A Thought About Some of the Radio Music

[Dr Fallout]

THe apocalypse destroyed all the holotapes except the ones with 50's music or the hundreds of Holotapes we find just lying on desks on destroyed buildings (like the ones on Nick Valentine's crappy companion quest).

Are people even serious with these kind of defenses? Gotta be an apologist even for the dumbest shit!

Yeah I find some of Someguy's attempts at defending stuff stupid. Mainly because what he's defending is stupid.

 

[RangerBoo]

THe apocalypse destroyed all the holotapes except the ones with 50's music or the hundreds of Holotapes we find just lying on desks on destroyed buildings (like the ones on Nick Valentine's crappy companion quest).

Are people even serious with these kind of defenses? Gotta be an apologist even for the dumbest shit!

Yeah I find some of Someguy's attempts at defending stuff stupid. Mainly because what he's defending is stupid.

Someguy37 is lost in his own little fantasy world.

 

[Dr Fallout]

THe apocalypse destroyed all the holotapes except the ones with 50's music or the hundreds of Holotapes we find just lying on desks on destroyed buildings (like the ones on Nick Valentine's crappy companion quest).

Are people even serious with these kind of defenses? Gotta be an apologist even for the dumbest shit!

Yeah I find some of Someguy's attempts at defending stuff stupid. Mainly because what he's defending is stupid.

Someguy37 is lost in his own little fantasy world.

Some of the reasons he has are actually quite good, but his attempt at defending raiders who attack everyone was a complete failure...

 

[Monco]

Why is Valentine's quest crappy? I haven't done in yet.

It's literally just a big fetch quest where you have to find like 9 holotapes from all across the map. It's basically like that one radio quest in NV, except the pay off dialogue with Nick isn't nearly as good as Hanlon's (spoilers: basically he just says that finding Eddie Winter was the only thing tying him to his former, pre-war life, and now that Winter is dead he is "free")

 

[Walpknut]

You also have zero choice on it, you can't even talk Nick out of killing Eddie nor to stop indulging in someone else's grudges or anything.

Seems put together at the last minute, like everything else in this game.

 

[MercenarySnake]

That quest sounds real lackluster.

 

[Walpknut]

Also, like everything in this game it basically says that murder is the one and only solution to any of life's problems.

 

[PossibleCabbage]

A question.

Do we know that "holotapes" are the most advanced storage available before the bombs fell? If there's no textual confirmation about this, we could assume that holotapes were an outdated technology in 2077, so that modern music wasn't widely distributed on holotapes, and the storage preferred by folks in the 2070s was less durable.

 

[Walpknut]

Holodiscs could store 4tb of data.

No idea why a futuristic piece of technology would only have old music when it works on digital files. Altho Bethesda changed them to Holotapes cuz WACKY 50s!!!!! a single Holodisk could easily hold multiple people's entire music collection.

 

[Ilosar]

A question.

Do we know that "holotapes" are the most advanced storage available before the bombs fell? If there's no textual confirmation about this, we could assume that holotapes were an outdated technology in 2077, so that modern music wasn't widely distributed on holotapes, and the storage preferred by folks in the 2070s was less durable.

You can find a time capsule made in 2076 (IIRC) in the depths of an old school, and it explicitely says that holotapes are the go-to storage device of the era. Many messages dating to just before the war (or literally the day the bombs fell) are stored in holotapes. So that's not the explanation.

As for the OP, really guys, the explanation is a simple Doylist one; Bethesda can't/doesn't want to make up what music is like in an alternate universe 2077.

 

[Someguy37]

As for the OP, really guys, the explanation is a simple Doylist one; Bethesda can't/doesn't want to make up what music is like in an alternate universe 2077.

Given that music is largely defined by the culture of the time, wouldn't 2077 music essentially be just "new" 50's music, given that 2077 was how the 50's imagined the future?

 

[BairdEC]

The "Treasure of Jamaica Plains" included a holodisc, and stated that it was the state of the art at the time it was placed there. (The bombs fell about two weeks later.)

