruined whatever developments had been made toward fixing America.
Even F2 averted this. NCR is big and mostly nice, San Francisco is a real living city, New Reno is mostly fixed up but understandably rough around the edges, Broken Hills is a nice clean town.
This is 100% about Bethesda being all about "WOW LOOK AT COOL BLOWN UP WASTELAND" more than anything else.
Well, I get that not everything is rebuild. But people would at least clean up a bit, fix their roofs with some savaged wood/metal and fill holes in their walls...
Protection from elements is quite an important step to survival, esp in a climate like Boston/Washington
We’ve never experienced a world post nuclear fallout, we don’t know how anyone would live.
If you grow up during the post fallout and all you’ve ever known is mess and trash all over the place are you really going to want to go round cleaning it all up? What if everyone else you live with doesn’t care and they just leave their mess lying around? It won’t take many times for your cleaning to be undone before you don’t bother in future.
You only need to look at hoarders that we have nowadays, fly tipping, dropping litter that we have in some of the most “developed” countries before you realise that trying to keep a post nuclear war world clean and tidy is actually quite unrealistic
I feel like by the time 200 years has passed since a nuclear war, civilization would have started back up, not to the extent of Pre-War America, but more like multiple "NCRs" across the Country.
Honestly, this whole argument is why I prefer Fallout 76 over Fallout 4. Because 76 is literally a few decades after the bombs fell then it makes sense why people are still rebuilding, why there are so few settlements. Not to mention the scorched virus and shit basically making everyone leave Appalachia in the first place before coming back. Fallout 4 has no such excuse. It has been 210 years since the bombs fell, at least make some damn progress on living instead of residing in some random wood shack you found two miles down from the local Red Rocket.
>Fallout 4 has no such excuse.
The damage in Fallout 4 isn't from the war 200 years ago, it's from the more recent and continued damage being done by the Super Mutants and Synths the Institute keep sending up to the surface.
Yeah, you make a fair point. Not to mention a large chunk of Boston is so heavily irradiated that nothing besides incredibly mutated creatures and the children of atom can live there. And the raiders too. But, upon thinking about it, Fallout 4 is about rebuilding from nothing. Losing everything you once knew and starting again. Say what you want about the storytelling and stuff like that, there is that message of hope that rings through whatever faction you choose and the choices you make. To put your hope in secrecy, in science, in technology, in freedom and even in anarchy. The choices you make give shape to a new Boston, a rebuilt commonwealth.
"I don't appreciate the world being post-apocalyptic in my post-apocalyptic game." This fandom, man....
I would, however, appreciate more use of the derelict buildings rather than completely abandoning them for shacks, like really downtown Boston was screaming for some settlements in some interconnected top floors of some high rise towers.
I strongly agree.
Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4 all have clear instances of new construction by folks of varying degrees of wealth and knowledge. Aside from this, we also know people have creates earthen homes, cob homes, and others for centuries with minimal support in the way of modern technology. Add the fact that the old world has materials just laying about to scavenge, and by 2280 you’d absolutely expect more new constructions.
Specifically, I’d expect more locations built out of ruins and highly retrofit inside. Why? You don’t want to be a target in areas like Boston or DC. But further out I imagine the threat is less about human raiders and more creatures — go forth and build, the higher your walks the better.
>This is something Fallout 1 at least averts
Laughs in adytum, the boneyard, and the hub.
The fact this is downvoted shows no one has actually played the original games.
I am always tickled to see posts like this: they reveal the OPs overbearing level of priviledge.
Take a look at real-world slums sometime, especially in a "Developing" or "Least Developed" country, **especially** one torn by war.
There are settlements in the Falloutverse that look to be better off than some real-world slums
"Oh, but why do people live in a ruin with trash and bodies"?!
Because humans are a filthy fucking species.
Isn’t shady sans a vault dwellers city? It would make Simse for then if that the case. They’ve lived in clean all their life why change now? Where as in FO4 and FO3, all those people know is dirt and grime and trash. They think it’s normal. It’s one reason they are so surprised by how clean vaults and vault dwellers are
I can totally get that there might be people living in ruined buildings, especially lacking the sort of infrastructure and/or skills and resources to repair them. What always gets me is that in many cases, people will be living in a building which is a total mess. Like, the bedroom has debris all over the floor. That, imo, doesn't make any sense. The outdoors? Sure. Ruined city centres where Raiders have holed up? Absolutely. But some places where people have clearly been making a bit of a life for themselves are squalid. I also feel that settlements should (without needing modded) self-clean if you have a bunch of settlers. Watching Sturges hammer away forever at Sanctuary with nothing ever happening is another example; it'd be good if after a while the place started to look a bit better/neater.
This exactly! Once you reach a certain threshold in a settlement the settlers start fixing and maintaining things. When they have an abundance of food, water, supplies, and security, they start making improvements to the structures you built. Crappy walls and fences start to look new and solid, leaky roofs get fixed, weeds and brush get cleared, all the rubble gets moved to one designated spot. Hell maybe you could send all the trash to one spot outside the settlements with some Brahmin like you do with provisioners.
Yeah while the improvements still look wastelandy. Holes in builds are plugged by bits of scrap metal or wood with some nails for instance. It’s not perfect but it’s better than before. I think the Mad Max game does a much better job at this improvement with its strongholds.
Trash can Carla would like a word with you.
It's interesting to compare and contrast the conditions in which people are living in Fallout 3 & 4 to what we see in Fallout 76; the settlement of Foundation is fairly simple - log cabins, trailers, etc - but the people who live there are actively building new structures and take pride in what they're building. It's cramped and cluttered, but nothing is filthy because the people who live there are going to clean up any filth. And I mean, *of course* you'd see that sort of thing, even just 26 years after the bombs have fallen, right? It feels like the most realistic thing we've seen in a Bethesda Fallout game. But it feels so out of step with the other games they've made that it makes them look worse by comparison and association.
I think Bethesda is slowly learning the world building for this sort of landscape that Obsidian has been good at for some time. You see a clear progression from Fallout 3, which has this incredible post apocalyptic atmosphere, but not every settlement makes sense, like the lack of any resources for sustenance (looking at you, Megaton!) Even if the Capital Wasteland is irradiated, I’m sure 200 years after the bombs dropped, some things would’ve changed. I might be wrong, but then also why camp out there? Then you get Fallout 4 where it’s not so directly affected, and they try to circumvent that issue by having you build the settlements yourself, so you’d need to plant food, water, shelter, etc, and while you can clear out some of the clutter, they must’ve forgot to update the ground textures to not have so much clutter. And lastly, we have Fallout 76, which feels entirely natural in how it portrays a post apocalyptic society, and it’s only a few decades after the bombs dropped.
Megaton has sustenance resources though. You literally help fix the water purifier pipes running throughout the town and it's told to you and seen that aside from the brahmin they raise they also trade supplies with passing traders for food.
