This over-saturation of Nuka Cola

Swimming_Pants

Swimming_Pants

First time out of the vault
I saw some footage of 76 advert and it got me thinking, what's with this obsession of Nuka Cola? It's something that bugs me. Yeah it was the most popular drink at the time, but does that mean it has to be shown everywhere? I groaned at the idea of the Fallout 4 Nuka World DLC because, c'mon who cares about a cola theme park? That's so stupid. If it was going to be a theme park, why did it have to be Nuka Cola? Ok, it may be considered a symbol of Americanism and national pride, but did 2070s America have nothing else to it?
Nuka Cola this, Nuka Cola that. I find it so excessive to the point it become laughable, beyond satire.

This constant rinsing also carries on to the Brotherhood of Steel and of course Vault Boy. You almost can't detach them. You to look at anything Fallout and count how many times you see Nuka Cola, Vault Boy or to a lesser extent the Brotherhood of Steel. But it only makes these games feel so unimaginative. Is there really nothing else out there? That's all it takes Nuka Cola, Vault Boy and Power Armour.

Wasn't Nuka Cola just a company that made popular soft drinks? Yet it's come to dominate these games even on a meta level. Is there something I'm missing, what do you think about the constant prominent appearance of Nuka Cola in everything? Is it too late to tone it down?


I know It's definitely a way for Bethesda to sell Vault Boy and Nuka Cola tat IRL, but damn is it annoying and tiring seeing this imagery everywhere.
Also, hello I'm new.:shrug: thanks

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Hello and welcome @Swimming_Pants. What is funny is during our podcast we were talking about the over saturation of things like Nuka-Cola and the Brotherhood and I think I can explain some of this. Bethesda is a corporation. Like many corporations they lack creativity and they also want to make their product be a lifestyle brand. Things like Nuka-Cola, Vault Boy and the Brotherhood of Steel are recognized by many familiar with gaming thanks in part by Fallout 3 and the nostalgia that many have for that game. When people see these things on screen they clap like trained seals and want to buy the product. It is much like with light sabers are to Star Wars. If their wasn't these things in the game then people will think that the game isn't a Fallout game or want to buy the merchandise.
What is funny is that New Vegas tried hard to give players something new. New soda in the form of Sunset Sarsaparilla, new factions, the Brotherhood and the Vault Boy not really being super prevalent. Hell, in Fallout 2 the Brotherhood only had a very small role.
Another difference is that Obsidian never tried to make New Vegas into a lifestyle brand. That is why many New Vegas merch you see is fan made like you find on Etsy. Obsidian and Interplay never cared about making Fallout into a lifestyle brand. They just wanted to make a good Fallout game. Bethesda on the another hand is a multi-million dollar corporation and they could care less if the writing is good or if placements of things like the Vault Boy or Nuka-Cola is obnoxious. So long as it makes dumb, mindless consumers buy the merch they are selling then betraying the core themes of Fallout is worth it.
 
Is there really nothing else out there? That's all it takes Nuka Cola, Vault Boy and Power Armour.
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I've also been saying exactly that about Bethesda's Fallouts for years now.

I do not understand this. I am not a creator, but if I were one, I doubt that I would be limiting myself so much to one thing.

Oh well......It's just Bethesda's Fallouts, at the end of the day. :shrug:
 
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Another group of communists jealous they didn't invent Nuka Cola :rofl:

Too bad they can't release a glowing quantum bottle that you could drink. Would probably get sued by Coca Cola. Haven't played F4 dlc myself so don't know how bad it is either.
 
RangerBoo said:
Hello and welcome @Swimming_Pants. Things like Nuka-Cola, Vault Boy and the Brotherhood of Steel are recognized by many familiar with gaming thanks in part by Fallout 3 and the nostalgia that many have for that game. When people see these things on screen they clap like trained seals and want to buy the product. It is much like with light sabers are to Star Wars. If their wasn't these things in the game then people will think that the game isn't a Fallout game or want to buy the merchandise.
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I guess inconsistency & anything to shift their tat is the way forward. No subtly or moderation. Fallout means Nuka Cola. Fallout 4's intro proves you literally can't have Fallout without Nuka Cola timelines be dammed lol. :roll:

Morgan_ said:
Too bad they can't release a glowing quantum bottle that you could drink. Would probably get sued by Coca Cola. Haven't played F4 dlc myself so don't know how bad it is either.
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I've played it, i didn't completely finish it though because I had reached my limit for Fallout 4. I will complete it one day, because I paid for it. It's very much just more of the base game, which is usually fun. But it stinks of Bethesda's over-correction - many people felt like the base game railroaded you to being a good guy, so Bethesda makes the same mistake except now it railroads you into being a bad guy. It's very jarring when you compare it to your character from the base game. You're character makes this sudden 180 in personality, you can go from whinging about your missing kid to a slaving bastard and then back again.

