In Fallout 4 we have a new situation, a protagonist who has lived through the time and culture of the late 2070's (which we know has retained the fashion and culture of the 1950's US.

The protagonists from Fallout 1 and 3 are vault dwellers with a Vault culture.

The protagonists from Fallout 2 and NV are more familiar with the wasteland, if isolated and dazed/confused.

I think role playing a '1950's' mindset of war and war with fictional China to be fascinating.

And to see how the protagonist may deal with the change from war torn 2077 to c.2277.

One would image the protagonist will go through culture shock stages of denial, distress, accommodation and mastery.

How would you like this to affect your role play?

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For reference, I've linked to some Fallout lore items and some real sources from the 1950's.

Lore

Assuming the protagonist is a veteran (and so the dates are easy), I'm assuming an age of 27.

• Age 13 - Vaults mostly completed with vault drills in cities.
• Age 16 - China invades Alaska.
• Age 18-27 - Protagonist's involvement in the armed forces (unspecified)
• Age 27 - Alaska retaken.
• Age 27 - Bombs fall.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline

1950's culture

oh wow, some of these real 1950's information films are quite enlightening of the period...

The classic 'Duck and Cover' safety film (1951) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60

'Self Self Preservation In An Atomic Attack' (1950) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCzUcwS_rPI

'The Atom Soldier' (1955) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CthmRe-IU_Y

'Survival Under Atomic Attack' (1951) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v60rbBinw4

I dont think the ss will have much problem adopting due to being in a bloody war with the Chinese and the wasteland is one giant battlefield.

We sort of see a glimpse of this shock when he is talking to Codsworth and seems befuddled when Codsworth asks if he wants something to eat...

On the one hand, the entire world is foreign to him, now, and he's bound to have some confusion.... but on the flip side, I don't want my character to ~constantly~ be going, "Huh? Durrr, why are bottlecaps important?"

That's a really good point. All those things that we as FO players take for granted, that's all gonna be new to him. Wonder if they'll just brush that aside, or actually try to explain it somehow.

There probably will be dialogue options such as the famous time your character saw a ghoul "EW, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU?! AND YOUR SKIN, TOO, WTF?!"

My favorite FO3 hobby was insulting people, lol.

I'm planning to Role Play it with a bit of culture shock. Sounds like it would be fun.

Wakes up, everything is blown up...time to be Jeremiah Johnson.

I think that makes perfect sense.

To use an example from another franchise, when my Shepard from Mass Effect 3 got 'kicked' by Kai Leng,

I turned from mild mannered to one angry ***** !

I can see setbacks pushing the sole survivor over the edge for a time...

That's the Glory of Roleplaying.

Sure you can just play it like "Wow, everything got blown up...Cool"...but it's just not as interesting as "Oh sonuva...oh god no...THis is...I can't even...I...I need to sit down..."

Don't forget about stuff like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s7X5-Drctk. Gonna go over real well in the wasteland...

Remember, Sole Survivor is a veteran. He/she is probably used to gunfire and explosions. What he/she might NOT be used to is all the glorious horror that prowl the Wasteland. Deathclaws, Super Mutants, that sort of thing. I can easily imagine them keeping themselves sane with, "Remember your training; if it bleeds, you can kill it. Doesn't matter if it's a hulking, 10-foot tall monstrosity. It can be killed somehow..."

I think he'll adjust just fine, things will be different but the battle to survive stays the same. He's a soldier and war, war never changes.

Considering that the Fallout world is the realization of 1950's prognostication and hysteria, it probably shouldn't be a shock as such.

I just find it a bid odd that he doesn't at all talk like he was from the 50s. I think for his character, that's kinda important for this culture shock to allude development on him/her.

"Aww gee wiz Codsworth, was I really out that long? What? Food? Yeah that would be swell!"

Interesting point, like hey all the fear propoganda was right. On the other hand, there might still be shock at the fact that the American way of life isn't as well preserved as they said it would be.

