Okey, this is something that has been bugging me a bit while playing Fallout 3. Everyone and everything is acting like the war was just yesterday. Back in Fallout 1 I could buy this. The game was set some ninety years after the Two-hour war, so while it seemed unreasonable that people other than Ghouls and Mutants would have been able to remember the world before the war it's feasable that this war was still fresh enough in the collective memory to affect everyone, even though most people would be, like, three or four generations into postapocalyptia. There were some signs of rebuilding, like Shady Sands and Junktown, and things generally seemed to make a certain kind of sense.

In Fallout 2, the war seemed a lot further off. And it was! 80 more years! Even though I've played Fallout 2 more than any other two games combined with over a dozen characters I can't really recall a lot of instances where they talked about the time before the war as if it was anything else than ancient history. Everything was there and everybody knew a lot about the time from before the war, but people were far to preoccupied with, say their local gang wars, slavery businesses, caravan running, building their own little republic or what have you to really care. Sure, the Enclave might still think of Good Ol' America as something rather recent, but American politicians that look favorably on the Golden Olden Days doesn't feel all that far-fetched, hardi har har.

In Fallout 3, however, everyone seems to remember the time before the war like it was yesterday. I really like the world in Fallout 3 and think that Beth have done a much better job than I thought they would, but it certainly doesn't feel like the war was two centuries in the past. For one thing, everything seems too untouched. While I can sorta buy that a limited populance can't manage to scavange everything in 80 years it really strains my suspension of disbelief that something refrigerators and first aid boxes just lying around haven't been put to good use by someone yet unless the suff is behind a very, very locked and hidden door, and even then it's a bit of a strech. Cars lie around unexploded and unstripped, Moria accually thinks there will be food and medicine in the Super-Duper Mart. Even taking into account that we're talking about her, and the fact that there really wasn't, that's like someone asking you to go fetch a gun from the remains of a French Foreign Legion outpost in Algeria. Even if we accept that that might just be Moira's personal warped view of the world there's the fact that no-one seems to have made any attempt to tidy up anything really. Everything still has 200 year old wallpapers. I mean, honestly, is it that hard to figure out how to make paint?

I'm not saying that the apocalypse shouldn't be remembered. It's just that I find it a bit hard to swallow that it really has been two hundred years, because everything I encounter while running around in the wasteland suggests that the war was something that happened when grandpa was young, not something that happened some ancestor eight generations back. 200 just feels like a number slapped on there and forgotten. I understand that Beth wanted to do something that felt a bit more like Fallout 1, but then they should really have placed it somewhere around that time in the timeline.

Am I alone in thinking this?

Basicly soceity hit the reset button and is rebuilding from the ground up.

Well, yes, obviously. That wasn't really what my post was about, though. My point was that everything, the scenerey, the people, etc, suggest that the war was something recent, not two centuries in the past.

Yes my point is it will take a long time for man kind to come back from this.

I really like the look of Fallout 3, but you are right that is does not look like the war happened 200 years ago. It looked like it happened 50 years ago at the most. Paper items like billboards and the like would have disintegrated out in the elements. Nature would have reclaimed much of the Wasteland. I realize Bethesda took an artistic license with this, but its the one flaw in a game I enjoy very much.

When there's this much to see, the reminders of the war are everywhere. Some buildings look like people just left a few minutes ago and should be back any time. So this makes it all but impossible to get over the war. But yes, after 200 years the war should be a distant affair.

It probably has alot to do with very few people want to work together, they only want to help them selves and the few that do can't take on the Super mutants and Raiders every where

it would been better if the game was placed 40 years after the war instead of 200.

so i try to think of it that way when im strolling around the Badlands.

If anything, though, this would make it even harder to remember the war and the world before it as anything other than ancient history. While I really have no issiues with the Capital Wasteland being in a more primitive and savage state than the west coast I do have a hard time with the fact that everybody remembers the war like it was yesterday. The more savage and brutal the area, and the rarer the occations of people getting together and cooperating, the faster things would fade from the collective memory. The tribals from Fallout 2 are a great example. These are people who live away from the cities and have started up primitive tribes that manage to get by pretty well out in the wasteland. They've developed a new culture with new iconography and gods and have little or no idea for example what a car used to do. To them the war is just another myth and the people who lived before it about as related to them as Adam and Eve seems to the average christian.

So, in short;
Primitive and Savage Wasteland = Great!
Primitive and Savage Wasteland where everybody treats the war as a recent event 200 years later = Uuuuhm...

I'm not saying it's not a cool setting, only that it feels more like it's taking place around 2161 rather than 2277.

Umm, there actually was food in the super duper Mart. An old refigerator has some, theres some stuff lying around, and some medical supplies are in the storage room in the back of the store.

Now I agree, its a little hard to believe, but I think the look fits it, especially when were talking about a city like D.C, which has the largest stone structure on the planet, and several other historic landmarks. To seee it ruined is much more moving then to see a pile of non-descript rubble.

Well I think its the kinda thing that gets passed down by storys and some gouls were alive before the war so they know what happens
now before the war they know little about...just talk to Aberham Washington in Rivet city He'll tell you all about how the American flew the Constitution by plane to King Henry thus Starting the evolutionary war...they kinda got old history down but I think someone needs to find a old Elementary history book in some school ruins to teach them

Yeah, technology makes things hard to forget, as well as things like vault-tec.

I thought there was just food back in the fridge, actually, and I didn't count that cause it seemed to have been brought there by the raiders. But if there acctually was food and stuff left on the shelves then... yeah... fat chance of that just lying around for two centuries.



Well, yes. But it would have been ruined a minute after the war too. 200 years later, it would probably have crumbled.






