Firstly: I know Fallout is not meant to be on the realism side. But Bethesda's portray of the Wasteland is becoming problematic given its chronological setting. Example: 3 Dog mentioned there are no new trees even 200 yrs after the War. If re-vegetation is that difficult, what have the Wastelanders of FO3 been eating? (Solely on packaged food left 200 yrs ago?)

If the next Fallout will continue further down the future, then they need to center on the Return of Mother Nature theme. I am not saying they should follow the documentary Life After People (which according to the awesome film, Capital Wasteland will be virtually a forest with no recognisable buildings), but when you descend upon the ruins of a Pre-War city, it should be like encountering the Mayan ruins of today. More new settlements and less Pre-War locations, and the NPCs need to stop being so knowledgeable about the War - period. Basically the backdrop of America will be in-game like an ancient mystery, and you the Indiana Jone.

Personally I love the world of FO3, but I cannot see it taking place 200 years after the War, 20 years maybe. They should consider resetting the chrono clock for their next Fallout if they want to retain 3rd one's looks.

The problem with that is, it will become less recognisable - it would just be anywhere.

Given that I think a lot of Fallout 3's success has come from the effect of seeing the Washinton Monument, The Capitol, etc in their ruined state, I think if this is going to be done, it needs to be at a less than realistic rate.

Personally i think setting Fallout 3 at around the same time Fallout 1 took place would have helped solve the issue of nothing seeming to have happened in the 200 years.

Of course, this would have meant that Harold couldn't be around, and the BoS and Outcasts would have to be changed. Of course that wouldn't have been an issue really, any generic military group could have been used. :shrug:

Im quite hoping that Fallout 4 will be set sooner after the war, but i feel thats unlikely to happen.

Well they also survive off of the local wildlife. What they eat..well who knows (carnivore heavy ecosystem..hm). In any event, the game does feel as if the war were 20 months ago the way everyone keeps living in their shattered refugee "settlements", but for Fallout 4..they can't really shift the timeline. Well they can, but to do so would cheapen the continuity and admit they cocked up. They started a story in Fallout 3, they definitely should continue it in the next - as well ditching the type of map so you can explore the NE of the US rather than just one city (but that's an aside).

It does seem like society hasn't really advanced as far in the DC area as it had in the California region by the time you got to Fallout 2.

I do think, though, that you can reason this out by the fact that it takes place in a different location. There's no reason to assume that everything has built up at the same rate all across America, after all. I got the feeling that DC was a much harsher and fought-over area than what you're seeing in the earlier Fallouts. There was less room for improvements in the area, with all the factions fighting for control (of what is roughly the size of one square in the overworld of the scope that the original games took place in.)

Megaton, Rivet City, etc - I think they're only a couple decades old, if that. (You can still find some of the founding members of Rivet City in the game - and their first priority was getting rid of the Mirelurks, not so much populating the area and fixing up the place.) So if you look at it as a very small area that is only recently being settled - I don't think it's so far-fetched to see the level of rebirth in the area that the game takes place in.

And that's another thing to consider, really. The entire DC area is about the size of what all of Junktown takes place in (as you can't really explore the outlying areas of the town that resides in that overmap square.) And you have much greater density of people vying for control. Once any one group manages to take control of the place - that's when you're really going to some actual advancement in the area.

Though I do admit that if we're going much further in the timeline with Fallout 4, I'd expect to see some greater changes taking place. And I would have liked to have seen some more detail in the logistics and infrastructure of these settlements. It looks like Arefu subsists primarily on their Brahmin stock, for example. So it would have made sense if you saw some rudimentary grazing pastures, for example. And if Brahmin are the staple food stock in the area (as apparently no one has been able to get any extensive farming going on,) I would have expected to see something more like Nomadic Tribes travelling across the area. (Would have made it a little harder to have set locations to find stuff in, but would have been an interesting addition.)

That, and a little more clear-cut explanations of the interlocking trade between all the other settlements. You'd sort of assume that maybe Arefu is trading their excess Brahmin Meat (and I don't know - milk perhaps?) to the other towns in exchange for things that they specialize in, for example. You see that they're relying on trade between the towns to keep them going, but you don't really see just what they're trading back and forth, really.

