So, the next Fallout ?...

[aieeegrunt]

I'd rather levels simply be dumped as well. Rage felt to me like a no levelling Fallout because you still had a go on missions system but non of that xp grindering balderdash.

[Panzersharkcat]

And because we're in GEC and it is going to be discussed anyway :

So, what changes in gameplay or in story-telling/quest design do you think should be made to improve the next Fallout ? Where would you like the game to take place ? What story would you like the main quest to be ?

There's one thing that I'd love to see in the next Fallout game, and that's a working atomic car. I'm thinking of something like the muscle car segment from Half Life 2: Episode 2 transplanted into a sandbox game, but with a trunk to put stuff in so that transporting something like, say, a garden gnome isn't a curse-inducing exercise in frustration.

You mean the Highwayman?

[Drooling Iguana]

Given how much inspiration the Fallout series owes to the Max Max movies, The Road Warrior in particular, I think it's high time we got some autogyros.

[Grumman]

There's one thing that I'd love to see in the next Fallout game, and that's a working atomic car. I'm thinking of something like the muscle car segment from Half Life 2: Episode 2 transplanted into a sandbox game, but with a trunk to put stuff in so that transporting something like, say, a garden gnome isn't a curse-inducing exercise in frustration.

You mean the Highwayman?

Something like that, yes.

[Shroom Man 777]

Apparently it's been centuries after the nuclear holocaust, and yet everything looks like shit and everyone just crawled out of a vault? Come on. I mean, by the first century after the nukes, they should already be (re)building a whole lot and by the second century, I think there'd be way way way more development than "everything looks like a wasted slum".

[Panzersharkcat]

Apparently it's been centuries after the nuclear holocaust, and yet everything looks like shit and everyone just crawled out of a vault? Come on. I mean, by the first century after the nukes, they should already be (re)building a whole lot and by the second century, I think there'd be way way way more development than "everything looks like a wasted slum".

I think it's implied that California is pretty much rebuilt by the time that New Vegas begins. Still not a reason for everywhere else to be still broken down, though.

[open_sketchbook]

Part of the reason for the lack of large-scale rebuilding is because the breakdown of civilization is perpetuated by the hostile wildlife and raiders. A lot harder to build infrastructure when you have to have constant guard up for scorpions the size of tanks and mindlessly aggressive crazies from the wasteland; much easier to build a small, self-sufficient community and cower inside the walls, with infrequent trading and scavenging by more adventurous individuals to supplement it. It's hard enough to build a road without also having to protect the workers from creatures deadly enough to take on your soldiers.

Note the amount of rebuilding is directly proportionate to how hard the area got hit; the west coast got off a lot more lightly than the east coast, so it has real nations slowly recovering pre-war infrastructure and building new stuff. Washington DC, by contrast, was plastered so bad that stuff still isn't growing right in the irradiated soil, the most organized groups are slavers, and civilization is isolated to tiny pockets. The most developed civilization we've seen on the east coast is The Pitt, which can only achieve industry on the backs of mass slavery and is barely stable.

Remember, the destruction of the US was basically total; the US and China didn't just have a nuclear exchange on major, they carpeted each other with tens of thousands of nukes. Everyone is a descendent of somebody from a Vault or other shelter; unless you got ghouled, were lucky enough to be in Vegas, or were secreted away by the Enclave, either the bombs or the subsequent radiation got you. There was fifty straight years of the US being essentially abandoned and too radioactive for humans, and when people were reintroduced into the wasteland it was with a warlord structure already in place from the isolation and division.

It doesn't help that pre-war civilization built everything from houses to food to last; people are still scavenging useful stuff, and when you can survive on the detritus of old society, you don't have as much pressure to develop your own infrastructure.

[Connor MacLeod]

There's also the problem that post-War society has used up a shit ton of certain resources - like oil. Things like oil and coal were what helped fuel the development of society the first time. How development goes the second time depends entirely on what sort of resources and fuels are available. We know they have fusion, some hydroelectric capability, some pretty advanced solar power, so there's at least the potential there for development. Of course that also depends on the tech they have available and what kind of infrastructure we're talking about. Maybe we'd see the development of wood powered steam tanks or something.

Anyhow, one thing I'd like to see is a Fallout that is set someplace other than the United Fucking States. Yes I know that's highly unlikely, but it would be nice to actually see and know how other countries are doing (as well as acknowledging other countries exist in post-War society.) What's more it gives you a way to 'turn back the clock' as it were.

