The thing with war is that it's started by powerful people and fought by normal people. Normal people left to their own devices can, and indeed do, create optimistic cultures. The problems happen when they meet or need to share things, hence raider gangs, and settlements martially protecting themselves. There's always been room for both ideas in Fallout for me, and in fact it's a key concept in my opinion. War, war never changes, but before war there has to be optimistic civilisation, even if it's just a small settlement protecting itself and their own.

That was New vegas.

No, New Vegas was cheerful. It actually seemed like an OK place to live. The Capital Wasteland was all, "Just kill me now because everything is miserable and filled with woe."

True. People in power (politicians, corporate leaders) start wars but they don′t fight them. They want war, normal people don′t, but they fight them because they′re told to. Very sad.

the only real difference is that everything isnt painted in a green hue and the sky is colored normally instead of being filtered green... and while yes that makes a huge difference. its not that big of a change really... just removing the ugly green filter on everything.

Color palette-wise, I'm so very glad they have more color in the world. Narrative tone, however.. well, that's a different story. I'd like there to be a fair amount of horrible, but.. Fallout 3 was too dead. So many areas where there was nothing at all. No people, no feral ghouls, no muties, no.. anything. Just swirling dust and the rotting corpse of modern civilization.

I want to run into caravans, raiders, gangs, random packs of wild animals, other wanderers out on the roads.

However, I also hope there are plenty of silent Vault tombs to explore and tales from the dead beside their remains.

it doesnt seem optimistic, its just not ugly as all hell. the colors make way more sense than everything being a slightly green-ish grey and it makes it look so much better, how the world is supposed to look instead. the music has always been cheerfully dissonant to the actual world and having a dog isn't anything new

Finaly we get more colors.

I didn't like the blue/grey color of F3, and the orange/yellow of FNV.

I think its for the better.

Fallout 3 was particularly bleak? Hmm. I found the overall "mad science post-apocalypse dripping in black humor & goofiness" thing to be kind of over-the-top fun.

(Of course, that did make the extra-super-bleak bits stand out a bit more. Like the nurse's diaries at Germantown Police Station, or the logs of the woman slowly going mad in that one vault.)

Hmm. New Vegas was the one where everything seemed to be going downhill under it's veneer of progress, and the final slideshow was a endless progression of "Oh, those people you tried to help in ? Yeah, it didn't work out. That companion whose problems you tried to fix? Ended up alone. Etc, etc, etc." Was pretty annoying, honestly, having tried to play through that as a Good Guy/Wasteland Savior type, to have all my effort come to naught.

The more different from FO3, the better. I loved the trailer.

I hope they have some of both: the bright cheery areas and some more dismal looking places. The contrast would make each stand out more.

Fallout 3 wasn't particularly dark. Maybe the aesthetic looked dark, but the quests and stories were largely lighthearted, and there was a constant feeling of optimism. Fallout 3 is probably the most lighthearted installment in the series, actually.

The Mojave seemed like a nice place to live? That place was more of a mess than the Capital Wasteland. Unlike Fallout 3 there's no optimism in New Vegas, things appear to be about as good as they're going to get - which is already arguably worse than the Capital Wasteland considering the dark and twisted people and situations you encounter. You're always getting a feeling that no matter what you do the situation is only going to get worse - which it does based on the ending slides. There's no happy ending for the people of the Mojave, and the West in general.

As above, I didn't care for the 'emptiness' of D.C. which certainly did accentuate the bleakness of it. It felt like D.C. was still a war zone, but (outside of the Super Mutant activity in the Mall) that the war had been over for a long time and nothing had ever been done to restore the city. Big Town's tiny population, and Canterbury Commons' struggle to be more than just a group of squatters in ~ruins~ were hints at humanity's attempt to recover. Rivet City was by far the most optimistic part, and I think Boston may be a step farther - people making moves toward returning the world to normalcy.

The great thing, I hope, about this is that where D.C. was pretty much a lost cause, and any hope of success was SO distant it almost seemed pointless to try, in Boston, they have already HAD some success.... which makes the chance of LOSING it all ~yet again~ potentially even more tragic. If Rivet City had failed, no one would be TOO shocked because it was such a small step from where we were. But if BOSTON fails after putting so much effort into recovering... that would be almost more tragic, I think. And of course, the darkest evils can hide in the brightest settings.... where you least expect them. I hope that we do find out something dark and have the option to keep it secret, to try to preserve the very fragile growth of humanity.