So that would be my main suggestion for a Fallout 4, is locations that sort of make sense for the world, or at least some more though given as to how they are surviving, logistically, and what their infrastructure is like. Megaton is running a Water Purifier, for example - maybe they should be trading water for Arefu's fresh meat, or Rivet City's Hydroponics (who need Megaton's supply of clean water to grow their crops.) Stuff like that, I would rather see more of an emphasis on than anything else, I suppose.

I mean, you do sort of have to agree to overlook some of the actual science behind what the Wasteland looks like - it's more about coming up with a specific look and atmosphere and coming up with a bit of Science! to back it up than thinking about what the situation would realistically be like, and basing the game around that. It doesn't have to be terribly realistic, only making sense within the established fiction.

wut.. is that Indiana Jones' evil unrelated enemy or something?


about your topic though, I agree.... kinda. The radiation is what keeps plants from growing. I do think that in 200 years, something would have happened. The game feels like its been maybe 50 - 75 years after the war. Everyone knows what happened, and people haven't rebuilt yet. I'm sure it would be hard, but the US has only been a country for a little over 200 years. Even if everything was 100% destroyed and no technology was left over, there would still be quite a bit rebuilt after 200 years, but that is not the case. There was technology left over and scientists who can do stuff. There is electricity and technology still working. Why haven't people built houses? I honestly don't understand that. In 200 years, it probably wouldn't look too bad. There would probably be a standardized government in place and other than the radiation, everything would be pretty much back to normal. I know they say its the radiation that's preventing any kind of rebuilding, but comon. In 200 years they could have figured out a way to clean it up I'm sure. They have purifiers and filtration systems to clean small amounts, so as long as they don't swim in the ocean, all their water should be clean. I don't understand why they haven't rebuilt. It's been 200 freakin' years.

Let me just state that I essentially agree with this entire post, and it pained me to any of it. There are things in Fallout 3 that I wish were more thoroughly described - more fleshed out. Sure there appears to be some trading between Arefu and Megaton (the Caravans go by) - but it's obviously not a Purified Water for Brahmin Steak type of deal. Also, where the heck do all those new Stimpacks come from. A My First Lab coughs them up one in four or five tries, so where does Doc Church get the 30-odd new ones every third day? But yeah - DC = more radiation = slower development. The big cities are only on the order of a few decades old, if that.

Not really. While the DC area people have shown themselves to be incompetent at getting the restoration underway, it's a bit too much to expect things to be back as they were at the pre-war state. It would have been neat to see some sort of DC version of NCR, sign that there are people working to bring some stability to an area (I bet Megaton will be the new Shady Sands, heh.) Not sure why the radiation prevents them from rebuilding to be honest, it's not exactly stopping them from building settlements with scavenged materials like wood and steel. I guess they're just lazy, heh.

That's my main problem. They just either live in 200+ year old abandoned houses (yeah right, they would have fallen apart), or they just stack scraps together. I guess they can't use wood since the trees were destroyed, but they could use rock or make bricks. They are just lazy.

Don't forget that they're not living in a vacuum. Shady Sands just had the one Raider encampment to deal with. Megaton, for example, is not only competing with at least 3 other major settlements in the same sized area as Shady Sands, but a significantly higher density of Raiders, Slaver, Supermutants and everything else the Wastes can throw at them. We don't know exactly when that wall went up, for example.

But just how far along do you expect people to be when their town gets trashed every other day? You build a nice house, clean it up a bit - and the Raiders run through and burn the place down. You put your sheetmetal house back together, and just when you're starting to settle down to try and build a better life the Slavers swing by and take the rest of your family and light your dog on fire. You're just getting over that when a band of Supermutants come and step on your neighbor who was going to help you get the plumbing working for the town.

So okay, you finally manage to scraqe your rubble back together into something resembling a home. Things are starting to look like they're going your way. You even found a nifty piece of pre-war tech the other day that's really going to help with getting the septic pump up and running again (which is nice because you've all been empting your bowels into a communal bucket ever since the town's best mechanic lost most of his useful appendages to a Deathclaw,) when the Brotherhood catches wind that you've been stockpiling pre-War tech and decides to "liberate" all your best gear for the "better good."

