People are starting to mix up the Radio songs and background music, there is a very clear difference. If it's radio songs that you want, then just play your own music while you play the game. As Styles said, the 50's music fits the lore and adds realism into the world. And if you can't see why those songs fit (whether you like them or not, I personally don't) then you clearly don't understand what Fallout is about.

Personally, I think it's important for the Fallout franchise to stick to it's established artistic aesthetic - and music certainly plays a role in that.

When you get right down to it, a wasteland is a wasteland is a wasteland. There's a reason that every time a new game or movie comes out that's set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, we see at least one "Doesn't this look remind you of Fallout/Mad Max/The Road/Book of Eli?" Stylistically, there's only so much you can do to set yourself apart.

A war-torn and arid landscape ravaged by nuclear fire is just generally going to look the same no matter how much you try to differentiate yourself. (I mean, a collapsed overpass is always going to look like a collapsed overpass whether you see it in Book of Eli, or Fallout.)

What you do have control over, however, is what that rubble is made from. And that's what sets Fallout apart. The franchise is set in a wasteland that had once looked like the optimistic '50's ideal of the World of Tomorrow.

Hence, the music.

I did find the radio songs got a bit repetitive after awhile. By the time New Vegas came out, I generally had kept my radio off - venturing into a settled area or passing by a radio that just happened to be on gave me enough of that music and accompanying news reports that I didn't feel I needed to have it on all the time. (And I don't think they'd really designed it thinking players would be keeping it on the entire time they were playing, either.)

I do think that there's certainly some room for some... "Wasteland" music. Something that sounds like it was composed and performed by the survivors of a nuclear apocalypse. If it fit the story, I don't see why you couldn't have that played on one of the radio stations in a new Fallout game.

But even then - I don't think that means it would have to be more modern music, either. A la Fallout:Tactics or something (yeah, I just looked it up on YouTube - I don't know where I was getting the Hendrix thing from. Somewhere in my head I kept thinking I was remembering All Around the Watchtower playing.) I think that could be a decent enough fit without pushing the envelope too far.

But I do think that at some point - if you want to play a post-apocalyptic game with modern music accompanying it - well, there's never really been too much of a shortage of this genre in videogames. I'm sure there's got to be something out there more suited to that already.

I see they fit fallout, but i think its stupid that even after all these years 50s music is still there and kicking. Should be a change of culture, instead of just: here is my favourite song Johnny Guitar. Granted i have been listenin to it in 200 years, but enjoy
And it doesnt fit a wasteland no matter how much it fits fallout.

Yes it does, it's contrasting just like the "Stuck in the Middle with You" song playing in Reservoir Dogs when he's torturing a cop, slicing his ear of with a straight razor and pours gasoline on him. It's a cheerful song to a horrible situation. I love that scene, it's kind of comedic. Black comedic. And I love black comedy, because it's a very contrasting comedy. People die in horrible ways, and there's always a funny soundtrack or a funny reaction by some character. Another wasteland film that has black humour and contrasting music - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu9fESAlGc4. The film that inspired Fallout, pretty much. (Btw, that's the best trailer to any film ever!)

Yeah well dont be expecting me to watch it. Boy and his dog, sounds like Edens story.

Eden's story? You mean president Eden talking about pre-war america?

A Boy and His Dog is about a kid named Vic who travel the wasteland looking for food and a woman to have six with (since women are scarce in this wasteland) and with him he has his dog Blood who can telepatically communicate with him. They have a deal, Blood sniff out a woman for him and he gets food, I guess. Don't remember. Anyways, he finds a woman to have six with, after killing a few raiders and encountering something that reminds me of a Glowing One? Then he ends up in an underground bunker similar to a Vault, and the people there are really weird. They cling to the pre-war times, and they capture Vic to svck out all his seman so they can reproduce because, I guess, the men have become sterile because of inbreeding and underground living conditions? Oh, and there's androids as well.

Btw, why would you think I was talking about some "Eden story" when I said it was a film with black humour?

Well do you really expect the radio to be playing every type of song for everyone? First of all this needs to be justified in the game, and secondly, I think it is a waste of time and money for Bethesda to put so much effort into doing that. I personally would not even bother having a radio to listen to songs on your pipboy in the first place.

