Those 3rd world slums are not in regions, where people have to deal with freezing temperatures in winter.

You won't survive in those shacks in the cold season.

And beside this. People in Fallout can not build solid huts, but they can build jukeboxes, televisions, radios and other less essential but more complex stuff?

Not to mention you can find a rifle 20 metres away by inspecting a piece of brain next to your foot.

Those Tvs and radios are before the war.

Not he ones you craft

I've always thought that this issue is one of the fundamental problems with Bethesda's take on the Fallout universe. Why did they set FO3 200 after the bombs? I can't think of a good reason at all. A compelling story could have been written that took place 20 years after the war and it would have made far more sense for everyone to be barely surviving in ruins and trash heaps.

It's simply stupid when you have people living in filth who don't even bother to clear some of the debris in their homes and surroundings.

Also, if it was only 20 years after the bombs I could believe that there could actually be undiscovered loot hidden in locked chests to be found. After 200 years every location should already be picked clean, but apparently I am the only person who every picked a lock or hacked a computer. LOL

FO3 was on the east coast and they should have set the game at in the same time of Fallout 1. They could have made all sorts of original content, instead of jumping through all the hoops they did to include the BOS and Enclave in FO3.

If you think it's absurd that people would live like this then you're living in some sort of first world delusion. There are people living in worse conditions in the world today.

https://sonjaindia.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/dsc_0181.jpg

https://nomadicfootprints.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/gioto-shack3.jpg

http://www.wolvo.net/gallery/d/9351-4/Slum+life+is+hard

Homelessness in the u.s. isn't much better except that we don't really give the homeless much of a chance to start building up a large community of shacks and shelters. Instead we break up camps and move them along.. forcing most of them to be transient and live in tents. We get build ups of tent cities for short periods of time.

http://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/464602_Leaving-The-Jungle.JPEG-07d.jpg- picture of the silicon valley camp.

I agree to some degree. You are right that it is ridiculous that they know enough about nuclear fusion to repair a power armor, yet they fail at much simpler things. BUT.. take into consideration what kind of environment it is. Walking around the town you can hear freaking mini nukes blowing up every few hours... How long you think can your house stay whole like that? I imagine it is similar to what people do in areas that have risk of tornadoes, they build stuff from light materials, because it is better to have your house get blown away by some blast nearby, than to get covered by rubble. You can hear in the background gun fire all the time, did you see how buildings look in Syria now? That is how buildings look, when you are getting bombed and shot at every day.

Like said above it is not that they can't, it is pointless. Defense is priority, and that is why gun crafting is more important than building another house for someone to destroy. It is a fictional world in anarchy, there is no law and no respect to property, and lots of hostile mutated creatures... you get your stuff wrecked all the time, be it concrete, wood or metal. So you build with light, easy to obtain materials, and never bother to make anything solid, you are to focused on surviving. You are right on the cold season tough, it would be hard to stay alive just by camping with fire.

It was easier to defend first Fallout's, Bethesda is adding alot of immersion breaking sh*t since Fallout 3, can't help it

Very true, you can still justify alot of decisions and get some logic out of it, but generaly it is a 21 days zombie movie plot, that is forced into "200 years later" story...

The fallout setting is about a few factions hoarding all the technology, leaving the rest of the population to make a living of the scraps that they aren't interested in. It is the contrasts of the real world, greatly magnified and combined with the retro-atmosphere of cold war doom. It is intentionally exaggerated and works on the premise of suspension of belief, those contrasts have always been the core of the fallout setting.

Plus if you build it they will come! the prettier your structures the more appealing they are going to be to hostile forces. The [censored]tier your place looks the less you may appear to have something worth stealing.

OP, it's a Bethesda game. They're never going to pay attention to what is logical or sensible.

So why do the generators make noise and throw off smoke like combustion engines?

Actually OP has a point.

All in all you can discuss how most of the populace died from nukes or later from radiation/illness.

They kept bars, inns, stores, hairdressers, school, church, casinos, doctors, etc.

So if they can do facial surgery you'd think they could build a wall XD

They were all computer geeks and high tech folks without any clue of how to build a solid house. I mean...how many houses have you built?

I do hope there are squares and levels and plumb bobs in this game.

Because they can, and so its easily recognizable that its on and working.

Well, for one, the opening story tells you how society was prior to the game. They used and enhanced nuclear reactors and had fusion power (not fission) to power their cities, which can last indefinitely forever.

Also, 200 years isn't that long a time given the first 100 or so years was nothing but a radioactive wasteland, incapable of sustaining human life. That leaves them 100 years to grow and in 100 years, fending off mutants, raiders, irradiated insects and animals, there has been little downtime to worry about things like masonry and carpentry skills.