So it's kind of like one step forward, two steps back. Wastelanders just can't catch a break, it seems. Because you finally bury your dead, trade the last of your Rad-X to a travelling merchant in exchange for some antibiotics for Little Johnny's infected leg, when a couple Yao Guai come through and do unspeakable things to what Brahmin weren't killed or stolen by the Raiders, the Slavers, or the Supermutants. So now you're left with nothing to eat except for 200 year-old Instamash (thank god they perfected preservatives by 2077, but you're still suffering from vitamin deficiency in about a month.) Once those supplies run out, it's back out into the Wastes to try and find a Supermarket that the Raiders aren't calling home.

Around this time, you're starting to make use of the Jet stash your buddy left behind when he decided to end it all - not for the high, but because it lets you go a couple more days without feeling so incredibly hungry. Not like you'd be able to keep any food down anyways, since you've been noticing your hair is starting to fall out, and you've somehow lost that energetic bounce in your step. You really need to get that roof patched up again, but you decide maybe you'll just take a little nap...

So there you are, catching some shut-eye in what's left of your house when this strapping young lad passes through wearing this crazy blue and yellow jumpsuit. He's whining about his long-lost daddy or some crap like he's the only the one with problems. You help him out as best you can and point him in a likely direction (he did fix your Water Purifier, after all, even though you notice half of your remaining posessions are suddenly missing.) And as he leaves you hear him muttering under his breath: something about "lazy Wastelanders," and he can't understand why they can't ever seem to take some pride in their appearance, take a bath, and learn how to use a broom.... :fallout:

(Okay, obviously this is all rationalizing - but the point is it's likely pretty hard just to survive in the Wastes. Picking up after yourself, or worrying about getting yourself one of those new-fangled infrastructures isn't necessarily a priority when you're just glad you haven't died today.)

Perhaps according to the laws of Science! radiation makes you lazy.

See, when it comes to works of fiction I'm perfectly willing to suspend disbelief for a given premise (in Fallout's case, the esoteric Science!), but not when it comes into conflict with logics since that'd be plot flaw. If Bethesda is going to forgo the fact agriculture is quite commonly found in the first two Fallout, then again I'm going to question the survivability of the Wasteland where vegetation are struggling. Humans can't be full time carnivores.

Secondly, if Fallout 3 makes it so clear that radiation is found in all the food and water accessible in the Wasteland, but since old people are still found, this suggest that people's physiology have finally adapted to accommodate radiation after 200 years of breathing, eating and drinking in it. Hence, makes Jame's efforts of trying to massively purify water seem pointless.

Now, it's quite plausible that any architectural progress in the Wasteland will be extremely difficult, due to the lack of available materials (either too broken down or rusted) and the ever presence of raiders and hostile mutants, but most importantly there's an absence of a primary economy (natural resources industry). Having said that, it's highly probable that even 300 years after the War, places like NCR is a rare find. I also agree caravans and nomads should be a more common sight, since so many settlements such as Rivet City are entirely incapable of growing their own food. There should also be more settlements built around mining and refining former cities as construction materials.

For the future of the Fallout series, I will like the designs take on one of the two directions:

1) Further into the future: Pre-War America becomes more archaic and a near-lost history. Mother Nature takes back almost everything, and humanity displays even more innovative ingenuity out in the Wastes, instead of sheltering in pre-War structures. Think the Wild West.

2) Reset the clock: by taking place merely one generation after the War, humanity still cling onto the ruins of a ravaged America, while constantly under threat from radiation and rampant mutants. Plenty of iconic American landmark and skylines with nuked makeover, while surviving texts and veterans from the War provide the wartime paranoia and bitterness.

If Bethesda even so much as worry about continuity - they can just have the next Fallout NOT set in the Capitol Wasteland. My $2.

Nahhhhhh, man....they just survive on all that canned food, snack cakes and cereal which for some [jazz-hands] kkkkkkkkkrrrrrrrrrazzzzzeeeeeee [/jazz-hands] reason is still around (not to mention edible) 200 years later.

:rolleyes:

Well true enough. Although, 200 years of barely scraping by, it's a wonder that they actually continued at all. Given how unsafe it is though, it's surprising that the safe points, with the influx of people, haven't formed some sort of militia to clear out their area and create a safe area after all this time, sort of like NCR. Seems awfully stagnant in the CW, to me at least. But, at least you can rationalize it, I suppose. Still not sure what's up with the pre-war lighting and power working in some areas though.

That's the other thing, though. The gist of the situation I got from the game is that the DC area is only recently settled to any great extent. Not to say that no one was around for 200 years, but that only in recent decades have people started trying to settle down in one place and making a go of it.