The first time that I got it I was just ten years old, went to the doctors and I think I got it some morrreeeeeee.

i didnt say that, what i mean is cause of the title. Now the story just movie just sounds sick.
Just maybe one other radio station (like a underground raider station) that consists of SOMETHING badass ) How is progress gonna be made if the culture is the same as before the war, its like trying to rebuild the old world. And i was thinking more about a way to put the songs into the background (like the radio) by downloading them (example i have ps3 and can get songs and stuff, and maybe uploading it into the game would help me make my own MOJAVE MUSIC RADIO. (BTW Mojave music radio is useless if u ask me)

Like I said, just play your own music outside of the game.
Also, If you have an underground raider station, how are you supposed to be able to listen to that anywhere you want while having a BADASS fight anyway.
If they do have varying styles of music, then most certainly it needs to be original work created for the game, and not a real world song...either way I would rather it just be in the local environment to make things more realistic, I don't care about having radio stations for the sake of having music to play on my pipboy whenever I want. Plus just how many safe functioning radio towers could there be anyway.

Exactly. Just how I like it. Black humour. Just like Fallout. If there'd ever be a movie based on Fallout, it'd be A Boy and His Dog.... errr... well... it's the other way around, really. Fallout was based on/inspired by A Boy and His Dog (along with The Road Warrior and Red Dawn)

This... but OT... Question to all of you.. How many of you are convinced that we actually see the slicing of the ear in Reservoir Dogs...

On topic:
It might (very likely will) not be every ones cup of tea: Brazil by Terry Gilliam coupled the Brazil song "Aquarela do Brasi" to a distopian world..Ie a very depressing world to a happy song. It makes the movie experience both ironic and tragic. Same thing with Fallout the tragedy of a world devistated by Nuclear holocaust is coupled to the (false) optimism of the 50's which works like a charm.
None of the other popular music era's would work .. let me explain:
The sixties: Protest/freedom: People are mostly free... there is no structure... thus songs about wanting no structure or freedom are redundant.
The seventies: Thematically music was the continuation of the sixties combined with glamour.. No connection to the wasteland.
The Eighties: (and late seventies) : Protest, anti government and establishment (punk) or mindless pop... Neither fits the wasteland.
The Nineties: Actually could fit the wasteland... because... both grunge (irony and desolate lyrics) and house/hedonistic pop dictated much of the era... However it would not sit very well with the imagery..
The naughties: For everyone something they could like... but ... not very fitting to the wasteland...
However.... The FO universe is progressing... in other words... while mutants and abominations are still roaming the wastelands the times (aka the wastelands) they are a changin''
In other words in the west.., with a stronger (possible) NCR... we could see a popularization of 60's music... and so on...
However... one thing should always be remembered.. the FO timeline is different than ours.. Thus the music we lable to a certain era might not even exist...

Indeed. I'm ok with some music from up to 1965 being in the game, for example. Some music do fit, but I'd like it if Bethesda, along with including real-life 40's-50's-60's songs as pre-war songs, also hired a bunch of indie/unknown artists to write a bunch of original scored for the game - the licensing would be much cheaper so we could get more songs, and it could fill the void of 1950-2077 where we got no songs (although they should be similar to the 50's music since culture was stuck in that era) as well as them writing post-war music being both wasteland inspired and 50's-and-backwards inspired (because they know of no other music before the war, so they couldn't just invent post-punk on the spot) and it would be played on instruments that could be found/made in the wasteland. That is including stuff you can build out of junk. And then there could be this radio station that actually ask for talented wastelanders to come and perform in their studio and record a song or two and then it's broadcasted over the wasteland. Think The Lonesome Drifter getting to record his songs and then you hear them on a radio station... Oh, and these indie artists they hired would probably be discovered by a larger audience if the Fallout fans like their music and look up their other music and buy it/buy the Fallout Soundtrack CD which they'd get royalties for? (dunno how that works?)

Getting away from the OP, but for lack of a better place and the desire to not make yet another FO music thread, I will put this here.

Fantomas.
I mentioned them earlier in this thread for a reason.
Someone besides me has to know who they are.
They make soundtrack music, basically. One of their albums is exactly that. Remakes of known movie soundtracks.
But far more than simply remaking movie soundtracks they make soundscapes as well.
Take http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef7_O5PfXec&feature=related for instance. It is the soundscape of being put under for surgery- the mind thinking it is dying as it slips out of consciousness.

They take a theme and run with it. If someone gave them a theme of black humor post apoc with 1950's optimism tinting, They could pull it off and well.