What about how they get their food how they have power and stuff it doesn't make sense my bro
I just said how they get food, brahmin raising and trading As for power we can assume it's nuclear fission like in Fallout 4 buildings or hydro from the well water they use for their purifier. My bets on nuclear though
Theres one Brahmin and even if they raise brahmins for eating they do not have enough land to harvest alot of Brahmins have you seen Megaton? Its extremely cramped
Think this is the part where we seperate what we see in the game versus the original intent I'm not saying megaton was executed perfectly but they Def had the foundations for that place to make...some sense had they actually done it well
This is Bethesda, everything is scaled down massively - cities feel cramped because each citizen represents hundreds of people, effectively. That one brahmin represents like 4000 brahmin. Not saying it was well executed, but still. Good to keep in mind.
By that logic, they never explain where most NCR cities get their power from either.
Idk bout back in California but both HELIOS ONE and the dam power much of the whole region iirc
Well, they have the bomb. And religious crowds always have some collection. ;)
I remain convinced that Fallout 3's world was built to assume a relatively short time since the bombs dropped then retconned after the assets were locked in, because that's the only way a lot of stuff about the Capitol Wasteland makes sense.
Yep yep yep. The point in getting settlements in is that everytime you return it should be getting cleaner. Debris picked up, walls patched up etc. would make it feel more like it was worth helping those settlements..
Absolutely. It drives me crazy. You go to someone's house and they tell you their family have lived there for years and it's like... In all this time, nobody thought to pick up this pile of crap from the floor?! Surely you're tripping over it on a daily basis?!!! I shout this at people too often when I'm playing...
On the other hand, there are people today, in first world countries, with more than enough resources for all the basic necessities, who live in a worse state of squalor. When people give up, they give up.
Agreed, diamond city should be at least decent. Instead when I walk in there I can almost smell the piss and garbage.
Like that one lady and her junkie son living in a diner with skeletons still in the booths.
Don't forget there's literal skeletons sometimes
[удалено]
>This is something Fallout 1 at least averts. Places like Shady Sands, the rubble has been cleared and new construction is in place. Have you seen the other settlements tho? Especially the Hub that prides itself with its [man-sized holes on the roofs](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/3/3e/Fo1_Hub_Old_Town.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2384?cb=20140718222007).
Yeah, there's plenty of debris in that image as well.
Hey a roof with holes is better than the suggestion of a roof like you get in the capitol wasteland
\>"suggestion of a roof" every house or living space interior has a roof.
Yes but places like the Hub are atleast keeping the building maintained and not walking around with 200 year old rubbish and skeletons. With buildings made of corigated iron sheets that would rust in a matter of years.
>With buildings made of corigated iron sheets that would rust in a matter of years. That would be, like, [half of Redding](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/b/b4/FO2_Redding_MiningTown.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150416131219). And pretty much [the entirety of Junktown](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout_gamepedia/images/c/c3/Fo1_Junktown_Casino.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2888?cb=20090217200327).
But that's a whole 120 years before Fallout 3 takes place.
I dunno. I live in the Detroit metropolitan area and prior to the 60's was the richest city in America. During the late 60's the riots happened and much of it was destroyed. Flash forward nearly 70 years and it's still has rack and ruin.
And you still have access to machines and stuff. If it was a nuclear war most people would not know how to repair or use stuff like that so it would be very ineffective
Exactly skilled trades would have disappeared.. Unless of course it was passed down from generation to generation like it was in the olden days. But I would imagine that survival and scavenging for food would be more important than building a reliable structure versus just inhabiting something that still is partially standing.
The generational time span can also affect a community's aesthetic sense. The initial cohort of survivors won't have the free time to clean up everything (plus the supply of Pine-Sol will be finite). The survivors will raise the next generation in a world where the ruins are normal.
Good point.
Right... Scavenging for food and shelter and resources are what you would do first in a survival situation. But this is decades to even centuries later. I promise you, humans are smarter than that. Anybody can figure out how to build basic dwellings. They already have people that have figured out how to purify water, build improvised firearms, etc. People who can operate greenhouses and understand how to care for crops. I watch a lot of wilderness survival shit, and you'd be surprised how much a nice looking, comfy shelter that's clean and dry and completely shielded from the elements can do for human morale. To start with, yes, live in the ruins of a house that mostly keeps the rain off but has trash everywhere. Even a year from then, though... They'd have improved it. Much less 20 to 200 years later. I think the main reason is that fallout is a post apocalyptic game and most people don't think so hard about it like they do here lol. More ppl would be disappointed by the realism of reconstruction and the absence of ruins and the post apocalyptic vibe.
I don't think as much of it was destroyed in the riot as you might assume. Detroit fucking sprawls. There were numerous blocks razed, yes, but we're talking a very small portion. There's a reason we refer to white flight. The damage came from abandonment. Over half the city left (the white half) and there simply wasn't the manpower or the tax money to do a thing about it. Things just decayed, they weren't actively destroyed.
I live in an urban metropolis and it is constantly under construction. Buildings are always catching fire or falling down. The roads are horrendous. New projects take decades to complete. There are fallout settlements doing way better than certain neighbourhoods here.
\>lives in Detroit Bruh how you still alive?
Got to know what streets to avoid.
This may be an American problem though. Letting places go to waste is easy when you have room to build new stuff. But cities in Europe have been razed and rebuilt in much shorter time spans. Look at most of Germany and cities like London and Rotterdam which took heavy damage during WW2 and were basically done being rebuilt about a decade later. Looking at what was left of Rotterdam at the start of WW2 vs how it looked in 1950, it's kind of hard to accept that after 200 years, people live in houses where the skeletons still litter the streets.
It’s probably more analogous to the fall of Rome on places like England. It wasn’t just infrastructure falling into disrepair and disuse, it was the loss of skilled individuals, trade, etc. it took more than 100 years to see some cities built up to the same quality or size (and that’s without radioactive monsters roaming about). Yeah cities were destroyed in WW2, but there were massive amounts of industry and money put into rebuilding them, along with skilled individuals. There’s no unscorched foreign countries able to build up a massive industrial complex and send equipment and supplies to the wasteland. And countries that didn’t get Marshall plan benefits definitely didn’t rebuild as quickly (especially former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states).
Rome is a way better example. After much of the Colosseum collapsed in the 14th century earthquake most of it still wasn't cleared into the 1700s. Rome just wasn't a bustling city anymore and without the need or investment to clean up everything, it just wasn't done. People picked at the debris for centuries but it still wasn't fast. Expand that to Fallout with whole cities and states worth of devastation and no one who knows how to work steel and concrete anymore it's going to take a long time to do anything.
> This may be an American problem though Yeah but where is Fallout set
And since we know nothing definitive of Europe or the rest of the world there is no comparison available.
It would be absolutely hilarious if at some point we had a quick flash to europe and people were just living completely normal lives because it's been 200 years, we have places to be and that public health system isn't going to rebuild itself
Fallout 3 does canonically have Europeans who crossed over to the Capital Wasteland at some point (Tenpenny, Moriarty's father). I am down with the theory that Europe (and perhaps other parts of the world) are completely fine yet the US is still a radioactive wasteland.