Still, though, even if everybody had thick "this is how life was before the war" manuals it still wouldn't warrant the "newness" of the wasteland, or the fact that everybody seems to be pretty new to it and refer to it time and time again. In Fallout 2 the war was fleetingly mentioned, like how someone would mention World War two these days. The harshness of the wasteland, the dangers of radiation and things like that were things that were assumed that everybody knew, except for those who lived in rather stable and sheltered communities. Things weren't "harsher now", things were just harsh. In Fallout 3 the war and it's effects still feel like the Latest Big Thing, and everything everywhere is just where it was when the bombs dropped.

When the war is responsible for your miserable existence, yes I would think it would still be talked about. The war drastically changed the world. With the burned out buildings and crap from the pre war era laying around how can it not be thrown in your face every 5 minutes.

You have to remember though - this is set in and around the Washington D.C. area. The seat of power for the United States. From all accounts, it's only recently that the area has become reinhabitable at all. Megaton's on it's second generation, and it seems the same way for Rivet City.

Hell, the White House (or what's left of it) is still emitting strong radiation, 200 years after the bombs fell.


To me, that all adds up to the Capital Wasteland being a hell for anyone beyond Ghouls and Super Mutants up till about probably 70 years ago, when the fallout finally subsided to the point regular Humans could finally set foot in and around the DC area.


As for the persevered ruins, structures, and signs...look around the Capital Wasteland. Do you see anything beyond Dust Storms in the way of weather patterns? It's as barren as a Desert - which would explain why everything's so well preserved after so long. If the Capital Wasteland was a "No Go" zone till recently, along with the stagnant weather pattern, there really wouldn't be all that much to cause decay.

It's a new darkage. The petty kingdoms and fiefdoms of the dark ages couldnt let go of the lost Glory of Rome. So I dont see why humans would now.

you have to remember, physics in fallout don't quite work the same way they do in our world. Instead, they work the way people in 1950 thought they would work.


case in point: nuclear winter.

Everyone here knows that if theres a nuclear war, you're going to have a nuclear winter which basicly more or less kills off all life on earth that survives the radiation and initial blasts.

In fallout, theres no such thing. (because the theory wasn't introduced untill the 70s), and therefore nuclear winter never happened.


Its also fathomable that people thought that posters and papers would last that long in 1950, so therefore in fallout, they do.





also people can never quite get over the war and start rebuilding on a large scale.... cause that would pretty much be the end of the fallout series.

u have to remember that there are other wastelanders who gather up things aswell and use old houses as bases or camps.thats y some of these things are around

I have to agree that the games art direction, item placement, and chracter actions all seem to date the war much more recently than 200 years.

Still, it's a very cool environment.

Think of it this way, it took us millenia to get society to this point, after the next to complete genocide of man kind 200 years is a very short time considering how long it took us to build up in the first place.

I think the OP is right, but at the end of the day, if they cleaned up the place, it wouldn't really be Fallout anymore, would it? They could explain the state of the place by saying something like "most knowledge of stonemasonry was lost in the war" or something, but even that sounds like a bit of a copout to me really.

however ... i thougth about it' the victory over the world war in 1918 is still celebrated in many countries in europe (nearly a century ago), the 4th of july is still celebrated in the USA (and that is more than two centuries ago), don't think it's strange people clinch to the great war (can give a hell more examples), it's not like that people there brains where turned off, and even than there are ghouls who have witnessed the great war on own account, and you have the enclave and the brotherhood of steel who 'preserve' old america on there own accounts ..... Ofcourse many things have been forgotten or changed it has been 200 years ago, but i'm sure in time things will be by far more cleared out ...

i wouldn't say it explains everything, but still till some point

incidentally nuclear winter was determined to be an incorrect theory.

In real life we still talk about many issues that happened over a 100 years ago. This was a nuclear war that destroyed entire cultures and decimated the worlds population and created things people have never seen before and changed most survivors into horrible ghouls. Everything around you is a result of the war that happened so to say "get over it" is truly a statement of a persone playing a game and not knowing how real life crisis and apocalyptic events would be.

Also, evidence of new towns and some cleanup has always been attempted and you can see those place everywhere in the fallout universe. People have tried farming and rebuilding and were met by death. Its a world of ghouls, and super mutants, and brotherhood has not intervened for the people until recently, and the enclave is not a helping factor either(numbers are low- stated in canon and their aims are hostile vs. survivors), and most towns have survivors who are not heroes to start reclaiming the land and make everything better.

I would say it is pretty sane to not try to cleanup when the land is infested with mutations and radioactivity and slave and raiders.
I would also say it is pretty sane and normal to live as if the war happened yesterday when everything you see around you is a result of a nuclear war...the end close thread 3 2 1 now.

If I had to put a number on it, I'd say the in your face war bit could be toned down a good 20-30%. I like how the world is done, but it does seem a bit too instilled in the populations mind.
I guess the counter argument is the good old Dark Ages of Europe. It was for all intents and purposes a post apocalyptic environment, yet everyone hung onto the memory of Rome, and it was a very, very long time before technology or society or culture got back on it's feet again.

I was thinking to post similar to it.

Indeed, when you talk to several people, there is a lot of info that is directly related to pre-war knowdlege, like info about the US government, all the speech of the enclave radio, about democracy and so on, this doesnt have any meaning on a society that have 200+ years after nuclear war.

Instead, i believe this was the way the developers wanted to make the game feel, filled with post-nuclear war references, if the game were supposed to be on 200+holocaust, it would be much more like mad Max, because a lot of people would simply lose the history, as there would be no books or knowdlege to keep about how was the past, and people living on isolated settlements would have not much more info on the past.

As said, my best guess is that the gaming year is just a joke really, the game is to be experienced like it happened a lot, but not much as 200+ years after the holocaust.