Fallout 4 does not make sense

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TorontoReign

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Rock Paper Shotgun shared something with us today which talks about skeletons and ruin still being present 200 years after the Great War. A short segment can be found below.

So I’m wandering through Fallout 4 , and I come across this old diner, sitting there, neon still lit, almost jaunty in a destroyed land. There’s a guy outside called Wolfgang, a leathered drug dealer, who explains that a mother and son have set up a shop in this diner, and that he wants paying for goods he’s sold to the son.

I go inside, aiming to resolve the problem between the dealer and the son, and get into conversation with the mother. But, looking down, I notice that, despite trading from this place, she hasn’t thought to remove a skeleton from one of the booths. Because why would you remove a skeleton from your shop? Or any of the filth that’s accumulated on the floor?

It’s just one of the weird little things about the world of Fallout 4 that I find confusing and alienating. Little things that nudge me out out my suspension of disbelief that this is a place. Instead of enveloping myself in all its detail, it just gets me wondering, absently, is this how it would be?

The neglected skeleton reminded me of the time I visited Fallout 3’s Three Dog. He’d presumably been broadcasting his radio station from his bunker for a good while, having apparently established it in 2272, five years beforehand, but for some reason his rooms were filled with rubbish and broken filing cabinets. Why wouldn’t he have cleaned up a little? He tapes his broadcasts; the guy had time.
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Walpknut said:
Weren't they praising that as "envirormental narrative" on release week?
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One week they praise the game the next they start picking out the flaws once the hype wears off. It happens every time.

But even in their initial review they said this:

There’s a slight cheat going on in that, even though the game is set at least 200 years after the bombs fell, its New England is designed to look as if the apocalypse was relatively recent. This means more colour, and more dark detail too – skeletal bodies found, BioShock-style, near logs and props which tell the story of their final hours, and near-intact shops and buildings which feel abandoned, Marie Celeste-style, rather than dilapidated and looted into ruin.
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It is a cardinal mistake to invest any concern for sense in the theme park. Alas, where Fallout was the world as their 1950's assumed it ~made post apocalyptic... FO3 and FO4 are the post apocalyptic world as Bethesda's target audience would assume it. None of it has to make sense (unfortunately), it's theme park decoration, not an extrapolation in earnest. :irked:

One might just as well mention that the BOS had held the Citadel as a working paramilitary encampment, and yet it's filthy. What military group with recruits would not have issued them all toothbrushes and mops, and had them clean the place spotless in the first week of occupation?
 
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This is one thing I've been complaining about for the longest time. In Bethesda's 'Fallouts', they make the world seem as if the bombs had fallen recently and not over 200 years ago.

I do like the colours, but the messiness of the (settled) world makes no sense. The settlements themselves make no sense. Why would you pass up a perfectly good military fort surrounded by a somewhat intact town for a crumbling, hundred years old fort?
 
Jabberwok said:
Not a new problem for them. Skyrim is full of ancient tombs, supposedly sealed for ages, that are filled with lit torches and lanterns. Not to mention fresh fruit, for some reason.
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I found that so hilariously nonsensical in Skyrim. I remember being low on health and trying to find a way to get some back (I was in combat) and had to eat thousand year old tomb cheese under a torch that had been burning for well over millennia.
 
sea said:
I still don't understand why they don't just say that Fallout 4 was like, 30 years after the apocalypse instead of 200. Many of the plot holes just vanish if you do that, and it's not like it screws up the continuity at all (though I guess it'd require they remove most of the Fallout 3 references... boo hoo).
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Then there won't be BOS. I guess they HAVE to reference something from previous games. Designing new factions like Minutemen, Railroad, and Institute is probably already too much work for Bethesda.
 
Meurzh said:
Jabberwok said:
Not a new problem for them. Skyrim is full of ancient tombs, supposedly sealed for ages, that are filled with lit torches and lanterns. Not to mention fresh fruit, for some reason.
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I found that so hilariously nonsensical in Skyrim. I remember being low on health and trying to find a way to get some back (I was in combat) and had to eat thousand year old tomb cheese under a torch that had been burning for well over millennia.
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I think they do explain that somewhere by saying the Draugr maintain the tombs (when they're not mindlessly attacking you). That accounts for the torches at least. The tomb cheese is another matter though. I can't imagine the Draugr milking zombie cows in their spare time.
 
I can just picture the Draugr being regular people most of the time, milking their cows, chopping wood and farming their plots. Then as soon as an adventurer goes in, it's like a theme park attraction. "Quick guys, put the tools away, grab the swords and go graaaAAAARGH".

Funny thing is, if you have a mod to create some Draugr settlement in the tombs, with merchants, markets and farmers...

You have pretty much Fallout ghouls in Underworld.
 
A good read but why don't the author mention that this is Bethesdas Fallout and their screw-up. The concerns raised in the article are not issues you will find in fallout 1, 2 or New Vegas, just in Bethesdas games.

In Fallout 1, 80 years after the bombs fell, people have already started to create new societies. The best example here would be Shady Sands, a society of farmers who have already constructed a lot of new buildings. And in Fallout 2, 160 years after the bombs, there is already a new democratic republic in place (NCR) and society as we know it is back. And in New Vegas, 200 years after the apocalypse, we see that democratic republic in war with barbarian hordes.

