Jump to content

LORE and GEOGRAPHY


BadPenney

Recommended Posts

Fallout 2 had locations that were named after real cities in California, Nevada and Oregon: Klamath Falls, Reno, Redding, among others.

 

Does Fallout 3’s Wasteland map show many real similarities to the DC and Maryland area?

 

I’m not familiar with that area by personal experience, and I’m curious. Megaton is obviously fictional, but what about Springvale? Arefu and Grey Ditch sound totally made up. The Monuments and Memorials are real. How much does the rest of the Wasteland map reflect reality? Which, if any, of the places have real counterparts? Andale? Canterbury Commons? Old Olney?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fallout 2 had locations that were named after real cities in California, Nevada and Oregon: Klamath Falls, Reno, Redding, among others.

 

Does Fallout 3’s Wasteland map show many real similarities to the DC and Maryland area?

 

I’m not familiar with that area by personal experience, and I’m curious. Megaton is obviously fictional, but what about Springvale? Arefu and Grey Ditch sound totally made up. The Monuments and Memorials are real. How much does the rest of the Wasteland map reflect reality? Which, if any, of the places have real counterparts? Andale? Canterbury Commons? Old Olney?

 

Most of the towns in FO2 are the same towns you find IRL.

 

New Reno is Reno. Klamath is Klamath Falls, and Redding is Redding.

 

Andale is Annandale. Old Olney is Olney. Springvale is assumed to the Springvale Road segment Great Falls, a suburb of Arlington.

 

Not sure about Canterbury Commons and Arefu. Grey Ditch is obviously (IMHO) a Boneyard Community in Arlington proper.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even Point Lookout is a very real place, easily found on a real map.

 

Olney is pretty much halfway between DC & Baltimore, well, almost, so I keep waiting for the day somebody makes a big mod for Baltimore. Another little town between the two big cities is Jessup. Jessup would be just a wee bit north & east of the Republic of Dave.

Jessup would actually be a very good spot for making a mod, since it is a little bitty place which serves mainly as a huge warehousing district for DC & Baltimore. The 18 wheelers all usually drop their loads at Jessup for later pickups by smaller trucks into the cities, and all these rows & rows of huge warehouses and truckstops and such would make a fine mod setting.

 

I think Canturbury Commons is just a shopping mall?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another little town between the two big cities is Jessup. Jessup would be just a wee bit north & east of the Republic of Dave.

Jessup would actually be a very good spot for making a mod, since it is a little bitty place which serves mainly as a huge warehousing district for DC & Baltimore. The 18 wheelers all usually drop their loads at Jessup for later pickups by smaller trucks into the cities, and all these rows & rows of huge warehouses and truckstops and such would make a fine mod setting.

That would be a good spot to attach a new Worldspace then. The Republic of Dave is close to the Northeast limit of the Wasteland Map. The Commonwealth is supposed to be in the Northeast. Could it be in Jessup or Baltimore, or is it supposed to be farther away?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The name usage for the DC area is pretty accurate. But some things to consider: language and place names get changed over time. So to have Annandale, VA shortened to Andale is not a far-fetched linguistic adaptation. Pretty much directly east of the Washington, DC area you have the Chesapeake Bay -- which leads northward to Baltimore, MD and southward to the Norfolk, VA area, with a lot of predominantly rural coastal regions in between; all of which would make excellent mod sites that want to be near water. Norfolk in particular has potential, as it is a huge US Navy facility.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, Fallout 3 has a lot of places you'd recognize if you lived over here. One thing especially is the metro system. Oh geez. It's so freaky having to take the metro every day to school. A lot of the stops that exist in the game exist in real life, like the Metro Center of course. Foggy Bottom is just one blue/orange line stop from where I am right now and Arlington Cemetery is one stop going the other direction on the blue line. So that would suggest my stop in Rosslyn would exist between those two on the white line in the game. Other stops like Takoma, Vernon Square, Dupont, the museum/smithsonian stop, Falls Church, and probably more. Those are places that exist today, at least.

 

In any case, the thought of feral ghouls attacking while I'm traveling the metro has crossed my mind many times.

 

 

 

Also it's hard for me to think of Anandale the same way again...inbred cannibals, yikes o_O

 

 

 

Oh yeah! The Citadel is the Pentagon. I've been in there many times and have to travel to/from there via bus every day, so it's pretty amusing to compare the game to the real life counterpart.

 

There's lots more to say, but I'll leave it at that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...So to have Annandale, VA shortened to Andale is not a far-fetched linguistic adaptation...

No, except when I first read the name on the PipBoy I processed it as a Spanish name meaning "fast". So when I pronounced the place in my own mind it sounded more like "on de LAY" and not "Anne Dale". That linguistic adaptation is more far fetched to current residents, I would guess. I was a poorly armed noobie dog tailing an Outcast patrol. All I had to do was stay out of their line of fire and be more stealthy than them to get some well guarded scout and scavenge missions under my belt. The Outcasts tolerated me but didn't stick around for stragglers, so I didn't stop to talk to the Andale residents when I first mapped the place. I thought of it as On de LAY for the longest time.

 

I've always thought that the Commonwealth would make a great basis for a mod, but I wouldn't even attempt to make a worldspace based on MIT. It would be interesting to see what a local modder from the area might come up with though.

 

It is interesting to see how much attention to detail was achieved in making Fallout 3, a point more easily recognized by someone who lives in the area today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure about Canterbury Commons and Arefu.

 

Neither of those are DC specific. The first is a nod to the post-apocolyptic novel Ridlley Walker which featured a town called Canterbury and the second has a double meaning: taken from the highway sign leading up to the overpass the town sits on, which is mostly unreadable except for part of the word "CAREFUL", and also the name of a village in Romania that assisted Vlad the Impaler when he was fleeing the Turks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...