Why was water not that big a deal(beyond the water chip problem and water merchant wars) in the first two games? Was water not contaminated at all by radiation, or they had better water purifcation tech in the east coast compared to the capitol wasteland?

As Tim Cain said, they set the game 80 years after the war, so that the radiation would be mostly gone already, but its results would be seen in the form of various mutated creatures.

Unfortunately, Fallout 3 screwed this up somewhat.

Maybe DC was more heavily bombed then other bases

That really wouldn't make much of a difference, considering Fallout 3 occurred 200 years after the great war. Now if they used the Limit 115 plague as a major part in the plot instead of radiation. Then again, Fallout 3 is full of plot holes.

Thing is, it is more radiated than the West Coast, but less destroyed in terms of buildings etc. It doesn't really make much sense.

Fallout 3 actually takes place 20 years after the war. the game just has a ton of typos

after 30-35 years the radiation levels would have dropped to levels where you could live without fear of mutation. However the water could be tainted because of a continuous cycle of glowingones peeing in the water and then drinking the water. Thus creating an endless cycle of radiation in the water.

Eden says that the entire country is in the same state, so the west coast would also have irradiated water.

All your questions can be answered by this one statement:

Fallout 3 has TONS of plot holes!

Such as?

Yes, Beth has changed some things from the first two, probably because it's a new freakin' dev team & yes they don't spoon feed you every answer, get over it

The original games are full canon, which means radiation being completely different in FO3 is a sort of plot hole. It's not like radiation would really create huge insects though, so reality is taking a back seat anyway...

As for water, I assume many rivers and lakes are gone, and the sea water is salt water of course. It makes sense that water would still be somewhat rare.

The Capital Wasteland has quite a few waste disposal sites.

Yup, it's not about reality but about internal consistency of the series.

Or maybe the Chinese used special nuclear weapons that created long term radiation effects on the East coast a more salt the earth kind of approach because it was a vastly more important military target, especially keeping with the fact that the West coast wouldn't have had all the tech industry it has now. Even now, Hawaii, the East Coast, the midwest minutemen silos and Texas would be prime targets the only real target on the west coast would be the San Diego Naval Station.

So the Chinese used convential nukes on the West Coast and weapons that recreated Chernobyl type effects on the east.

Or Beth decided to stretch the rules even more then they had been stretched in the first 2 for gameplay sake and make radiation a little more important then it was in the other two, because in reality places like Chernobyl weren't barren wastelands after less then 80 years and giant insects certainly couldn't have lived in such a barren wasteland because there wouldn't be the oxygen levels that existed during the pre-dino extinction periods that allowed invertebrates to be large outside of the oceans.

Or a Wizard did it!

What ? You mean the Great war ?

I can live with that.

Plot Wizard strikes again.

They might have used nuetron bombs on the east coast, wich has a much higher radiation output.

Where should I begin?

Colonel Autumn surviving the irradiated Project Purity chamber?

Fawkes can retrieve the G.E.C.K. amidst lethal radiation levels, but somehow cannot enter irradiated Project Purity chamber?

Little Lamplight somehow retains a substantial population of children for centuries, originating from one pre-war field trip?

I could go on at length, but suffice it to say, Fallout 3 is a finely aged Swiss cheese when it comes to plot holes (plus I haven't played the game since November, so I've forgotten most of the smaller ones).

The DLC Broken Steel actually solves the first two plot holes.

1) Look carefully. He injects himself with something. What he uses, I do not. Probably the Rad-X and RadAway beefed up majorly.
2) Can. Fawkes can. The word you're looking for is 'won't'. Some stuff about destiny. Its the F.E.V., messing with his brain. Or at least that's how I see it.
3) They collect Orphans from the wastes. Just because you don't see many kids in the game world doesn't mean there isn't a lot of kids. Think how many Orphans there would be.

Well, that's what people have been saying. I missed it the first time around (and so did most people, which is a bad design decision since noticing is necessary to make sense of events), but that explanation raises more questions than it answers. How would Colonel Autumn know to prepare for sudden irradiation by carrying special drugs? If Colonel Autumn is aware of the potential hazard, why aren't his troops also prepared?

It's still a plot hole because the explanation seems contrived.



Well, for one thing, Fawkes is female.

For another, I realize she says something about "destiny." That breaks the fourth wall so hard it almost defies belief, however. She might as well be saying, "I can't do that, the plot wouldn't work if the developers let me do the completely obvious and logical thing."



I personally find it incredibly hard to believe that there are two hundred years' worth of orphans that somehow manage to survive the harshness of the wastes and end up at Little Lamplight. The Lamplight kids are isolationist and essentially have turned the caverns into a fortress. They don't really send out scouting parties.

Once again, the explanation seems contrived and implausible, which is why, explanation or no, this remains a plot hole.

I agree with Vainglorious these explanations dont really hold water.

Theres no evidence of this super Rad-X that Colonel Autumn has anywhere else in the game. Theres no evidence or reason for Fawkes sudden recaltriciance in going near radiation, which is not sorted by Broken Steel as you still go into the Chamber without a choice - you just dont die now. And the Little Lamplight thing - again no supporting evidence in game.

Using extraneous information to explain away poor writing, bad plot, plot holes, and bad design decisions does not make things right you know.

It is a nuclear wasteland, it's perfectly reasonable he would be prepared for radiation. And the troopers, they're probably expendable.



I checked the wikia, and found this; Contrary to a comment about Fawkes' gender made by his voice actor, lead designer Emil Pagliarulo has confirmed "No, Fawkes was absolutely a male. This was a mistake. Wes gave an interview and he was mistaken. Trust me, Fawkes is and was male." http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fawkes
I agree, it's a bit of a cheap way out, but I wouldn't say it's breaking the fourth wall, more of a deus ex machina.
As for little lamplight, definitely not orphans, it isn't Never Never Land.

Yes, it's reasonable to be prepared for radiation, and for normal wasteland travel, good ol' Rad-X and Rad Away suffice. You do expect to come across radioactive waste, mutants, water, and so on and so forth. Obviously though, the irradiated chamber was a special, particularly lethal case, and normal Rad-X and Rad Away weren't sufficient to survive bombardment. That meant a specially prepared medicine was needed, and how the heck did Autumn just happen to be carrying this perfect defense on his person?

Basically, it still seems contrived and implausible to me. If it didn't, would we even be having this discussion? No one would have noticed this as a potential plot hole at all if the scenes had been handled better to begin with.



Well, I can't blame Fallout 3 for the gender blunder. In Fallout 2, if you pay for a hoker for Marcus, he tells the Chosen One that Super Mutants aren't actually sterile. The developers later stated that Marcus was wrong, and that they are in fact sterile.

As for Fawkes' refusal to enter the chamber being a deus ex machina (which means "god from machine" [I knew that years ago, I didn't Google it ]), not quite. That's actually the opposite of what we're talking about, which is a refusal to help. Here's the Wikipedia definition of the term:

"A deus ex machina (pronounced /ˈdeɪ.əs ɛks ˈmɑːkinə/ or /ˈdiː.əs ɛks ˈm?kɨnə/,[1] literally "god from the machine") is a plot device in which a person or thing appears "out of the blue" to help a character to overcome a seemingly insolvable difficulty."

I'm not sure what you'd call the plot device that is Fawkes' refusal to help for no other reason than to support the plot. The best I can come up with is "cop-out."

Isn't it possible that there is nuclear waste constantly entering the water table in fallout 3? Nuclear power plant or damaged atomic bomb? I'm not really sure how radiation works in water but isn't it possible that something like that continues to contaminate the water. Like how in fallout 2 gecko is pollution vault city's water.