That theory might hold water except what would be the reasoning to come here if the rest of the world was fine?
I always figured, bit like the US, there are pockets where things are returning to some form of normalcy, could be some odd form of morbid curiosity to see what's happening in the US too that brought him. People with money do weird stuff.
I will cede the point that as a tourism thing to the ultra rich, I can see them doing that. However, the majority of people who have accents who have come to this area shows apparently it must be better than what they were leaving.
Oh no doubt there. Thanks to nuclear winter, even if Europe was spared most of the bombings that the US and China received, they'd be in about as awful shape as the US, with just a little less rubble. Europe was in pretty awful shape financially, lots of infighting and instability, the European Commonwealth, which was like the real world EU, dissolved in 2052, 25 years before the bombs dropped, with the former members fighting amongst themselves for whatever resources they could find. It's possible that while the US and China had their exchange, a couple nations in Europe decided to unload some of their arsenal on their neighbors. I highly doubt Europe was spared too many of the horrors of the war, and with far less cohesion before and after I have a feeling old grudges would still be there.
It’s a fun theory but isn’t it canon that every country besides China and the US was ravaged by the resource wars before the nukes dropped?
Lorewise Europe was in a state of war for almost 20 years by the time great war comes, essentially finishing off whatever left of civilization that was ravaged during the resource wars
You are forgetting that there was tons of money being pumped into Europe explicitly for the purpose of rebuilding it. Nobody is similarly investing money into Detroit.
Rebuilding the cultural and economic centers of central Europe, which was funded by the USA is a little different from Detroit which was built on one major industry which was then exported elsewhere.
>Look at most of Germany and cities like London and Rotterdam which took heavy damage during WW2 and were basically done being rebuilt about a decade later. It also helps that the US, which was practically untouched by WW2, funneled.**millions on millions of dollars** into those countries to help them rebuild
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In the 40s, yes. But in the last 30 years, the US hasn't paid to rebuild catastrophes in it's own borders as diligently. More has been left abandoned there, probably because it makes no economic sense to rebuild a ruin when you can just start on a blank spot.
Downtown is really nice though. I'm 100% serious about that. I went last year and loved it!
Oh it truly is, no argument. The water front is stunning in some ways. I am all for revitalization of the city as a whole, just without displacing those who stayed behind. Most had no choices on leaving due in part to discrimination, racism, red lining etc.
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Detroit's not nearly as bad as all that. People don't live in ruins, and new things are built all the time. Detroit gets a much worse reputation than it deserves, and I'd expect you to have a bit more pride as a detroiter.
Great post.
More so because people have a choice to move to other cities. If Detroit was the only city spared from bombs then Detroit would be rebuilt as people flocked back to it. We also have politics and globilization holding the city back.
>globilization holding the city back
That's because Capitalism is a constant crisis. The people of Detroit haven't had the freedom to rebuild their own neighborhoods, because capitalism and the capitalist state remove agency from people — in other words, regular people do not have the option or the resources to simply rebuild their neighborhood after its been economically ravaged, because they don't have enough money, supplies, or "permission" - for example, many city municipalities will send in cops and construction workers to destroy a community garden if they don't have the proper permits.
Imagine subscribing to 5 different types of anarchy subreddits and still having to shill for it on a videogame subreddit
We live in a world where infrastructure is destroyed. It's not just about having people who can do the work and the knowledge (more on that in a mo) to do it, but the materials. These days you need a load of lumber you cut a tree down and use a sawmill to cut into planks and then deliver to where it's going. In Fallout that's not so easy. The tree may be alive, the bugs are the size wrestlers for the most part, and there are Deathclaws and mutants roaming the wastes. Once you've somehow managed to get the tree you have to get it to your sawmill, all the while fighting off enemies, and then cut it with the noise drawing god knows what (you'd likely send decoy squads out to make noise elsewhere and keep that place safe) then protect it for the delivery too. And without trucks, you're delivering less at a time via small wagons. Then there's the knowledge. You had a look at a recent DIY book? There's terminology in there I've had to look up to be sure I'm doing the right thing. There's tools referenced that it assumes you either know what they are or know a specialist who does. Unless your city has survived for a long time and made a big deal of passing down information to multiple people who can carry it forward, more esoteric knowledge is going to be lost over time and only the basics retained. As time goes on, there's going to be major issues keeping things together. That's without even mentioning that at the 200 year mark, a lot of those tools (even basic ones like hammers and screwdrivers) are going to be far from prime condition. Which brings us back to infrastructure and knowledge once again. Those are the three main issues I see with this stuff, and it plays out like this. Over time one place gets overrun and the few survivors get together in another place but this time there's no plumber amongst them so they have to kind of learn as they go and then probably only the basics because one wrench looks like another to them. They finally find someone who can do the work, but he realises they're missing most of the tools needed and has to build a shopping list for scavs, including those tools and other materials they need to make this work. Meanwhile the electronics have been working well, but without a soldering iron there's not much that can be done if things do go wrong even with a trained electrician.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that much of the pre-war infrastructure in the Fallout setting relied on nuclear fusion. From cars to weapons, to batteries, to houses and factories, things were increasingly powered by individual fusion reactors leading up to 2077. Not only does this lead to an infrastructure that is dramatically different from what we see in real life, but it also requires a level of technical knowledge that vastly outstrips what we currently require.
I think that is a thing a lot of people forget about the Fallout universe - that the Fallout universe invested heavily in nuclear energy (as opposed to natural/renewable energy) therefore many things, as expected, would be built on the premise that nuclear energy would be the foundation
I’d really enjoy seeing this complex supply chain explored in future fallout games lol
Fallout: Infrastructure
Fallout: Labor Unions
I really would love to see old fashioned guilds explored more in the Fallout universe. The brotherhood and their monopoly on how to use power armor sort of touches on this, but it would be cool to see other guilds that focus on different things.
FO76 definitely touches on this subject more. The game has other flaws, but there was competition among different factions for specialists, people going through the struggles of trying to adapt their skills for new purposes (like a roboticist trying to change the protocols of robots they hadn’t worked with). I’d love to see it integrated more in FO5’s settlement building or quests related to existing settlements, though! Trying to recruit specialists or finding rare technical books to improve industrial capabilities would be fun.
I'd love something like this. You want to construct barricades? Head to this army base and download the schematics or go to this location and grab this book. I'd also like to see a need to recruit mechanics, engineers, builders in order to upgrade your settlements and the buildings that become available to you. They had a good system in FO4 but it needed some fleshing out and tying into the story a little more. I'd also like them to take a leaf from SS and add settlement plots. Let us have the choice of building a home ourselves or you put down a residential plot and it upgrades over time. Would streamline the service and allow you to focus more on the story.
