Well, there's also the complete collapse of infrastructure and education to consider. And those left in the wastes that are educated rarely seem to care about uplifting the poor savages of the wastes.

Still, 200 years. More than enough time for new societies to form. Human is a herd animal, after all.

agree with that

yes. awesome post. Megaton = Paradise Falls without collars.

You need to remember that a World wide nuclear war destroyed EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE! There is no UN help to be had, no infrastructure to assist in rebuilding, no government to provide emergency assistance, no schools for kids to learn at, no hospitals to deal with possible epidemics, no police or army to keep the peace, no farms to grow food, and the wasteland does not support new growth too well (probably would after 200 years, though, but we don't see much farming). Add to that the fact that the Fallout universe seems to move quite a bit slower than our world, since it was kinda stuck in the 50s for some time. It's plausible that they would also be stuck in a post-nuclear limbo at bit longer than a potential similar real life situation.

Yes, humans will group together and try to reestablish a society, which we have seen evidence of in Megaton, Rivet City etc., but there are also multiple factions at war, actively stalling progress. When you get your head blown off by Super Mutants or Enclave soldiers or Raiders or whatever every time you step outside your door, it's kinda hard to grow a proper society and fix everything that needs fixing. Many factions seems determined to keep things the way they are, because that's how they profit the most. The few successful societies that have been established are still fighting every day to maintain control of their own situation, so they don't have the time, energy or resources to provide assistance to anyone else.

I don't think it's an unrealistic setup given all these circumstances, but I do like that there seem to be a slightly less dim light shadowing the world in FO4. Some area should definitely look better than others and I'm sure we'll get plenty of dark areas that have not recovered at all.

As much as I would love for FO in general to be more realistic, I had to toss that out. I'm ok with the 1950's alternate reality timeline ... and eating 200 year old can's of beans. IMO it would have made a LOT more sense for everything to be within 30 some years of the bombs so that stuff would be around, but many of the story lines and even MQ revolve around there being several generations of people (either in a vault or topside) prior to the events in the game.

To be realistic stepping out of the vault would have revealed a completely overgrown or wasted land with little if any evidence that a prior civilization existed. The wood and steel just doesn't last as long as those ancient stone architecture.

Color palette will be easily changeable, at least on PC. ENB will take care of that once they get the ball rolling. Story wise, we don't know much at all yet.

Erm, isn't the Fallout series rooted in a post post-apocalyptic setting anyways? It's nice to finally have the environment match the story.

I agree and disagree. I agree with the point of bleakness, I loved that in Fallout 3 but I also like how colorful Fallout 4 is.

Based on all the interviews I've seen, they've spent 7 years putting thought and care into this game, I'm sure it will be well deserving of the hype, I doubt the game is gonna svck.

And to reflect on the question of the lighting and atmosphere, it's been over 200 years since the bombs fell, it makes sense that people & factions would start rebuilding sooner rather than later. Although I think there should be more overgrown buildings but I digress.

Sounds like you need to play Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light.

The war only happened 20 years ago.

Much much darker.

Not an open world, but a very good tight story with strong elements of horror.

I highly recommend it.

I'm looking forward to F4.

Boston was largely untouched by the nuclear bombs and the climate is much better than southern California or the Mojave.

If any place in North America should be on the way back it should be the Commonwealth.

It will be interesting to see why they are not even further along than the NCR.

What is holding them back?

"Not Impressed", is certainly a valid response from a potential customer. I'm sure there will be plenty of gameplay footage available once the game releases, so the OP can make an informed (NON-hyped) decision on the purchase.

Bethesda does not owe each and every potential customer some sort of "hype-gasm" and i hope they continue to concentrate on finalizing the game properly.

One of the mods I'll be looking for when the mod tools are released, is one to green up the Boston Wasteland.

Much of the East Coast should be under a 200 year old forest.

Hard to market a game that makes people want to kill themselves. I'm sure the bleakness we all know and love will be in the game proper. Game developers don't market to fans they already have, that's what the actual content is for. Marketing is for bringing in potentially new fans. Skyrim was really pretty to look at back in 2011. If someone's never played a FO game, but played Skyrim they're expecting something similar as far as aesthetics go. If all they see is brownish/greyish/green they'll probably pass.

...add a good bit of white and some flames and you have the Skyrim color pallet pretty well covered.

Without the iconic landmarks DC had to offer as backgrounds, the Boston area is going to be hard pressed to provide equivalently gripping screen shots and videos.

Well yeah, but there was also a fire breathing dragon and a scared viking that turned around and yelled back at the dragon. That's what sold millions of copies, not brow/green/grey.

Point is they have to grab people's attention and since they're keeping the story under wraps pretty vistas is all we're getting.

If someone is going to pass on a game simply based on the color palette, they are far too persnickety to bother even trying to market to.

I agree. But business, business never changes. If I could I'd tell some of my co-workers to go [censored] themselves, but then I wouldn't be able to pay my rent. Similarly Beth needs to turn a profit if they're going to keep making the games we love.

Meh. You're quick to judge I think. All we got to judge this game as a "light tone, funny game" is the graphics which seems to have a tad more color. I'll judge whether it's not dark fantasy anymore after actually playing the game.

Despite popular opinion, the customer is not always right.

I'd like to see "customers" appeal to the NFL to change the color of artificial turf, simply to get more "fans"...

I get your point, I don't want fallout to turn into a hyper realistic world where everything is goofy and there is no seriousness, sort of like dead rising. But we don't know how the game will be and im confident in Beth's abilities to pull this off.

On the colour pallet, I always thought of FO3's grey as a style and mood thing rather than that being what the world actually looks like. In the same way that films like The Book of Eli and Children of Men are shot very nearly in black and white.

But it did make everything a bit samey.

The good news with the more colourful look, is you don't even need a mod if you want to tone it down a bit. Just fiddle with your monitor or TV settings. That only really works in one direction.

I think the brighter color palette in some areas is going to be good for contrast of the darker places.
If a settlement is just drab, then the drab wasteland isn't going to seem like it's really anymore desolate than that oasis in the wastes.
Give it color, so when you leave the safety of it's walls, you know that you are in the wastes- where bad things happen.

I would also argue that the faded, rusting color we do see in game is a perfect counter to starting the game pre-war, where everything is pristine and new.
The color in this context is a haunting reminder that the world was destroyed. So, even that color would be bleak to someone who had seen it's pre war glory.

Exactly, the palette is a character in the story, not an arbitrary decision sent in place due to lack of crayons.

I agree, I think the grimdark paint everything brown attitude got old in 2004. Personally I'm looking forward to Fallout 4 being more Thunderdome than Road Warrior.

Again, I agree. I'm all for the dark and gritty. I'm a DC Comics and early 80's Raiders fan, but you're making the assumption that the palette in a 2:37 minute trailer represents the entire game when the purpose of that trailer is to sell copies by bringing in new customers. Either way we won't know until November 10th.