Fallout 4

Fallout: New Orleans with Obsidian at the helm sounds divine. I'm betting we get a lot of classic jazz on the sound track like we got western and rat pack music in New Vegas.

Speaking of the music, I've been wondering how to beef up the soundtrack a bit better.

Because they're scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point. A lot of the radio tracks in Fallout 4 are... well, I'll be honest, awful. I don't give a fuck about your bingo-bango-bongos in the jungle and a few of them are too slow for the gameplay context of 'I could be walking down an empty road, or I could be killing a Deathclaw right now'. And most of the ones that do work are ones that were already used in Fallout 3.

Well, I started thinking about what could be done and it occurred to me. ALL of these songs came out in the 1940s in Fallout's universe, correct? But the war didn't happen until 2077 something, right?

Did these people just... not write and record new songs? Did we just say 'Yes, this is the best music ever written. No need to listen to anything else!' for over 100 years?

Why not do what Bioshock: Infinite and Wolfenstien: The New Order did? They took songs like The Beatles or Cindy Lauper's 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', configured them to the game's world, and it did wonders for world building and story progression. Just take classic songs that would still have occurred in universe (because, obviously, the culture kind of stagnated post-50s) and give them a period appropriate cover? Similar to what Postmodern Jukebox does on You Tube. It would do a lot to add history to the universe post-WW 2 and leading into the great war and give us some new tunes to listen to.

And, if they want, maybe one or two completely original songs that were released before the great war similar to how Magnolia (Lynda Carter) wrote five songs to be performed in the Third Rail.

I just... I swear to god if I have to hear about how goddamn worry, worry, worried you are or about your bingo-bango-bongos one more time, I'm going to shoot the next man I see... ...Maybe this is what the game intended in the first place. Maybe this is why everyone in the Fallout Universe is so insane?

Maybe get Postmodern Jukebox to do the covers of newer songs in a 1940's or 50's style. I mean that's their whole shtick.

edited 29th May '17 3:06:51 AM by BigMadDraco

The only decent new songs in the Fallout 4 soundtrack came from a collection called Conelrad 640-1240, which I had been using as a mod for both Fallout 3 and New Vegas for years. I don't mind that, but as Razorfist(&) said in his Fallout 4 review, since Fallout has basically been ripping off the heavy metal scene's iconography (and character names from some of the iconic metal tracks - Mister Crowley, for instance, as well as complete lines of dialogue) for decades, where the hell is the heavy metal music?

Where's the Motörhead, where's the Metallica, where's the Black Sabbath, where's the Judas Priest, and where in the utter heck is the Queen? Or AC/DC? Or Led Zeppelin? Come on, Todd Howard, you made enough money in the first two days of release to be able to afford literally any licensing fee those bands would have asked for - pay the bastards.

And I'm not really interested in any "oh heavy metal music wouldn't fit in the lore" stuff, when the Overseer of Vault 92, the Music Preservation Vault, no less, is Rick Rubin!!!

(&) I'd link it but it's not very safe for work

I'm going to have to check out Vault 92 to get what you're talking about. I IMD Bed him and he's not listed as connected to FO 4 in any way, shape, or form. So I'm assuming uncredited or you just mean he's based on him?

Here - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Richard_Rubin

As I said, the Overseer of Vault 92, the Music Preservation Vault is Rick Rubin, named after one of the greatest Metal, Rap and Hip-Hop producers of all time. There is no way in hell that that wasn't deliberate.

Just a shout out nothing meaningful.

Post Modern Jukebox doing covers would be a great idea. Get that hash of older music presentation meets modern tunes.

edited 29th May '17 11:38:55 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Or, like, even better, not ignoring forty years of some of the best popular music there's been in the Western world since ever? In an another different musical genre mis-step, for pity's sake, even Elvis Presley isn't represented, and he did all his best work in the Fifties (leaving aside there's a whole gang devoted to him in New Vegas). There's no Johnny Cash, and no Stevie Wonder either. I could also tolerate some Michael Jackson. There's no one going to tell me that a franchise that has literally made billions of dollars in revenue can't afford at least one track by all those guys. (Or Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Elaine Page, Barbara Dickson, Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin and sodding Madonna Louise Ciccone, to name just a few of the prominent female singers of our time who could also have appeared.)

But no, we had to get Pete hacking and whacking and chopping his meat again.

I also disagree about the Rubin thing. They could have called that Overseer anything - they chose Rick Rubin. They knew what kind of bells THAT name would ring in anyone who's got more than a passing interest in the music history of the last forty odd years, even in a throwaway kind of never-appearing-in-the-game scenario, and that's why they did it. The only guy whose name would have rang louder would have been Quincy Jones.

Well being stuck in the early 50s is well Fallout's thing. I have issues when they stray from that.

But they aren't stuck in the early fifties. Between the Ray Gun Gothic look and the various barely settled tribals that have their own personalities separate from the old world, they've been past that since the very start.

I could see rock and roll forming in the Fallout verse, but very differently from ours. Instead of it being a rebellion from authority, it'd be heavily jingoistic and in your face about killing people like the Chinese for the sake of your country.

Well... Maybe that'd be a bit uncomfortable to listen to while wandering the world...

