Or maybe it's simply a peculiarity of the eastern seaboard, which had a much higher population density and urbanization. I'm not convinced that the Survivor couple are middle class suburbanites, by the way. From the speed of the military deployment, the arrival of the Vertibird, and presence of cutting edge power armor, it's pretty clear they're an affluent couple in an upper class neighborhood, the top 1% living the American dream. Compare that with the checkpoints outside Boston, filtering out undesirables, or the martial law in Canada.

Well you usually don't see very high priced luxury items advertised on normal broadcast television, no.

There's always exceptions of course, but TV ads usually try to carter to the widest range of audience they can.

Which would make sense if Nora is a lawyer and Nate has a fat military pension. Upper-middle I'd say personally.

Pension, shmension. Pre-selected for a Vault!

Yup. And when's the last time you saw someone rebuilding a 2010 vehicle? Plenty of those still on the market...yet here we have a situation where a woman and her son are restoring a vehicle that is only five years old.

That doesn't strike you as odd?

No, and that's the point of Fallout. Remember, that same Fallout 1 intro was hawking a Corvega with "no electronics, no computers" for 199,999.99 - meaning it was a economy car. A Giddyup Buttercup children's toy cost 16,999.99. A beer at a restaurant attached to a brewery in Boston ran you anywhere from $55 to $75 per bottle.

The US is still depicted as a consumer culture, but that culture is choking to death on itself...because of the shortages.

Two, by my recollection. The damaged Enclave Mister Handy outside of Klamath, and Toto the Robobrain in Shady Sands. Both from Fallout 2 - but then, Fallout 1 was a pretty short game, all things considered and I get the impression between the Followers, Gun Runners, Brotherhood, and Master all bits of advanced tech were quickly gobbled up in the Core Region. The Boneyard certainly lives up to its name, at any rate.

Terminals in Fallout 3/New Vegas explain this. Corporate America was investing more in robots to replace the Human workforce (which wasn't doing anything for inflation and the shortages crisis).

The only Vault I know of that had a robot was 101, and Andy was an aberration, considering in other Vaults bringing robots (even pets) was disallowed. Likely because they'd interfere with experiment parameters.

Surly robot butlers, mind you. "How May I Serve You Master? ....not that i really want to." I'll admit he makes little sense in Megaton, but in Tenpenny Tower he's thematically appropriate.

And not much else.

Fallout 4 pulled back on that, and I do agree it was odd just encountering the random Robobrain/Protectron/Sentry Bot wandering the wastes in Fallout 3.

You also only get paid 25 pre-war dollars and your employment is terminated upon completion of the quest.

In the game that is a Factory town for the employees of Corvega. No one owns a house, Everyone lives in apartments and the streets are super narrow while there is still plenty of greenspace to spare. For a world obsessed with overconsumption you would expect the employees of corvega to live in a neighbourhood like sanctuary hills with two car garages. This however isn't the case.

Our contemporary Lexington has way bigger houses.

They weren't in the top 1% they were an experiment. Vault-Tec was paying for the military escort and Vertibird, not the Families in Sanctuary.

It seems you missed the point where a pre-War corporation builds a superhighway through the middle of a historic city, erects a huge factory right next to its historic city center, and passes it off as Progress! It's corporatism at its worst.


How does one preclude the other?

I believe they were meant to be middle-class 1950s suburbanites by the sheer deluge of suburban 1950s imagery in the short segment we encounter.

Albeit, a practicing lawyer does not qualify.

Just to point out, they are definitely not upper class. I'd say upper-middle class at best. They're a successful educated family, but they're living the expected dream life of a college educated couple or spouse. To call them the 1% is utterly laughable. Calvert and House are the type of people who were the 1%.

(also a reply to Charlie up there)

Upper class is always defined relative to the rest of society. The Survivors have a house in an elite housing district, with a robotic butler, their own high end car (a late model Corvega!), robotic butler, and a Vault on their doorstep. They're pre-approved for the Vault, and when the Great War comes, they're escorted by the United States military (which arrives on the spot in moments) into the Vault.

