Agreed, but my point stands that 200 years are far too long for high-tech weapons to still work. Hermetically sealed ones, yes. Well-kept family heirlooms, sure. But otherwise, the simpler the better the chances to keep on gunning. In Fallout1+2 jury-rigged devices to fire pre-war ammunition were rather common, energy weapons were rare. Where they were available, they were either unique items salvaged from pre-war installations, or imported from the Enclave. The best somewhat common hightech-weapons were railguns and 1990's weapons with caseless ammo.

In the current Fallouts you get your hands on energy weapons everywhere, even the ammo is cheap and commonplace. Even when people aren't capable of building their own power plants using the available resources (sun, wind and brahmin dung) someone ought to have made use of the seemingly unlimited supply of Microfusion cells before fighting wars over an antique solar power plant and an even older dam.

As for modern conventional firearms - we use them along wiith weapons in WWI and Civil War design, and the ancient gunpowder weapons stick with the modern weapons just fine. That was my point with the firearms: It makes sense that the ancient weapons are "so good" when you assume that the modern weapons suffered very badly from those 200 years.


200 years after civilisation's end, people should long have ran out of pre-war weapons and ammo. So either they continue fighting with sticks and stones, or improve civilisation to a point where they are able to produce pre-war-style weapons in (Yes, I know that the Gun Runners do it.) But if they have that technology, they should no longer need to covet pre-war artifacts.

Long story short: In either case the Fallout we know has to end after 200 years, it either evolves into a preindustrial survival game, or into a SciFi variant of The Settlers. (That said, I'd prefer a Fallout set in the 2170's)

You have to look at the originals again, Energy weapons and the "high tech" stuff are extremely rare, and you only find then in the hands of the really powerful factions. The BoS (in FO1) and the Enclave in FO2. We still see "modern" firearm in the FO universe mostly because the big powers or groups have salvaged enough tech to begin making new ammo, and replacement parts. Thats why I don't like the trend FO3 starting in this regard.

I think the NCR or the Van Graffs learned how to produce energy weapons and this is a video game man with technology that in the REAL WORLD wouldn't make today. If you ever take apart a 1950's radio they're tech looks like that.

The music is there to give it the "something is wrong feeling." Like Bioshock!

I can understand people in Fallout manufacturing things like clothing and weapons, but it's silly that are there still very specific brand-name foods that are still left over from before the war. Then again, Fallout was always meant to be silly :disguise:

I would have greatly appreciated something a bit more like the original series than Beth's original series. Even changed with the times, IMO Fallout 3 should have had a hell of a lot more in common with 'the Witcher' than Elderscrolls.

I wouldn't agree with that. Fallout (the understanding of it that I got from playing the series and watching interviews with the core design team), was about a future alternate Earth that had once been the idealized pop-50's future based on popular fears, ignorance, and their idea of the super future (Flash Gordon, ray guns, nuclear everything, little understood, and it's monstrous side effects ~like rads make people into ghouls... I took it to have "Heavy Metal" undertones too). Fallout had some weird stuff, but on the whole I found it a lot more serious, more disturbing, (and more fun to play) than the recent offerings.

Also... It could be that the 50's shtick was only pre-war. :shrug: There is almost nothing 50's-ish in Fallout or Fallout 2 that did not pre-date the bombs.

Most, if not all, the 50's cultural references are from pre-war artifacts and left overs. The people of the wasteland has long since been developing their own cultures which are different from the ones before the war.

I'd tend to agree. Aside from their taste in music, I really don't see much about the wastelanders/"people of Fallout" and their societies which scream 1950s culture in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

A minor point, energy weapons aren't supposed to be common. They were just being introduced before the Great War started. Energy weapons are supposed to be large, clumsy, and unwieldy, because they were essentially portablized industrial tools. Especially the Wattz laser rifle.

I'd agree with that but I kinda like them being common though. It added another weapon specialization that a character could focus on from the start, rather than in the orginals when you used small weapons (or what have you, I used small weapons) until you got the energy weapons, then it was "kill all" time (at least in Fallout 1).

According to FO3 canon, the AER9 wasn't cutting edge technology at the time of the Great War, which suggests it had been in use for some time.