I think the Nomadic Tribes concept is something they likely could have worked with, for example. Because I get the feeling that's what the place was like for most of the past 200 years, just a lot of smaller bands of people moving across the Wasteland trying to scrounge a living and following the Brahmin herds in search of places that were at least marginally suitable for grazing. (Obviously, that's way up there in terms of rationalizing - there's no background info in-game to specifically lend any credence to that theory.)

Nevertheless, we do know that Megaton, Rivet City, and I'm assuming most places like Arefu and the smaller settlements (Big Town is an odd man out here, and I'm not going to try and defend that particular settlement because I don't understand it, either,) are recent developments. It's not like Megaton has been around for 200 years and is just stuck in a rut - what you see there is simply the best they've been able to in the past couple generations. Just stripping down the Airport and getting all the materials into the town likely took a decade or two (can't be easy moving that much material around when you're also worried about being attacked by any number of things.)

And Rivet City isn't anywhere close to 200 years old, either. The original founders are still living, even (albeit in hiding,) and much of the early years were spent just trying to make the place habitable. The scientists have only been there working on stuff continuosly for what, 19 years? Sure, they were around much earlier but they went over to Project Purity, during which time Rivet City likely suffered some setbacks, it seems.

I realize I'm rationalizing quite a bit, here. And I do feel that Bethesda missed out on a lot of big opportunities for providing enough background information to make the place seem believable. My contention is two-fold, though.

1) It's a little unfair to bring up the 200 years point - if we're working with what we do know (without any rationalizations) then they've only been giving it a go at rebuilding civilization in the area for about a generation or two.

2) That they failed to provide specific reasons as to why what we're seeing is like it is doesn't mean it's completely out of the realm of believability (meaning, of course, consistent with established canon.)

I will agree that Bethesda dropped the ball on explaining why things are the way they are. If they're building this highly detailed world, it's only natural that players would want to know more about what's going on. And you really don't see as much opportunity to dig deeper into the history of the place as I'd have liked.

I'll agree with you on this one, though. I don't really get it, either. I can understand that the computers I'm seeing still running were made to be very durable and long-lasting (there are small hints throughout all the Fallout games that a big thing in Pre-War society was making things "Vault-Tec Approved," bomb-proof, and EMP-Resistant.) But yeah, I don't know what's powering all of this stuff. For myself, I don't see it as a big deal - Fallout is "soft" Sci-Fi, after all - I don't need to know how the Spaceship runs to suspend my disbelief that it can break the Light Barrier, for example.

Actually looking at the story of Megaton it seems they go well back, the place started a refugee camp for people trying to get in Vault 101 and seems to had survive because it have some kind of purifying water machine.

Rivet City is relatively new but was started by the members of the pre-war Naval Research Center but I have no idea were they were before they moved in.

Also if you look you find a lot of deserted places, as the Abandoned Shacks that seem to indicate places risen and fallen over the years ... the reason nobody seem to have left (that is debatable) is likely due to the fact they cannot make the trip due to the dangers, also do not forget the Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 world maps were a lot bigger and in Fallout 2 the reason places prospered was due to being close to the NCR and/or Vault City, for example Broken Hills always fails because the ore runs out.

Also the NCR was created because of several factors, if left alone Shaddy Sands would have been overrun but I think the reason there is no "NWR" is because the NCR existence was a very significant departure of Fallout feeling as established in the first game, it was "civilization" at close of pre-War levels and felt out of place ... I admit F3 does feel "odd" without having some kind of "New Republic" around but at the same time it does feel more "Fallout" without it.

If rationalization is needed ... I supposed the Capitol Wastelands survive just for salvage the ruins of Washington D.C. as the former centers of civilization seem to be now so dangerous nobody tries to live near then anymore if they have a choice.

I doubt that reason, and NCR might not fit in Fallout, but it does in Fallout 2. It is a sequel and I guessed it's to show that humanity is indeed on its feet 180 years or so after almost getting obliterated, you get that sense from a lot of the settlements. There's an absence of "grimdark", something this game does sort of cheesily but it at least showed things moving forward.



Well for 1, I don't think it's unfair (if I can be unfair to a game, heh), two generations is still a good bit of time, but perhaps we'll see things develop at a good clip in the succeeding games (see Megaton thrive into a full out town, with a militia, etc). For the most part, the lack of settlement development is more bothering in that there's squandered potential for some really cool plot lines within those towns, rather than it wrecking the reality of the game world. For #2, I guess that's a failure of storytelling.