I hope you will have the choice to indulge in a little shock, or not.

I see it a bit like the Frozen people revived in Monthership Zeta. ? People out of time.

I actually always wondered how those people re-intergrated. Not so much Somah but people like Tercorien and Paulson and the oldest Human alive, Toshiro Kago. Like you stated they are from a Different time. Effectively what happens to them, they were frozen against their will and were reanimated by player action (we dont know how you are brought out of it in FO4.. just that you are)

Paulson towards the end game gives a bit of a Fatalistic streak to his sayings and I have no idea what Kago is talking about. Both Somah and Tercorien seem to 'adjust' the best.

Of course we have Sally who would have to stop exploring the ship eventually, but she has NOTHING to return to.

Thats the best comparison I can make to how a FO4 character would handle things.

Give him a leather jacket, a cool haircut full of gel and a song to sing to the ladies.

That's probably why our Post-Great War companion (forgot her name) stayed on board with them so she could give them a crash course on what's been going on the Earth since their abductions. Though she'll probably have to figure out how to translate her English into Kago's Japanese.

One saving grace is that the society left after the war has remained a broken shell (if a violent one) of what went before.

That is to say, the world has not recovered, the wasteland remains a wasteland. A feudal robber baron society.

A society that had developed for 200 years would be like dropping a veteran: Napoleon Bonaparte,
into the modern military and expecting him to cope (the same 200 year gap).

But no, in the world of Fallout, the society of the 1950's has been strangely impervious to change up to 2077 (127 years)

and recovery from the nuclear war has been no less repressed over a further 200 years,

(though there is a basis for super mutants, ghouls and other dangers holding societal recovery back)

The 1936 movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atwfWEKz00U (based on the HG Wells novel) presents a familiar scenario:

In it's case, in 1940: war and plague to break down society until by 1970 a Brotherhood of Steel like outfit (Wings Over the World) seeks to rebuild the wasteland.

And as the local warlord, the 'chief' says before he is swept aside by new technology, war, war never changes - 'war's war'.

Wells envisaged a societal breakdown, recovery and profound technological advance within 100 years.

Because it is the future as thought of by 50's sci-fi. It affected technology and architecture mostly. People were not frozen in a 50's mindset and behaviorism for 120 years.

That's a shame too; it was not supposed to have been. That is Bethesda simplifying the setting for marketability ~through making it easier understand at a glance. (IE. The Elevator pitch version of Fallout. )

Fallout was not a world stuck in the 1950's culture; it was a world living in the manifest expectations of the 1950's.

Fallout shows many emergent cultures, and the only things with truly 50's aesthetics are the pre-war remnant junk and past architecture. The http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/Fallout1amp2NPCs_zpsf1uapi01.png in Fallout were shown to have developed their own cultures; their own icons, and own aesthetics.

In a world based on Mad Max and http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/647fad8ea385aead3bec88c71f2392ee_zpssv03e9el.jpg, characters like Butch Deloria are quite out of place.

What is very interesting (and will doubtless go unused in the game), is that the PC is one of the few ~non-ghouls still alive that remembers the world as it was before the war. It will be a terrible shame when we find out that that has no significance in the game; when it could have had several plot changing effects on the modern descendent's of the ~retro paradise lost.

• Huh? There is a Fallout 'rule book' that Bethesda has to follow?
• A bit cynical on plot relevance, that may well be covered. Perhaps you can report back on the matter after you have played the game?

• Yes; (though nobody is left to stop them. Interplay made the sale without provisions. ).
• Not needed. Such a thing rests high above the expected bar; and one need only look at their past choices in their released games.
  (IE. They don't have to, and it could be seen as confusing, or as a battle they don't want to pick.)

The first thing that comes to mind is that the Sole Survivor (almost alone among all humanity), can have a unique rapport with ghouls for having a common understanding of the world as it existed before the war changed everything. I don't expect this to show up in the least; it's too perfect for an RPG, and too painful to get one's hopes up.