I know its just wishful thinking, but it would be BADASS and fitting.



back to the OT. There is so much i gotta shake my head about reading through this thread.
Yes music would have evolved past the 50's style music that we have seen in FO thus far, even if it was underground and not predominant.
But what’s more, the music examples that have been shown in fallout games don’t even begin to scratch the surface of what was being played in the 50's. As if there were only two or three styles of music back then. Come on, now...
Additionally, the reason the FO:T sounded different was simply because it was to be more representative of Chicago blues- the style didn’t change, even if it was a higher fidelity recording that had a bit more break-up due to some better tubes.

Thematically, the 80's were very close to the 1950's
Both had us fearing the ruskies.
Pop music and excess after recovering from depression/recession/war.

Of course the idea is to put in songs that are in contrast to the bleak nature of the wastes.
But I also think there is room for "BADASS" tunage as well.
Take that however you want, but I don't mean sliptknot or whatever. I mean gritty music that isn't ambient and isn’t optimistic,
Like you raid a group of raiders that are all jacked up on jet and psycho... are they going to be listening to Doris Day?

I would argue that bands like The Ventures and some of the old Rockabilly groups from the 1950's would have easily led to more hardcoe type of music.... Something mighty close to punk rock.. The 1950's wasnt just optimism and apple pie, and fedoras and milk men.
Teenagers and young advlts have always rejected the status quo. You combine that with the prosperity of the 1950's, even in the fallout universe where the US was still essentially "doing OK" by the time of the great war and you would have some mighty rebellious teens and young advlts, making music that doesn’t fit any of the "oh-god-imunna-be-sick-this-is-so-sweet" music that has been featured as most of the FO "song" music.

Heck, most of the FO music we know doesn't even come from the 50's. but rather the 40's. That’s mom and pop music by 1950's standards, which is about the time that teens and young advlts started having expendable cash and therefore a demographic that catered to them


any way.
i agree, no to the 80's, even if i don’t agree that music wouldn’t have progressed..

i was born in the late 60's but i spent my teenage years in the early 80's (i love 80's rock and new wave), i like your idea, but since fallout is set in an alternate 50's i don't think it would work (i also love 50's rock buddy holly, big bopper etc)

I wouldn't mind seeing some more music from the 50's , 60's and maybe the early 70's. The music chosen needs to tightly fit in with the Fallout timeline, it's culture, and technological advancements. Fallout music in the 1980's wouldn't sound the same as our own. There's probably some music from that time that could fit though. I would also love it if they got bands to make new music that fits the fallout universe. With the kinds of computers and robots they had by 2077, synthesizers were probably possible, but the music created would have had a very 50's feel to it, and very raw sounding overall. I would imagine having a synth sound in the style of early blues and rock. They could also make music being played by peoples out in the wasteland. It would reflect the music left behind, but focus on their current situation, maybe a kind of blues with a twangy punk like sound. We could also have singing robots.

Before the war of 2077,They probably had some underground music, but most of the mainstream music would have been heavily monitored and censored by the government most likely.

I've always wanted to hear Hurt by Johnny Cash come on the radio while I was walking through the wastes. Getting the rights to do that would be a major pain, but I think the song fits Fallout perfectly.

hearing johnny cash's ring of fire in fallout game would have been interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zqRxMnH7_CY

No thanks, this is fallout... roaming the wastes and killing raiders is already BADASS enough for me. Although more original songs composed for the next game would be welcome. Assuming they were 50's oriented... More songs in general would be nice...

Well my point was maybe not the most serious one but yes CD or not music saved digital don't last as long as anolog saves so that what what survived or not!
Most digital saves and commuter's seems more or less corrupted anyway in the fallout world!

Would i like to roam around the wasteland, killing things, listening to Spandau Ballet, Aneka and a Flock of Seagulls? Well... yes... i would actually. However, i have a playlist for when im in that mood, and i think it best to not inflict such sordid fantasies on others.

I'd love GTA style radio with different channels for rock, blues, government propaganda, independent news, etc. Would also be cool to have different hosts on the radio, to hear real news from the wasteland, you blow up a town or whatever crazy stuff happens or is about to happen, you'll hear about it on the radio. Right now the radio is repetitive and boring, same loop over and over. There are plenty of radios on the wasteland and people with pip-boys but no proper channels

Thats like having Maiden (up the Irons) in Bioshock it wouldn't fit the atmosphere and theme