The author claims these are issues with "Fallout" but in reality they are the errors of Bethesdas stupidity.
 
khain said:
I can just picture the Draugr being regular people most of the time, milking their cows, chopping wood and farming their plots. Then as soon as an adventurer goes in, it's like a theme park attraction. "Quick guys, put the tools away, grab the swords and go graaaAAAARGH".

Funny thing is, if you have a mod to create some Draugr settlement in the tombs, with merchants, markets and farmers...

You have pretty much Fallout ghouls in Underworld.
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It would be better than Underworld as most of the ghouls in Underworld do bugger all. They sustain themselves by "scavenging", somehow.
 
Walpknut said:
Weren't they praising that as "envirormental narrative" on release week?
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That's something what Tim Cain came out with in his interview for RPG Codex at first:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8416
I also loved the set decoration FO3. There was so much destruction, yet obviously everything had been meticulously hand-placed. So much story was told entirely through art. I ended up naming these little art vignettes and creating side stories in my head about what had happened. There was "The Suicide", a dead guy in a bathtub with a shotgun, and I figured he just couldn't handle life after the bombs. There was "Eternal Love", a couple of skeletons in a bed in a hotel room, forever embracing each other. There was "My Last Mistake", the corpse in the temporary one-man fallout shelter which obviously didn't do its job of keeping out the heat and radiation. My favorite was "Desperate Gamble", where I found a feral ghoul in an underground shelter filled with lab supplies and lots of drugs... except for Rad-X. I imagined that a scientist found himself irradiated and desperately tried to synthesize some Rad-X to cure himself before he succumbed, but he was too slow. I did notice that whatever was left of his mind sure did seem to enjoy toilet plungers.
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Since then, every young gaming journo feels the need to mention „environmental storytelling” in any Beth-game reviewed, because you can't be wrong in your article with it when Tim Cain himself mentioned it, right?
 
valcik said:
Walpknut said:
Weren't they praising that as "envirormental narrative" on release week?
Click to expand...
That's something what Tim Cain came out with in his interview for RPG Codex at first:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8416
I also loved the set decoration FO3. There was so much destruction, yet obviously everything had been meticulously hand-placed. So much story was told entirely through art. I ended up naming these little art vignettes and creating side stories in my head about what had happened. There was "The Suicide", a dead guy in a bathtub with a shotgun, and I figured he just couldn't handle life after the bombs. There was "Eternal Love", a couple of skeletons in a bed in a hotel room, forever embracing each other. There was "My Last Mistake", the corpse in the temporary one-man fallout shelter which obviously didn't do its job of keeping out the heat and radiation. My favorite was "Desperate Gamble", where I found a feral ghoul in an underground shelter filled with lab supplies and lots of drugs... except for Rad-X. I imagined that a scientist found himself irradiated and desperately tried to synthesize some Rad-X to cure himself before he succumbed, but he was too slow. I did notice that whatever was left of his mind sure did seem to enjoy toilet plungers.
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Since then, every young gaming journo feels the need to mention „environmental storytelling” in any Beth-game reviewed, because you can't be wrong in your article with it when Tim Cain himself mentioned it, right?
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And stuff like that is one of the good parts of FO3. And it would work even better with a coherent story and setting. 30 years after the war. And if you're going to turn the BoS into boy scouts anyway, just replace them with a division of the US Army equipped with power armour.
 
I wonder, would skeletons be in such good condition 200 years without having a museum curator or archaeologist taking care of it?
 
Mr Fish said:
khain said:
I can just picture the Draugr being regular people most of the time, milking their cows, chopping wood and farming their plots. Then as soon as an adventurer goes in, it's like a theme park attraction. "Quick guys, put the tools away, grab the swords and go graaaAAAARGH".

Funny thing is, if you have a mod to create some Draugr settlement in the tombs, with merchants, markets and farmers...

You have pretty much Fallout ghouls in Underworld.
Click to expand...
It would be better than Underworld as most of the ghouls in Underworld do bugger all. They sustain themselves by "scavenging", somehow.
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As we learned in Fallout 4, they don't have to ;)

Why would anyone scavange anything if he can just happily exist for 200 years in a fridge. The Underworld Ghouls don't make any sense!
 
Hassknecht said:
GlutinousRice said:
I wonder, would skeletons be in such good condition 200 years without having a museum curator or archaeologist taking care of it?
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No. They also won't stay in their fancy poses for 200 years because without sinews and flesh they just fall apart. But writers are allowed to have some fun.
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Not only would they disarticulate, but their bones would be picked up by cats and dogs and rats and badgers, and taken into burrows or bushes - for then to be gobbled right up.

Unless protected by extraordinary conditions (such as those that allow for fossilization), bones will eventually dry up, and almost fall apart under their own weight, untill there's only dust left.
Proper burial offers some of this protection, and these are the skeletons archaeologists tend to find - and even then only a small fraction of the total number of people who have died and been buried.
Bones that are re-exposed to the air, after being unearthed by an archaeologist, require immediate attention, protective coating, and once again - sustained protection from the elements.

But yeah, we're probably stupid to read so deeply into it, since skeletons posed around in the hundreds have always been a staple of Fallout, ever since FO3.
 
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