Given the sorry state of the rest of the country, they're the top 1%. It's not laughable, it speaks volumes of how badly the rest of the country is doing. You know, riots, rationing, the like.

Top 1%? Sniffing the kitty litter again I guess. Top 1% would be like CEO of Poseidon, or Mr. House. Maybe upper middle class they were, but 1%? Lolz.

Oh see I'm not only one who noticed that.

For Kitty Sue, it isn't like the rest of society is 99% bums and 1% Everyone else. There are still multi billionaires in the FO Universe, and everything in between. Dunno why you consider having a Vault that is an experiment a luxury.

The make and model of the vehicle being rebuilt is never mentioned. 2073 is just the oldest car listed that we know of that the garage is working on.


And yet it doesn't seem like anyone was struggling to buy beers, cars, toys or robot butlers.


I basically consider the Enclave to be functionally a pre-war military. Again there's no great problem in explaining this from a lore perspective I'm just saying that there is a very distinct difference between the number and location of robots in Fallout 1/2 and Fallout 3/NV/4. It's plainly there. Maybe someone at Fallout 1/2 just hated the way the robot models looked (they shouldn't they looked great) or whateverand there was no deeper lore statement meant by the rarity of robots but they were rare.


If there are resource shortages shouldn't robots be much more expensive than paying people?


There's at least one other in Fallout 4 which is two more than a Vault had ever been portrayed as having in Fallout 1/2. And I think there were more in vaults in Fallout 3 but I could well be wrong on that point.


Thematically appropriate or not my only point is there are a lot more robots in a lot more locations than there were in Fallout 1/2. It's just a fact.


Washer, dryer, TV, radio, dishwasher, full kitchen, refrigerator are all what I can remember off the top of my head. Not to mention a full baby room with plenty of toys. The Sole Survivor and his family have a pretty good quality of life.

Not entirely.

People here in the US will buy current model cars all the time. Not like they do it yearly, but you see plenty of people who update from an older car they feel is too much work to maintain. For all we know their Corvega is a replacement from an older car. They were Pre-Approved because of the husband's military service, so it's not like he was some wealthy industrialist. Also, the military didn't arrive at the behest of the family, they arrived for the sake of Vault Tec and Vault 111. You can keep calling Sanctuary Hills an elite suburb but it's not. Its your run of the mill upper class suburb. Keep saying it as you like, but you're wrong. They are doing well, yes, but they are not the 1%. Maybe they look like the 1% based on your country's standards, but by American standards they're your ideal suburban family of the 1950s. Average, well to do single family home. Nothing more, nothing less.

There are a bunch of Robobrains in the Vault where you find good old dad.

By American standards of 2077, a country rapidly going nowhere with a collapsing economy that's been fighting total war for eleven years straight. You completely ignore the point I raised, that they are in the top 4 million Americans still living the American dream in an idyllic suburb in New England. You're saying that I'm wrong without offering any counter point.

I did provide points. You're trying to continually argue west when I've shown you're supposed to be going east. You're living entirely under the presumption of assumed perceptions of the Pre-War world as if the entirety of America was dystopic and destroyed. If you're trying to tell me 4 Million Americans are 'The One Percent' you're running your own absurd set of logic to define what it means to you when in fact the couple is nothing more than a typical suburban family. Are they higher on the food chain than a RobCo factory mechanic or Red Rocket gas attendant? Most certainly, but what you're trying to argue is purely illogical. A government's status does not inherently reflect the status of its citizens. You act as if a majority of citizens of America lived in tin shacks or yurts and cookfires when that's simply not true. I've said my points and proven why you're wrong, you're just not getting it.

Yes, I'm telling you that the top 1% of Americans is the top 1% of Americans. Surprising, isn't it?

The majority of Americans, the 99%, did not enjoy the quality of life the Survivor and his spouse did. A well stocked fridge, a robotic butler to do house chores for them, a nice house in an idyllic suburb with a spot in the local Vault. The counterpoints you offer only apply to our reality, not that of America AD 2077.