[Rabid]

To explain why in Fallout there's only AMERICA, if I remember my lore correctly, you have to take into account the fact that by the time the war happened (the 2070's), China and the US were the only remaining functional Countries/Nations in the world :

- Europe and the Mideast had already fought their own resource war and nuked themselves a decade or so before at this point.
- As the world was collapsing into chaos and anarchy (New Plague, Resource Wars), the UN disbanded, and almost every governments in the world more or less ceased to exist, save for the US and China (as far as we know). Basically, the whole world turned into Somalia (the parts that weren't already radioactive rubble).
- The New Plague (which the FEV was originally created to fight) was, well, plaguing the whole world, people dying by the hundreds of millions all around the world. The US weathered the New Plague thanks to the fact that by this point it had already closed all its frontiers (Canada was annexed after the start of the New Plague, I think...) and was shooting on sight on everyone trying to break in, as well as severely limiting transportation inside of the country itself (dwindling resources helping).


What I don't know is if only the US and China were bombed during the war of 2077 ; or if the two belligerent also sprayed the rest of the world, "just in case". But even if they sprayed the rest of the world, it is likely that the spray was far thinner than on the the US or China, so...

We don't know if any country apart from the USA had an equivalent to the "Safehouse Initiative" (the Vault program). We can suspect that China had something, but there's nothing about it in the Fallout Bible as far as I know ; and even then it's likely it would be very different in nature from the american vaults : I imagine chinese Vaults would vast "centralized" vaults, with hundreds of thousands of peoples in it, in fact underground cities already populated before the bombs fell. Talking out of my ass, in this case it's likely there would have been less of these vaults, and their locations known or suspected they would have been priority target during the Great War... In short, at the end of the day, there would have been less Chinese Vault Dwellers than american ones.


As for other "countries" in the world, I doubt at this point they'd have the necessary resources or coordination to pull off a successful vault program.

[Bakustra]

There's also the problem that post-War society has used up a shit ton of certain resources - like oil. Things like oil and coal were what helped fuel the development of society the first time. How development goes the second time depends entirely on what sort of resources and fuels are available. We know they have fusion, some hydroelectric capability, some pretty advanced solar power, so there's at least the potential there for development. Of course that also depends on the tech they have available and what kind of infrastructure we're talking about. Maybe we'd see the development of wood powered steam tanks or something.

Anyhow, one thing I'd like to see is a Fallout that is set someplace other than the United Fucking States. Yes I know that's highly unlikely, but it would be nice to actually see and know how other countries are doing (as well as acknowledging other countries exist in post-War society.) What's more it gives you a way to 'turn back the clock' as it were.

Remember how in FO2 San Francisco was half offensive stereotypes and half Scientologists? I can envision a Fallout France composed entirely of mustached Parisiens in berets, with mime makeup, a propensity for snorting, and comments about how much they stink. Iguana-on-a-stick or whatever would have Brie or Gruyere ( ) stuck on, and the cars would all be Smart or Renault. There would also be a shitload of baguettes and every character would probably be cowardly under the guise of "satire". Violins would feature heavily in the music. In short, I don't trust them to avoid being offensive/stupid.

[Connor MacLeod]

There's also the problem that post-War society has used up a shit ton of certain resources - like oil. Things like oil and coal were what helped fuel the development of society the first time. How development goes the second time depends entirely on what sort of resources and fuels are available. We know they have fusion, some hydroelectric capability, some pretty advanced solar power, so there's at least the potential there for development. Of course that also depends on the tech they have available and what kind of infrastructure we're talking about. Maybe we'd see the development of wood powered steam tanks or something.

Anyhow, one thing I'd like to see is a Fallout that is set someplace other than the United Fucking States. Yes I know that's highly unlikely, but it would be nice to actually see and know how other countries are doing (as well as acknowledging other countries exist in post-War society.) What's more it gives you a way to 'turn back the clock' as it were.

Remember how in FO2 San Francisco was half offensive stereotypes and half Scientologists? I can envision a Fallout France composed entirely of mustached Parisiens in berets, with mime makeup, a propensity for snorting, and comments about how much they stink. Iguana-on-a-stick or whatever would have Brie or Gruyere ( ) stuck on, and the cars would all be Smart or Renault. There would also be a shitload of baguettes and every character would probably be cowardly under the guise of "satire". Violins would feature heavily in the music. In short, I don't trust them to avoid being offensive/stupid.

Actually I only played bits of the first fallout before getting bored and doing something else. I dont remember what, but I just remember the whole 'tribal' beginning. But them having that in there isn't suprrising: Fallout for me has alot of parallels in its themes and attitudes to 40K, minus the fantasy elements, but that parallel isn't always a good one either.

[Ryan Thunder]

As for other "countries" in the world, I doubt at this point they'd have the necessary resources or coordination to pull off a successful vault program.

