Judging from whats been revealed so far, I'm expecting the Boston wasteland to be a much more optimistic place. The capital wasteland, for the most part, was desolate and hopeless and depressing.

My first instinct tell me, that while playing Fallout 4 the overblown optimism might turn me off after a while. Suffering being such an integral part of human history and nature, I feel that the bleak wasteland was in a lot of ways immersive and gave a lot to the imagination. At the time, I was going through a dark time of my own so the capital wasteland to me felt like I was at home.

Do you remember? exploring old, rusty, abandoned vaults with their own backstories. Body parts and blood everywhere.. finding computer terminals with bite sized pieces of a story, just one piece of a puzzle. There was so much narrative in just the environments themselves, you didn't need dialogue to explain to you the horrors which have occurred. It lends a lot more to your imagination and that was really amazing to me.

I have friends who could not play Fallout 3 because they didn't have the stomach for it.. I think that is very telling how well Bethesda pulled off their vision for Fallout 3. Personally, I'm a little worried that the overall optimism won't relate to me as much and I can't quite get into it. But I guess time will tell.

The tone of 4 is more in line with the rest of the franchise. 3 was the odd one out in how bleak it was.

Yes that is true, for Fallout 2. Fallout 1 I found to be pretty bleak though.

Honestly, I hope there's a nice balance of bright-eyes optimism and bleak mind-numbing atrocities. Vault 87 was a great location to explore, in my opinion. Seeing the failed experiments, reading about the Vault's descent into madness, it was sublime. That's what I want from at least a couple vaults in Fallout 4, and hopefully in some normal wasteland areas too. But at the same time, I want to see optimistic settlers who are trying their damned hardest to turn the wasteland into a place worth living in.

What exactly is giving you these vibes?

to me the setting looked like a mix of prosperity and dystopian.

The happy, go lucky music. The colors, the dog. A lot of it is in high spirits, especially when compared to Fallout 3.

Yeah, Todd has already mentioned that he has deliberatedly changed it up and made the game 'less depressing' with the new color palette.

Though he did say that the parts on the map where the bombs fell will remind us more of FO3.

So it looks like it could be a bit of both, which sounds good.

Not really. People need to stop saying such things because the original games only dealt with context in the western United States. Bethesda deliberately chose to use the eastern US settings so that they were free to develop the lore there, lore that really was not covered elsewhere. That's why it is very silly for players of the original games to claim that Bethesda is violating lore. No, they are not, because the lore of what the eastern US was like isn't known, or isn't known in any detail.

In fact, in the "Making of Fallout 3", Todd freely admitted that it was Emil (if I recall correctly) who argued for using the eastern US. Todd's original desire was to continue using the western US, but he became convinced by the arguments that using the east coast would offer much more freedom to reboot the franchise (which turned out to be very true, of course).

Now, regarding the desolate and despairing air of FO3, the whole point (as was also stated in the Making of video) was that that area of the country (DC and surroundings) never really recovered from the bombings, unlike the west coast. Instead, the DC area wound up constantly being in a state of conflict/warfare whether from looting, Raiders, Super Mutants, mutated animals, or whatever. The dark, depressing result is quite accurate to real life areas that suffer such ongoing or successive conflicts.

For the Boston area, it makes sense that it wasn't hit as hard as DC. However, any sort of optimism might also be only on the surface. Deep down, there could be plenty of dark, depressing elements. In other words, it could be that people (in general) are either adjusting post-war by ignoring the depressing aspects (this is one defense mechanism, after all, just as being openly depressed is) or that some of the more powerful people/groups have convinced the general populace through propaganda or other means that things are not too bad or even quite bright (i.e., similar to what Eden and the Enclave attempted to do in DC).

The music and dog are pretty much the same as FO3. The colors are a result of not being in a constant state of conflict post-war and not being hit anywhere near as hard as a capital would be during the war. It all makes sense, but it may not be very optimistic once we look past the surface impressions.

