By the time of New Vegas, will forests have returned to the world?

Atomic Postman

Atomic Postman

Vault Archives Overseer
As it has been discussed before, we know that a lot of plant life would have returned to the world after 200 years, so what I'm wondering is that at the time of New Vegas, could locations like in the picture below exist?

9yeNwtu.jpg


Or even this?
pz4cEX8.jpg
 
Was this just an excuse to post pretty pictures?

And I'd say yeah. Trees can grown substantially within a hundred years. But more like the upper picture. Scrub and brush is borderline weed-like in it's growth. Also, Fallout 2 shows some scrawny trees and whatnot.

Forests would be fun in a Fallout game. The problem I generally come across is populating it with monsters, since in North America, generally the only hostile mutated wildlife that would reasonably be there are mutated bears and Pumas.
 
google "nature reclaiming buildings" and click "images".
Undisturbed, I wager anything not brick and mortar/concrete would be completely demolished by nature within 100 years. It all depends on the climate. Drier, arid biomes would take much longer.
 
In the real world, yes. Fallout operates on slightly different physical laws, though, so everything will probably remain a desert unless someone activates a mcguffin process to restore the world.
 
Hassknecht said:
Fallout operates on slightly different physical laws,
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Where is this stated, specificly in terms of climate? (200 year old edible snacky smores from Bethesa don't count)
The first two games take place in arid desert. So, 100, 500 years into the future, barring some sort of major climate changing "event", they would remain desert. Bethesda's east coast game, well, I could list nonsensical shit ad nausem.
 
mobucks said:
Where is this stated, specificly in terms of climate? (200 year old edible snacky smores from Bethesa don't count)
The first two games take place in arid desert. So, 100, 500 years into the future, barring some sort of major climate changing "event", they would remain desert. Bethesda's east coast game, well, I could list nonsensical shit ad nausem.
Click to expand...
It's not explicitly stated, but it's general consensus that Fallout is based around SCIENCE! and thus pulp-visions of the future. That's why there's an eternal desert instead of a nuclear winter.
 
It's the whole Science! thing. Radiation in Fallout is supposed to work according to the whims of atomic age popular paranoia and pulp. Wastelands back then were more or less permanently stunted, if not irreparably scorched, Earth, for the same reason that radiation made things big, and that The Glow is still deadly after 100 years, and that the ocean in F1 (and 3) was still a toxic mess.

It should be noted, too, that while Southern California was chosen for the first game's setting partially because of its arid nature, the F1 and 2 maps actually cover a lot of ground in the fertile Central Valley region, too, as well as the wetter and more temperate mountain and inland areas. The Glow itself is probably pretty close to San Diego, which is one of the most year-round pleasant cities in the world. As of the mid 2240s, the whole lot of them were still brown and scrubby except for those bits that had been G.E.C.K.ed (Shady Sands and Vault City).

Edit: what Hassknecht said, only with more words and half an hour later than I thought I said it. Guess I'll be sure to tap "send" on my phone a little harder next time.
 
I don't get why the forests would even have been gone in the first place. The ICBMs would have been launched against cities and other places with lots of infrastructure in it, not carpet bombed all over the face of the planet.
 
Fallout 1 and 2 both have maps with trees. The trees have leaves on them. The fact that the leaves are brown/black can be attributed to SCIENCE! I guess.
 
The impression I got was that those were a mix of dead trees and sickly growth that was the best the land could manage. In fairness, we didn't get to see anything south of Shady Sands after the mid-2160s, but we know that none of the land directly adjacent to the hex the town is in looks any different than the wasteland ever did.

I'm of two minds about the re-establishment of the ecosystem in Fallout. On one hand, it could provide for new and interesting locations and area types, which is going to be important going forward as long as Bethesda has the franchise and continues it in their typical style (so conceivably, until hell freezes over or everyone's so sick of it that it'll be another decade before anyone wants to pick it back up). I enjoyed Point Lookout and Honest Hearts more than I did 3/4 of the homogenous grey capital (and if I'm being honest, God help me, maybe as much as 1/3 of the homogenous brown Mojave depending on the mood I'm in when I boot up). On the other hand, the further we get from blasted cityscapes and hard, hostile wastes, the closer the franchise gets to morphing from Fallout into an Atompunk Red Dead Redemption.
 
