It used to always bother me in FO3 that the wasteland wasn't green. After all, there's no way the remaining food would support any human life if there weren't still crops. So if I'm there, plant life must still exist and so the wasteland should be green. Also I've seen reports on Chernobyl (as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki). THEY are green even after heavy radiation.

Here we are in Fallout 4 and there ARE crops but how did they survive unless there is plant life (and there is limitedly). The trees would have survived and the grass would have too -- not everywhere but it would have come back everywhere. I don't think it's necessary to the atmospherics for the surrounding land to be bleak -- after all the situation is bleak enough. Not a big deal but I think I would like it better if I believed human life could be supported on the wildlife and plant life still around.

A big part of it is that nuclear fallout and the bombings in general drastically changed the Earth's environment. The atmosphere has a very different composition, and although it's still at least partially suitable for supporting the same life, it isn't suitable to the extent that it was prior to the bombs falling. There is plenty of plant life everywhere, but it's very different. The climate changed, and at least this part of the world has a very arid, desert-like climate. There aren't the lush green grasses that we're used to seeing in the US, but those grasses aren't really native to the US anyway. European settlers brought them with. It makes sense that non-native plants wouldn't have emerged on their own again.

I'm not sure that Chernobyl is really a good comparison. That was an at least relatively isolated event, and it wasn't anywhere near the magnitude that the bombs in Fallout are meant to have taken. Wildlife from outside of the Chernobyl fallout perimeter was able to simply move back in. Part of the point of the bombs falling in Fallout is that it was basically a global thing. One country dropped them, so some other ones were launched in retaliation, then another country launched some, then another and so on. There wasn't much of anything left anywhere, as is evidenced by the fact that basically all of the animals in the game are hideously mutated.

Reminds me of an episode of river monsters...Jeremy Wade got access to the Chernobyl area, and indeed it was very green and full of life, but still highly radioactive in a lot of areas..

It's fall in the game. You can see fallen leaves everywhere.

Just like it's winter during Skyrim's events, there's trees and bushes everywhere, so all the snow melts during summer.

There are already mods for that.

Simply gameplay over realism, that all. Just going for a mood/setting

This is what I was thinking. My immediate interpretation of events was that it was the fall season and so the leaves had fallen and the grass had gone dormant. Even if, as I hear the lore suggests, the war drastically altered the Earth's environment you would still have seasons, with the days growing shorter/longer depending on the time of year. I don't know if the spring season would be lush but I have to believe it would look a bit greener - of course I could be wrong.

there are enough green games out there

even if it's not realistic... it's still nice to see something different

the Stalker series for example was having a 'green' nature, although it had a post apocalyptic scenario

Fallout on the other hand does not, which is good <3

Don't like it? Mod it.

That's the gloriousness that is Nexus Mods.

I know that they were going for a certain stylized look, but I wish there had been some special green places like Vault 22 or Oasis.

Keep in mind this is not a realistic setting after all. The Wasteland is based on what 1950's pulp sci-fi imagined a world after a nuclear war would look like.

did you just spoil that there aren't?

I should stop reading the forums ^^

I...I am so sorry, I didn't even think about the fact that it would be considered a spoiler D: I haven't been everywhere in the game, maybe I just didn't find a place like that?

No it's not. The 1950's pulp sci-fi was all pre-war stuff within USA. The wasteland should not be affected by that.

The wasteland isn't affected by that...the theme of the game is. The 1950's pulp sci-fi theme has been rationalised significantly on what it was in Fallout 3, but it is still very much of the theme of the game.

You argument came up loads during Fallout 3 by various posters thinking the same thoughts. Scientifically you are right.

I prefer the colour style used in Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 considerably more than Fallout 3. The old school Fallout games did not have the same green color style that Fallout 3 had either.

Wrong game. You're looking for a post-apocalypse simulator.

Greener maybe, but it's supposed to be late fall / early winter and most of the vegitation is dead. Not sure why they chose to leave out ALL evergreens

Nuclear winter wiped out all but the most resistant flora/fauna, so in order to adapt to long sunless environment it seems that plants have developed alternative food production cycles (other than chlopofhile (green) based ones).

Hence the lack of green plant life in Fallout universe.

This.

They want it to look like a blasted wasteland. So it does.

That's the theme & imagery they're going for.

I would love to hear the NMA comments that would follow if they made the Fallout world into a lush farmland...

They also don't have Yao Guai or Bloatflies in Chernobil, so what's your point?

http://d1udmfvw0p7cd2.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/fl20110417x1a.jpg

foliage in chernobyl, on which i think much of the theme is inspired.

Looking at the glowing sea they must have had some super nukes in 2077. The plants that do grow mutfruit and tanto are pretty scraggly. But yea I saw that same thing about chernobyl, this is worse.