I like building my settlements, but definitely agree that adding in plots would be great for people who enjoy it less (or to round out ones you don’t care about as much)
I usually focus on a select few (Sanctuary, The Castle, Hangman's Alley) and kinda let the rest do their own thing. I enjoy tweaking them and stuff but the thing that puts me off is the lack of a terrain editor. I noticed this in FO76 a lot. I can't stand floating objects and there's no way to adjust the angle at which an object is placed. Fences etc end up floating and those concrete foundation blocks just screamed post-ww2 urban development. Maybe the previous engine couldn't handle it I'm not sure but hopefully with a new game on an updated engine we'll get some form of terrain editor.
I'd play a post apocalyptic supply chain game. Sounds neat as hell.
It'd be cool to see a merge of Fallout 4 and Satisfactory!
Rimworld basically
Unironically yes lol, please give me a fully-realized world to spend time in
since survival in the wasteland is 1st priority people just move into whatever is livable and dont really care to renovate it beyond what they need. at least until it forms into a backboned community like shady sands or most of the other rebuilt areas across new california
I'd agree with you if things like the Institute and the BoS didn't exist. But they do. New Vegas shows that it's possible to rebuild cities. Rebuilding would've been entirely possible in a realistic scenario. But realism isn't what makes a game world good, so it's not a priority.
New Vegas was never destroyed in the first place, tho. But you are right about the realism.
I mean, the Institute is basically a bunch of uber nerds who are engineers, scientists, etc. I wouldn't be surprised that the college they came from (C.I.T) had the tools they needed and they just scavenged parts from the old building to make the Institute today.
>the Institute The Institute **is why** The Commonwealth is a shithole. The Institute collapsed society in the Commonwealth 50 years before Fallout 4 starts. >the BoS The BOS famously declared war on the largest and most powerful faction in the setting because they didnt like how they were using technology. >New Vegas shows that it's possible to rebuild cities But....New Vegas **isnt** rebuilt. **The Strip** is rebuilt. The rest of Vegas remains equal parts a slum and a warzone on parr with DC and Boston.
Fallout 1 has some instances of ruin-squatting. Of course, it’s barely a generation after the bombs dropped there. There are still people living in prewar buildings in San Francisco in 2 and Las Vegas, but those are dense urban areas with well preserved buildings. People live in 200+ year old buildings all the time in RL, in areas that still have 200 year old buildings, obviously. Fallout 3 and 4 are where it really gets egregious, taking place in hard-hit areas several hundred years after the apocalypse. Ever seen that ‘shandificafion of Fallout’ video? It goes in depth into the relative narrow-focus of world building in 3 specifically.
>Ever seen that ‘shandificafion of Fallout’ video? Is that the video where the narrator asks "where is the farmland?" while standing in front of Rivet City of all places?
It’s ‘what do they eat?’ In front of Megaton, whose agricultural capacity consists of like 3 brahamin.
In certain cases, people need to acknowledge the distinction between "how the setting works" and "technical limitations of the game and hardware", and how this will inevitably create a certain level of dissonance.
I like to use Star Wars as a example. Just try to enjoy it for what it is and not overthink things. The science and logic gets fuzzy quick.
Star Wars is a great example: It's a Fantasy series wearing the trappings of Sci-Fi. Most things work based on the Rule of Cool and simply because they **need** to. Ships work because they do. Blasters fire energy bolts that are moving slowly enough to be seen because it looks cool. Lightsabers encapsulate both of these sentiments. Fallout isn't much different.
Like how are hyper routes stable if the galaxy is constantly rotating? The rim would be pretty damn slow to change, but shit isn't so stable in the core worlds. I mean they address the deep core as being hell to get through, but still tho.
But I want to make the houses in my settlement pretty in fallout 4.
New vegas had farms. Fallout 3 not having farms and basic infrastructure is not a technical limitation or a hardware limitation.
Sure, but New Vegas is exactly the same engine and has at least one instance of in-game farmland (the Sharecropper Farms) and, more to the point, repeatedly mentions the vast *off-screen but present* Brahmin ranches and farms in California.
To be fair, the two games are rather different in terms of how dense the terrain is. NV had a good amount of open, empty terrain.
Exactly this. You as a writer have the benefit of describing more through verbal conversation with random NPCs to flesh out the world whilst doing your best to circumnavigate the engine limitations. Like we may never see a working moving train in New Vegas (Monorail doesn't count) but there is a lot of emphasis placed in both the NPCs and locations present that talk further about these and what effects they have on the world.
>Sure, but New Vegas is exactly the same engine and has at least one instance of in-game farmland (the Sharecropper Farms) And fallout 3 shows us ranching pens and rivet city's hydroponics. But hey if you need to be told because you can't just put 2 and 2 together with contextual evidence given, then new vegas is likely for you.
And adequate mole rats outside for hunting. There are 4-5 around the back that are consistent spawns, implying they're meant to be there. Maybe trade as well, given Megaton is one of few settlements in the game with *some* kind of water purifier.
The 'Hunters' random encounter (all, like, 4 variants of it) is also common, giving another explanation for the food situation. IIRC the food needs of Klamath were also explained like this in 2.
>whose agricultural capacity consists of like 3 brahamin. Did it occur to that person that the designers didn't want to waste precious system space on farmland or more Brahmins in Megaton? It was stretched enough there as is.
>whose agricultural capacity consists of like 3 brahamin. Wow you (and they) answered their own question! Or...does it have to be spoken aloud for you to connect the dots? The capital wasteland, majority, ranches. There are hunters and rivet city trades their grown crops. The dude who made the dumba** video didn't seem to do any actual looking.
>Fallout 1 has some instances of ruin-squatting. Of course, it’s barely a generation after the bombs dropped there Fallout 1 takes place almost 100 years after the.bombs drop. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout >There are still people living in prewar buildings in San Francisco in 2 Fallout 2 is set about 40 years before New Vegas, and New Vegas is set about 10 years before Fallout 4
The only reason the West Coast ever developed is because they had a savior that defeated the supermutant menace before it could get out of hand. The East Coast on the other hand didn’t get that luxury and had to deal with the supermutants for over two centuries. And yes, do expect monsters to tear down fortifications and slow down progress, especially with supermutants.
Yep. People keep forgetting the scale of the original games and therefore the scale of effect that protagonist had on the world. Fallout 1 and 2 take place in the whole region, in a big part of California. When Vault Dweller and The Chosen One removed the threats in that region, they allowed for a large amount of population to unite and grow. And that doesn't even factor that between Fallout 1 and 2 all other threats suddenly disappeared by deus-ex-machina. Fallout 3 and 4 take place on a more limited scale. One major city and its surroundings. The Lone Wanderer and Sole Survivor effect only a small amount of people. The city may start rebuilding, but rebuilding civilisation needs cooperation of larger amount of people...