It was not an "ugly green filter". Not sure why various people claim such things, but some people must have poor monitor settings. FO3 doesn't look "green" in my game and I do not mod the filter from vanilla.

What it looks like with the slightly green tint is the green phosphor computer monitors that are standard throughout the game and that were the norm during the decades of early electronic computer development (until the late 20th century). In other words, it fits the time scheme of the game world.

Perhaps some younger people playing the game do not know about the history of computers (or perhaps they do not care... not sure).

Anyway, FO3's environmental visuals fit the game world. New Vegas didn't aside from the basic desert tone (but that isn't post-apocalyptic nor 1950's era). We'll have to see about FO4 and how it handles the atmosphere of the time period (i.e., 1950's era America).

Edit:

Also, I have never understood how anyone can claim that the Capital Wasteland is "dead" with nothing in it. On the contrary, you find various things in the environment almost every few steps. Not life, necessarily, although there are certainly plenty of encounters/spawn points. However, there are many, many findings of military posts along the roads, skeletons or bodies of people (Raiders, wastelanders, etc.), empty shacks that were clearly used by someone for a time, even just a few pieces of random garbage here and there (some of which is useful and others which can simply be scavenged).

There are very few truly "empty" or "dead" places in the Capital Wasteland.

Eh. It never occurred to me to be some attempt to look "old-timey". The post-processing filter (whether you thought it "green" or not), I thought, was meant to be a "the world is overcast and the air is full of dust/pollution" thing.

And yeah. I modded it out. Made the game look much less..... green. (Note that a greyish-green tone to all the colors will still be referred to as "green" by many, even if it's not bright green.)

oh, and yeah - I used computers back in the day on green-ish tube monitors. The terminals & pip-boy in-game? Yeah, I'd associate that with the old computers I used. Not the general view of the gameworld though.

I hope it's more dark, I don't want a everybody saves the world the end type of playthrough, I want struggle for sure.

Yes the narrative theme has stayed the same, but the aesthetic rendition of this theme has differed (which is pertinent to the OP's worries of FO4 being too optimistic based on it's variegation).

Fallout 3 is a visibly depressing place to look at as Todd Howard has said, New Vegas by contrast is constantly derided as not being as depressing and looking like a typical desert

Fallout 3 looks like the glow from the original fallout, and doesn't have anything like New Vegas to offer people the tentative dream of making it rich in Vegas, with such vices as gambling, prostitution and drinking.Even Fallout 2 has a haven for the opportunistic to succeeded in New Reno, and a relatively salubrious settlement in Vault City (I'm sure drugs and alcohol are profane).

Most people in most settlements in Fallout 3 sit in derelict house or a hut in the mud, longing for something more.Whether it be for food or safety etc and this is often the case throughout a settlements entire history in Fallout 3.So the series has offered considerably more than just bleakness from the get-go, even Fallout 3 had the anomalous Tenpenny tower.

The series (bar Fallout 3 to a large extent) has always had the juxtaposition between optimism and pessimism (both narrative and aesthetic), from the Hub to the Glow in Fallout 1, Vault City to Mordoc/NCR in Fallout 2 or New Vegas to Freeside. Though Fallout 3 shows it's incongruity with the series yet again, by rendering the entire wasteland in abject despair, with people merely trying to survive, often in the most spartan conditions (bar tenpenny tower and Oasis at a significant push).

The series has offered more than just the bleak, though Fallout 3 struggles to and that's where the misinterpretation lies.

Seeing as Beth does not like to re-use the atmosphere, Boston is bound to be different from the Capital Wasteland in several ways, as will it's story type. However, that does not mean it will be more cheerful: bleakness is not the only way to create a dark world.

For a region that is supposedly so dangerous, the individuals actually living in it seem pretty nonchalant about these threats - especially considering their nearly non-existent defenses. The only community where Super Mutants actually seem to be a threat is Big Town. No one seems to really care about the Enclave, raiders, or Talon Company. There's certainly no massacres on the level of Nipton, Nelson, and Searchlight in the Capital Wasteland.

I'm not sure what ending you saw, but the Fallout 3 ending I saw was happy - especially when you factor in Broken Steel. The Enclave is gone, pure water is being distributed throughout the wasteland, and the Brotherhood knows where the Super Mutants are coming from so it's only a matter of time before they're dealt with. There's no hint that anything worse is going to happen to the region at all.

