I think F2 pushed it the wrong way, what I was expecting after first Fallout was something much closer to A Canticle for Leibowitz or Mad Max scenario - the world destroyed to the point that almost all of its surface was rendered uninhabitable, with huge deserts and former big cities contaminated by plutonium isotopes with a half-life lasting for tens of thousands years, with almost all fauna and flora species completely wiped out. What we've got instead is NCR where brahmins are breed from thin air by those ranchers and cowboys because America fuck yeah, and New Reno with its Tommy gun toting bouncers. Meh, Fallout 2 could have ended much better than this..
Well Fallout 1 from the very beggining was showing some signs of rebuilding. There were already farms and ranches, and the cities seemed stable enough on there own to become major forces for good in the wasteland.
Fallout 2 just continued that 80 years down the line, where obviously things would have got better.
The Capital Wasteland is a barren horrific land full of ruins, underground tunnels, and a few shantytowns. The Commonwealth is a pastoral bunch of farmlands and a giant swamp with one big radiation zone. Really, Boston is just poorly designed with no thought to story or sidequest design.
Fallout 3 has a couple tiny settlements, with two big towns, one a scrappy, chaotic, frontier type town, one a more succesful town built on a pre-war ruin. The entire map is filled with generic raiders with too little backstory, and there are dumb supermutants who are hostile for no reason everywhere.
Fallout 4 has a couple of tiny settlements, with two big towns, one a scrappy, chaotic, frontier type town, one a more successful town built on a pre-war ruin. The entire map is filled with generic raiders, who although they have some backstory, still come from generic gangs with very little explanation, and there are dumb super-mutants who are hostile for no reason everywhere.
And the Commonwealth is just as much of a barren ruin with no signs of rebuilding as the Capital Wasteland is.
Well, the nuclear war is a constant daily reminder of why their lives suck as the vast majority of their technology and goods are scavenged from said civilization.
Why, 200 years after the war, is all there technology and goods scavenged from said civilization?, That's completely and utterly retarded.
In 1, 2 and New Vegas there are factions which create there own weapons, new technology, farm for there own food. Very little actually comes from the pre-war world in those games.
For me, the games focus should be on good story, good exploration, and good gameplay in post-apocalypse lawless environments. Bottlecaps and Dogmeat are natural parts of that.
How are Bottlecaps and Dogmeat a natural part of that?
Bottlecaps take away from the good story aspect, because there is absolutely no explanation as to why they are still around, and Dogmeat adds to literally none of that, and is nothing more than a trope.
The Enclave may have sent its soldiers to recover a bunch of vital military equipment or other materials (since they live on an Oil Rig and might need it) or join up with a pure group of humans they made contact with for more breeding material. They might have also discovered Raven's Rock and decided to set up a base there to restore vital military systems. They gave an explanation in the games which works because of vertibirds but it still felt unncessary.
Sure, because the Enclave suddenly has an infinite amount of expendable troopers who they can send to the other side of the world.
If that was the explanation, I doubt they would be able to afford to send even a hundred troops, in which case they'd never be able to be the big, powerful protagonists you see them as.
I think a big part of the post-apocalypse is backwards thinking and poignancy from what was lost.
The big part of
Most post apocalypses. The thing about Fallout is that it never tried to keep those tropes going, it tried to focus on the post-war world, which given how far down the timeline it is, is realistic.