What about the Moscow fallout shelters?

I know they've already featured in another game, but they're already in place.

[Rabid]

Well, maybe. The Soviets (they never collapsed, and their relations with the US where paradoxically relatively warm, given the general anti-communism of the US,) where probably the least fucked-up Nation after the Us and China in the pre-Great War period [1] - though it is probable they were also invaded by China for their Siberian oil & minerals...

To be clear, I didn't say that humanity only survived in the US or China - if only because it is very likely ghouls exist all around the world. No, what I meant is just that it's easily believable that in the Fallout Timeline (2150 and onward), North America is probably the most populated area in the world, just by virtue of the Vaults.


[1] : given the timeline diverging at the end of WWII from IRL, I like to imagine that South Africa finally conquered a good chunk of sub-saharian Africa, and that up until the shit it the fan it was a relatively prosperous country. That could allow for interesting possibilities, story-wise.

[Julhelm]

Fallout canon ever since Fallout 3 is an incoherent mess that makes no sense at all and doesn't even pretend to take its subject matter seriously. TBH it'd be better if they just rebooted the series and made something more along the lines of the original Wasteland RPG. Or it could be set in something like the O-Zone (for those who may have read that) and basically be kind of an american STALKER set in an irradiated midwest wasteland instead of fucking BoS, Ceasars Legion and robotic cowboy unicycles.

[Vendetta]

Anyhow, one thing I'd like to see is a Fallout that is set someplace other than the United Fucking States. Yes I know that's highly unlikely, but it would be nice to actually see and know how other countries are doing (as well as acknowledging other countries exist in post-War society.) What's more it gives you a way to 'turn back the clock' as it were.

Fallout is the future as envisaged by 1950s Americana and then blown up.

If you set it somewhere else, well, it's not really Fallout any more.

[aieeegrunt]

The next Fallout should be set outside the US, in Australia, and be full of cheesy Road Warrior shenanigans.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

There's also the problem that post-War society has used up a shit ton of certain resources - like oil. Things like oil and coal were what helped fuel the development of society the first time. How development goes the second time depends entirely on what sort of resources and fuels are available. We know they have fusion, some hydroelectric capability, some pretty advanced solar power, so there's at least the potential there for development. Of course that also depends on the tech they have available and what kind of infrastructure we're talking about. Maybe we'd see the development of wood powered steam tanks or something.

The problem is that the +/- 300 year timespan is just absurdly too long. Even with all the above being true, in any given FO game you see that there are still stockpiles of resources and energy reserves available, obviously in massive enough quantities that even three hundred years later you can power massive projects with it every hundred miles or so. Yet everyone (aside from the Enclave in 3) seems content to live in absolute squalor. If the resources are so readily available, even if slightly limited, shouldn't we more realistically see at least a series of short-lived, incredibly clean and advanced pockets of society and technology before they drain the local resources and fall apart again? Y'know, sort of like what we see when we look back through history?

That and, apparently, food exposed to 300 years worth of open weathering is still good to eat, aside from some mild radiation. And somehow nothing suffers the effects of environmental damage despite the fact that you can't leave a car outside for even half a century now without it weathering away to near nothing, let alone subjecting it to a nuclear apocalypse first.

I hold onto the belief that the nuclear apocalypse, among other things, also sent the entire population of the US (if not the Earth) insane, so that while everyone firmly believes three hundred years have passed... in truth it's barely been a decade, if that. It makes almost the entire setting make a lot more sense.

EDIT: And agreed that the Fallout setting should never leave the US. It's based quite heavily on a farcical look at a purely American stereotype/fantasy of the 50's. Removing that would remove pretty much the only thing that separates it from any other post-apocalyptic wasteland.

[TC Pilot]

Isn't the "1950's Americana" theme just a Fallout 3 invention? I've only played a bit of the original, but I don't recall seeing anything there to make me think it was aping '50's stereotypes.

Oni - you're off by a century. Fallout 3 takes place 200 years after the war.

There are ostensibly such "pockets of society and technology," like the guy from MIT who was chasing after his runaway cyborg who considered everyone in D.C. to be dumb, squalid savages.

[Gunhead]

The 50's tone has always been there. Fallout 3 may have brought more of it into the picture. The whole anti and pro communism propaganda was stepped up a notch in F3 for example. But the whole quasi futuristic stitch was there from fallout 1. I don't mind really, I think they did ok with it. They kept a pretty consistent design theme throughout the fallout series and in it's own nuclear powered communism fearing 50's throwback it's pretty neat.