Can't tell if serious. I sure hope you're not.

I honestly have no idea what Fallout 3 you played, but the game was nothing like that.

The people in every major settlement, Megaton, Rivet City, Tenpenny Tower, and Underworld, express no real concerns over safety, food, or water. Ever smaller settlements, such as Canterbury Commons, and Girdershade, also express a feeling of being content with their lives, and often outright say they have few, if any, worries.

The only settlement shown to be in any real danger is Big Town, a notable exception. Hell, even Little Lamplight, which sits right next to the super mutants, is shown to be a fairly ok place to live, with no one really THAT concered or needing anything.

What you describe more closely fits NV more then Fallout 3, where every NPC in every settlements is always worrying over the powder gangs, NCR, Legion, or some other supposedly terrible threat just on the horizon.

Methinks I need to re-play Fallout 3. I must've forgotten how contented everyone was. Except for Big Town and Paradise Falls, of course.

I disagree, whether it's tenpenny tower residents complaining about ghouls, rivet city in fear of the enclave at the Jefferson memorial or the specious andale being about as bleak a location as the series has seen.Though this is supererogatory as you've made my point for me.You originally said "Not really, the entire series from the get-go has been nothing but bleakness." and you've just articulated how this isn't so.That was my main grievance.

I also don't think danger and bleakness are interchangeable in this context, as Megaton is literally a button press away from being a crater but has a surprisingly ebullient aura.

Except it is bleak, from a real world perspective. Seeing the height of America, the nation's capitol, utterly destroyed is bleak.

Bleak works on perspectives just like everything else. From the real world perspective, that of looking at the game's narrative, the one I talked about originally, its very bleak. From an in-universe standpoint however, disregarding the meta-knowledge of the narrative, it isn't. These two are not mutually exclusive.

The ghouls aren't ever treated as a real threat. The Enclave never make any move to Rivet city, and Andale isn't bleak by any means.

The DC Wasteland looked pretty dead to me, if you meant anything besides Super Mutants, Rad Scorpions, and Raiders.

Girdershade was having raider problems. Ronald has killed two raiders at Girdershade.

Canterbury Commons was having a serious robot/ant problem.

The people of Arefu were afraid to come out of their homes.

Grayditch was wiped out by Fire Ants.

Megaton, Rivet City, Tenpenny Tower, and Underworld are some of the best fortified settlements in the DC Wasteland and there were still major problems.

Rivet City was still having serious clean water supply issues.

Tenpenny Tower was about to have a serious ghoul problem.

And the caravan trade route was barely getting by.

Now in the Mojave, it was a different setup.

The Mojave was in the process of recovering till the NCR/Legion war started and never stopped.

All the unrest was mostly due to the ongoing war.

Certainly without the war the Powder Gangers would never been allowed to revolt or been allowed to continue.

The Fiends were secretly being armed by the Legion.

And of course there was the direct confrontations between the NCR and the Legion.

But otherwise there was plenty of clean water and power if you knew where to look for it.

They were even repairing the railroad between New Vegas and the NCR.

I will say that Obsidian did a better job in Fallout New Vegas with the people's attitudes/settlement atmosphere, but they were building on what Bethesda had already created.

-Actually they weren't. You are even told this by Ronald, the raiders dont bother them. The two raiders he killed only went there because he payed off the courier who was supposed to deliver the nighty nightwear to Lag-Bolt, the leader of those raiders, to deliver it to him instead. Raiders don't go there normally, and after Ronald killed those two guys... the remainder never came back.

-And Uncle Roe even mentions its actually NOT that big of a problem, because nothing ever happens. He even says he wouldn't mind one of them staying around because they are so harmless, he just wants you to remove one of them because they MIGHT actually do something that harms someone if both stay, not because they are actually a threat themselves.

-No, Evan King is afraid of people coming out of their homes. Everyone else treats him likes he is crazy and paranoid. They just do what he says because he is their leader.

-I will give you that one.

-Serious? No, its only brought up in some very minor dialog that there might be a problem, nothing actually says that there is, nor does anyone make a big deal out of it.
-Again.... serious? No, not at all. Roy was totally harmless because he had no way into the tower without your help. Nothing they could have done without your help was of any major concern.

-And where are you getting this "barely getting by" stuff from? Nothing suggests that as much as I can remember. They weren't getting the maximum profits they could have because no one was organizing them, but nothing says they were barely getting by.

None of these supposedly "serious" problems are actually serious.