Now... on the other hand a valid gripe would be "why is everything dead still?". Chernobyl, less than 100 years later is a flourishing forest filled with wildlife, but with dangerously high levels of radiation for humans. After 200 years, the Fallout world should have more flora and fauna present instead of still being a scorched wasteland.

It would have been easy to give them a whirring sound, and blinking lights or a glow would tell you it's working.

So I think they're burning petroleum which we mercifully don't have to refill.

My friend, the crux of my disbelief is not that anyone would live like that, it's that everyone would. Somewhere, somehow, there is a wastelander who has OCD and can't handle disarray and degeneration. I just haven't met him yet.

Or maybe I should recruit the robot butler fellow to follow me around and organize the junk piles by texture. Seems like he would be pleased to have something to do again.

Seems to be true every time.

I can't believe people are actually arguing with the OP....seriously

Everything outside in the wasteland is a representation of slums, and battlefield. And people that have knowledge and resources are those that live in vaults and Brotherhood. Those are the places, where everything is clean and tidy. It was the main premise of first games, that Brotherhood of Steel is the last refuge for humanity, and everything else is mutants fighting with sick,hungry, degenerated people - simple, comicbook style plot with heroes and villains.

And for the 100 time, people do not rebuild during war, they do it after. Wasteland is at constant war with mutliple factions, you don't build a concrete house, if you know that few months later it will get blown away, and you will be covered in rubble. No one rebuilt anything during WW2, people lived in ruins back then, why would it feel unreal to you? People were hiding on the streets in trash, doing diversions and sh*t, it is all there in history books. Look at WW2 photos and tell me how tidy it was, they were hiding in severs, and again - no mutants trying to kill for no reason, no mutated pigs. It is not like a bottleor a scrap is lying there for 10 years and no one is cleaning, stuff gets wrecked every day, and every day new trash and new holes in the wall are made. I don't understand why it is so hard to believe in, it shouldn't be anything that causes disbelief, there are lots of worse, illogical decisions Bethesda made that ruin it for me, but I will defend the way they see society.

People here have presented a lot of solid arguments against OP claims, but you seem to be reading only what fits your view, and ignore everything else.

These people have the peace and comfort to plant and harvest crops, the fruition of which is counted in months and years. If people are so busy hiding in foxholes that they can't be bothered to build their fortifications out of anything other than corrugated metal sheets (I'm sure that'll protect you from bullets), they certainly wouldn't be planting crops. I mean, seeing as how they would promptly get blown up long before they're ready to harvest. As you say.

My impression of the wasteland is that some of these settlements are permanent. These aren't just scavengers hunkering down in an abandoned building for the night before they move on. These people are here to stay, and have been for a while. There's nowhere safer for them to go. And you take your spare time, whatever small amount of it you have, and you build stronger walls and prepare for the FREEZING BOSTON WINTER. And maybe, just maybe, in a place like Diamond City, where things are so secure that there is such an excess of free time that you have not a few, but MANY people performing non-essential tasks, people might sweep up the detritus in their homes.

OP is a barrel of fun.

Why u guys are so stuck on your head that everything should be like real life, Fallout post apocalyptic universe is base on how the ppl on the 60's imagine earth will be like after a nuclear war.......

Is more most of the technology and the design on if u see on the game is base on how the ppl saw it back on the 60's.

Seriously if u cant understand Fallout, how in name of god, u can enjoy a movie like Mad Max, or Resident Evil. IS CALL Science Fiction, bc is fiction.

Because the old technology is a lost art, that's why.

The components needed for the settlement generators you build include oil, a resource that had become very scarce before the war everywhere except America (in Alaska). However, the 200 years since the war would certainly allow whatever used oil in the past to still be there and that is where you gather it from.

As for the various supplies (including components) that are around, it is totally untrue that all of that stuff would be taken 200 years later. No, what would happen is that stuff would be looted, stored somewhere by the looters, looted again, stored again, etc. in an endless cycle of scavenging to survive. This is particularly true around urban centers where the vast majority of the population would not have any clue about how to survive without "modern conveniences" (i.e., the vast majority of people are consumers, not producers of various items).

What is absolutely stupid is the idea of pure water sources such as Good Springs in FONV that are not overrun by wild creatures right next door as well as numerous gangs and other criminal elements who would certainly take control of such resources and sell them on the black market. Heck, you have Sunny Smiles telling you that the geckos are a pain exactly because they are attracted to the water supply. Fine... and so would the radscorpions, death claws, ants, and every other creature for miles around.

You know I made exactly this suggestion in another forum and everyone balled up on me. 20, 25 years after the war would be much more believable. You wouldn't imagine how much a city can deteriorate in 20 years of abandon. Also for the radiation levels, in 200 years there would be practically none left in the water, air etc.

I can agree with that - and it would have been an excellent time period to introduce settlement building and scavenging as well.