Fallout: New Vegas

Honestly, enforcing a status quo on the setting would have been pretty detrimental.

Post-apocalyptic humany can go one of two ways - either long-term improvement or extinction - and "everyone just kept on scavenging instead of rebuilding for a few more centuries" is not what I'd call good storytelling.

You either move the story along or you stop telling it - otherwise people will just stop giving a shit about it.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 25th 2020 at 8:38:16 PM

The story being told doesn't have to be about the setting as history. Much like how period pieces don't necessarily have to be about the end of that period, you can still tell meaningful post-apocalyptic stories that aren't about humanity as a whole overcoming the apocalypse and moving forward. Just not really if the biggest, most powerful factions are already doing that, and you keep moving the clock ahead by multiple decades at a time.

Edited by Unsung on Mar 25th 2020 at 12:41:12 PM

That’s why I feel Fallout should change the country it’s in and explore other parts of the world.

I don’t want Obisidian to say the NCR or House fail after the game online and render my hours of gameplay meaningless.

@ Red Hunter 543 I understand. Even Nazis had a few pretty good points, their own motivation and goals, beliefs and honor code.

Doesn't make me want to join them or agree with them. Even the most horrible people have their reasons. And that makes them even scarier, than pure psychos.

There is a way to avoid that — Bethesda took this option. Just tell different stories from far away. Like Easter coast and now Boston. Or from another time, like a few years after bombs fell.

Edited by Gentlecoldafterdusk on Mar 25th 2020 at 12:42:54 PM

Glad to hear it. The writing goal with the Legion’s lore was to make them realistic as a society. Not at all sympathetic.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 25th 2020 at 12:42:11 PM

I wouldn't really have a problem with prequels at this point. That was one of the things that made 76 *sound* cool, before it came out.

You can't have Fallout in a non-American country though, that kinda defeats the entire purpose of the series.

I have wanted to see how other parts of the world (or at least the U.S.) were doing, or maybe even an ocean themed game.

In some sense the very first game is a prequel, with communities only starting to erect and conflicts starting to go strong again, even if it was 84 years since the war started.

I'd love to see Junktown in 3D.

Ah, but that *wasn't* the point of the series until Fallout 3 brought the Enclave back from the dead. And maybe Fallout Tactics had a hand in that too. It's pretty much inextricably woven into the fabric of the franchise now, but it could've been a lot more open-ended before.

(Raises an eyebrow)

Uh... Not sure what that means here.

Edited by Unsung on Mar 25th 2020 at 1:05:41 AM

"Wasn't the point of the series until Fallout 3". Kindly elucidate.

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 25th 2020 at 1:04:38 AM

Avellone has a very different view of what Fallout should be about versus Tim Cain. Tim said the point of Fallout is following how society develops post-apocalypse. Avellone is fine with the idea it's now a post-apocalypse Fantasy setting.

• Cain: It will rebuild to a new technological society within a few generations.
• Avelone: It will be Medieval Scavenger World for thousands of years after.

Just that while the '50s Americana was still fairly strong in the ruins and the games do make use of California landmarks, it was also more backgrounded. The influence of, say, Mad Max is much more apparent when it comes to Junktown or the original Khans, because while the audience recognizes those '50s touches, they're still pretty alien to most wastelanders. The Master and his supermutants aren't really representative of any uniquely American identity. And while the Enclave *is* definitely all about the identity of America, the fact that they're the remnant of the former US government doesn't come up until maybe 2/3rds of the way through the game, and they get nuked pretty thoroughly in the ending. Them being back and stronger than ever in 3 is a bit of a plot hole (not that really matters, and it's not hard to explain away), given that the idea of the Enclave was that they were the descendants of the politicians, soldiers, and support staff who supposed to have fled to the oil rig in their entirety just before the bombs dropped, and the East Coast in general was generally supposed to have been even more heavily bombed than the LA Boneyard.