Well, it just seems odd to me to hold it against the area for not making any headway in 200 years, when the rebuild effort has only been going for a few decades at most. (And even then, not in any unified manner, but among small pockets of relatively isolated communities.)

Now, if we're to talk about whether or not it's accurate (within the context of the game) considering 50 years or so of time to get things going, building up some infrastructure, etc - that's another thing, and I think a lot more relevant. As far as that's concerned, the only thing we can really do is come up with our own rationalizations. And I do think Beth dropped the ball to an extent on this one - it's not that it's an impossible situation, it's that they didnt' go the extra mile to explain to us why it is so. No argument here. One thing I was expecting my first time through Megaton was that it was going to be a huge time sink. I was looking forward to spending days hunting down sidequests and dealing with subplots in that area. (You know, like the other Fallout games...) But after I talked to everyone in town, and finished up a couple quick sidequests, the only thing left was Moira's Quest. I was really hoping for some serious depth, there. I don't think they did a terrible job, there, but I would have absolutely liked to have seen a greater density in that area. (And the same with Tenpenny Towers, too.)

There's plenty of just random nameless people just wandering around Megaton (though oddly, not so much in the other towns...) A couple more populated areas would have gone a long way towards adding some real "meat" to a lot of these locations. I mean, that's not only what I was expecting from a Fallout game - I was expecting that since it was now Bethesda doing it, that there'd be tons of quests to do in every place I went to. (You know, like the Elder Scrolls Games... you can't walk two feet without tripping over a sidequest in that game.)

Those are my thoughts as well, from the point of view of realism, Fallout 3's portrayal of the wasteland 200 years after the war. It's mostly a matter of feel, I think, Bethesda probably wanted to make prewar locations look distinctly recognizable as their real life counterparts, if you go to the Mall, while it certainly isn't identical to real life, especially with the damage to the buildings and the trenches, it does really show you that you're in a post apocalyptic Washington D.C. If Bethesda tried to really be realistic here, many locations might not be easily recognizable, and with just a different name, it would be able to pass for any generic nuclear wasteland. Bethesda did a good job here, though some signs of nature reclaiming would have been suitable, an ecosystem does not work without the bottom of the food chain being present, so the lack of visible plants is somewhat unrealistic.



Indeed you can't, but odds are that side-quest will be another boring fetch or delivery mission, whereas in Fallout 3 some tasks that don't even get quest entries, such as repairing the pipes in Megaton, would probably be considered "quests" in Oblivion and Morrowind.

I really do hope we get to see why things stagnated in the capital wasteland and the growth in the South West seemed more profound. However I share your oppinion when it comes to the way quests were handled in Fallout 3. I am really disappointed with the amount of quests we got from the bigger settlements like Megaton, Rivet City, Tenpenny Towers, Underworld, Canterbury Commons, and many others. I looked up Fallout 2 today and saw that it had 15 locations totaling 117 quests. Fallout 3 has 92, this includes the O:A DLC quests tacked on, so Bethesda didn't even try to match Fallout 2's Quest volume. Even if this would have made them have to push the game back farther to make this happen I would have been ok with it. The next problem I have is that each location in Fallout 2 had no less then 3 quests and the vast majority had large numbers of quests and these quests helped guide you to other places in the process. These Fallout 2 quests where the guidance laid the ground work for your game play and gave you direction in how you could approach situations gave you interesting results depending on your attributes and skills. This is missing in Fallout 3 and I don't think Fallout Vets have failed to notice this flaw in Fallout 3's design. My hope is for Fallout 4 to incorporate these elements back into the game to allow more options for completing quests, other then just the Good and Evil routes in Fallout 3. Because lets face it I don't think I am the only one who thinks the Sheriff of Megaton and Mr.Burke were the only two people interested in the bomb at the center of town. The Brotherhood of Steel, The Outcasts, and The Enclave would have known about the bomb and would have each had a vested interest in obtaining it. Bethesda should have given you the option to work for one of them or back stab the one your working for and go to the person giving the best profit. That was just one of the things that I could have been done in Fallout 2. However, I could be delusional and just imagining this but I don't think I am. I also remember meeting the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 2 and they really wanted to have nothing to do with me at first, until I proved myself to be of use to them, and this was when the BoS was just as gray as the Raiders who tried to ravaged Vault City and Sold Slaves at the Den. I am putting a list of the quests in Fallout 2 for those to gander at that may not know about them. You can find this list at the Fallout wiki.

