Fallout 3 QA guy on subject of "200 years later"

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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Dan Ross, a QA guy on Fallout 3, talks about why the world of Fallout 3 looks like it does, with wooden houses still standing 200 years after the war and with society having progressed very little.<blockquote>This is something I've thought about personally as well. One thing you have to keep in mind is that you are looking at an alternate future with an emphasis on Science! rather than the normal sciences we are accustomed to. AI supercomputers use vacuum tubes, radiation doesn't have a half-life, Gamma rays create The Hulk instead of cancer and things are just built differently; made to last. "They don't make 'em like they used to" came about because things built back when resources were cheap were really well-made. Now imagine that being carried out into the future where everything was well-made.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while 200 years is a long time, but it's not so long when you compare it to the "age" they are in. 200 years ago from our time things were a lot different, but there was an economic and social support structure in place that allowed things to advance as quickly as they did. Imagine if all the industries that existed were simply not there and the population numbered merely in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of millions?

People don't have time to develop new technology or clear rubble when finding uncontaminated food and water takes up 75% of their waking day. There are no supermarkets, independent farms get raided (so why grow anything?) and any settlements that sprout up are just as likely to be torn apart by the inhabitants as outside forces. It's very similar to the "Dark Ages" where things remained the same for a very long time and people lived by tradition simply because it was the only guaranteed way to make a living in a harsh world.

Now add in all the nasty Wasteland creatures, ghouls and mutants... factions all fighting amongst themselves for resources (War never changes, I hear.) and you have an especially harsh world. 200 years of that? I wouldn't expect much change in so short a time when just living is enough to keep anyone occupied full-time. </blockquote>Sensible enough. Though one should note progression of time is a problem for Fallout, and you can't keep setting sequels decades after the previous game. It's a mystery why Fallout 3 isn't set around the time of Fallout 1, anyway.

Thanks Ausir.
 
It's a mystery why Fallout 3 isn't set around the time of Fallout 1, anyway.
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Because then they wouldn't be able to use all the cool factions from FO1 and FO2 on the East Coast, of course!
 
You can't help but think that that DC would suffer a nuclear attack and a hit would leave the city flattened. Granted, DC has a lot of very sturdy buildings, but I don't think there should be much of a DC.

What the Dan Ross is saying seems to suggest creative license in the "alternative future." But this also creates an opportunity for sloppy game design and emersion.

Quite simply, the game designers can hear criticism such as "WTF? This isn't realistic? This isn't logical, this makes no sense" and can respond with "hey alternative universe means physics works differently."

A PnP post-apocalyptic game system- the Morrow Project- actually thought about this. In that game the survivors come up about 150 years after nuclear holocaust in small vaults where they've been living in hybernation chambers. As I recall, the wooden buildings are all gone.

(See here for a brief description of the Morrow Project- which looks a bit more like an adult post apoc RPG than Bethesda is capable of creating.- oh and it has vaults too.

I can't see how wooden buildings can stand after so long. Especially not with those huge cockroaches we saw in Tactics.

However, an earlier game moght have meant that they couldn't have used the BOS, Super Mutants or the Enclave. Oh who am I kidding- its not like Bethesda understands canon.
 
I think the pitfalls are not in the general state of things but in the details. Things have to make sense in context. One thing that stood out for me as iffy was the quest described in a preview of going to the Super Duper Mart to retrieve medicine. Because supermarkets would stock medicine, right? And then you actually find it on the shelf where it was being sold. Assuming this description does the quest justice, this is bad not because it requires medicine to survive intact for 200 years, but because it requires everyone who has lived in and around the supermarket for 200 years to be morons. One of those can be justified by invoking artistic license and narrative conventions, the other cannot.
 
Or the stuff on the Chinese spy's corpse in the one-man shelter in an area infested with raiders.
 
blimey! i think some of you lot need to go and actually experience a nuclear war rather than even think about playing or discussing a game. because thats what Fallout 3 is; a game. unless im mistaken and each copy shipped out will contain a mini nuke that will render most of the country a bit buggered.

the wooden houses wouldn't still be standing.....dear god man! its a game!
 
Oh guys we have to stop pointing out when things make zero sense, because it's a game! Quickly, shut your brains off, there will be no thinking about games EVER.

Ausir said:
Because then they wouldn't be able to use all the cool factions from FO1 and FO2 on the East Coast, of course!
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Yeeeaaah...

No seriously, the more I think about it, the more it stops making sense. Why is Fallout 3 set after Fallout 2?
 
Ausir said:
Why is Fallout 3 set after Fallout 2?
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Of course because it wouldn't be a real sequel if it wasn't.
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Well...it isn't.

And even so, chronology doesn't really affect something's status as a sequel, now does it? Only if it would tell the story of before Fallout 1 would it be a prequel.

A bit of a simplification. Bethification?
 
And even so, chronology doesn't really affect something's status as a sequel, now does it? Only if it would tell the story of before Fallout 1 would it be a prequel.
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Well, tell it to the people from Bethsoft forum that claim that WoW is a direct sequel to Warcraft and that gameplay has nothing to do with a game being a sequel.
 
Ausir said:
Well, tell it to the guy from Bethsoft forum that claims that WoW is a direct sequel to Warcraft.
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...

Well, it is in the same sense Fallout 3 is a sequel to Fallout 2, I suppose.
 
Brother None said:
No seriously, the more I think about it, the more it stops making sense. Why is Fallout 3 set after Fallout 2?
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Because The Enclave were wiped out in Fallout 2 and it would look utterly ridiculous to have them appear in Fallout 3 IF that game were set in a later time.

:roll:

OMG, it is set in a later time.

:roll:

OMG.
 
Because The Enclave were wiped out in Fallout 2 and it would look utterly ridiculous to have them appear in Fallout 3 IF that game were set in a later time.
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Now, even the makers of Van Buren assumed that Navarro survived. The problem is not them surviving in some capacity (it is doubtful that the destruction of the Oil Rig would destroy all of them), but them being the main villains again on the other side of the continent.
 
Ausir said:
Well, tell it to the people from Bethsoft forum that claim that WoW is a direct sequel to Warcraft and that gameplay has nothing to do with a game being a sequel.
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:crazy: Yowza. Now I believe I've heard everything.

Personally, though, I wouldn't care if this particular game were set years after FO2, between FO1 and 2, or some other time... but for the ridiculous ret-conning of the factions being in DC in the first place. And the single-person shelter tubes.
 
To be honest I think fallout 3 would have been better made between the periods of fallout 1 and 2. Clear up that 80 year gap. It could have been in california still, but since it is in DC, which you would think would have been nuked harder than any other place, it really has no connection to callifornia anyway, even if you set it in DC in the year 2210.
 
That sounds reasonable. Though the trick is, to make sure it has no connection to the California in the Fallout universe, they'd have to make up their own factions. Bethsoft doesn't seem to be capable of this, though.
 
Meh, the ending movie says you completely wiped out The Enclave. And if it was only Navarro, it's highly doubtful that they'd still be around in large numbers, especially after all that time, and still flying their VertiBirds and so on.

The only reason I see for them setting FO3 after FO2 is simple: it allows them to change more. If they had made a game that was set between FO and FO2, they would not have been able to change the PipBoy2000 into the PipBoy3000 with such ease, they would not have been able to mess with the Power Armor the way they have, their story would have made even less sense than it does now and so on. They could have done so nonetheless, but why complicate the matters if you can just beam to the future and let past time fill in the gaps.
 
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