 

[Askorti]

As for the OP, really guys, the explanation is a simple Doylist one; Bethesda can't/doesn't want to make up what music is like in an alternate universe 2077.

Given that music is largely defined by the culture of the time, wouldn't 2077 music essentially be just "new" 50's music, given that 2077 was how the 50's imagined the future?

Doubt it. How do you imagine music will be like in 50 years? I doubt you would expect it to be the same as it is today, right? You might not know what it will sound like, but I suspect you would think of it as something that's definitely going to be different to what we listen to today.
So the setting being 50's vision of the future should have things that are different to what said 50's actually had, because everyone expects future to be different to the present.

So music in fallout sounding like it's from the 50's is completely illogical.

 

[Someguy37]

Doubt it. How do you imagine music will be like in 50 years? I doubt you would expect it to be the same as it is today, right? You might not know what it will sound like, but I suspect you would think of it as something that's definitely going to be different to what we listen to today.
So the setting being 50's vision of the future should have things that are different to what said 50's actually had, because everyone expects future to be different to the present.

So music in fallout sounding like it's from the 50's is completely illogical.

That's not really a valid comparison because the real world wasn't undergone such a complete and total cultural regression in the modern day like the Fallout world did. Music in the real world keep changing because culture keep changing into something new. The Fallout unvierse just went into a big loop sometime after the counter culture era of the 60's, and before the 2240s/50s.

Similarly, idealized versions of the future always include things like music from whatever time period is making up their version of the future. Humans are, by nature, short sighted, and prone to simply jamming in whatever is around them into the spaces. Many old movies and the like from the 50's, showing idealized versions of the future, included music from the 50's in their idealized versions of the future becuase
A. That's the music they had on hand
B. Since it was their own era's music, they naturally had a superiority complex in regards to it, and thus thought that any sort of perfect future would have it too because its just "that good" in their opinion.

 

[Walpknut]

We are missing another Bethesda retcon here, in the World of Fallout at some point in the mid 60's the american government banned production of all new music and they probably punished violations with death. About the only explanation for Bethesda retarded radio obssesion in their games.

 

[Askorti]

Doubt it. How do you imagine music will be like in 50 years? I doubt you would expect it to be the same as it is today, right? You might not know what it will sound like, but I suspect you would think of it as something that's definitely going to be different to what we listen to today.
So the setting being 50's vision of the future should have things that are different to what said 50's actually had, because everyone expects future to be different to the present.

So music in fallout sounding like it's from the 50's is completely illogical.

That's not really a valid comparison because the real world wasn't undergone such a complete and total cultural regression in the modern day like the Fallout world did. Music in the real world keep changing because culture keep changing into something new. The Fallout unvierse just went into a big loop sometime after the counter culture era of the 60's, and before the 2240s/50s.

Similarly, idealized versions of the future always include things like music from whatever time period is making up their version of the future. Humans are, by nature, short sighted, and prone to simply jamming in whatever is around them into the spaces. Many old movies and the like from the 50's, showing idealized versions of the future, included music from the 50's in their idealized versions of the future becuase
A. That's the music they had on hand
B. Since it was their own era's music, they naturally had a superiority complex in regards to it, and thus thought that any sort of perfect future would have it too because its just "that good" in their opinion.

I think you're forgetting about the 1970's and 80's vibes of fallout 1 and 2.
It really is just Fallout 3 and 4 that make people think that culture didn't progress past 1950's. There are people who at first though that Fallout 3 was set in alternative 1950's instead of future inspired by what science fiction in 1950's envisioned.

 

[PossibleCabbage]

We are missing another Bethesda retcon here, in the World of Fallout at some point in the mid 60's the american government banned production of all new music and they probably punished violations with death. About the only explanation for Bethesda retarded radio obssesion in their games.

I believe in the Fallout 3 manual they state that in the 1950s America undergoes cultural stagnation so it's possible that music released in the 1950s in our world didn't get made until 100 years later in the Fallout world. I mean, 100+ years of cultural freeze is kind of implausible, but so are deathclaws.

