Fallout Atmosphere

The Man From Nowhere

The Man From Nowhere

It Wandered In From the Wastes
I just wanted to take the time to talk and create a thread about how awesome the whole atmosphere is in the Fallout universe. One big reason for this is the atmospheric score by Mark Morgan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SefxmOv-88M





The soundtrack gives the game a sense of mystery, creepiness, and death around the corner that the Fallout 4 lack. The earlier games also have a darker, more serious, and edgy razor sharp unforgiving tone to it.

There's nothing like traveling to The Glow and on the way the world map shows more and more of the land scorched by bombs until eventually you come upon a massive crater. When you go inside its deafly quiet. No enemies. No sounds. Nothing but completely blackened piles of bone and dust that used to be living people.

Greatest. atmosphere. ever.

There's nothing like coming upon and interacting with the populated areas of the casinos post-apocalypse which run entirely by mafia gangs.

Or walking into the town hall of Nipton and seeing bodies scattered throughout the entire building and vicious Legion dogs left behind with this in the background


There's nothing like overlooking the Mojave atop a hill at nighttime all alone with caves nearby and Vipers within a local radius, and the bright city of New Vegas in the distance.
 
I love the desolate "what's out there" vibe fallout 1 gives me. And i love the lawless freakish nature of Fallout 2. But I dunno... at this stage in the timeline a western atmosphere works best.
 
The Followers of the Apocalypse theme is on the top.

The necropolis version is creepy, gives that hostile that death is around vibe.
 
Mark Morgan is amazing. Torment's score was also incredible. I don't think I'll ever get tired of listening to My Chryslis Highwayman or Sigil Battle.
 
I've always thought Fallout worked well as an atmospheric horror.

What I have always noticed about any of the fallout (especially New Vegas) is that their soundtracks make you feel lonely, isolated, not knowing if you're either a step away from danger and conflict or if there's even life within 50 or more miles. There's comfort and yet unsettling feelings to roaming the desert at night.

Inon Zur did a decent job at ambients in Fallout: New Vegas.


 
I enjoy the more unrealistic aspects of fallout 2 but I also like the haunting atmosphere of fallout 1. In my opinion, there should be a mixture of the two, but leaning more towards a creepy, desolate wasteland.
 
BoS track is the best, dont know why they didnt copy it into other fallout games like they did with the art assets and some other tracks. Zelda games recycled music and it worked well.
 
mfkndggrfll said:
BoS track is the best,
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Yeah Devin Townsend is a kick ass musician. If you don't know his stuff check out his Ziltoid album. That said, heavy metal ain't a great fit for fallout. Neither is HACKIN N WACKIN N SMACKIN as much as I enjoy these songs on their own, within the context of the games they feel out of place and only in there because the original had "maybe" in the credits. Fallout works best with ambient music. Even so I find the radio DJ a completely acceptable in universe alternative. In fact, I think it's genius.

/ edit suddenly realized ya probably weren't talking about fallout: BOS for ps2
 
mfkndggrfll said:
No i meant the track playing in the BoS in F1
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The track title is ~ Metallic Monks.

I think my favorite is ~ A Trader's Life, played in the Hub.
My second favorite is ~ Khans Of The New California, played in the Raider's Camp.

I have a soft-spot for the Glow & Necropolis tracks ~ Radiation Storm & City Of The Dead.
______
It's interesting (to me) that you can find bits of the music—certainly samples used in it, in the sound track for the 1998 tv series PREY, which AFAIK Mark Morgan contributed some of its ambient tracks.

@mfkndggrfll (and anyone else)
Several years ago, Mark Morgan released the complete Fallout 1 & 2 soundtrack for free, on the Aural Network. Unfortunately the site doesn't seem to exist anymore, but there is a copy of the collection on the archive.org website. It's some of the best ambient music that I have ever heard.

https://archive.org/details/AURAL01 (links untested, but presumed working)

NMA hosts (some of) it as well: http://www.nma-fallout.com/resources/fallout-soundtrack.64/
(But it says it is just the Fallout 1 tracks.)

Of course Youtube has several links to all of them.

Alternatively, anyone who has the games, has the sound track in ACM format, and there are ACM players, converters (on this site), as well as a WinAmp plugin to play the files directly from the game folder. (But the MP3s are easier; and I believe they might have been remastered).

*ACM is an audio format that Interplay used in their games, (possibly their own in-house format).
 
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Gizmojunk said:
The track title is ~ Metallic Monks.

I think my favorite is ~ A Trader's Life, played in the Hub.
My second favorite is ~ Khans Of The New California, played in the Raider's Camp.

I have a soft-spot for the Necropolis track ~ Radiation Storm.
Click to expand...

My two top favourites would be Vault of the Future (Vault 13) and Industrial Junk (Junktown). Although I tend to associate the former with Vault 11 and the latter with Vault 22 in New Vegas.





Acolytes of the New God is a very eerie track as well.



Gizmojunk said:
@mfkndggrfll (and anyone else)
Several years ago, Mark Morgan released the complete Fallout 1 & 2 soundtrack for free, on the Aural Network. Unfortunately the site doesn't seem to exist anymore, but there is a copy of the collection on the archive.org website. It's some of the best ambient music that I have ever heard.
Click to expand...

Is that the collection where the tracks transition into one another? It's not bad but I much prefer the original tracks unaltered.

If you have a copy of New Vegas you can get most (maybe all, I can't remember) of the Fallout 1 and 2 tracks out from the game files.
 
I love the ambient soundtracks from the original games. Industrial Junk and Acolytes of the New God are good enough to make an isometric game with graphics from 1998 scary.

I have to say though, there is also something unsettling to me about hearing shit like this echo through abandoned buildings on some distant radio:

 
Damn, never really paid much attention to the Vault soundtrack but its unreal when you listen to it alone... Like most of the soundtrack too
 
Gizmojunk said:
Try sleeping to the Glow, or Necropolis track; Radiation Storm, and City Of The Dead.
Click to expand...

Ooh, City of the Dead. What a classic. It was in the background when a lot of players first encountered ghouls and super mutants. Some people might disagree with me that Bethesda should have made Fallout 3 more of a survival horror game instead of an Elder Scrolls sibling, but these tracks just further entrench my beliefs.

Imagine something like an open world Bioshock or Dead Space with the mechanics of Fallout and Fallout 2. Would have made everybody happy.
 
I remember hearing this unsettling and extremely fitting ambient while I was playing detective and solving the Caravan ambushes around Vegas along with Cassidy and finding clues going to each site and discovering Van Graff and Crimson Caravan armor.

It was the pitch dead of night doing this quest on the outskirts of New Vegas. The plot was thickening while uncovering murder and robbery conspiracies.


This was it. More specifically go to around 50 seconds into it. Gave me goosebumps.

 
It's kind of hilarious that I know pretty much all of these tracks note for note from playing these games so much despite never having known any of their names.

Sure I'm not the only one.
 
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