They're still not the everyman G.I. Joe weapon, yeah, but they're not extremely rare either.



That's basically exactly what I said; it's unrealistic in some aspects (the World of Tomorrow, ray guns, mutants, etc) while other areas are quite realistic. Didn't say everything was crazy sci-fi.

I'm playing through Fallout 1 at the moment, and I have to say there's quite a bit of humor in the game; I wouldn't necessarily qualify it as "more serious" than FO3 or FONV.

And of course, we know how Fallout 3 thinks about canon...

I like the idea of crude energy weapons better. It feels more... I don't know...

Regardless of how you feel about Fallout 3, fact remains it's canon now; Bethesda revived the series and changed the canon as they saw fit. For better or worse, that's what the canon is, as evidenced by the fact that FONV did not bring back the Wattz series of weaponry.

I prefer the FO3/FONV energy weapons; it makes more sense in the "World of Tomorrow" pre-War context, I think. The ray guns should look like actual World of Tomorrow ray guns and not industrial tools, since everything else looks like a product of the collective imagination of the 1950s.

I feel its a real shame too.

Same here.

I thought the 50s feel was sort of a direction that the world took in the 1950s. Instead of going like here and moderner like the 60s' it went more 50s and it stuck.
Maybe there was less rebellion.

It is a alternate reality after all.

The retro futuristic 50s feel makes it interesting and creepy.

It has the same effect as Bioshock games. 50s feel and earlier to 50s music and scary things in a underwater city gone insane.

Playing older music like 50s and earlier with horror games is very effective in creeping you out and catching attention.

But I would have thought they would have made more music.
At least got to techno and metal.

A more futuristic modern feel might have been better though.

It is a bit too retro 50s.

I like the whole 50's aesthetic. I love the originals, but I just like the retro-future feel of the recent ones. I already have S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for serious post-apocalyptic RPG/FPSing, I'd rather Fallout be a little bit more light-hearted (but still grim).

I am surprised they have not made their own music styles by now. Wasteland rock or something.

I get they are in a scary irradiated wasteland, and the things from the past would be a relief. And some are in Vaults which ahve been cut off from the rest of the world. SO the culture will not be as forward as the rest.

But they would have made their own music by now, surely.
Their own post apocolyptic culture and music. There is the culture and style but not the music?

Spoiler alert.

In Nier, the Replicants are left to their own devices after the Shades go to sleep for 1000 years. They gain sentience, make their own cultures, their own languages, that are evolved from the languages before, and their own style. They whole new cultures.
There is things about it from the past, because they were replicants of humans. But they make their own unique cultures. When the Shades come back the languages are diferent, evoluvtions and combinations of the languages before. No one speaks the languages they do now. But they sound like the languages now, sometimes. Some words are similer. The music and songs from it are sung in the language from Nier, but for one song. The music from Nier is the most beautiful I have ever heard from a game. I bought it from I Tunes.


You would think that the people in Fallout 3 would make their own cultures too.
Like the Replicants did in Nier. but to a lesser degree, because the Replicants are civilisationally kept back to stop them revolting or being dangerous at the start of the project.

They do, to a point.

Apart from the music, which is odd.

I did wonder about the language in Fallout 3.

Is it diferent from now?

Fallout 3 is not as insane, disturbing, dark or twisted as Nier.

But I did wonder if the language they speak is diferent from now.

I don't think that Fallout 3 language is that diferent.

But I think maybe the makers of FO3 were more concentrating on the nuclear war part, lol.

But I wondered if it was, and they put it in english or whatever applies so they did not have to subtitle everything.

I did wonder about the hair. The hairstyles you are offered are either punkish, post apocolyptic or fifties.

Surely they would have made more hairstyles than that bynow, even in a vault or ina post apocolyptic wasteland that like the prewar past.

Sorry If someone already posted this, but during the war there was fire EVERYWHERE, so the chances of their modern music surviving, which was used everywhere, is very small. That's why you hear old, old, old, music, because it was the thing, (Cassetes, and Vinals) most likley to survive, being hid away somewhere deep underground, to keep them collectibles, or because they were trash, so they made it through the war, but not many, with them still being vulnerable.

Well it was more because that was the music that was popular. Its a 1950s retro-futuristic universe, thats the only type of music that existed.