 

[Someguy37]

I think you're forgetting about the 1970's and 80's vibes of fallout 1 and 2.

It really is just Fallout 3 and 4 that make people think that culture didn't progress past 1950's. There are people who at first though that Fallout 3 was set in alternative 1950's instead of future inspired by what science fiction in 1950's envisioned.

I never really got 70s/80s vibes out of Fallout 1/2. Outside of a few small references to like Terminator via Skynet, which Avellone later said Skynet's name wasn't canon anymore, and some easter eggs which were never canon. But even Fo3, NV, and 4 make references to 70s/80s movies and the like.

And I know many people who thought the same of Fallout 1/2 and NV. The only game this wasn't true of was Tactics, which got heavily criticized for veering off from the 50's vie of the older games.

 

[Hassknecht]

We are missing another Bethesda retcon here, in the World of Fallout at some point in the mid 60's the american government banned production of all new music and they probably punished violations with death. About the only explanation for Bethesda retarded radio obssesion in their games.

I believe in the Fallout 3 manual they state that in the 1950s America undergoes cultural stagnation so it's possible that music released in the 1950s in our world didn't get made until 100 years later in the Fallout world. I mean, 100+ years of cultural freeze is kind of implausible, but so are deathclaws.

Yeah, it says that. Personally, I never really had that feeling from Fallout 1 and 2, though. To me it always felt like Mad Max happening in the World of Tomorrow, not just the World of Tomorrow with nuclear holocaust added to it. I don't think it was really meant to be that much stuck in the 50's, just, y'know, inspired by it, especially with the technology. Having the Ink Spots in in- and outro never struck me as a canonical depiction of the culture, but more like an ironic counterpoint to the grimness of the actual world.

/edit:
Forgot that post:

I think you're forgetting about the 1970's and 80's vibes of fallout 1 and 2.

It really is just Fallout 3 and 4 that make people think that culture didn't progress past 1950's. There are people who at first though that Fallout 3 was set in alternative 1950's instead of future inspired by what science fiction in 1950's envisioned.

I never really got 70s/80s vibes out of Fallout 1/2. Outside of a few small references to like Terminator via Skynet, which Avellone later said Skynet's name wasn't canon anymore, and some easter eggs which were never canon. But even Fo3, NV, and 4 make references to 70s/80s movies and the like.

And I know many people who thought the same of Fallout 1/2 and NV. The only game this wasn't true of was Tactics, which got heavily criticized for veering off from the 50's vie of the older games.

Dunno, many visuals and tropes in Fallout 1 and 2 are straight out of Mad Max and A Boy And His Dog (the movie, not the book) and similar movies from that timeframe.

 

[Walpknut]

So what¡ "cultural stagnation" means every single person ever agrees to never ever make new music? then the typical "but this world has monsters so anything goes!" dumbass argument rears it's head... That's not how writting fiction works, at all.

Specially considering the Pre war world's ultra consumerist culture and the apparent prevalence of radios even in 2077, just from that Big Hit songs are ensured to be produced each year, just like in our own, artistic expression rarely asks the culture for permission so it's pretty nonsensical that with the growing social unrest there wouldn't be any counter culture genres either. Also how would cultural stagnation suddenly mean that the Ink Spots would magically be born 100 years later? It really makes no sense, the original Fallouts had references to rock music, there are even TOOL posters on Fallout 1, New Vegas showed that the Hippy movement happened... Just makes no sense for only 50's music to be in there.

I would rather have no forced Radio in the next Fallout game, but Bethesda made that a staple, even when they really halfassed the DJ on Fallout 4. If we have to have a DJ and a radio then original music would be a much better touch for stablishing a setting. Would probably cost them less as Post war music would have to work with more limited assets.


Totally no 70/80s influences, of course:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Leather_jacket_(Fallout)
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_cultural_references


There is a huge difference between Retrofuturism and just it being the 50's, something that neither Bethesda or their fanboys seem to realize.