Yeah. You're just going to keep missing the point no matter how many times I break it down. You do this any time you don't get it or you refuse to admit why you're wrong, you keep going in circles or you don't catch the point. It's a routine thing with you in debates and I'm not going to waste my time. So whatever, you're always infallibly right and you're without a doubt the undisputed master of all Fallout lore. How could I have EVER doubted in your wisdom. I'm done with this nowhere discussion.

Do you not know basic American history...? Or basic Fallout history, that the games provide and infer throughout the entire series? You know how in Fallout 3, you can explore all those houses and city buildings, that are really nicely decorated? You know how there are explosive cars that clog up all the roads? Or how everything has this over-the-top, cheery atmosphere?

Just because the economy was horrendous leading up to the Great War, that doesn't mean that anyone living in a suburban residence was super well off. Middle Class is not the 1%. Middle Class is Middle Class. And it's heavily implied that the reason the main character has that house in the first place is because of his service in the military.

I will argue in your place. He is wrong. Clearly in the FO World 99% of the population wasn't sitting around a barrel roasting a rat they caught for dinner. If 99% of the people was in that rough shape, there would have been a revolution, and no army would have stopped them. The "1%" would have been ripped apart in the streets, overwhelmed by the "99%". There are vehicles all over the place, and we know how expensive they are in the FO world, and it isn't the "1%" that owns them or was making all purchases in the country. There wouldn't even be an economy if it was driven by only 1%. Yes, some places had it rougher than others, but it wasn't 99%. That is just laughable, just as it is laughable comparing the SS to the CEO of Poseidon in terms of social status.

So describe the point, in detail. Ideally, explain to me why they aren't the top 4 million Americans. How many could afford not just a late model car, but also a robotic butler and a place in an elite neighbourhood? I mean, Martyr, you keep arguing that they're not the 1% without indicating why they aren't the 1%. America of 2077 was a state coming apart at the seams, under martial law, with power armor units crushing riots on a daily basis. And it wasn't rioting over abstract issues, it was rioting over access to food.

Yes, people in the lower rungs of the social ladder could afford cars. But a combination of an expensive house, in an expensive neighborhood, with an expensive robotic butler, and a guaranteed spot in a Vault? That combination is not middle class. Not even upper middle class.

Why is that an expensive home? It a 2 bedroom 1 bath house, kitten, on a single lot. Not like they have 10 acres or a private estate there. How do you know it also not his or her parents home passed down? How do you know they don't have a mortage they struggling to pay off? Why is this an elite neighborhood? It just a suburb. We know about the Denver food riots, not what explicitly caused them. That could have been a state or local problem. Maybe the regional head of super duper mart pulled a knob move in the area.

Individuals like the Mayor of Boston are the 1%'ers. People with their own personal Fallout shelters and large amounts of disposable income. A soldier (and he doesn't appear to be an officer even) and a lawyer are undoubtedly money-earning professions, but not the incredibly wealthy 1%. Upper-middle is what I'm sticking with.

Sanctuary Hills is never described as an elite neighborhood. Its solidly middle. Hell half the people in Sanctuary Hills had nowhere to go when the bombs fell. Remember those people crying because they couldn't get into the Vault or struggling to pack whatever meager things they had into a car and make a desperate break for it?

That's not even remotely elite class material. Upper-middle, maybe, but 1%? No.

I think you're off the mark on this Tag.

By comparison to the rest of the United States, it is. Again, in 2077, the United States was rapidly disintegrating. It isn't the United States of 2015, but far more like Russia in the early nineties. Worse, perhaps, due to the imposition of martial law and runaway totalitarianism. I mean, how many families in the United States could afford a home in an idyllic suburb, with a robotic butler, and a kid, without either of the parents fully employed (Nora mentions "dusting off" her law degree, while Nate is most definitely not active duty)?


If Andronicus says it, I must be. But seriously, the point is that the Survivor is incredibly well off compared to the rest of the United States. All relations are relative to the contemporary context, after all.