Fallout 2 Settlements and quests

Arroyo Quests

* Kill the evil plants that infest Hakunin's garden.
* Obtain flint to have Mynoc sharpen your spear.
* Fix the well for Feargus.
* Rescue Nagor's dog, Smoke, from the wilds.
* Retrieve the GECK for Arroyo.
* Find Vic the Trader.

Broken Hills Quests

* Fix the mine's air purifier.
* Find the missing people for Marcus.
* Beat Francis at armwrestling.
* Break Manson and Franc out of prison.
* Blow up the mine's air purifier.
* Divert more electrical power to Eric's home.

Den Quests

* Free Vic from his debt by getting his radio from his house in Klamath and paying Metzger.
* Sabotage Becky's still.
* Get car part for Smitty.
* Return Anna's locket.
* Collect money from Fred.
* Get book from Derek.
* Deliver a meal to Smitty for Mom.
* Lara wants to know what is being guarded in the church.
* Get permission from Metzger for gang war.
* Find weakness in Tyler's gang guarding the church.
* Help Lara attack Tyler's gang.
* Listen to Stacy's kitty story.

Gecko Quests

* Solve the Gecko powerplant problem.
* Repair the powerplant.
* Optimize the powerplant.
* Get super repair kit for Skeeter.
* Get 3-step plasma transformer for Skeeter.
* Find Woody the ghoul for Percy. Try the Den.

Klamath Quests

* Aldo the drunk.
* Refuel the still.
* Rescue Smiley the Trapper.
* Guard the brahmin.
* Rustle the brahmin.
* Kill the rat god.
* Rescue Torr.

Modoc Quests

* Something strange is happening at the farm northeast of Modoc. Investigate and report back to Jo.
* Cornelius has lost his gold pocket watch. Find it and return it to him.
* Farrel wants you to find Cornelius's gold pocket watch. Find it and return it to Farrel.
* Jonny is missing. Find him and bring him home to Balthas.
* Jonny's in the Slag caves. Find a way to get Jonny back home to Balthas.
* Farrel has a rodent problem in his garden. Remove the infestation..
* Deliver Slag message to Jo in Modoc.
* Jo is suspecious of the Slags. Find out about the dead bodies at the Ghost Farm and find out what happened to Karl.
* Go to the Den and tell Karl it's alright to come back home.

Navarro Quests

* Deal with the deathclaw.
* Fix K-9.
* Retrieve the FOB from the base Commander.

New California Republic Quests

* Retrive Parts/Gain Access to Vault 15.
* "Take care of Officer Jack" for Mira.
* Complete brahmin drive.
* Retrive papers from Dr Henry.
* Test mutagenic serum on a super-mutant. Try Broken Hills.
* Eliminate Mr. Bishop.
* Deliver Westin's holodisk to Lynette in Vault City.
* Get the map from the NCR Rangers, for Vortis the slaver.
* Free the slaves in the slave pen, for the Rangers.
* Deliver Hubologist's field report to AHS-9 in San Francisco.
* Kill Hubologist in NCR for Merk.
* Stop brahmin raids.

New Reno Quests

* Recover your stolen car.
* Find out who was responsible for Richard Wright's overdose.
* Suspect: Jagged Jimmy J.
* Suspect: Jules.
* Suspect: Lil' Jesus Mordino.
* Suspect: Renesco.
* Find a way into the Sierra Army Base.
* Track down Pretty Boy Lloyd, recover the stolen money, and make an? example of him.
* Collect tribute from Renesco.
* Help guard a secret transaction taking place in the desert.
* Find some endorphin blockers to make a cure for Jet.
* Bust up Wright's still beneath the train station.
* Assassinate Westin in NCR without making it look like a murder.
* Murder Carlson in NCR.
* Deliver ten Cat's Paw magazines to Miss Kitty.
* Deliver a laser pistol to Eldridge.
* Deliver Big Jesus's package to Ramirez at the Stables.
* Collect tribute from the Corsican Brothers.
* Assassinate Boss Salvatore for Big Jesus Mordino.