We'll have to wait and see exactly what the situation is in Boston, but it may not be very cheery after all.

If they nail a good balance I'll be a happy chappy

Though if it's unbalanced.. I would personally prefer it to be in depressions favor.

The happy-go-lucky music that played during the murder montage? The colours that were probably implemented due to a lot of people criticizing the relentless brown and gray of FO3? The dog we've had in FO3 but with a updated texture and better AI?

Now I don't know if FO4 will have a less bleak tone and I don't really see how that detracts from the story if it does BUT! I also think it's too early to tell one way or another. Potential counter argument: we know that this trailer shows a family, with a little baby, actually experiencing the start of the great war. And then one member of that family emerging into a Wasteland 200 years later (but for them just a few hours) and, to their knowledge, as the 'sole survivor.' It doesn't evoke flowers and rainbows for me.

Well when you put it like that.. I guess not. But sometimes it's not what's being told, but how it's being told.

I'm more interested in dark themes and stories, the world can look all sunny and rosey for all I care as long as there's cannibalism and torture and weird cruel experimentations on people and etc.

Oh and nuking. Maybe with a more vivid realistic visual of the affects of nukes close up.

Yes, these things definitely add more depth and reality to the game world. Immersion is just as, if not, more important, than the for fun features we've been shown so far.

There's been happy and upbeat music in Fallout 3 and New Vegas as well on the radio stations, the song played in the demo/trailer was in line with that. Unless you guys consider "Civilization," "A Wonderful Guy," "Way Back Home," etc...to be bleak and depressing Enemies still explode into meaty bits, dog companions were present in both Fallout 3 (Dogmeat) and New Vegas (Rex), we haven't seen nearly enough to judge how dark the story or quests are, the only thing different is the colors. It was a popular phase for quite a while that brown=realistic/edgy/etc...and I'm glad they're doing away with it.

I had exactly the same concerns like you (op) judging from the game Content that we've seen so far. The majority of it indeed seems to be rather cheerful and bright and only Little places appear to have that distinctive Appeal that fallout 3 had. Aside from the dialogue System, this new Color Arrangement has been the biggest disappointment of the game so far.

I'm sure you'll be able to get a mod that makes everything brown/sepia tone again.

Nah. People have been asking for much more grey. Less obvious good outcomes and more consequences.

So now absolutely every quest will have dark motives and hidden agendas.

Every decision you make will backfire.

Common raiders will have families.

Simply buying all the ammo from a trader will leave them defenceless. Expect to find their mutilated corpses in the wastes.

Your path through the game will be measured by ruined lives and the blood of the innocent, no matter how you try to justify your actions.

You are a monster.

I mean, what do you expect if you go gun happy the way we do in computer games? Do you think you're the good guy?

Honestly you can still have a dark themed game without having to just be grey, grey, brown and more grey. Good thing beth realised this too.

It will still be as dank as Fallout 3.

dank?

Personally, I'm happy that there will be better, more thriving areas and bleak areas where the bombs fell. It provides a nice contrast.

Though I don't think you can judge how "optimistic" the overall tone of the game is from a few trailers. We haven't seen any uninterrupted gameplay footage.

Not really, the entire series from the get-go has been nothing but bleakness.

The fundamental fact that "war, war ever changes", that people are unable to stop repeating the mistakes of the past, and are unable to stop being destroyed by them, is throughout the series.

Borrowing this for another thread. Well said.

Exactly. The whole series revolves around the fact that...

(1) We blew ourselves up, possibly sending us back to the Stone Age.

(2) We clearly hadn't learned our lesson 200 years later, as we're still fighting each other over resources and pre-War ideals.

The entire theme is is the line that's spoken in the beginning and ending cutscenes before the main game: "War never changes". Even after humanity had completely destroyed itself, it's still kicking its irradiated corpse thinking something different will happen as a result.