Well if Point Lookout and Zion are any indication, there have to be forests and more gren around the country by the time of New Vegas, and probably even before that. It would be interesting to visit colder regions.
 
Also the farming of crops across all games sans 3 is due to two different types of photosynthesis, because SCIENCE!
 
Yamu said:
On the other hand, the further we get from blasted cityscapes and hard, hostile wastes, the closer the franchise gets to morphing from Fallout into an Atompunk Red Dead Redemption.
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I think this is the real elephant in the room when it comes to future Fallout games; assuming these games are set after the events of NV, the "post-apocalyptic" tone of the series is becoming harder and harder to maintain in a plausible (read: internally consistent rather than "realistic") manner.

The existence of the NCR shows that there are clearly enough people with enough resources now to begin rebuilding something resembling the old society, complete with a standing army and republican institutions; realistically I would expect that the age of scavenging from the old world is probably about over, and that people are probably now focusing on building things anew. I think this is why groups like the BOS, which are obsessed with hoarding old world tech, have become pretty much irrelevant; two centuries after the bombs fell, we see that there are still some sweet spots ripe for plunder like Repconn, Sierra Madre, etc, but for it to continue much longer seems unbelievable. There are only so many abandoned military bases out there. If the NCR and Legion can manufacture enough materials to equip armies, then it probably makes more sense for them to focus on developing their own forms of tech and culture, rather than relying on the diminishing returns of ruins and memories.

To me the biggest design/story-telling question that any Fallout title set after Vegas is going to have to answer is this: is it going to maintain an aesthetic of "right after the bombs fell" in the manner of FO3 just for the sake of retaining the "post-apocalyptic adventure" label, or is it going to seriously try and grapple with what happens once societies move beyond the immediate aftermath of devastation, pick up the pieces and build something new?

The only real ways I can see of dodging this question would be to set a new Fallout game earlier in the timeline, or else in an isolated part of the country with little to no contact with the West Coast; maybe even have it so that in this section of the country, the Vaults don't open until significantly later, so that we return to a setting more like FO1, with communities that are less developed and infrastructure that hasn't been touched yet.
 
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Well, I really enjoyed the post-post-apocalyptic setting of King's Dark Tower books, so an Atompunk Red Dead Redemption would be right up in my alley :D
But it will be kinda hard to keep a setting 'true to Fallout' if the ruinous feel fades away. Going elsewhere or earlier is the way to go, I think. The future is too bright ;)
 
Fallout 2 already has forest areas.


As always, just because you don't see x in form of y, it doesn't mean that x doesn't exist in the Fallout world. In the end it's still just a game and especially Fo1 and 2 were limited a lot by tile sets, color palette, computer tech (RAM, for example) and amount of disc space available.
 
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Jacobstown and Mount Charleston are full of trees, snow and wildlife, so are Zion valley in the add-on Honest Hearts, full of wildlife, trees, plants and no radiation at all, besides some caves full with toxic waste.

Also in the Mojave it grows plants, not actual trees but bushes, flowers stuff like that.
 
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After reading through the thread I think you can achieve a happy medium with plant growth:

Around/near water sources: Tall green/yellow grass,several trees, generally these areas are looking pretty good
Rural Areas away from bombed areas:Some grass (Yellow desert grass,like the Mojave) and a few bushes, maybe the occasional tree.
Close to cities/towns: sand and rock mainly, with the occasional bush or small patch of yellow grass
Cities/towns:Sand and Rock, desert environment in the city, rubble and dust.

Opinions?


I think the Fallout:New Vegas mod : Project Brazil, did a good job with getting the wasteland desert to plant life ratio correct,but I do think there are too many dead trees and the sky is still fucked up (Even though we know the sky is normal by Fallout 2.)
 
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