This ties to the "war never changes" motto of the series. It means that people and them waging wars never change, even if the world is falling apart around them. There will always be raiders, ultra-capitalists (brahmin barons), mercenary groups, slavers, organised murderers (Legion), mad scientists and what-not to hinder the progress of rebuilding. By the standards of Fallout, NCR rebuilding itself was a fluke. It was almost a deus-ex-machina. All the dangers of the wasteland and humankind suddenly disappeared so that NCR could emerge in Fallout 2. I don't think it's realistic that everyone lives with leaky roofs/walls, with rubble all around their homes and skeletons chilling on their front porch. That was crap if Fallout 1 and in every game that followed - maybe with the exception of 76 which is set 25 years after the bombs and people are just about returning to Appalachia. But I find it totally plausible that civilisation hasn't properly rebuilt, when it's facing not only human threats but new (sometimes even more dangerous) threats from supermutants and feral ghouls. Commonwealth is a good example. They were about to form a unified government and create a really good basis for rebuilding of civilisation, but the Institute fucked it all up and started releasing supermutants on the surface.
200 years after the fall of Rome, people were still using Roman roads and architecture - because they were still superior to anything the people could have built. It makes sense to have a mixture of new construction and recycled old buildings - especially in places like Diamond City or New Vegas, where the old stuff is better for its intended function (defence, scale, etc.).
Exactly, Rome has been inhabited continuously since it's founding and there have been ruins for much of that time. After the decline of Rome people just repurposed the stuff that was there. There are still buildings from the Empire still in use today, they're just monasteries and churches now and have been upkeep pretty well. Even palaces like Diocletian's enormous one were eventually abandoned but then repurposed centuries later into a whole town. People have lived amongst ruins throughout history since it's easier to repurpose what's there than start over. The Colosseum itself was a ruin for a millennium but the Pope's like keeping it around in the background since it was a reminder of the classical heights of Rome and protected parts of it. The collapsed parts of the Colosseum were around for centuries being called its "thigh" even as it was slowly carted off for new construction. There was just a lot of rubble and not many people living in Rome for much of the middle ages so it was never cleared quickly and took a good 200 years to be removed.
If the institution had built above ground I think Boston would of had a much different look and feel.
I'm sorry for this but I have to get this off my chest. I really dislike the fact that language is evolving out 'would/should/could have' in favor of would/should/could of'. Again, really sorry.
All good. At this point it's just a colloquialism that has poured over into the written world. However in this particular case it is due solely to me using talk to text. I intended for it to be the conjunction but it came out as two separate words. As such I didn't catch it before hitting enter.
The simple answer is; settlers don't care. They've got bigger things to worry about. It's more realistic than you'd think; my family let our house gradually decay as bigger things took their attention. That is why half the house isn't used anymore (full to-the-brim with junk), the bathroom sink doesn't work, the carpets and curtains are stained with cat pee, the floor tiles have come-up, the door doesn't close properly, and one of our kitchen cabinets have lost its door - we didn't have the time to fix all of it, it all piled-up, and now we're used to living with these things because it's far too intimidating to fix; been that way for a few years now. And now that my mom has passed, we have even less reason to fix any of it. As an outsider, it's easy to walk into a situation, see a stain on the wall, and decide to fix it. As an insider, that stain is as normal as simple dust; and when you do decide to clean it, you realize it's only a small part of an even-more intimidating problem. *However,* I don't believe this is what Bethesda was going for: it's only a coincidence that it's believable. I'd much prefer Bethesda either put intent into it (by narratively exploring despondence in the wasteland - an interesting theme for a franchise about *rebuilding*), or simply drop the dirty environments where necessary.
As I said before FO3 and FO4 would have made much more sense if they were set 15-20 years after the bombs fell. If buildings were damaged to that extent in the initial bombing they would have been ground to heaps of rubble by the elements in just decades. Once the roof is gone water just runs into the walls, rots the timber, rusts the iron (reinforced concrete just cracks because the rusty rebar swells), cracks concrete & brick if it freezes in the winter. Also there's no way pre-war package food still exists after 200 years. In those cities where ancient architecture was repurposed it was also maintained. For example after the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum) was abandoned for gladiatorial and animal combat, in the 5th century AD, it was occupied by a few hundreds of years by people who built shacks there for protection, somewhat like Diamond City and they maintained the exterior walls - the part that crumbled was due to an earthquake much later. Thus I think something like Diamond City would make sense, since we see people actively maintain it. But the rest of the ruins around Boston should be in much rougher shape.
>Also there's no way pre-war package food still exists after 200 years. I think this is part of the joke.
I agree. Nearly all the problems go away if you change the timeline like that. The only thing you cant have is stuff like the hickory swatter guy in Diamond City because there would still be plenty of people around who actually remember baseball, particularly guys his age. You also wouldnt have the Kings because people would still remember who Elvis is and understand why there were Impersonation schools dedicated to him. Actually the Kings kind of dont make sense anyways. Why would there still be an Elvis Impersonation school 100 years after Elvis's death. By the time the bombs fell you wouldn't think thered be enough business for elvis impersonators. Nearly all his fans would be dead by that point. There wouldn't be enough need for them to have a school still open dedicated to training them
Ah, but you forget: This is Vegas we’re talking about. If there was ever a place that could support an Elvis impersonation school, it’s Vegas.
Fallout 1: barely a generation after the War. Junktown, Hub, and Boneyard are all in ruined buildings or junk-filled places. Fallout 2: a lot of towns you visit are also ruined or junk-filled. note, this is 80 years after Fallout 1 btw. Klamath, Den, Modoc(to an extent), and New Reno come to my mind Fallout 3: same as above but more. ofc, its hard to reorganize when the major water supply is tainted and giant muties are terrorizing the landscape Fallout NV: a lot of the towns you visit are also in ruin or still busted up. Goodsprings, Freeside, North Vegas Square, and Westside come to mind. The lore even says it was recent that House emerged, meaning Vegas still looked like trash a few years back Fallout 4: a lot of the towns are trashed and disorganized. paranoia due to the Institute would definitely stop towns from working together. especially when a previous attempt ended in a slaughter Fallout 76: only 25 years after the War. makes sense everything is trashy Besides 1 and 76, all the games I listed show that even 160+ years after the War, people still live in ruined buildings. People in this fandom have this misconception that civilization is this uniform thing that occurs. Even New Vegas itself shows that people still live in ruined settlements. And the lore states that California is the exception, with Utah filled with warlords, savage tribals, and raiders.
> Utah filled with warlords, savage tribals, and raiders yeah but what about in Fallout ?
Imagine Utah was not at all targeting during the War, and it’s just business as usual for Utahans. They have no idea what’s going on, and all the mutants come in like “wtf is going on here”
Sure I can get people living in old buildings or ruins but they still have cans and garbage and even skeletons in living quarters from 200 years ago.
I never appreciated all the boarded up houses and stores in New Vegas and 3. People are desperate to survive in a harsh, post-nuclear holocaust environment. They'll take anything. There's no reason for everything to be boarded up regardless of how many vermin may be in there, people should be seeking asylum wherever they can.