Also it's got stuff I absolutely hate, like Gatorclaws (I'm sure you can guess what those are based on the name) and bloody Ghoulrillas. There's a quest-line with a Caveman character that I hated, and an actual magic ghoul I hated. The best Power Armour known to man chilling in a soft drinks company's theme park, which I hated. You have the option to raid your own towns, which is stupid and I hated. I want Fallout to stay as grounded as it can, personally. I don't mind zany stuff as long as it remains out of the way easter eggs.

I don't hate Bethesda, but they're not exactly giving me reasons to like what they do. There are some changes they've made I'm in favour of like PA training, that makes sense to me. But these are outweighed by the bad, lol they even discarded the PA training. They just constantly make decisions I absolutely cannot stand, and it appears they have all intention to continue doing so.
 
You could make the same argument for Super Mutants, Ghouls and the other stuff that Bethesda keeps recycling over and over. They come up with contrived, nonsensical reasons to have all these things in every single one of their games. Like West Tek apparently just kicked a barrel of FEV into a river in West Virginia and that made Super Mutants, and that only happened because Bethesda wanted Super Mutants for the player to shoot at in Fallout 76.

The other major issue with this is that they don't even do good things with these recycled things. Put Super Mutants in Fallout 3? Make them dumb as rocks and also make them into bloodthristy monsters without a thought of their own. Bring back Brotherhood of Steel? Turn them into paladins of light and then try to overcorrect this in Fallout 4 by turning them into basically nazis. Bring back the Enclave? Literally do nothing with them except what Fallout 2 did. Obsidian did far more good things with the Enclave remnants in New Vegas than Bethesda did with the Enclave in the entirety of Fallout 3. In fact, the Enclave remnants actually kick ass and brought much needed depth to that faction.

And the worst part? Bethesda has tricked a bunch of people into thinking Fallout is nothing but BoS. Super Mutants, Ghouls and the other stuff they keep recycling. I have seen unironic comments on the internet of people saying Fallout is nothing without all of those aformentioned things. Which is pathetic and sad, because it means this franchise can't go beyond those things.
 
As far as marketing goes, I honestly can't blame them. Being able to basically imitate and ride off the back off of probably one of if not the most recognizable, successful and widespread consumer products in human history in order to also market your own brand is pretty fucking neato. If I were a major shareholder, I'd absolutely want that angle pushed as far as legally possible.Why do you think it went from being a general soda that glowed bright blue and simply had the common fix "Cola" (Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola etc) to being literally just Coke?

It goes without saying the great irony of it. The conception of the Vault Boy was a cheesy, tasteless and saccahrine 50's mascot (I mean it's literally a palette-swapped Big Boy) applied to products, used in-game in juxtaposition with starkly violent and grim imagery in order to create irony. Same thing with Nuka-Cola, the name is a dark joke. A world that experienced horrific nuclear holocaust where billions died foreshadowing their own terrible fate through mass-consumer sugary drinks for children. Not a tentpole of the world before, but a small bit of darkly comedic worldbuilding. They were representative of an era of shallow, unintelligent and tasteless marketing with an underbelly of innocent naivety before marketing "got smart", which made their juxtaposition against the brutality of Fallout that much better from a comedic perspective.

I understand why they play the marketing of Vault Boy straight - he was always iconic to Fallout, and the Childkiller Icon will not make a great t-shirt.
 
Norzan said:
Like West Tek apparently just kicked a barrel of FEV into a river in West Virginia and that made Super Mutants, and that only happened because Bethesda wanted Super Mutants for the player to shoot at in Fallout 76...
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lol I didn't know that haha
 
Maybe next Fallout we can have Vim! as the main drink hehe

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I like this artwork, looks like Love and Rockets

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Surprised Bethesda didn't forced Obsidian to use Nuka Cola instead of Sunset Sarsaparilla in New Vegas for that cap collection quest.
 
