In Fallout 2 there was the NCR are which was a form of gov't, but in Fallout 3 on the East coast things seem further behind on the "try to rebuild humanity" front. Why? :confused:

There's a long thread about this not far down... I think the general consensus was that the East was bombed more.

Well, considering that D.C. has most of the landmarks standing in pretty good shape I'd say that it wasn't

Larger area. Better Climate. 2 vaults emerging with GECKs (8, 15), another vault worth of surivors which may or may not have had GECks (Boneyard vault seeding Adytum), Supermutant threat rising later, only after civilisation had bitten, strong traders holding a valuable resorouce to create a "Water Standard" currency.

Cus west coast is tha best coast yo!

• Fallout 3 is only dealing with one concentrated area, and Fallout 1 and 2 take place over a much larger area. Things in DC are pretty bleak, but who knows what the rest of the area looks like? (This is a weak point, for obvious reasons, but still... smaller area.)
  
• It's a heavily-contested area. Before NCR got anywhere, they probably had to set themselves up as the dominant force in that area. (And then, of course, once they expand far enough they're going to have to deal with Vault City and the other players in the power struggle.) It's hard to be the one faction that starts to rebuild society when you're still waging a three-war with everyone else there.
  
• Because that's how Bethesda wanted it to be set up as.

On the West Coast the super mutants were beaten at their main base, but in the East Coast, the super mutants were too embeded into the D.C. area before anyone posed a threat to them to be beaten as fast. Another thing is the lack of a strong, unified faction in the East, as in the West, they have the NCR. The Enclave and BoS had beaten eachother down to a pulp, so they cant take control of the area. The D.C. area is just too overwhelmed with hostiles and terrible conditions for them to recover as fast as the West Coast.

It could also be attributed to Bethesda's design decisions.

It's not that weak a point really... the game takes place in a smaller area directly around a source of an even worse Super Mutant problem than in the West... there are tons of statements in the game that due to the mutants and such the area is pretty bad off.

In the West they had a functioning control vault with a GECK as well as a Vault Dweller who stopped he mutants and brought some relative peace, as well as a stronger BoS presence earlier on (the BoS only got to DC 20 years before FO3).

I think its becuase since the capital was there, that more bombs were dropped. Not just nukes but regular bombs maybe :nuke:

It could have been Neutron Bombs, which do less damage to buildings and leave a lot of radiation.

While the overall time scale is a bit goofy, the west coast would recover quicker after a nuclear exchange. The prevailing winds across the continental US are from the west. Simply, the east would be a lot more radioactive for longer.

All this stuff seems to make sense! And also to the guy who said the West Coast is better, I have to agree with you mainly because that's' where I live!

Well, NCR can be attributed to the fact that Vault 15 (whose descendants founded Shady Sands, which became NCR) happened to have a G.E.C.K., so naturally they recovered from the bombs faster. (As did Vault 8, i.e. Vault City).
Other than those two powerhouses, the West Coast is just as bad as the East Coast. They're both barren deserts, but the Capital Wasteland seems to have more intact buildings/monuments- a design decision- why make a game in D.C. if it doesn't even look like D.C.?

On the other hand, The Pitt is pretty advanced industirally, and the Commonwealth is very advanced in science. Point Lookout has thriving vegetation, too. The East Coast seems to be doing okay for itself. Fallout 1 & 2 had places like The Hub, Junktown, Necropolis, Gecko, Klamath etc, and they seem to be just as backwards as most of the settlements seen in Fallout 3.

The only G.E.C.Ks on the East Coast were Vault 87, which was overrun with super mutants who frankly don't care about rebuilding society, and presumably Vault 76, a control Vault we never see, but is supposedly in the Capital Wasteland- it's safe to say their G.E.C.K was never used, as there is no evidence that it was: where's the farming? Where's the new buildings that aren't made of junk? Where's the clean water?

The agriculture seen on the West Coast can be assumed to be thanks to the G.E.C.Ks again, as they contain seeds, fertilizer etc for exactly that kind of thing. People would trade crops between settlements or take them by force, leading to more farming.
East Coast doesn't have that, but that doesn't mean that the West recovered faster.

In my opinion, both coasts seem to be going about rebuilding society in different ways, and both are doing pretty well.

You can't compare the DC area to the whole of the West coast.

Yeah but alot of radiation had disappeared, except in a watersource, but Project Purity took care of that...

with the water, does it rain in the Wasteland or becuase of the radiation does it not.

In the art book, Bethesda say that they looked in to what buildings would be standing after a nuclear war, and they found out that none would be. So they used artistic license to make it more enjoyable. Remember, Fallout is based on Science! not science.

Radiation would not effect the Water Cycle. Evaporation and Rain would still happen as normal. However, the weather patters could change because of other factors.

but remember that there where no Supermutant threat before the vaultdweller defeated them and forced them to retreat east, to D.C.

The East Coast is further behind than the West because they didn't get their savior figure until much later. The Lone Wanderer's dad wasn't even an itch in Granddad's pants at the time the Vault Dweller emerged.

Sure there was, the Super Mutants on the east coast came from Vault 82 not from Mariposa. The Vault 82 Super Mutants aren't as big of a threat as the Mariposa batches, though.



I think that does have a major impact. The west coast was just as bad off (if not worse) than the east coast during Fallout; the Vault Dweller fixed a lot of things making it possible for Shady Sands to become the New California Republic, and preventing The Master and Mariposa Super Mutants from spreading (they would have eventually made it to the east coast if not stopped). The Vault Dweller saved not only the west coast, but probably the entire world.

The Chosen One came along eighty years later and stopped the Enclave from wiping out the entire planet with an airborne modification of the FEV virus, and also performed other actions that potentially allowed the region to flourish. Once again, if not for the Chosen One the east coast would have been wiped out because the FEV modification in Fallout 2 was set up to cleanse the entire planet.

The east coast didn't receive any aid from any remarkable individuals until the Lone Wanderer came along thirty years after Fallout 2; at least none that we can tell. I don't think Dashwood counts since he seemed more like a bumbling fool than a savior.

"How come the West coast recovered faster than the East?"

gamesas didn't design the west coast. I loved FO3 but it didn't seem like anyone had even tried to help the DC area recover. 200 years have passed, you'd think that people would be rebuilding, at least planting gardens...

I don't think so.

In my view, The East coast at the start of FO3 is less developed than the start of FO1....

So... um... if it was less developed than FO1 at the start of FO3, why was Project Purity all but finished, only needing the Geck module and some power tweaks to make it happen? What about Rivet City and Megaton? Both of them have some manner of defense (though Sheriff Simms is of questionable skill if we take his "gunfight" with Mr. Burke as evidence.) Both also have some form of water purification before PP came out. And with Canturberry Commons, the three complete a somewhat-thriving trade route. Talon Co., despite it's awful reputation, is highly organized for a post-war group (it has to be with that many members.) Reilly's Rangers is fighting what's effectively a one-man-war on the Super Mutants in DC and doing somewhat well, despite that hiccup in the Statesman Hotel, and is also providing mapping information to an unknown client. Tenpenny Tower is the place of luxury; certainly it couldn't have appeared if the east coast was completely ramshackle. The Pitt it creating raw steel for an unknown purpose, and there's a slave trade that thrives because of it.

Heck, even a group of semi-organized Raiders managed to pen in a Super Mutant Behemoth!

What does FO1 have? An organized Super Mutant presence, and Vault City. That's about it, aside from some traders, raiders, and the odd settlement.