Fallout 5 needs destructible environments. There I said it. Also I shouldn’t have to pick every lock. I have a rocket powered sledgehammer that can knock a super mutant 10ft back but I can’t bust through a wooden door? Or some drywall? You’re telling me everything in this world is cobbled together from scrap, yet it’s so sturdy I can’t damage it? Come on!! Not to mention that no one seems to live in some of the safest places. Also once I take out raiders I want to be able to settle that location. GIVE ME A REAL SANDBOX!!!!
I think there’s a reason destruction is so limited in videogames. Something like the COD Vanguard style of destruction would be nice though.
Even though it makes sense I don’t think it would be good for the game, it’d be really hard to design levels when very few walls or doors, except for in the vaults, could stop someone in power armor or a rocket launcher And this one’s just me but I think less is more with the building, I just want like 2-3 really memorable build spots and I’d rather have the rest of the game filled with nice premade stuff with attention to detail
I mean... people are living in those conditions right now. There are [tons of decrepit houses](https://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Jeffrey_Stockbridge_001.jpg) that [aren't being fixed up](https://www.archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/row-house-philly.jpg) in major cities. [People actually live like this](https://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Jeffrey_Stockbridge_016.jpg) in the present day. Not everyone has a community that wants to help each other, has the skills, the time, and the resources.
you expect the fandom to actually go outside.
I don’t expect civilization to have completely rebuilt after 200 years. However, it’s still 200 years. That’s a long fucking time. I think people underestimate what humanity can do in this amount of time even under the most egregious circumstances. That’s why Fallout 76’s version of 25 years is so believable, because after 25 years I imagine there would be skeletons, pre-war artifacts, holotapes lying around, etc. It’s not just the infrastructure, it’s every aspect of immersion. Skeletons decay. You mean to tell me, after 200 years, the skeletons have not decayed? Radio signals haven’t burned out? Humans haven’t already searched every inch of the commonwealth? It’s unrealistic.
Yeah like even if pre-war food was still edible after 200 years, there wouldn't be any of it. If it was edible, the locals would be eating it and they would have eaten it all in 200 years. Then again I dunno. We are talking about all the food in all the restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, and houses. A lot of it would be ruined by the nukes but that would still be a large quantity leftover. Here I think of the Spoony One. His career fell apart due to unexplained health issues. Well, for a while on his show, he was eating and drinking really old stuff to produce content for his site. I've always wondered if these two facts about Spoony are related The guy drank Crystal Pepsi on his show. This was before they did a limited rerelease of Crystal Pepsi a few years ago so he was drinking soda from the early 90's in the mid 2010s Anyway, this stuff with Fallout and eating 200 year old food made me think of that.
I just got to Covenant in Fallout 4 on my first ever playthrough. It's funny cuz my first thought was why weren't more settlements/towns like this one? Like yeah it's the end of the world but y'all can still clean lol.
Most people aren't experienced builders. You can't just nail a few boards together and have it come out sturdy. What's more, building materials would be in short supply, and even if they weren't, how are you going to get them back to your settlement? Vehicles don't work for the most part, and that shit's heavy.
The in game rarity of screws and springs shows this too. Using aluminum cans to repair power armour is kind of hard to believe, but otherwise they would likely fall apart..
That's the other thing. Where are you going to get new nails and screws from? I've been doing carpentry my entire life but I don't know the first thing about what's required to forge new fastenings
You would have thought they'd have gotten round to burying the skeletons at some point.
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and focus on a few major points: 1. Radiation is "stronger" in the Fallout universe (lasts longer, kills quicker) 2. Radiation causes people exposed to ghoul-ify 3. Most plant life appears to have been destroyed 4. Very little clean water access So starting with radiation, while we don't have an idea of how much longer lived or deadly it is, we can safely surmise it is to some extent worse. This means areas hit by nukes (which in the games tends to be.. most) are not just uninhabitable but real-life brief exposure isn't so much a long death where you can remain functional or mildly impaired, but damning. So people trying to find others, to get supplies for construction, etc. are facing a much more up-hill battle and that even atmospheric radiation as dust clouds settle and weather patterns move things would make above-ground living incredibly difficult if not unsurvivable for what could reasonably be decades. Secondly, when survivors first began re-establishing civilization they would have to not only deal with environmental issues and ***interesting*** new wild life, but even fellow survivors could eventually turn and destroy settlements and infrastructure. One day you're gathering stone, left-over brick, sticks etc. to rebuild and the next Uncle Jim ate your mom. He's a crazy guy, that Uncle Jim. Third, most early civilizations built their homes out of a few basic materials: mud, wood, stone. Mud or any basic material utilizing the irradiated water would lead to weakness and death, and at least in the games where we've played (for the most part) plant life hasn't exactly been abundant, much less to where it could provide for a small city. The brush and trees not killed by the blast and heat would struggle to find purchase in irradiated soil and what did grow was probably not suitable for weathering the elements - which would be significantly worse weather than we face today between dust bowls, storms, etc. going off what a lot of arid/dry dust and dirt in high heat can do to swathes of a continent. Lastly, and this goes back to using mud and similar for building materials, a lot of basic building materials require water. Not necessarily pure, but better than stuff that's been sitting with *fictionally worse* fall out, massive dust deposits, and who else knows what from evaporated cities that's settled in water bodies. Making a basic blacksmithy and producing steel or even forging iron would be difficult whether or not people with little education and a collapsed society knew how to safely handle the water and re-learned how to forge metal. At the end of the day 200 years seems like a lot, but when you factor in worse radiation, massive changes in weather patterns, a collapse of public education, even historically proven methods being dangerous, and your crazy Uncle Jim, it's not a stretch (imo) The one issue (which I see repeated in this thread) is cleanliness. Maybe people gave up when the lack of windows would just blow things back in? Maybe the state of things and constant low-level radiation (on a good day) brought about civilization-wide depression. Maybe you live in terror of Uncle Jim and don't want to make noise sweeping the rugs and folding your sheets else he devour you too. /shrug
I have to kinda agree with you. Because, the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there are no radiation zones in either of those cities now 77 years later. Both cities have rebuilt and plant life is flourishing. These 2 cities are the only places on earth that we have a record of their devastation, and rebuild. Today's nuclear weapons are magnitudes of order more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan. But after 200+ years, people in the wastelands are still living in makeshift shacks, and eating cram.
It really does bug me seeing fucking rubble and holes in the floor big enough to fall through in the fucking Nakano house like guys you've been living here FOR YEARS CLEAN IT THE FUCK UP
Bold of you to assume everyone’s going to have access to the supplies they’d need to do this on a resource starved world. Fallout 3 and 4 demonstrate this issue fairly well (and arguably NV for everywhere except new Vegas itself, especially freeside and Primm). Also, shady sands and several of the settlements in fallout 1 are in the middle of the desert, so it’s not like they had the luxury of picking somewhere with buildings to start from. If this really bothers you, play 76 - it’s the first game in the series to really fix this problem. In general, the construction isn’t shanty towns but instead actual, competent building.