It's a shame that Fallout will never be nothing more then Super mutants, BOS, and what ever else. Imagine if Bethesda use this kind of terrible writing philosophy with the TES games. Imagine if cliff racers were in skyrim because they are iconic, even if it breaks the lore. Or they also put in giant mushrooms in Cyrodill because people like those in morrowind. This is basically how they write the nufallout games. You will never have anything new because it's not "iconic". I dread the day that Bethesda uses the NCR or Legion in there games. How bad they would fuck those factions up.
 
About Nuka-World... you know how people here often complain that Bethesda fallouts are like “theme parks”? Well not only is Nuka World literally an amusement park, but it fits this criticism to a T. As you fight your way through this DLC they keep throwing wacky enemies and characters at you, with no thought to how stupid or nonsensical it all is. Gator claws were already mentioned, for example. I even heard that they brought hubologists back for this DLC, though I never saw them.
 
Iprovidelittlepianos said:
About Nuka-World... you know how people here often complain that Bethesda fallouts are like “theme parks”? Well not only is Nuka World literally an amusement park, but it fits this criticism to a T. As you fight your way through this DLC they keep throwing wacky enemies and characters at you, with no thought to how stupid or nonsensical it all is. Gator claws were already mentioned, for example. I even heard that they brought hubologists back for this DLC, though I never saw them.
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Honest to god forgot that DLC was a thing. Jesus 4 was bad.
 
Gonna be a tall order to replace super mutants/master army, imo. The story surrounding them and morality questions raised was maybe the best writing and world building in post apoc settings. Better than Mad Max if we're being honest here. This doesn't even get into Enclave and Legion.

We've had prewar remnant organizations with the Enclave, House and Institute trying some form of shit usually involving varying degrees of genocide and rampant ai. The NCR trying to recreate the US. Various cults ranging from smal tribes and religions up to the Legion and we have seen varying forms of society being rebuilt.

I know that stories and myth are derivative of past stories as the bible was with Gilgamesh, but what stories and characters are there really left to tell at this point?

It reminds me of how British tv would criticize US shows for not stopping once the story was told.

Fallout 1 and NV are the only true Fallouts in the end.
 
Morgan_ said:
Gonna be a tall order to replace super mutants/master army, imo. The story surrounding them and morality questions raised was maybe the best writing and world building in post apoc settings. Better than Mad Max if we're being honest here. This doesn't even get into Enclave and Legion.

We've had prewar remnant organizations with the Enclave, House and Institute trying some form of shit usually involving varying degrees of genocide and rampant ai. The NCR trying to recreate the US. Various cults ranging from smal tribes and religions up to the Legion and we have seen varying forms of society being rebuilt.

I know that stories and myth are derivative of past stories as the bible was with Gilgamesh, but what stories and characters are there really left to tell at this point?

It reminds me of how British tv would criticize US shows for not stopping once the story was told.

Fallout 1 and NV are the only true Fallouts in the end.
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I still think post war theology and religion would make a perfect focus for a Fallout game. Thematically speaking anyway. I think that's a story that could/should be told.

We've seen post war conflicts over ideology, racial supremacy and resources now. I feel like religious conflict is the final card in that deck of "war never changes"
 
Fallout, since Fallout 3, has been all about milking iconography. (excluding FNV) The entirety of Fallout 3 is about just that. At this point Fallout is too synonymous with its icons that the lack of them would probably deter people but the milking of them stagnates the series.
 
Morgan_ said:
Another group of communists jealous they didn't invent Nuka Cola :rofl:

Too bad they can't release a glowing quantum bottle that you could drink. Would probably get sued by Coca Cola. Haven't played F4 dlc myself so don't know how bad it is either.
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Nuka World is the hammiest ham fisted insert of the Nuka Cola brand and I get contact diabeetus just thinking of all the sugar in that theme park.
 
Atomic Postman said:
I still think post war theology and religion would make a perfect focus for a Fallout game. Thematically speaking anyway. I think that's a story that could/should be told.

We've seen post war conflicts over ideology, racial supremacy and resources now. I feel like religious conflict is the final card in that deck of "war never changes"
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The Van Buren documents did a little something like this with the Mormons. Maybe back then or around New Vegas time we could have seen something interesting like this. Nowadays with today's current culture I don't think we will ever see something like this from a major studio. They will either be too scared at pissing people off or it will be something incredibly on the nose like Bioshock Infinite where the moral is "religion bad, m'kay" instead of something much more complicated and thought provoking.
 
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