But its still pretty annoying that the only music is from 100+ before the bombs dropped and has all the quality of such. I'm shocked there aren't more recent tunes and things in better quality after so long.

Considering what their government is like, I can't imagine much of their music would be comfortable to listen to. You'd have tunes about using drugs and alcohol to escape the issues. Tunes glorifying wars on Canada and Mexico and the rest of the world. Maybe some stuff painting the world as all rosy even though you can clearly see that it isn't.

I mean, people half joke about recent history painting this series as prophetic, but the game's United States really is more horrible to its own people than the real one currently is*. Any song that was immersive and accurate to the setting would be strained beyond belief to paint it as anything more than a Soviet-style hell hole where you just blind yourself to how bad things are for most people to keep from blowing your own brains out. Our intro seemed innocent and happy enough on the surface, other than the parts where their reality strikes and they're talking about nuclear devastation and making a mad rush to the vault.

• Man, I had to qualify that. To the inside we seem like sane people doing everything we can to get by, but you get to the third-world downtrodden areas of the world where our corporations run rampant and prop up rulers every bit as bad as the Enclave and you get people claiming we're already there, if not worse.

I'm thinking of making my own custom radio tracks for Fallout 4. Heavy metal on one station, Elvissy-type rock 'n' roll on the other. There's a page on the Nexus explaining how to do it, and luckily I bookmarked it earlier on.

Even so, the music's purpose in game is to give you something to listen to while roaming the land so it IS supposed to be comforting and/or badass. While the in-universe music might be uncomfortable, it wouldn't serve the gameplay purpose. It might get really uncomfortable and I don't think anyone would be wrong to feel that way.

I'd say, if we have to, reference that such songs exist but just never put them into the radio cycles.

edited 29th May '17 7:04:48 PM by InkDagger

Tam: Uh no it is pretty much just a shout out and nothing more. Given the time line for the vaults and the fact this is a completely different timeline from our own it is pretty safe to say it is just a shout out. Though i will agree we have lots of additional music from the era to pick through it would be nice to see the King make a showing.

Falout has been hung quite thoroughly on the late 40's and part of the 50's aesthetic and rather brazenly and openly. I would also point out that Ray Gun Gothic was formed by those eras to begin with.

I would say that just for variety's sake they should include additional music genre's on other stations for future installments. I usually find myself playing without the radio these days since listening to one type of music gets really annoying after a while.

Also Fallout has never really stuck to it's aesthetic 100% of the time. Fallout's 1, 2 and tactics had real world modern guns like Desert Eagles and P90s. And New Vegas had M4 variants as weapons.

edited 30th May '17 12:29:35 AM by evilface

New Vegas had a little bit of that. Obviously not a huge variety, but they had a few different stations you could listen to.

Honestly, I think people oversell the '50s Americana feel at times. The first game took on a pulpy '50s sci-fi feel, yes, but it snagged a lot from elsewhere (Mad Max immediately springs to mind) and both the first two games are pretty wide in what they reference. There's a bit of western in there, too, I think — you're this lone (wo)man wandering through this partially settled desert — but honestly not too many direct nods at '50s Americana, at least not in the first game.

The Bethesda games admittedly go harder at it, in my opinion. In Fallout 3 you've got Liberty Prime, the statue of Lincoln, they've set it in the nation's capital, you have to get the Constitution, etc., and of course in Fallout 4 you're begin in a stereotypical idyllic '50s household. But I don't think it's really something that essential to the Fallout feel — it's why I've never really been bothered about ideas like "Hey, what if they made a Fallout game somewhere else?"

edited 30th May '17 5:39:48 AM by Lavaeolus

The 50s theme is good and all but I'd love a fallout game with an 90s aesthetic.

"I'd say, if we have to, reference that such songs exist but just never put them into the radio cycles."

Or have multiple stations and if we ever face an Enclave remnant again, slap down one of those heavily jingoistic "Kill 'em All!" stations for them instead of just the old patriotic claptrap.

Yeah. Using raygun gothic as an excuse not to include Heavy Metal, Elvis, or any other of the many different artists I've said I think should be in the game is, well, odd. Particularly since all the other modern stuff that's been talked about by posts above this one is in the game.

If anything I'd say the most glaring omission from the game isn't, funnily enough, the music - though I think much more varied genres should have been included and I've never heard any valid reasons from the dev team as to why they haven't done so. It's the Pursuit Special, a.k.a the last of the V8 Interceptors, from Mad Max - since they've ripped off, excuse me, homaged almost everything else from the movies, it seems rude not to.

It wouldn't really be Fallout's world then.

So? I guess maybe it would work better as an entirely different post-apocalyptic story, but a Fallout game with a 90s theme is a fun concept.

Yeah that wouldnt be a fallout game, everything from Pipboy and radiation on down is influenced by 50s ideas of what the future would be like.

Now they could do a different franchise and base it around 70s/80s/90s style and ideas which would be more of a post-apocalyptic Cyberpunk. Would probably end up kinda like Appleseed or Destiny.

edited 30th May '17 9:14:11 AM by Memers

Yeah true, it wouldn't be the Fallout we know.