Redding Quests

* Find out who cut the [censored].
* Find the excavator chip.
* Break up the bar brawl.
* Kill Frog Morton.

Vault 13 Quests

* Fix the Vault 13 computer.
* Talk to Goris.

San Francisco Quests

* The tanker needs fuel.
* The navigation computer needs the NavComp part to work.
* You need to use a FOB to access the navigation computer.
* Kill the Shi Emperor.
* The Hubologists need plans for a vertibird from Navarro.
* Steal the vertibird plans from the Shi.
* The Hubologists need fuel for their spaceship.
* Kill Badger so the tanker vagrants will embrace the Hub.
* Kill the AHS-9.
* The Shi need plans for a vertibird from Navarro.
* Steal the vertibird plans from the Hubologists.
* Find Badger's girlfriend in the hold below the ship.
* The Dragon wants you to take out Lo Pan - hand to hand.
* Lo Pan wants you to take out the Dragon - hand to hand, if possible.
* Get Chip's spleen.
* Get some hardened power armor from Crockett.
* Get the vertibird plans for the Brotherhood of Steel.

Vault 15 Quests

* Rescue Chrissy.
* Kill Darion.
* Complete Deal with NCR.
* Give Spy Holodisk to authority in NCR.

Vault City Quests

* Get a plow for Mr. Smith.
* Deliver Moore's briefcase to Mr. Bishop in New Reno.
* Deliver a sample of jet to Dr. Troy.
* Solve the Gecko powerplant problem.
* Deliver Lynette's holodisk to Westin in NCR.
* Rescue Amanda's husband, Joshua.
* Deliver beer and booze (10 each) to Lydia.
* Deliver pliers (tools) and a wrench to Valerie.
* Scout the eight sectors around Gecko and return to Stark.
* Enter NCR and return to Stark.

Well, that was a long list wasn't it. A list that Bethesda should have matched and added DLC on top of along with making the SPECIAL a ton more important in how there quests played out. I hope that by listing these quests that a Bethesda Dev takes note and seeks to develop their next fallout game with better attention to the detail that the guys at Black Isle gave to Fallout 2 in just the short 15 months it was in production. I don't expect the dev's at Bethesda to lose sleep so I really think that the 100 hour work weeks not happen like they did for the people involved with Fallout 2. Now I think we Fallout 1 and 2 fans are spoiled by our exposure to Fallout 2. What made Fallout great wasn't how many places there were on a map to visit but the vast amount of space in between and the feeling of having this profound Journey. Fallout 3 to me feels much like my experiences on the playground when I was a kid, in that it had bumpers keeping me from getting outside and experiencing true freedom, while everything inside is really great it just doesn't match the scope or feeling of how I wanted to Climb the Oak tree I saw or Kick someones foot and run away.

With this in mind Bethesda. I make a humble request to see Fallout 4 come out with the same amount of quests as Fallout 2 did at Launch, and then DLC content to surpass Black Isles Quest Volume. All the while making the game feel like it did in Fallout 2 with its vastness and attention to the SPECIAL system and how it can be used to make a complex but fun game. I also think we could use "More Cow Bells!" With this I don't think we fallout fans are asking for to much. All we are asking for is what we remember and what was great about Fallout 1&2. Now if this is too hard for you guys, for the love of god start flogging people until morale improves. I didn't pay 50 bucks for a game and pay an extra 10 to GFWL for content that isn't equal or above that of Fallout 1 and 2. OK I have said my peace, so I am done with my rant. I will go back in my hole now and play Fallout 3 or Civ4.

Not to mention all these quests usually had a deep impact on the fate of the cities in question. Each city had like 3-5 different endings.

Fallout 3 basically ignores all your effort besides the main quest and you are left none the wiser as to the consequences of your actions in those 'cities' in Fallout 3. The ending should'nt just be about the main quest but also about your impact on the world.

The first Rivet City Council Minutes are dated April 25, 2239 making the city 38.5 years old.

