Culture of Fallout

[Izak]

The only way to make a Utopia is through a dystopia.
Brainwashing the masses to believe only what you tell, take down freedoms, destroy individuality until all that's left of their soul is an empty space allowing the government to pour whatever mixture it wants.

Dr Fallout for president.

 

[peadar87]

The only way to make a Utopia is through a dystopia.

Brainwashing the masses to believe only what you tell, take down freedoms, destroy individuality until all that's left of their soul is an empty space allowing the government to pour whatever mixture it wants.

How did that work out in Eastern Europe?

 

[DVL]

They kinda did that with the Brotherhood. Veronica, if you ask her, will tell you how the Brotherhood looks down on same-sex relationships since they are a isolationist faction that shuns outsiders and because of it breeding is mandatory in the BoS since its their only way to get new members with the exception of rare occasions where they let outsiders join their ranks.
The Legion also looks down on homosexuality as, just like the Brotherhood, breeding new soldiers is mandatory and to engage in same-sex activities is punishable by death in the Legion.

Rose actually used "Legionary way" or some such turn of phrase to suggest that she thought you might be gay. Whether Legionaries actually did bang each other or not, or whether this was just her way of taking the piss out of the Legion, I don't know. But it makes sense to me that they might know about homosexuality within the ranks and just not care. Not at all dissimilar to Spartan warriors -- since it encourages loyalty within the ranks.

===

Putting that aside, I sort of think Fallout culture as people thinking that the future would be the raygun gothic and the Jetsons but instead found themselves in Robocop.

 

[Deleted member 98605]

I distinctly remember that generally, once the oil ran out circa 2050, it started going to high hell. The European Commonwealth and the Middle Eastern Bloc or whatever went to war nearly exactly right quick, and there's no way the USA didn't feel the affects of that. The virus was hitting US cities, which always seemed to me to be the antithesis of all that 60s and 70s planning, from looking at the intro of Fallout 1 alone - less 'we did it guys!' and more 'Bees in a hive' or 'Ants in a hill' crowdedness and 80s level of violence already in full swing.

By the time of the Great War, the people alive would have had 20+ years of living in a collapsing world. Your mind can fill in the little details beyond the canon lore, but it was no where near pretty in any case; with the degradation of soft power for pure hard power, with hungry and scared kids joining the army just to have bread shooting down hungry and scared kids who don't want to join the army but still need to survive. The dreams of detente and prosperity have all been forgotten and it's either the US survives, or no one survives.

Then by 2077, the government has all but abandoned everything and everyone it doesn't consider salvagable; when Maxson rebelled no one came by to squash him - the guy who is guarding one of the most ambitious projects of the USA, who rebels, is allowed to go scott free. Similar incidents could had been expected for years beforehand and concurrent with his, and it points to a complete destruction of order within the government itself. From that, one can easily imagine how horrible life would be in the big cities by that time and the situation would be some kind of mix of Mad Max 1 and The Forgotten War (When Mendoza returns in 2029); and then someone sets off a first strike, and the missiles fly.

So, culture wise, it would be the darkest days of the 80s, really, for twenty years on end, from the top of the White House to the end of the alley in Brooklyn or Los Angeles; a society barely functioning on the best days and even then only due to the sole fact that the government looks your way because you're useful and there's still some good people trying to keep it all together; but even then they die off or run away or are broken down.

 

[Hassknecht]

So, culture wise, it would be the darkest days of the 80s, really, for twenty years on end, from the top of the White House to the end of the alley in Brooklyn or Los Angeles; a society barely functioning on the best days and even then only due to the sole fact that the government looks your way because you're useful and there's still some good people trying to keep it all together; but even then they die off or run away or are broken down.

Agreed. I always thought of pre-war America as heading straight towards Mad Max 1 happening to the Jetsons.

 

[Atomic Postman]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head @The-Artist-64. The original Fallouts were inspired heavily by Mad Max and Mad Max The Road Warrior which were made in the late 70's and early 80's. The early Fallout games were pretty anachronistic. Black Isle did a good job mixing different periods and their cultures together to give the Fallout setting its unique flare.

I think you're exaggerating, a lot. The 1950s influence was always strong. Just take a look at the trailers for Fallout 2 for God's sake, or even the blasted intros of the games. I know we all hate Bethesda but pretending that anything they did was totally wrong in regards to Fallout is just silly. Yes, Fallout is not just retro-50s, it's a careful mix of 50s retrofuturism with cyberpunk and art-deco, but in no way is it influenced as heavily by the 80s as it is the 50s.

 

[Black Angel]

I think you're exaggerating, a lot. The 1950s influence was always strong. Just take a look at the trailers for Fallout 2 for God's sake, or even the blasted intros of the games. I know we all hate Bethesda but pretending that anything they did was totally wrong in regards to Fallout is just silly. Yes, Fallout is not just retro-50s, it's a careful mix of 50s retrofuturism with cyberpunk and art-deco, but in no way is it influenced as heavily by the 80s as it is the 50s.

But is the 50s really had that much influence like you thought it is? You've only mentioned the intros, is there anything else throughout the game itself? And like RangerBoo's said, The-Artist-64 nailed it.

Although, I'm not exactly on the loop on this whole 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s stuff, since I was born some few years before Fallout was released and I'm not a U.S citizen, too, so....

 

[Atomic Postman]

But is the 50s really had that much influence like you thought it is? You've only mentioned the intros, is there anything else throughout the game itself? And like RangerBoo's said, The-Artist-64 nailed it.

Although, I'm not exactly on the loop on this whole 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s stuff, since I was born some few years before Fallout was released and I'm not a U.S citizen, too, so....

Yes, like I said the trailers. Then there's all the perk/vault boy art, the style of the cars, advertisements and media that we see from before the war. The Vault Dweller's Survival Guide manual also reeks of 50's Duck and Cover. The Fallout Bible also explicitly mentions that Fallout is based directly on 50's pulp science fiction. It's inarguable that the 50s is the greatest historical influence on Fallout.

 

[Hassknecht]

I always felt like Fallout was the World Of Tomorrow that underwent a Mad-Max-80s-style apocalypse.

 

[Vergil]

Asking questions about Pre-War Fallout with bethesda at the reigns is like asking questions about how your fast food is made. Your gonna end up disappointed and a bit disgusted by the answers.

 

[Earth]

I suppose the difference between Interplay/Black Isle's Fallout's and Bethesda's is that the pre-war world in the original Fallout's didn't matter all that much. There was some sci-fi tech, some implied fascistic government towards the end. But really it didn't matter. All that mattered was people were living in the post-fallout world now. A world of mutants, radiation etc. The series has always looked forwards, and very rarely back.

Bethesda is clearly obsessed with the pre-war aesthetics, and care more for '50s retro-futurism than they do post-apocalyptic art. More this:

And less this: