They sure did build narrow streets and modest single story homes. Even if we were take in-game world scaling into account people still seemed to have really tiny houses on the east coast while there was plenty of green space left to spare. if you compare the Doc's house in Goodsprings to the Sole Survivors in Sanctuary Hills it's nearly double the size if not even bigger, not to mention the homes in Sanctuary are meant to be cutting edge and new.

The only relatively big homes on the east side are the officer's two story houses with detached garages at Fort Hagen and Croup Manor.

I don't know something just feels off from what we're lead to believe via the lore and what we see in game world.

Well, the fact is the 1950s were the creation of the suburbs and conformist culture.

The American Dream was a big dream but the majority of people never-ever made it big.

I imagine the home of Enclave members is another matter entirely.

Professor Calvert shows us what actual RICH people lived in.

I've always found the New Vegas homes to be too big, to be honest. The Sole Survivor's place isn't much smaller then the house I live in right now and I think it's perfectly fine in size.

And when I say "perfectly fine" I mean "A pain in the ass to dust".

The old world fell due to overpopulation and resource shortages. It actually makes sense that as time dragged on houses would become smaller and people's lives meaner. One of the reasons I dislike the Fallout 4 intro sequence is that it gives the impression of the pre-war world as being pleasant and prosperous (ex-serviceman and a lawyer have a personal robot butler?) when in reality life wouldn't have been anything like that for the average person.

I mean, the Mister Handy was designed for the average middle class household. Its not necessarily supposed to be a "luxury" item.

I imagine purchasing a Mister Handy was a bit like purchasing a small car in the real world. A hefty price, but well within the means of a solidly middle class family.

Where I live a "normal" middle of the middle class home averages between 1500 and 2000 sqft, and those are your basic suburban homes 2 storey, attached 2 car garage, finished basemant. Even the "older" pre war homes seem smaller than that. I'm referring to homes you would have assumed were built before the great resource shortages.

However none of this accounts for unoccupied "green space" and how narrow/tiny the roads and highways are. I doubt you could even make a lane change on those.

I disagree because I think the previous Fallouts went overboard showing the Pre-War world as a hellhole. It should have been beautiful on the outside, rotten on the inside.

Like the actual Fifties.

Like Kellogg's memories? XD

That's how it's interpreted now. I don't recall any hint of personal robots being so ubiquitous originally.

The Fallout 4 intro doesn't give the impression of rottenness anywhere. Life is apparently great and if not for the bombs would have gone on being great as far as the player character is concerned.

The fact "life would have been good if not for every man, woman, and child dying in many places" is a pretty big caveat.

Even then, Vault-Tech makes it clear there's justified paranoia about the end of everything.

Also, the fact both of the protagonists are veterans.

I also like you can have them both scarred.

It would have been silly, I think, to portray people are unable to have any sort of happiness in their life. Then the Great War wouldn't have been a tragedy.

Right, because you're seeing life through the eyes of the Sole Survivor. They have a stable household and are the classic image of a single family home. But read the headlines of Pre-War papers in Fallout 3 and other tidbits of the past and you'll read about food shortages and riots. It's like if I viewed your life and yours (I assume since you own a current gen console/PC capable of running Fallout 4 you have a stable life) is stable financially. That doesn't mean everyone in the world has it good like that, does it? Of course not. We only get one (wo)man's perspective of the Pre-War world, not the whole picture.

Also, bluntly, it loses some of the tragedy if the world had it coming doesn't it?

On the surface, sure.

But look in the kitchen - very little in the way of actual food. Look at the house - very little in the way of personal items. Heck, the Sole Survivor's family lacks a recharging station for their Mister Handy like we saw in D.C. homes - they have to keep a can of fuel on hand instead. Fuel costing around $200 a gallon at this point.

The world looks idyllic, sure. Not the same thing as actually being idyllic.

Well not really since the nukes going off has nothing to do with the presentation of the pre-war world. Unless you're arguing that any world in which nuclear war can occur must by nature be awful. Of course people can have happiness within their lives and that is not my objection to the Fallout 4 intro. Just look at the Survivalist from Honest Hearts if you want a good example of how to combine the tragedy of the Great War without glossing over the dark aspects of the pre-war world.

Well that kinda proves my point doesn't it? If all anyone ever saw of contemporary America were happy successful individuals with no hint of privations or hardships it is absolutely going to affect how people perceive contemporary America. Particularly in a fictional universe who and what you get to see absolutely matters to how people are going to perceive that universe. I do not see how a single new player to Fallout 4 would walk away with any conception of the dark nature of the pre-war world based on that Fallout 4 pre-war sequence.

The "world" didn't have it coming regardless. A man losing his wife and child to atomic fire is pretty horrific any way you slice it. Average people in the Fallout world were not somehow evil, worse, or any different to people in the real world. That's kinda the meaning of the whole "war never changes line" and the fact that the pre-war American government was full of murderous [censored]s ruling over a collapsing society doesn't somehow make it less tragic.

That's quite a stretch don't you think? If you went into the game without any preconceptions are you honestly going to tell me you'd walk away thinking the Sole Survivor and his family are in any way disadvantaged or have a rationed or inadequate food supply?

Just for the initial cutscene? Probably not. But then again, that all goes by rather quickly. We don't actually get to spend much time in the pre-war setting.

But as you play the game, the dark side comes out quite clearly. And the SS makes a number of remarks which can hint at the dark underbelly of the pre-war world.

So yes, Fallout 4 portrays that the pre-war world wasn't exactly "idyllic" quite well IMO. I don't see why all of those things have to be addressed immediately in the course of the opening sequence.

And I don't recall them being portrayed as high-class luxury items reserved for only the elite either.

Since its the only time in any Fallout game we've actually gotten to experience the pre-war world it would've been nice to get a fuller picture of it. I'll take your word for it coming out clearly throughout the game but I haven't seen it so far aside from Vault-Tec which relates back to my point about everything being fine until the bombs dropped. I don't even believe Fallout 4 has made clear that Vault-Tec was basically part of the government and the experiments were being done at their behest.

We only encounter robots in the original game in pre-war military bases. Even the Vaults didn't have them. In 3/NV/4 they're suddenly everywhere.

And we're in the pre-war setting for literally five minutes maybe. The main point of which is to try and establish some characterization for your family, not to immediately give the bleakest picture of the pre-war world possible.

Yes there's plenty of references to the darkness of the pre-war world. I literally was just in a labratory that was enforcing "mandatory overtime" preventing employees from going home or sleeping in order to finish an important project that was "vital to the country's protection."

Fallout 4 does not in any way portray the pre-war world as an idyllic place.

Well, going at it from a newcomer's perspective, the fact that the opening narrative remarks on those "shortages of every kind" (Even shows two boys fighting for something with knives and a angry mob of people swarming a factory), and immediately outside of Sanctuary there's a gas station whose prices are $200 a gallon...yeah. I'd say a newcomer is going to get the idea that things weren't all sunshine and roses pre-war.

To be fair, if you keep scouring that laboratory and find the Director's terminal, the reasons for that mandatory overtime is explained. Basically, the bombs had already fallen and the only way the Director could get a military escort for them out of the city was if they had materials "vital to the war effort", ie what they were working on. He locked them up and forced them to work as a means to save them.

That probably has more to do with differences between the coasts. The Mojave certainly had plenty of Robots kicking around - it's possible the Northwestern Commonwealth simply had legislation that restricted robots. We know from the Fallout 1 intro that Mister Handy was being advertised and likely sold in the region, but given the general technical aptitude of the Core Region was higher then in the eastern wastelands, my guess is the various domestic robots were quickly cannibalized for their rare components by survivors eking out a living. Maybe the early Brotherhood rounded the majority up, before their dogma entrenched itself too much.

I wouldn't really call that much better though.

He basically enslaved them in a misguided attempt to "save them" and they later died of radiation poisoning or in the process of trying to escape. The guy took it upon himself to decide the fate of everyone in his lab. Rather than letting them decide for themselves.

Oh I totally agree with you, but he had an eye witness account of the brutal days just after the bombs, and the bullet to match. You really can't blame the guy for wanting a full military escort to get his wife out of the city.

I'm not asking for the bleakest picture possible simply some acknowledgment of the grimmer aspects of the reality. You could do this in one throwaway line like Honest Hearts managed without touching the characterization of the family or the attempt at pathos in any way.

Apparently that was a post-war deal. Exploration largely bores me in these games so I'm sure I've missed things but I'm also pretty sure the average player doesn't go scouring through every location on the map either so this is kinda reinforcing my point about the intro that every player does experience giving a really positive impression of the pre-war world.

Shortages of every kind for someone. Not the Sole Survivor or his idyllic neighborhood. This is like everyone in New Vegas talking about how hopeless the NCR is while the presentation rarely reinforced that and often contradicted it. It really undermines what you're trying to get across. If gas is $200 a gallon where are the effects? People in the neighborhood still have shiny new cars.

Sure you can explain it and its not a big deal from a lore perspective but it's pretty plainly not how robots in Fallout were originally envisioned.

Shiny cars, sure, but not exactly new. Check the terminal in the Red Rocket, which talks about a resident working on rebuilding an old vehicle. Notice how much public transportation there is in the Boston area. Note that on another terminal in Sanctuary, you discover just how many of your neighbors were doping up.

The Fallout 1 intro features a commercial for Mister Handy. the Robots in Fallout are being depicted exactly as they envisioned.

Yeah, which to me shows they overdid and almost ruined the Pre-War world in trying to make it hellish.

People have had idyllic nuclear families in the Dark Ages, Ancient Rome, Stalinish Russia, and more.

The 1950s depended on a false sense of prosperity.

Which is why they should have been like the PC's life.

I take it you didn't visit http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Lexington.

For comparison, https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lexington+Green/@42.4491616,-71.2310477,3a,75y,60.55h,88.64t/data=http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1557566-for-a-society-plagued-with-greed-and-overconsumption/!3m7!1e1!3m5!1swDTV9o2sxbFKShoAaQmDSQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DwDTV9o2sxbFKShoAaQmDSQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dsearch.TACTILE.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D129%26h%3D106%26yaw%3D28.779392%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e39dd04ad8bca9:0xb80737f5be44a930!6m1!1e1 Note the distinct lack of giant superhighways and corporate monstrosities dominating the horizon.

The oldest car mentioned is a 2073 and the woman rebuilding the car isn't doing it out of hardship. There is plenty of public transport in Boston now. If the worst thing the pre-war world apparently has going on it is a drug problem it's still a pretty idyllic place.

Everything advertised on TV is common and affordable? You went from one robot making one appearance outside of a pre-war military base in Fallout 1/2 to every office building having robots out the ass, Vaults with robots, post-war scrap houses with robot butlers, middle-class pre-war suburbanites with a robot butler, robots wandering the wasteland, robots selling noodles and junk and so on. It changed.