Share your head-cannons for Fallout

[Gizmojunk]

He says directly that he was from Mexico

Typhon was a child when he became a ghoul; the son of Set. Since we are talking head-canon, Raul could have been a child too; brought back to Mexico—from Necropolis... Wouldn't have even had to have been a vault resident... just in the area during the war... Wouldn't have to have remembered anything about Bakersfield.

*I don't know any of Raul's dialog, or what memories he has mentioned about Mexico.

 

[Deleted member 98605]

Basically that ghouls are now common zombie enemies is the problem.... Glowing ones in Fallout 1 lived with normal ghouls and people; you can literally talk to them in 2 in Gecko; and we have no idea if the ghouls above ground were either 'normal' ghouls or just ghouls radicalized by Set to attack passerby on sight (and at night? If you go during the day, no problem?).

Even in Tactics Ghouls were talkative folk, though of course the random encounters you mow them down, but they were armed and equipped, not bum-rushing you with their hands. They felt like gangs, not zombie hordes.

Like, I get it, Fallout needs enemies to shoot. Geckos and dogs and bears can get you only so far. Raiders get stale. It's also why Mutants keep popping up. If the Tunnelers weren't so blatantly OP to be another civilization-ender they would be an example as a step in the right direction....

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Typhon was a child when he became a ghoul; the son of Set. Since we are talking head-canon, Raul could have been a child too; brought back to Mexico—from Necropolis... Wouldn't have even had to have been a vault resident... just in the area during the war... Wouldn't have to have remembered anything about Bakersfield.

*I don't know any of Raul's dialog, or what memories he has mentioned about Mexico.

Raul specifically says he lived with his family on a farm outside Mexico City, I think he also says he never went to America before the war. And he was old enough to go out scavenging for supplies when his family was killed, so I think he was at least a teenager
Edit: he actually goes into a lot of detail about his past, if he had spent time in Bakersfield when the bombs dropped he would’ve mentioned it. Also he says he was born in 2047.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

I know my retcon conversation is dead, but I've changed it a bit so that Yes Man modified House's new body so that when he thinks about or is around the Courier, he can't think aggressive thoughts.

Damn dude, in my opinion that’s even more fucked up than leaving him to die outside of his pod. Although it would be interesting, how he would figure out how to take his revenge on the courier. House would probably realize that his mind has been altered, and I imagine he’s not the kind of guy to just give up on taking revenge on the person that stole his city. Figuring out how to get rid of the courier without being able to think aggressive thoughts about him/her sounds like just the kind of seemingly impossible plan that House could pull off.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

All this talk of Raul has reminded me of something he said that always confused me. In his backstory, when’s he’s hunting down the guys that raped and killed his surrogate little sister he says that he was able to catch up with them because “they needed sleep. I didn’t.” Implying that ghouls don’t need to sleep, which doesn’t make much sense to me other than from the whole “they’re radiation zombies lol” angle.

So in my head canon what he meant by that was he was so consumed with rage and desire for vengeance that he literally didn’t sleep until they were dead. If this were the case, it probably didn’t take him more than two days to track them down, otherwise he would’ve died from sleep deprivation. But I seem to remember him saying it took a week to find them, so I guess I’ll just retcon that in my head canon.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Anyway I would really like to cut back on the number of Ghouls and "abuse" (abuse as in making them stupid cannon fodder).
Ghouls should be more rare, especially two centuries after the war, and not shitload of zombie Ghouls with each decade new ones replacing the dead old ones.

What really is needed is a new kind of humanoid enemy to create some diversity as others have suggested here.

In my Fallout Texas idea the player would eventually run into "Degens", "D-gens" or just degenerates.
These would be failed clones from Clone Station that suffer from clone disease which causes deterioration of their minds and bodies, becoming more animal like as the "disease" progresses. (it is not really a disease but more that the cloning process is not perfect)
The more smarter ones could probably still use tools and weapons.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Anyway I would really like to cut back on the number of Ghouls and "abuse" (abuse as in making them stupid cannon fodder).
Ghouls should be more rare, especially two centuries after the war, and not shitload of zombie Ghouls with each decade new ones replacing the dead old ones.

What really is needed is a new kind of humanoid enemy to create some diversity as others have suggested here.

In my Fallout Texas idea the player would eventually run into "Degens", "D-gens" or just degenerates.
There would be failed clones from Clone Station that suffer from clone disease which causes deterioration of their minds and bodies, becoming more animal like as the "disease" progresses. (it is not really a disease but more that the cloning process is not perfect)
The more smarter ones could probably still use tools and weapons.

