I'm New to the Fallout Universe and something already bugs me...

Z

zer0location

First time out of the vault
I read an article from kotaku which opened me up to this wonderful website yesterday and I gotta say wow! Now just know I am a Fallout virgin. I never played the series before, but I did see many of my friends play 3 and New Vegas. Never found it interesting enough to play myself. I figured the previous games were similar in every way except the camera perspective. Until I read the Kotaku article that is. I appreciate there's a group of dedicated fans of a game series, and that's why I am here.

I have been seeing tons of footage for Fallout 4 and I am a bit confused. Is Fallout 4 suppose to be after or before the events of previous games? I ask because the game looks Beautiful and I do not mean it in a post apocalyptic kind of way. I don't get a sense of "i am in a wasteland". The game looks as if you are just in a normal world rather than set in a wasteland. Did the world get healed after one of the previous entries? I guess I'm stepping into spoiler territory here.

Anyone also feel the same way?
 

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The world starts to heal allready by the very first Fallout game, that was part of the story and point of the first game, that the residents of the vault consider the world a dead and radiated place, but in contrast, there is trade and agriculture, and civilization reborn (as well as some sinister threats to the rebuilding effort)

In Fallout 2, you can visit cities that are not only built up from scratch, but also quite modern, most notably Vault City, and as well the famous New California Republic/Shady Sands, which goes on to conquer/control most of the region, and in these areas are able to offer a civilized and functional urban society (now we're into Fallout New Vegas lore)

even in Fallout Tactics the landscape seems littered with various "city-state" communities, similar to FO1, they seem to have essentials like water and electric power easily, and trade with their neighbors. Their built-up areas/rebuilt areas do not show any signs of nuclear catastrophe, because there's no reason for it: It's rebuilt!

It's mostly FO3 (open a can of worms) that disrupt this image, by showing a more "stereotypical" "nuclear wasteland" with irradiated pools everywhere, and an entire city that is complete rubble and ruin so long after, with only mediocre attempts at rebuilding society (such as just occupying a broken-ass boat, or piling airplane scraps together, or living on a bridge like some reverse-troll)

FO3 ruined a lot of stuff
FONV reintroduced the "sense of effort", with electricity being a major focus, agriculture a secondary yet important one

I've no idea what FO4 will do, but probably something FO3-ish.
 
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The important thing to keep in mind is that Fallout 3 was originally planned as a prequel to Fallout 1 & 2, which explains the tremendously barren environment, the overall lack of development, and the small communities that couldn't have plausibly lasted for 200 years. They moved it forward in time because of issues like "The Brotherhood of Steel didn't exist before 2097, and it's going to take them a while to cross the continent" and "John Henry Eden can't be president of the Enclave until Richardson bites it in 2242".

But Fallout 3 as a whole makes the most sense as a game set something like 20-50 years after the great war (which explains the desolation.) It's really the outlier in the series, and if Fallout 4 is a little more developed that will actually be a positive step. After all, Fallout has always been not about the war itself, but about what comes after. The story of people's efforts to improve their circumstances is a lot more compelling than the story of survivors moping around and waiting for death, after all.
 
Thanks for the information I guess seeing all my friends run around in a green bug infested wasteland made me assume the world was like that.
I imagined a more "hell on earth" world where almost all cities lay in ruin.
I have to play the series when I get a chance.
 
zer0location said:
Thanks for the information I guess seeing all my friends run around in a green bug infested wasteland made me assume the world was like that.
I imagined a more "hell on earth" world where almost all cities lay in ruin.
I have to play the series when I get a chance.
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Do too. Do you mind difficulty because Fallout 1/2 can get hard sometimes. Like really hard.
 
I prefer it to be more difficult than mindless like an assassins creed game or RPGs that don't require any thought. I may get upset but it's more fun that way...well to me least lol
 
Don't worry: once you discover a certain weakness most enemies share and learn to exploit it, the game becomes much easier.
 
The world was much more destroyed in the classics, and landmarks really didn't survive. Bethesda took the opposite road so as to make the games more visually appealing, and because of the recognizability of the buildings, monuments etc. that they preserve without adequate explanation. Bethesda's way of designing games is to choose style over substance. Although their games are fat with content though. The substance would be depth, which is lacking.

It really helps pull in the masses when you have all of these icons people instantly recognize, Nuka Cola, the pip-boy, Vault Boy, and cities with slightly damaged monuments like the washington monument. They bank on that kind of stuff. They do these kinds of things because it instantly tells the same thing to everyone on the surface, and doesn't require one to dig through the surface of it to understand it. This is really the core dichotomy between Fallouts 1-2-NV and 3, Tactics, PoS. Although New Vegas did great in both regards I think, which shows there's a third way. Still, many found the game to not be as 'cool' as far as the atmosphere and moment to moment satisfaction goes. A sign that you can never balance the surface and the depth perfectly, always having to sacrifice something.
 
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Akratus said:
Although New Vegas did great in both regards I think, which shows there's a third way. Still, many found the game to not be as 'cool' as far as the atmosphere and moment to moment satisfaction goes. A sign that you can never balance the surface and the depth perfectly, always having to sacrifice something.
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I think a lot of people just didn't know jack shit about Nevada, so there was no conceivable way they could have been impressed with the various landmarks in New Vegas. Personally, I thought raising the Bomber out of Lake Mead was cooler than any of the bombed out buildings on the mall.
 
Bethesda said that there are zones that are mostly ok and also some pretty fucked up ones by the nuke explosions of the Great War. So far they've just showed the nicer parts of the Fallout 4.

I bet there's some really really wastelands areas that have tougher enemies.
 
According to Todd Howard the reason everything in Fallout 4 looks shiny and colorful and new is because he though the grayness of Fallout 3 felt depressing after a few hours (nevermind that this is what a Fallout game is supposed to feel like). So, there is not necessarily any particular correlation between the newish aesthetics of Fallout 4 and it's plot.

As to the chronology, it goes like this:
WW3 happens in 2077
Fallout 1 begins in 2161
Fallout 2 begins in 2241
Fallout 3 begins in 2277
Fallout 4 begins in (probably) 2277
 
Lol - even someone who isn't a completely dorky nerd like me can see the foul logic reeking from this game.
 
It looks like the New England Wasteland (not sure if thats the official name for the place) is going to be closer to the Mojave Wasteland than the Capital Wasteland in terms of "nuclear devastation".
 
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