The heavy satire of '50s propaganda in 3, Eden's fireside chats and the ruins being Washington DC, the culture inside the Vaults still being heavily based on '50s values and Vault-Tec's filmreels, the clash between the Lyons Brotherhood and Liberty Prime against the Enclave in their literal Nazi/Galactic Empire officer's uniforms, it couldn't really be about anything else at that point. They just didn't double down on it as much in the first two games.

Edited by Unsung on Mar 25th 2020 at 1:36:50 AM

I...

I can't tell if you're joking or not.

You do realize fallout-verse is NOT irl right

like

what's he thinks is good for the Fallout fictional universe

is probably not the social-political system he wants to live in irl.

I could see a spinoff game taking place in another country since then it wouldn't need to follow series conventions as strongly.

If they're willing to make such drastic gameplay changes in spinoffs like 76 and Shelter, why not a setting change? I think a game set in Europe could be really interesting. We know very little about what happened to that part of the world, even what it was like pre-war. For all we know England could have had a 1984 thing going on and Germany had a Nazi remnant. And was it heavily hit by nukes, or was it spared since they had already destroyed themselves in the resource wars? What kind of factions have developed there? And in the process we could get a lot of lore on other areas. Russia, Africa, India, the Middle East, even China. We barely know anything about any of them compared to the US.

Or if they want to keep some of the US theming, Canada or Mexico could be a good option. We could find out a lot more about their occupation, how it affected their culture. And of course what's happening there post-war. Maybe there's more than one NCR: We could meet the New Canadian Rebublic, with mounties instead of rangers.

Edited by FGHIK on Mar 25th 2020 at 4:34:44 AM

I'd be into it.

I would agree that Fallout is essentially about America. The premise comes from how America behaved during the early Cold War, and the irony of the cheery pseudo-optimism juxtaposed to a fear of a nuclear apocalypse. Similarly, it's aesthetic of technology is pseudo-American.

Having said that, I'm not entirely opposed to going outside the US for various reasons. Ignoring the world outside the US feels a bit odd after a while. Also, it's worth noting that what's going on outside of America would actually become relevant to what's happening inside of it. For example, the NCR would come into contact with Mexican and Canadian communities pretty quickly.

To use a metaphor, it feels a bit like a variant of The Milky Way Is the Only Way (which is already pretty arbitrary*), except even more artificial, since the US border is basically gone now.

• Intergalactic space is not a complete void, there's a lot of intergalactic stars and such, it just happens to be more sparse. Even if your ships can't travel to The Andromeda in any reasonable amount of time, there's no strong reason to stop your colonization at The Milky Way's "border". It wouldn't be too hard to colonize those extragalactic star systems sitting just outside The Milky Way.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Mar 25th 2020 at 2:35:23 AM

I'd want to see Australia, it'd be funny if they remained largely normal aside from a few pockets of radiation and mutants while the rest of the world became Mad Max.

Edited by Kaiseror on Mar 25th 2020 at 4:36:30 AM

Australia is already a Death World, nukes are unnecessary.

That would be a waste of such potential though. Australia is already infamous for their wildlife. So what does it look like now when the world has scorpions the size of cars and flies the size of dogs? Spiders the size of battle tanks? Snakes with legs? Theropod-esque kangaroos? Deinosuchus sized crocodiles? Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads? Hyper-intelligent emus? Ooh, and don't forget the Thylacoleo inspired drop bears.

Come to think of it, have we ever seen Giant Spiders in Fallout? Seems like a weird omission for such a classic 50s sci-fi trope. And we know the devs can do it since they exist in Tamriel.

Edited by FGHIK on Mar 25th 2020 at 4:59:38 AM

The lack spiders always confused me since it just seems so obvious.

I've actually had an idea for a more story-driven Fallout spin-off that has you travelling to different countries on a repaired boat or plane.

Too obvious, probably. They were already doing multiple flavours of giant rats. Gotta at least try and separate yourself from all the medieval fantasy games. Hence scorpions! And mole rats!