I spoke with Manya to get the low down on Megaton. I'm guessing she's in her 60's or 70's, but could be older. She says her Papi was born in Megaton - but back then it was just a bunch of people holed up in the crater as shelter from the dust storms. It was her Papi that organized folks to put up the walls to defend against Raiders. So it's possible Megaton is as old as a hundred, but the walls have only been around for "a few decades". Lucas Simms mentions that it's only been the past few decades that Megaton has been growing. Megaton's story is quite interesting - people gathered in the crater to appeal for admittance to 101. They took shelter from the elements in the nearby crater (although the remnants of Springvale seem like they would have served just as well. I guess Raiders had already taken over Springvale Elementary by that time). Some folks started worshipping the bomb. This semi-stable settlement became a base for various traders - who were replaced by the travelling caravans. Manya's dad organized the traders to scavv the remains of crashed airplanes to establish the walls. Seems like a reasonable timeline to me.

The only settlements in Fallout 3 that I can think of that date back to the Great War are the Vaults and Little Lamplight.

Electricity is a bit odd - but considering that everything is Nuclear!, perhaps those buildings have some sort of on-site fusion electricty generation. Certainly, there are devices in most buildings that may well be some form of Fallout Science! nuclear power generation - and there are some small devices (the functional computer terminal in Springvale Elementary or the table top lights in Smith Casey's Garage - for example) that have visible external power supplies (look like micro-fusion batteries). Some of the vaults are powered with geo-thermal as well

The thing that suprises me is the running water. The water fountains in upper floors of the Statesmen Hotel still work. Where's that water coming from? Where's it going to? How is it that a building with as much damage as Statesman still has so much intact plumbing?

Edit: just thought of another building with inhabitants dating back to 2077 - Mama Dolce's. That's a right puzzler that one is - I thought that the longevity of ghouls wasn't automatic - a sort of rare - by chance sort of thing. The remnants in Mama Dolce's are the originals - (unless they keep their women in some secret unfindable location) - and it looks like a good fraction managed to survive.

This is one of my 3 greatest complaints about the game. Anything outside of these three complaints is admittedly nitpicking. But these three things make me all clenchy-fisted. :banghead:

I don't know, maybe Ron Perlmans asking price went up because of Hellboy and the decided to hold those multiple endings because of monetary issues. I understand it svcks and it would be great to have these in Fallout 3 but maybe Fallout 4 will have some actors that are willing to put tons of voice to tape for a reasonable price tag and we can all rejoice. I understand peoples dislike of fallout 3 not having this major element from its predecessors. There is always the hope that Fallout 4 will have this put into it. That is if we see a Fallout 4 before 2012, because the world could end... our begin a new as some people would say. What would really be mean is if Fallout 4 was going to hit the shelves the day after an actual end of the world scenario occurred. I think that would really svck major donkey nuts. Well, at least we can say we got a Fallout 3 before we all took our collective dirt naps. Tee Hee :dance:

No, that would be awesome, because we would all get to play Fallout in real life. Then we can all see who got it closer to reality, BIS or Beth. We should place wagers and agree on a meeting point beforehand, preferably between the U.S and Europe. The Azores sounds good. Place your bets please.

I'd like to see FO4 take place shortly after the war, say ~30 years or so. Say you are born in a vault which just opened and set up a Vault City sort of encampment. All around you people are starving, sick, dying, Society, what is left of it, had degenerated to a warlord sort of situation, where the powerful determine who will survive. Ruins everywhere, and within them, small pockets of people try to defend themselves and eek out survival by microfarming land which yields very little. Remnants of the government and military hole up in their bunkers and camps, and often forage the countryside, carrying away what they can. The land is blasted, pocketed with piles of rubble, stubble in the fields, and deep, dark tangles of woods which harbor who know what.

The people are generally ignorant of their new world. The young folks can't read, nor do they see a use for reading. The old folks remember the before days and know secrets that could be useful. The government is operation in it's own interests, as is the military. Both are armed, but sometimes the patrols never come back. Sometimes the posts get raided and destroyed, with the spoils of war lost in the wastes, to show up later in the hads of youth ganges.

From a lore point of view, we can explore how, and why various factions emerged, how settlements came to be. From a RP point of view, if our basic mission is to either promote the development of society (good) or maintain the state of anarchy(evil) or to build your vault city, (neutral?), the qusts you embark on will change the path of history, both short term and long term. The city overseer would want to make alliances where possible, engage in political intrigue, and go to war when necessary. You would be tasked to accomplish some of these goals, and the way you decide to handle them will determine the outcome. Do you follow the overseer's orders no matter the consequences, or do you decide to take matters into your own hands? What is the overseer trying to do anyway?

How does this sound so far?