So let me get this straight. For the sake of realism you want a game with no weapons,ammo, food, junk, or seven buildings? Yea, that sounds like a lot of fun to play.

You need perspective. 200 years ago was just before the Industrial Revolution. The Earth's resources were still largely untapped. The population was booming. Europe had been developing for three centuries already. Much of the prosperity of Europe would be built on the backs of the colonies they would acquire over the 19th century, while America had its own vast resources of its western regions to tap.

Compare this to the world of Fallout.

200 years ago, the world was ravaged by nuclear war. The industrial agriculture system, the base upon which modern society is built, collapses overnight. Most people revert back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to survive. The food supply dries up and the water is radioactive. This is made further difficult by the fact that every other animal now wants to eat people, and most are easily capable of overwhelming an unarmed man.

Speaking of arms, you've got armed raider gangs who are far better armed and armored than your average wastelander. And they have no interest in rebuilding society. With no organized army or police, these gangs quickly become the de-facto "powers that be", terribly extorting wastelanders they don't just kill.

To top it all off, there are no fossil fuels left. The resources that we built the industrial revolution off of are totally depleted. Most wastelanders will not have the technical know-how and/or manpower required for solar or nuclear power, and wind power will be impractical for any number of reasons.

Frankly, the fact that the Commonwealth has progressed to the city-state level of development is a bit remarkable. Many parts of America, notably Utah (as seen in Honest Hearts), are still dominated by tribal societies.

Fun fact: KOTOR tried to claim that its events were taking place 4000 years before the Star Wars movies! How much sense does that make? In that amount of time we went from stone tablets to smart phones. In Star Wars World they went from lightsabres and spaceships to... guess what.

I agree though. The world should be totally picked over by now. You've been out of the vault for like a month and you have personally cleaned out every ammo box in the state of Mass. The buildings, the ones that survived the blast, would probably be reduced to rubble by the constant fighting in the streets.

Rule of Cool

Feral Ghouls, mutated animals, raiders, and radiation limit the amount of ruin exploration. Better to just stay at home and grow crops. Fallout protagonists are a unique breed in the Fallout universe. They all have a reason to travel across the Wasteland rather than staying in relative safety.

I think if were were bombed today. This very moment....that there would still be some scattered cans of spam and packages of twinkies left about to have.

Just take a look at pictures of HIROSHIMA, JAPAN after one very low yield bomb, just do a google search on images. Now think what would be left to any major city after 3 or 4 high yield bombs struck. Would not be a very fun place to have a game world based on. I think they would have been much better off making it a biological strike and what we see now is what is left after years of neglect. But hey once again this is not real it is a game, it does NOT claim to be a simulation, just enjoy it for what it is.

I get what you're saying, but realism makes for poor gameplay. A realistc wasteland would be boring as a game.

It just works....

Radiation can preserve food, and stop decay by killing bacteria, pests and hungry wastelanders. It's not like there isn't a bigger, more nutritious meal, like Brahmin, Mirelurks, or a juicy wastelander...

There have been great advances in psychiatric drugs in recent years.

No, the 200 year gap was by Bethesda, not sure where you got your info about it being in the original Fallout.

Fallout 1 begins in 2161, 84 years after the war in 2077

Fallout 3 begins in 2277, yes 2277, meaning it's exactly 200 years after the war.

You should have suspended your disbelief back when you first saw terminal working without electricity.

Would you want to pop one open and chow down on the contents, 200 years later?

This is why I always supported the Empire and Sith after playing KOTOR - clearly, the Jedi and the Republic stand for thousands of years of stagnation and intellectual oppression!

hmmm 200 years, well most animal and microbes that cause decay in the first place would be gone. The amount of radiation would be around for at last 100+ years. During that time going outside of a protected area without protection would shorten your lifespan to a great deal. You would either die or be ghoulified. The level of radiation would limit how far people would go out and where people would go. drinking or even walking/swimming or even being near water would be dangerous.

You also have to think about in fallout 4 nuclear power plants would be abundant, not to mention all the car, trucks ...ect. we know that the people in our vault left around 180 days after the bombs dropped. which most likely would of been a death sentence.

read and listen to the history people talk about in game and you will get an idea of what it was like during those 200 years.

You make lots of good points, the world of fallout does need lot of suspension of disbelief or acceptance of it's own personal rules (especially for me the food expiration date). But that's how it is, we'll have to make do for years of nuclear post war development and super science we never had and 200 years of nuclaer fallout we thnkfully never had to go through and imagine that's how it worksin fallout's world.


Ironically, they still have one of the strongest militaries in the world. War never changes...

After 200 years of no human interference, the continental US would be one huge forest with a few deserts and mountains here and there.

But this is a game where I can talk to a Ghoul (a human with no skin, ears, or nose), battle giant Super Mutants, romance all my companions and survive injuries that would otherwise kill, y'know, everyone else. This is a game that has giant roaches, Deathclaws, and with enough Radway and Rad X, I can stroll through the Glowing Sea naked. This is a game where we were frozen in a freezer for 200 years and got out with no consequence save shivering and gasping for air.

The MST3K mantra applies here in full.

In a post apocalypse world. Yeah, I'd give the spam a go. I mean, I don't think there would be many choices in lean hunting times. Since I've already eaten MREs from about 1942 and it wasn't too bad...I'd give it a try.

so how do you explain the pyramids, the coliseum, easter island, or other ancient buildings that have lasted for thousands of years. its not really that much of a stretch.

They're made from solid stone and had architects who built in heaping amounts of load tolerances.

Modern buildings are fragile things made of things that will decay over time without people watching over them while not having excessive load tolerances.

I believe so. Also why the games are set on the east coast.

Though i still say the last 0 in "200 years" was a typo, and now they're stuck with it

Like steel?

Non Sense steel is very light weight ahahaha.

Alternate universe. Not yours.

/Thread

The thing is, how could he have managed to keep doing that over 200 years? I'm still trying to decipher the source of Codworth's infinite supply, perpetual motion machine fuel. I actually did stumble across the only can of fuel named after him while saluaging recently. Can't remember where my PC picked it up. Decided to hang on to it in case Beth has something in store for making infinite supply jet pack or fusion core raw materials.