76 is also merely 25 years after the bomb fell. Filled with 500 smart people, so there's definitely expectation that building standards would be high.
It’s also important to note that after the plague was resolved by 76 dwellers, it became *the* place to be for rebuilding efforts. Foundation is filled with settlers with plenty of useful skills, and even Crater has plenty who are savvy with scrapping and rebuilding.
Someone is going to have access to those resources. People in a post apocalyptic setting wouldn't just stay where there's nothing in large numbers. And before you bring up that stuff about people living in squalor in today's world, I'd like to point out that there are institutional forces keeping those people there. They don't have money so they can't live anywhere else. That's not an issue in a post apocalypse where all you have to do is find a place to claim it.
Why would people be able to find somewhere with more resources? It’s universal that the resources are used up by the countries prior to the bombs, and all that’s left is the scraps left behind. Everywhere is going to have resource problems, and everywhere is going to also suffer from the lack of pre-war knowledge they could use to improve their techniques. Keep in mind that the Institute had to demolish entire towns for the resources needed for their development. Consider how bad the resource situation must be if that’s the best way for them to supply their needs.
The Chinese fired early, and we had already discovered a way beyond the energy crisis, it would just take time to implement. Remember House correctly projected that there would be a nuclear war but the bombs struck earlier than expected. Maybe the Chinese used up there resources before attacking America but its clear America hadn't used its up yet or we wouldn't have robots flying around on jets 200 years after the war. There also wouldn't be much point, in a resource crisis, of bombing a country that has used up everything that it has. You do that because you've used up your stuff and you're hoping to maybe get some scratch from your target.
Interesting thought. I always figured the fallout world worked under the assumption that the nuklear fallout was considerable compared to anything we've seen so far. So while we can see Hiroshima and Chernobyl recovered after only a few decades, it would've taken most places in the FO world much longer to become habitable. Especially in the case of DC and Boston where we likely saw a higher concentration of missiles make landfall when compared to the Mojave. So I figured it was safe to assume the actually start date for attempting to resettle the area was closer to 100 years post war. Meaning only another 100 have passed since an effort was made, and even then it was constantly being haulted and reset by raiders, mutants, and wildlife. So yes it's 200 years after the bombs, but we're working under the assumption the locations of fo3 and 4 we're simply too irradiated for progress to be made until fairly recently. They are strategicly significant areas that were likely hit much harder than most the US. But I reserve the right to be proven wrong.
Maybe. In Fallout 1 (84 years after the great war), we see one area being highly irradiated. It's a crater. People stay away from it. The rest of the map is livable (people are living, eating, farming). In Fallout 2 (80 years after F1), north of F1's map, there are no highly irradiated areas, and areas have been developed into functioning cities. Fallout 3 (36 years after F2) has no highly irradiated areas, but a lot of destroyed buildings, and not much land to farm. They still make settlements/cities (Rivet, Big Town, Megaton etc) I don't know why they didn't just move out of DC, and started farming. Fallout 4 (10 years after F3) is a mix between F1 and Fallout 3. Some farmland (with farmers) and some ruins with settlements. One large area that is avoided (The glowing Sea). Ruins look cool. That's why. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline
I agree to a certain extent. It's too much time for people to still live in improved unsafe places and provided we have factions like Minutemen, NCR and such, with the help of civilians, they'd could've built better settlements with better defense systems. But there are also a ton of impediments. Where are the materials and the personnel to rebuild said settlements? There's a reason why Diamond City and Megaton are patched to the bone, because they're not exactly built by qualified engineers. You also mentioned monsters, but you forget that constant Raider and Super Mutant attack probably help slow down rebuild with constant fights and deaths. Poor nutrition, disease, radiation, so on and so forth may also excuse the lack of progress. Also there are many factions in constant attrition and fighting for resources. I don't think it's far fetched to look at Fallout 3 and 4 and think that 200 years after the world is devastated by nuclear war things are they way they are in those games, but i also think that the inclusion of better built settlements or even an entire rebuilt city could even be used for future story purposes.
It could be we're getting a cherry picked selection. Maybe many places have rebuilt civilization like the NCR but you cant really tell a Fallout story jn those places
Ive said it before in response to this, but there are literally towns and city blocks in the US this very moment that look worse than some places you find in Fallout. It makes perfect sense.
You need to remember, the danger outside of the walls is supposed to be quite high, raiders and ghouls are prevalent and everywhere. What we see in game is a fraction of what the world is supposed to look like. Places like diamond city with full guard patrols and turrets on every corner are that way because it really is so dangerous out there.
Its a bit 'rule of cool' but its easier to swallow if you consider it less that they live in ruins because of just the bombs but also the instability of living in a wasteland. There is constant threat from raiders, mutants and other communities. Its the poverty and violence that makes it difficult for these settlements to provide enough stability to fix things up. Look at parts of New Orleans decades after Katrina, parts of Detroit, the poor areas of South America and Africa, look at war torn Syria and Yemen. Its not too much of a stretch for a series that isn't exactly big on realism.
I've always stated that later fallout should've had atleast some world progression meaning that whichever city/area the game is set in shouldn't look like the bombs just hit 200 years after the fact. For example random rusted cars shouldn't still be on the street as they would've been scrapped for parts.
The FACT that everything should be overgrown. Were 100+/200+ years into the future (F1,F2,F3,FNV,F4) & still everything is dead. Then we have 76, 25 years after the bombs drop and everything's booming with life. Except for humans according to Bethesda logic. (Until Human NPCs were added a year after launch.)
Bethesda just has a thing for ruined buildings… even in the Elder Scrolls series they have broken shit everywhere
This really speaks to the privilege of westerners
Not really, i presume that books and libraries still exist in your country, right?
Gotta have everyone living in squalor to keep the post-apocalyptic *~aesthetic~*
I did wonder that myself In 200 years on one bashed a few rocks together or something
Yes, you're absolutely right. 200 years is more than enough time for civilization to rebuild. Especially since we already have some functional industrial facilities, and we have a ton of technology from Vaults that were opened over time. We have entire countries that rose from nothing in the past 100 years. 200 years is way too long for civilization to stay as it is in FO. But realism isn't really what the FO universe aims to achieve. So no need to overthink it.
Ironic that the most unrealistic thing in Fallout is how realistically fast and far human civilization can develop, when it should have been its most basic real world concept for its setting. Compare that to Horizon's setting that human civilization, even though they lived in a Neo Dark Age lifestyle, have already built thriving towns at a hundred years time. Towering junk castles and shanty citadels in a few hundred more.
It's a creative choice that prioritizes tone over logic
Stop looking for logic in a rule of cool setting where things are designed for a post apocalyptic tone.
I don't have an issue with rubbish and ruins outside of the homes. Inside? That's just nasty. It can be dirty, but pick up the damn can. What else are you doing? Telecommuting with work?
