I don't know if you've done any wandering in the Capital Wasteland, but it's filled with all sorts of animal life. Dogs, Molerats, Bloat Flies, Brahmin, etc. Also, Hunters. And cannibals. And if you talk to any merchants in the game, you'll notice that they carry food items like ""Squirrel on a stick" or "Brahmin Steak" or "Mirelurk Cakes" or "Strange Meat". I think it's pretty obvious what people are eating.

There's some very small amounts of vegetation (which the Brahmin feed on) - but generally speaking, it's scavenged package food from before the War and meat. And before you go on about "how can there be any food left to scavenge", well yeah - that's a but silly, but at the same time - consider that the Capital Wasteland is MUCH less sparsely populated than the West Coast is.

Anyways, holy moly! (hm seems familiar)? Give me a break. If you are trying to claim that the FO3 storyline is "cribbed" from the Water-chip story than you have the FO3 SUX fever worse than I thought.

Edit: less populated or more sparsely populated - not less sparsely populated.

Well sparsely or not, 200 years, they'd hit the bottom of that well of junk food and pre-war packages. The food at vendors is something I didn't think of, doesn't really add to a sense of sustainability as much as a hydroponic garden, or a farm but I suppose the average person might get the caps needed to feed themselves and so on. I guess you have to use a fair bit of imagining on your part to figure out how they feed themselves, keep power, etc. I guess the farms were a point in the games that showed things were moving forward, something the Wasteland isn't, pretty much at all - I guess it's supposed to be immensely overbearing "grim"-ness. 200 years and everything still looks and operates as if it was the same time setting as Fallout. And yes the "we need to do X so we have clean water" quest did seem familiar - I'm guessing that was the point..I hope - it's not "cribbed" from the water-chip story, the Enclave bit was sort of "oh, gee, this again" with the FEV plot.

Yes. 200 years later and the settlements are still tiny. And there are no viable farms. And these things are related.
Yes. 200 years later and the Capital Wasteland is still stagnant, unable to move forward - because the DC area is still a harsh and dead land.
People in FO3 eat meat. They have to. Hydroponics? If they had that amount of fresh water, they'd be drinking it.

All of that is intentional. That is the story of Fallout 3. The story of the Capital Wasteland. And (AFAIK) it is NOTHING like previous cRPG's. Are you being serious when you say that this story seems familiar? From where? Because it uses the words Enclave or Brotherhood or water? It's probably the most original storyline I have ever seen in a video game.

Anyways, I guess I'm done poking at your nitpicks - heck you still haven't addressed my point...

Oh wait, I forgot about the SM's. The US Gov't comissioned West-Tek to do the PVP and FEV projects. The US Gov't comissioned Vault-Tec to build some Vaults which were also sick and perverted experiments performed on her own citizens. Vault 87 is in the DC area, where a lot of US Gov't stuff also happens to be located. So what exactly is the problem with an FEV Vault? This breaks the logic of the game in what way?

Oh that's right. My original point again - When You Consider FO3, You Are Only Allowed To Look At Bad Stuff, And Good Reasons For Pointless Nitpicks Don't Count. (I've used up my inventory of eye-rolling smileys, please send more)

Whoa...! Post limit and then some.