Yeah I’d like stuff like that. I always felt lobotomies were an interesting “zombie” enemy and it’s a shame they were confined to Big MT. In regards to your Degens, are they still being created or are they just leftover from before the war?

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Yeah I’d like stuff like that. I always felt lobotomies were an interesting “zombie” enemy and it’s a shame they were confined to Big MT. In regards to your Degens, are they still being created or are they just leftover from before the war?

They are still being created, they are an unintended "byproduct" of the cloning that is going on at Clone Station.
Clone Station (actual pre-war name College Station) is a scientific community with possibly some advanced farming and livestock research that is populated by succeeding generations of clones.
The "Founders", surviving scholars and scientists from Texas A&M university sought to preserve the best of humanity through cloning, having the idea that by resurrecting great leaders and minds from the past (think Einstein and such) and preserving baseline humanity they could play a role in rebuilding human civilization.

The cloning process is not completely flawless and decades of using the same genetic material has resulted in numbers of Degens.

The scientists at Clone Station try to keep them in a special medical ward on the Clone Campus, hoping to find out what is causing clone disease and perhaps cure their brothers and sisters but sometimes Degens manage to escape into the wasteland.

Degens are kind of tragic cases as these individuals know that when they starts to experience the first stages of clone disease of what is going to happen to them and how they are going to loose their memories and reasoning capabilities.

 

[Malpais Dominus]

Another really minor one but one that bothers me is why there's such an inconsistency with the coloration of Advanced Power armor and why Mk. I and Mk. II aren't visually distinguished at all in game. Sometimes it's grey so light to the point where it's almost White and then sometimes it's pitch black such as in the character model. For me the lighter almost grey colored armor is the Mk. I whilst the black armor is the upgraded Mk. II variant.
Doesn't do much to explain why there's 3 or 4 different colors for the eyes but it's as much as I'm ever going to get.

 

[Atomic Postman]

All this talk of Raul has reminded me of something he said that always confused me. In his backstory, when’s he’s hunting down the guys that raped and killed his surrogate little sister he says that he was able to catch up with them because “they needed sleep. I didn’t.” Implying that ghouls don’t need to sleep, which doesn’t make much sense to me other than from the whole “they’re radiation zombies lol” angle.

So in my head canon what he meant by that was he was so consumed with rage and desire for vengeance that he literally didn’t sleep until they were dead. If this were the case, it probably didn’t take him more than two days to track them down, otherwise he would’ve died from sleep deprivation. But I seem to remember him saying it took a week to find them, so I guess I’ll just retcon that in my head canon.

I interpreted the "I didn't" line as Raul being a determined manhunter out for vengeance rather than a quirk of ghoul biology.

 

[Deleted member 53669]

Another really minor one but one that bothers me is why there's such an inconsistency with the coloration of Advanced Power armor and why Mk. I and Mk. II aren't visually distinguished at all in game. Sometimes it's grey so light to the point where it's almost White and then sometimes it's pitch black such as in the character model. For me the lighter almost grey colored armor is the Mk. I whilst the black armor is the upgraded Mk. II variant.
Doesn't do much to explain why there's 3 or 4 different colors for the eyes but it's as much as I'm ever going to get.

The entire aesthetic of the Fallout universe hinged on the t-51 suit. It alluded back to the aeronatical engineering of the late 40s, 50s, and early 60s, and its purpose in the universe allowed the "Knighthood" of soldiers, spawning The Brotherhood of Steel. My favorite aircraft designs are from that period and they have beautiful curvature to their fusalage designs. They were so aerodynamic at the time that contemporary flight control systems could not keep them stable.

They are also other types of modern art at the time that one could bring to mind. Post WW2, analog and deadly.


The same goes with the automobiles of the time.

The entire feel, and perhaps, setting of Fallout is in these types of designs. When Interplay and Bethesda went away from this type of imagry that is when the setting of Fallout became way too open.

The t-51b is a nuclear Cadillac.


The utopian ideals of The United States and The Soviet Union / China of the 1950's were considered reached in this "analog" reality. However they are also what caused The Great War that destroyed the planet.

Civilization itself tries to return to those ideas, while other remnants try to become one with the wasteland. The only group that seemed to not be caught in the duality were the Followers of the Apocalypse.

These high-tech analog aesthetics are what make Fallout. Bethesda has been stealing other templates from other places to fill in the gap of their creative bankruptcy and it has made the universe a less interesting one.

 

[cratchety ol joe]

Potentially unpopular opinion:

• Micro-electronics (transistor based) do exist in the FO universe.

Rant follows, skip to bottom as to why I care about this.