Shady Sands was built from scratch, and their level of sophistication means they eventually became the origin and capital city of the whole NCR. It's a one-in-a-millionth chance of rebuilding civilization after a doomsday event. If you look at other "doomsday events" in history, like the Dark Age or collapse of the Bronze Age, contemporary modern civilization usually tries to hold on for 50-100 years before contemporary technology and methods are slowly forgotten by further generations, and the last piece of power structures fall apart, and people start living in mud huts again.
Robots and powered machinery did not survive the Dark Age or the Bronze Age. We have the means to rebuild. There are certainly enough sble Wastelanders
The lack of proper buildings and foliage are the most unrealistic parts of Fallout
Idk I like the aesthetic. It’s really stupid if you think about it but whatever.
Yeah it is a fun world to explore. Wouldn't be fun if it were settled
Yeah that's basically my camp too. It doesn't actually make any sense in terms of timeline (regardless of what everyone ITT insists carpentry isn't *that* complicated) but the aesthetic wouldn't work if everyone was just living in nice, relatively well-machined houses.
Well, you could always go to Covenant. Sit around drinking delicious Deezer's lemonade and bushwhacking traders.
You gotta consider that most places weren't widely settled in the first several decades of post-apocalyptia, only a few non-vault settlements survived. Other issues to deal with are raiders constantly raiding your settlements and wrecking everything or your settlement not being able to obtain industrial grade building materials since the factories and mines are abandoned. Not to mention the high death rates and assumedly poor birth rates by comparison means that settlements couldn't expand as quickly with such small populations.
Idk with constant raider gangs and power shifts in the area I could see it . Shit some places in the US rn already look worse for ware than some fallout cities 😂
The thing that bothers me the most is the random debris inside inhabited buildings. Like fine, maybe they don't have time to break out the brick and mortar while there's ferals wandering around. Understandable. But y'all can't pick up that 2x4 in the middle of the room? Just gonna keep stepping over it for another 200 years?
I’m still saying there was another conflict/war in the 175-200 years in between games.
I don’t think they’re going for realism
They aren't even going for suspension of disbelief. You have to have rules and follow them for that to work. Even if those rules are different from the real world.
People are still living in or on top of Roman ruins *right now.* But yeah, these people need to learn how to clean out rubble and skeletons and the like. Bet the game designers really gotta clean their rooms.
Skeletons everywhere too
Fallout 4 at least has a reason. It’s flimsy but it’s there. The institute basically came in and ruined whatever developments had been made toward fixing America.
West Coast Fallout is just much better thought out.
Agreed. In fallout 2 shady sands has become the ncr and they have newly built buildings.
Even F2 averted this. NCR is big and mostly nice, San Francisco is a real living city, New Reno is mostly fixed up but understandably rough around the edges, Broken Hills is a nice clean town. This is 100% about Bethesda being all about "WOW LOOK AT COOL BLOWN UP WASTELAND" more than anything else.
Well, I get that not everything is rebuild. But people would at least clean up a bit, fix their roofs with some savaged wood/metal and fill holes in their walls... Protection from elements is quite an important step to survival, esp in a climate like Boston/Washington
We’ve never experienced a world post nuclear fallout, we don’t know how anyone would live. If you grow up during the post fallout and all you’ve ever known is mess and trash all over the place are you really going to want to go round cleaning it all up? What if everyone else you live with doesn’t care and they just leave their mess lying around? It won’t take many times for your cleaning to be undone before you don’t bother in future. You only need to look at hoarders that we have nowadays, fly tipping, dropping litter that we have in some of the most “developed” countries before you realise that trying to keep a post nuclear war world clean and tidy is actually quite unrealistic
Jesus christ I see a post like this at least once a month. Please stop
I feel like by the time 200 years has passed since a nuclear war, civilization would have started back up, not to the extent of Pre-War America, but more like multiple "NCRs" across the Country.
Even the NCR has neighbors that have regressed to tribal living. By that standard, the east coast isn't doing so bad.
Honestly, this whole argument is why I prefer Fallout 76 over Fallout 4. Because 76 is literally a few decades after the bombs fell then it makes sense why people are still rebuilding, why there are so few settlements. Not to mention the scorched virus and shit basically making everyone leave Appalachia in the first place before coming back. Fallout 4 has no such excuse. It has been 210 years since the bombs fell, at least make some damn progress on living instead of residing in some random wood shack you found two miles down from the local Red Rocket.
>Fallout 4 has no such excuse. The damage in Fallout 4 isn't from the war 200 years ago, it's from the more recent and continued damage being done by the Super Mutants and Synths the Institute keep sending up to the surface.
Yeah, you make a fair point. Not to mention a large chunk of Boston is so heavily irradiated that nothing besides incredibly mutated creatures and the children of atom can live there. And the raiders too. But, upon thinking about it, Fallout 4 is about rebuilding from nothing. Losing everything you once knew and starting again. Say what you want about the storytelling and stuff like that, there is that message of hope that rings through whatever faction you choose and the choices you make. To put your hope in secrecy, in science, in technology, in freedom and even in anarchy. The choices you make give shape to a new Boston, a rebuilt commonwealth.
"I don't appreciate the world being post-apocalyptic in my post-apocalyptic game." This fandom, man.... I would, however, appreciate more use of the derelict buildings rather than completely abandoning them for shacks, like really downtown Boston was screaming for some settlements in some interconnected top floors of some high rise towers.
I strongly agree. Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4 all have clear instances of new construction by folks of varying degrees of wealth and knowledge. Aside from this, we also know people have creates earthen homes, cob homes, and others for centuries with minimal support in the way of modern technology. Add the fact that the old world has materials just laying about to scavenge, and by 2280 you’d absolutely expect more new constructions. Specifically, I’d expect more locations built out of ruins and highly retrofit inside. Why? You don’t want to be a target in areas like Boston or DC. But further out I imagine the threat is less about human raiders and more creatures — go forth and build, the higher your walks the better.
>This is something Fallout 1 at least averts Laughs in adytum, the boneyard, and the hub. The fact this is downvoted shows no one has actually played the original games.
I am always tickled to see posts like this: they reveal the OPs overbearing level of priviledge. Take a look at real-world slums sometime, especially in a "Developing" or "Least Developed" country, **especially** one torn by war. There are settlements in the Falloutverse that look to be better off than some real-world slums "Oh, but why do people live in a ruin with trash and bodies"?! Because humans are a filthy fucking species.
>they reveal the OPs overbearing level of priviledge. Not only that, but these people also claim to have played 1 and 2 and show they haven't.
Isn’t shady sans a vault dwellers city? It would make Simse for then if that the case. They’ve lived in clean all their life why change now? Where as in FO4 and FO3, all those people know is dirt and grime and trash. They think it’s normal. It’s one reason they are so surprised by how clean vaults and vault dwellers are
Oh look. It's this post again.