-Gunhead

[aieeegrunt]

I hold onto the belief that the nuclear apocalypse, among other things, also sent the entire population of the US (if not the Earth) insane, so that while everyone firmly believes three hundred years have passed... in truth it's barely been a decade, if that. It makes almost the entire setting make a lot more sense.

I personally rationalized it as being set thirty or so years after the holocaust, making the teen aged lone wanderer part of the first post war generation. I mean the first thing you see after emerging from vault 101 in Fallout 3 is the ruins of Springfield, where wooden frame houses with the siding blasted off are still standing, and various bits of furniture like the ubiquitous armoirs are still intact. It does indeed make the whole setting make a lot more sense. A derelict beached aircraft carrier might still be habitable after thirty years. After three hundred you might have a keel and a heap of rusting debris.

EDIT: And agreed that the Fallout setting should never leave the US. It's based quite heavily on a farcical look at a purely American stereotype/fantasy of the 50's. Removing that would remove pretty much the only thing that separates it from any other post-apocalyptic wasteland.

A similarily farcical post apocalyptic Australia (you have a quest to find a rig that would haul that tankah, and the basis of currency is gazzzoleeeen) would fit the theme perfectly would it not? That seems like a tremendously narrow viewpoint; it's like saying every Halo game must take place on a Halo.

[Panzersharkcat]

I personally rationalized it as being set thirty or so years after the holocaust, making the teen aged lone wanderer part of the first post war generation. I mean the first thing you see after emerging from vault 101 in Fallout 3 is the ruins of Springfield, where wooden frame houses with the siding blasted off are still standing, and various bits of furniture like the ubiquitous armoirs are still intact. It does indeed make the whole setting make a lot more sense. A derelict beached aircraft carrier might still be habitable after thirty years. After three hundred you might have a keel and a heap of rusting debris.

And the founding and quick spread of the NCR in those supposed 30 years? I just went with people bomb-proofing everything even down to the friggin' furniture. Also, I remember reading about Bethesda deciding to see what cities would be like 200 years after a nuclear war. When they found out nothing would be left standing, they just went with artistic license because it'd be boring as hell walking around with no buildings anywhere or something.

[Gunhead]

If I'm asked to rationalize the fallout universe, I go for the slow decline. Basically the atomic war was the spark that caused massive fractioning of the U.S and after that small communities have sprung up and been wiped out in the 200 years or so. In 200 years you could have had dozens of NCRs rise and fall with little or no trace of them ever existing. So it's a cycle of cities being slightly rebuilt only to be burned down again in the next round of fighting.
Is it really plausible? No not really but I think it's no more less plausible than many other fictional universes and as long as they can maintain some level of internal consistency it can provide a good bouncing board for all sorts of fun atomic horror adventuring. I think the main thing about the fallout series is not to take it too seriously. It doesn't take itself too seriously and to me New Vegas struck a pretty good balance between humor and more serious issues. So if there is to be a fallout 4, I just hope they can maintain a good mix of that, no matter where it is set.

-Gunhead

[Rabid]

Yeah, the thing you have to remember about Fallout is that it never took itself that seriously in the first place - a thing Bethesda sadly seemed to forget in Fallout 3, which was really GRIMDARK in tone, sometimes needlessly so, in my opinion...

Personally, I have always seen Fallout 1 & 2 as set in a "cartoon" universe. A gory cartoon set in a post-apocalyptic retro-future full of dark-humor and references to 50's American imagery and popular culture with a tongue-in-cheek tone ; which still managed to touch on serious questions, like "what is it to be human ?".


... Thinking of it, maybe you could argue that "What is it to be Human ?" was one of the central themes of the first two games, with the Master and the Super Mutants in the first game, and the Enclave and their plans to cleanse "mutation" from the planet in the second. I don't know, literary analysis has never really been my thing (I'd leave this to Bakustra )...

[Oni Koneko Damien]

And the founding and quick spread of the NCR in those supposed 30 years? I just went with people bomb-proofing everything even down to the friggin' furniture. Also, I remember reading about Bethesda deciding to see what cities would be like 200 years after a nuclear war. When they found out nothing would be left standing, they just went with artistic license because it'd be boring as hell walking around with no buildings anywhere or something.

What about the NCR? Take a look at nearly any 30 year spread in history beyond the Renaissance and you can likely find expansion/change similar to that level.

[FaxModem1]

We could have a Fallout game take place in Canada, American Territory. Considering that in the Fallout universe, the US conquered Canada in the mid 21st century for their oil reserves, it's still America. We could have mutant moose and the descendants of the Mounties becoming the only thing holding the northern frontier together. While at the same time you can have some Enclave based up there, and plenty of other Canadian stereotypes and other wackiness.