Rewriting Fallout 3: The 200 years issue

Thaqui

Thaqui

First time out of the vault
I've been working on modding various changes to Fallout 3 to bring it more into line with what I perceive as the atmosphere of Fallout. One of the things that pops up is the setting of the game being 200 years after the bombs fell, while the environment does not support it at all.

I've been considering changing this through dialogue and writing in the game so that the game is set 80-90 years after the war, around the same time setting as the original Fallout. I was hoping to bounce the idea off the community to see if anyone could see any major problems in changing this.
 
Rather than dial back the clock, I thought, what if the Capitol Wasteland was uninhabited until roughly 40 years ago? Perhaps the area had been made barren of human life by the bombs. Impetus from unknown sources had recently driven former tribals from the South and the North into D.C. Slavers and raiders followed their prey.
 
There's also supposed to be a vault 76 nearby that was a control vault. In theory, the members of this vault could have slowly filled the capital wasteland.

But as for the 40 years, doesn't the old lady in megaton say she was born there?
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
Too bad the game doesn't support this, as Megaton is supposed to have existed since 2077.
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I was always wondering how people of Megaton survived after the bombs fell...
 
TD5160 said:
There's also supposed to be a vault 76 nearby that was a control vault. In theory, the members of this vault could have slowly filled the capital wasteland.

But as for the 40 years, doesn't the old lady in megaton say she was born there?
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The good thing about it is that through dialogue changes, it wouldn't be hard to change it so that the lady never says she was born in Megaton.
 
I always just assumed that the bombs intended for the DC area either missed their targets or just failed to detonate, this has actually happened before (by accident) and considering there's an undetonated nuke in Megaton itself I always just figured that the bombs never detonated.
 
Yazman said:
I always just assumed that the bombs intended for the DC area either missed their targets or just failed to detonate, this has actually happened before (by accident) and considering there's an undetonated nuke in Megaton itself I always just figured that the bombs never detonated.
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Game doesn't support this, considering there's a 200 year old ghoul in Underworld, that tells you about when the bombs dropped.
 
This has been bugging me too about FO3.
Lots of stuff makes a whole lot of sense if the timeline was adjusted back. The burned trees, why all the settlements are so tiny and how come almost everyone seems to be living on food from 200+ year old tin cans. Guns and armor also makes a whole lot more sense if it's a short time (50-100 years) after the war; looted weapons & ammo are still abundant and the old tech (power armor, computers, satellites etc) haven't been outclassed by the new tech yet.

A time-line mod would allow me to enjoy the original FO3 setting with only minor changes to the game.
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
If the game was set between 2097-2107...
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What about the muties then? Or the ghouls?

Slaughter Manslaught said:
If the region was totally radiated until recently, then everything would've been scavenged anyways either by ghouls or DC Super Mutants.
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For that to be true, there only needs to be an ample source of long-term radioactivity. Impact craters would not count. There'd need to be a meltdown of some sort, caused perhaps by the impacts.
 
Dubby said:
Mikael Grizzly said:
If the game was set between 2097-2107...
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What about the muties then? Or the ghouls?
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Muties: Dip one man inside a vat with green stuff and you have a mutie. Time needed: A few months/years?

Ghouls: Expose a man to radiation and you have a ghoul.

Nothing in game with the exception of the some dialogue suggests that the year ingame should sometime after 2085. Well, from some conversations people talk about:"The end of the world already happened." and stuff that people born 170 years after the nuclear war would not even know. It sounds much more like something that somebody that lived thought the nuclear holocaust would say.
 
TD5160 said:
Yazman said:
I always just assumed that the bombs intended for the DC area either missed their targets or just failed to detonate, this has actually happened before (by accident) and considering there's an undetonated nuke in Megaton itself I always just figured that the bombs never detonated.
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Game doesn't support this, considering there's a 200 year old ghoul in Underworld, that tells you about when the bombs dropped.
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Oh I do agree that there are things contradicting it a bit, but to me it just seems like maybe a relatively small amount of bombs actually detonated in comparison to other places. Seems logical to me.
 
DustyTraveller said:
The burned trees, why all the settlements are so tiny and how come almost everyone seems to be living on food from 200+ year old tin cans.
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Tin cans I have found have all been empty, I regonized the people of wastelands ate brahmin steak, squirrels & human flesh. How they still have Nuka Cola around though, thats another thing. Nuka Cola factory did not realy seem that active...

And I guess the reason cereals is still edible after 200 years is because they are mostly sugar. Sugar have almost unlimited expiry date - so the unhealthier food the longer you can keep it around?

Lack of people in settlements? Well it's hard to survive in wastelands now ain't it :D


I don't see a problem in the current date actually, and it's not a gameplay setting that has to follow our own rules 100% anyway right?
 
Killerrabbit said:
Tin cans I have found have all been empty, I regonized the people of wastelands ate brahmin steak, squirrels & human flesh. How they still have Nuka Cola around though, thats another thing. Nuka Cola factory did not realy seem that active...
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There's a huge number of tins of Pork 'n' Beans lying around that you can eat. Now, tinned food keeps for a long time, but when the tin has rusted, and the food has been exposed to the elements for so long, it should not be edible.

And I guess the reason cereals is still edible after 200 years is because they are mostly sugar. Sugar have almost unlimited expiry date - so the unhealthier food the longer you can keep it around?
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Simple fact is that the food shouldn't be edible, but more than that, there shouldn't be any lying around. It should have disappeared a long time ago. I mean, you can find food in the Super Duper Mart. What, the raiders that have been living there for who knows how long didn't like that particular flavour?

Lack of people in settlements? Well it's hard to survive in wastelands now ain't it :D
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True, so how would a settlement of 3 people survive? No food, hundreds of beasties and raiders wandering around wanting to kill and eat them. How do they defend themselves? Rivet City and Megaton I can see surviving, since they're fortified. But there are smaller settlements that you find that just shouldn't have lasted that long.

I don't see a problem in the current date actually, and it's not a gameplay setting that has to follow our own rules 100% anyway right?
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Well, the beauty of Fallout has always been that it's not 100% realistic. But Fallout 3 takes that to a whole new level. There's been no development for 200 years.
 
Not only is there no development the idea that the wasteland itself is still highly irradiated after 200 years is completely and scientifically unsound. I love how people have complained about fallout 1 and 2 not be irradiated enough, I cannot say if the foods left in the open would still be but people would have grown new crops. Stimpaks are hermetically sealed so not like they would become irradiated.
 
Now ya'll are just nitpicking.
You want to be really technical?

Nothing would be around after the nuclear holocaust. Radiation would heavily remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years, not just in certain places.

Most bridges and buildings would've begun to collapse just a few decades after the drop. Not only would the heavy explosion due damage, but most bridges receive maintenece every few years.

Basically, after a nuclear holocaust, nothing would remain excluding areas that were almost completely untouched. Highly populated areas that would have been prime targets would no longer even exist.

Of course, that would make for a far less entertaining game, eh.
 
Sushi Gatorade said:
Of course, that would make for a far less entertaining game, eh.
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A game where you walk outside the vault and instantly drop dead from radiation? Isn't that pretty much what happened in Fallout 3?
 
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