I don't understand complaints about Beth's take on pre-war society

Delbert

Delbert

Vault-Tec Employee
Yeah, we all know the crimes of Bethesda. But their interpretation of pre-war society isn't one of them.

The reason I bring up this matter is that I have seen a few people here and there saying that Bethesda made pre-war society too retro-futuristic.

I contest this claim, being that I think Interplay made it pretty clear what kind of society existed before the war. Even the two introduction animations for Fallout 1 & 2 are valid support for Beth's interpretation.

If needed, I could name other examples of how Bethesda stuck pretty well to the vision of Interplay writers.
 
I disagree. The pre-war society that Interplay painted was more akin to 1970's and 80's, with pacifist movements opposing the war with China, protests, overall panic caused by the plague and red scare. While what we see in Bethesda games, especially in trailers and gameplay from F4 is something that reminds me more of 1950's, the American dream, peaceful life in "the American way". Remember President Eden speeches in F3? More of the same.
 
They keep cramming 50's music, record players and 50's haircuts on everything. The original games had the Retro Futuristic vibe but Bethesda just went and exaggerated it and made it a caricature, with people drinking radioactive isotopes in the 2070's and such.
 
Just friggin look around you when playing the original 2 games. Look at Zax, look at that the cyclop HAL bots. Look at the mohawk heads on the pre-war buildings. If you need more, check out the combat armor designs or the weapon designs.

I won't argue that a SMALL amount of retro 50s science influence is there, but its nothing like what Bethesda has done.
 
Bethesda didn't really understand what Fallout tried to evoke, so they just took bits and peaces and just went ape shit with those. If the introduction in Fallout looked and was in the spirit like the old days - the black and white video with the ink spots song playing in the background, then Bethesda just littered it's world with to the point where it looks like the world stopped changing after the 50's. I see everyone pretty much agrees on that... at least here.

Here's a video of Tim Cain talking about Fallouts philosophy.

 
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Aniki said:
Bethesda didn't really understand what Fallout tried to evoke...
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It's not that, it's that they don't care in the least. Look closely at what they did ~across the board.

The scraped the most obvious trappings of the IP, and skinned their TES game with it (in the ultimate act of 'Me-Too!'); and they took the complex nature of the setting and reduced it to an elevator pitch of the concept... in order that the unfamiliar would think they grasped it enough to become comfortable with it. Notice how it's not (any longer) the future of the 1950's prediction; but rather the 1950's set in the future. There were professional reviewers under the notion that FO3 was set in the 1950s. And it suffers the same problem as Fallout 2, in that the designers interpret it as 'anything goes'. :(
 
I think the issue is not with pre-war society, since "what were things like before the war" was never really the point of Fallout.

I think the main issue is with Bethesda failing to understand that 200 years is a really long time in terms of social and cultural change. If there's been enough time for Raiders to start dressing like Mad Max rejects and think that's normal, there's no reason the more civilized people should be stuck in the 50s in terms of dress, speech, and social norms. I mean, 200 years ago there were still people wearing powdered wigs as though that the height of fashion. So you can make the radios and TVs look old-fashioned, and that's fine, but move society forward a bit please.
 
Askorti said:
I disagree. The pre-war society that Interplay painted was more akin to 1970's and 80's, with pacifist movements opposing the war with China, protests, overall panic caused by the plague and red scare. While what we see in Bethesda games, especially in trailers and gameplay from F4 is something that reminds me more of 1950's, the American dream, peaceful life in "the American way". Remember President Eden speeches in F3? More of the same.
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I have to disagree a bit with you there. The feel of the 1950's 1960's was pretty present in the first Fallout when they showed the intro sequence in black and white, the future back in the 50's pretty had an idea that everything would be atomic powered in a basic form of atompunk fiction. You might be right because Interplay didn't really give us a cgi sequence of what it was like before the war went nuclear but I feel the overall feel in Fallout 1 and 2 is still more 50's and 60's. More than likely 60's while Fallout 3 threw it to the 50's.
 
Walpknut said:
They keep cramming 50's music, record players and 50's haircuts on everything. The original games had the Retro Futuristic vibe but Bethesda just went and exaggerated it and made it a caricature, with people drinking radioactive isotopes in the 2070's and such.
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Okay okay, I agree with how ridiculous they've pumped it up to be and how stupid it can be at times. (Really? People don't notice that their food is filled with DEADLY RADIATION, so known about by the 1950's?)

I thought Fallout 4's pre-war intro fit my vision of the pre-war world, however.
 
And I partially agree with with Sn1p3r187, being I don't get much of a 1960's feel from Fallout (at most, only the early 1960's, around 1960-1963).
 
Again, the intro and the cars were the biggest 50/60s look.

Otherwise, the combat/infantry armor used in the game was nothing like what the U.S. soldier had at the same period in time. If you look at the various computers, its a blend of 60, 70s, and 80s era style tech. I remember reel tape based memory storage but I saw nothing like the wall of lights/UNIVAC computers that were popular during the 50s/60s.

Not to mention we have weapons like the blade runner ish pistol and the energy weapons that really look like nothing how the 50/60 imagined. The laser rifle itself looks very 80s. Same with its pistol counterpart. The same could be said about the Plasma Rifle/pistol.

Although the 'mini-gun', was developed for vehicle use in the early to mid 60s, the idea that a soldier could carry one, had its primary influence from Predator, which was a movie that came out in the late 80s.

As others have pointed out, the aesthetics were what the folks from the 50s and 60s had predicted would happen, incorporated into a mixture of styles from later decades. That's why you have 60s type cars mixed with mohawk statues. It was an amalgam of styles for a parallel, hypothetical future. To me, it was like if someone combined retro america/science with cyberpunk.
 
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fallout 1 and 2 painted the portrait of a prewar society similar in some aesthetic ways to but not identical to 1950s/60s america. you could really tell that the one was not the other. in f3, though, the society is turned into an allegory for the 1950s. that's ham-fisted and cheap.
 
I'd love to see the last days of America from the view of a civilian in the rocky mountains. A survival RPG spin-off that would be set in a relatively small area which constantly changes as you try to survive the apocalypse. Doesn't even need to be set in the Fallout universe.
 
Delbert said:
I thought Fallout 4's pre-war intro fit my vision of the pre-war world, however.
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But the pre-war world shouldn't really be considered. At all. It was always a McGuffin and nothing more. The fact that the folks at Bethesda wanted to explore the pre-war world with Operation Anchorage and now with absolute portrayals of it, shows once again that they don't understand what Fallout was about, and in all probability just liked it aesthetically.
 
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