From Fallout 2, I never got the 'sense' that micro-electronic didn't come into mainstream use... Lots of the tech presented in that game implies a pre-war world-space heavily invested in and reliant on very advanced technologies, most of which can only exist in a world that has extremely widespread consumer/commercial scale production of advanced electronics, well outside of the hyper-50's retro-futurism heavily leant on by Bethesda.

Although the official timeline expressly states that transistors "weren't" invented or at latest introduced only in 2067 (or some argue late 2000's). I simply cannot make head or tale of how some of the technology considered canon, exists in the FOU without micro-electronics/transistors and all the goodness of 'advanced' tech.

And so, in my head I just refuse to accept that mankind just skipped one of the biggest technological steps and consider that such things were invented, maybe just a little later, or through a different avenue of scientific endeavour, but the world I see in the games cannot exist otherwise.

To try and make a case for my point; one of the very first items we can 'scavenge' in Fallout 2, or later in Fallout, is a pretty high-range most likely transistor powered portable radio...

Real world: transistor development @ 1920's
Real world: military two way hand radio's @ 1940's
Real world: first commercial scale 'hand portable' two way radio's @ 1960'/1970's

Fallout: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/2043B_radio
Fallout 2: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vic's_radio

Real world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR-536

Some important details (which are literally game-breaking IMHO) the real-world SCR has a range of about 1 mile, limited by ... vacuum tubes/power throughput. It's only after radio development (read also transistor development) that later models capable of higher range VHF/UHF transmission, required for the "4 mile" range of the 2043B radio.

And so, I consider that, technologically speaking, the 2043B can only really be matched to the early transistor based developed radios of the 1960's.

TL/DR of the above:

For me, this one point is a real clincher as the core of what this one point of detail encompasses defines what the pre-war world would actually have been like, and thus; is a nexus detail for a basis on what post-war world must encompass. I don't even have to get into the tech we see that drives things like force-fields, computer terminals, holo-disks, and all the stuff seen in (pre-Bethesda) Vaults or military installations...

I don't hate the retro-futurism, I don't hate the divergent technological concepts, but what I cannot abide is things that simply make little to no sense.

 

[Malpais Dominus]

This may also be an unpopular opinion but I dislike the idea that the world of Fallout has to be so rigidly 1950-1960s themed. I don't know if it qualifies as headcanon since they are in some of the games but more modern firearms like MP5s, P90s, and others are perfectly fine and exist in the world of Fallout to me. I'd much rather see a variety of weapons like the desert eagle and an AK-74 in the wasteland than the abominations that bethesda has come up with.

 

[Deleted member 53669]

I don't. I don't even like the idea of plastic being in widespread use either. I like the idea of bakelite, vacuum tubes, steel, and wood everywhere. Just some transistors, simple ones... It just fits the theme so well. There's steampunk, but what about vacuum punk?

I think the most advanced regular firearm should be perhaps an M-16/AR-15/Minigun and then immediately after moving towards energy weapons.

 

[Atomic Postman]

I think stringent adherence to technology rules/progression in Fallout is perhaps misguided. The aesthetics and the tone is most important of all rather than the technology itself, you can have extremely advanced science fiction technology in Fallout and still have it fit provided you do it right. The Big Empty and its various absolutely insane levels of technologies fit Fallout due to the context they're in and the way they are presented, the Synths in Fallout 4 do not for the same reasons.

 

[Deleted member 53669]

I like the world that was painted in Fallout 1 in the big picture of how the world is. Fallout 2 has always been to me something of a "Parody." of the original, as in "wouldn't it be fun if?" I'm all for spin-offs and such...However, I think that Fallout 1 had more style.

 

[Malpais Dominus]

I can understand your point of view and the fact that I've never really cared for energy weapons in these games probably plays a big part in my way of thinking. I think there should be some cut off point for ballistic weapons development in the Fallout world in favor of being replaced with what should be (in theory) better energy weapons.

 

[Atomic Postman]

From what I understand was the original intention not that Energy Weapons were in the process of outclassing ballistics but they were so recent that civilian models hadn't begun to be properly produced yet.

 

[Deleted member 53669]

I like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. a great deal. I can very much understand that way of thinking as well. A spinoff named something like (Fallout: 1980) or the such would be awesome. Post-Apocalyptic WW2 would also be great. STG-44s and nuclear nazi ruins.

 

[Malpais Dominus]

From what I understand was the original intention not that Energy Weapons were in the process of outclassing ballistics but they were so recent that civilian models hadn't begun to be properly produced yet.

That's the intent but it's not clear to what level ballistic weapons had progressed before they were starting to be phased out. Did they stop innovating past 1950's style designs or did they get as late as the 1990s designs and then switch over to energy?