What is and isn't Lore Friendly

[rjoseph700]

One thing that bugs me about the Fallout 4 game is gamers and the game team that thinks it is lore friendly to live in rusted out unpainted patched up homes surrounded by garbage. While they may be a few lazy bastards in a Post-Apocalyptic world. I am sure people would have found old paint factories and metal factories, concrete slab centres, furniture stores, DIY stores etc and actually build or got someone else to build their homes and shops in a neat, painted, nicely decorated and orderly fashion. To me that is lore friendly. The classic one that irritates me is the Abernathy farm. Most farmers and I have lots of farming relatives I know are fairly handy with intermediate carpentry, electrics and mechanics as it is almost an essential requirement on the farm. They would not have built such a crap shanty home and left it cluttered with garbage. Anyone thing that is lore friendly has no understanding of farmers and holds a very low opinion of anyone living in the post-apocalyptic world. In fact, farmers living out in the countryside with all their general handy knowledge would be the most likely survivors of an apocalypse as its city dwellers who are bunched up in the target zone that are most unlikely to survive an apocalypse of this nature.

 

Hopefully any future installations of Fallout 4 will take this into consideration as to what is and isn’t lore friendly. A good example of a Modder that has a good concept of this is Onyx Nightshade who only uses materials from the game however like actual people that would have survived this mess he recreates settlements in a tidy, clean, orderly and creative fashion.

[SirDanest]

Bethesda isn't really very interested in lore accuracy, so that presents a problem.

Living in crap shanties full of garbage is just sort of part of the weird culture of the east coast, it seems. Though they haven't shown it in modern games, Shady Sands back in the NCR probably looks absolutely fantastic if it's equal to or better than it was in fallout 2. We're imagining American farmers (I assume)... I can show you plenty of pictures around the internet of real life shanty towns and people living in garbage -- knowing how to drop a few seeds in the ground (which is all the Abernathy family was doing I think) wouldn't be much help there. They're lucky if they even know what electronics are, and have no power tools.
I think American farmers (and many other farmers) have a heritage coming from being pioneers who deliberately chose to come to a "new" land, so they naturally were "handy" with the skills they'd need.
But the Abernathy ancestors might be descended from Walmart cashiers or alcoholic homeless people or who knows what, people who were not "handy" with electronics or anything, but just got lucky and didn't die in the nukes. Or from a flawed vault, that taught them all the wrong stuff on purpose or something. Indeed you're right though, they have nothing in common with the survival-skilled farmers we know today,and that's probably by design. They're farmers only in that they're a bunch of people who put seeds in the ground and the seeds didn't die. In the fallout universe, that'll get you called a farmer.

[Di3sIrae]

Maybe what you feel and see in the game is not how things trully should be. In the game, we have people living in scraps and nothing bad ever happens. In the concept, and how everything tells us how it should really be, is that these places should not even be liveable. One week, the farm is ok, in another, there is a bunch of lunatics raiding over your place, killing your stock, breaking your stuff and raping your daughter. In some way, settlements out there in the open are all scrappy mostly because they probably had to be rebuilt many times, and because beautiful and well built places are like a sign calling out for raiders. Working the land must be hard enough to keep building perfect places every time.
What bugs me is a place like Diamond City still being a bunch of scraps. I mean, this is no Megaton. Megaton was built over whatever they could find around, like a plane, but DCity is in the middle of Boston, they have plenty of materials around, plus guards and enough people to bring up a decent scavenging team.

But, again, this is not what the game shows us. The game have a poor design that consists of dungeons with enemies, and ocasional random raids in your settlements, and only this. You don't find organized enemies raiding Dcity for example, as they so many times say that Mutties almost took it some time ago. (could actually be part of the story of the game, but... yeah).

Edit: Oh, just look at Quincy, for example. That is a good example. The place is not well biult as it should, but it was raided by Mutties and gunners and people just left. Imagine how many times this has happened before in several locations.

There's of course also the question that farmers are not really farmers, they prob were anyone out there that decided to try working the land. These people prob don't know anything they should know, like a farmer as we know in 2019.
Many time has passed and it is clear that society is still a mess because Raiders.
No excuse to build good stuff of course, like i said, DCity should be actually a real city, damn it doesn't even have a library. But shacs made of crap materials and crappy places full of garbage around the wastes are not exactly non "lore friendly" (i truly HATE this word).

Let's just no enter in the big endless dark hole of "why is that" in Fallout, like why things are like this 200 years after the war, because... well, i think it is a waste of time xD

[rjoseph700]

Both of you have made valid points. and I accept your rationale on events. However working in the mental health field I do realise the importance of doing things that keep you with positive mental health one of those would be looking after your home environment more. I think where the Fallout 4 has missed the boat is that farmers would most likely have banded together knowing they were living outside a defended settlement such as Diamond City. If we look at America's history there is classic examples of people banding together in commune like environments to support one another and for defensive purposes. I accept what you both said about these are not really farmers as we know American farmers today just escaped townies having a go. However both of you have neglected acknowledging my point that the most likely farmers not excluding the wannabe farmers mentioned would be genuine descents of farmers. As mentioned in my previous post they are more likely to be survivors to nuclear bombs then city dwellers unless of course you're a farmer in North dakota farming right next to the missle silos. As an ex North Dakotan I am keenly aware that the government didn't have a concern for farmers in that State as they decided to put a lot of America's missile silos right out there in farming country which of course are big targets for strikes. The irony of it was Dakota has a lot of fertile farmland and making all that radioactive would certainly not contribute to rebuilding the nation. I believe they did the same thing down in Kansa another fertile farming area. Of the many things I like about the game which I think is the best game out there at the moment and yet it scares me is that it actually reflects geo-political activity currently happening. America and China are moving closer to a war in real life over two issues Taiwan and economics. Lets just hope that Fallout 4 does not become a reality in our real world.

[cossayos]

America and China are moving closer to a war in real life over two issues Taiwan and economics. Lets just hope that Fallout 4 does not become a reality in our real world.

 

Won't happen. At least not China vs USA over a trade disagreement. Having grown up in the middle of the cold war the Iron Curtain just 20 miles removed from my home, I've grown a pretty thick skin when it comes to the danger of nuclear confrontations. Too much to lose for both sides.

 

As far as Fallout goes, you have to suspend disbelief in many instances. 200 years since the bombs fell and they can't even manufacture a set of clean cloths? Living in Shanties instead of solid houses, music stil the same old records from centuries ago and nothing resembling public order outside of small pockets of borderline civilization. No international travelling, but we still have Russians with a thick accent or an Irish Cait as a companion. Vegetation still rotten grass and trees, no green. If you look at places like the irradiated surrounding of chernobyl, everything's green an lush and also the fauna seems to prosper.

 

True, we haven't seen the NCR territory or the main base of power of the BOS, but everything else just screams for suspending disbelief.

Edited August 22, 2019 by cossayos

[HeyYou]

 

America and China are moving closer to a war in real life over two issues Taiwan and economics. Lets just hope that Fallout 4 does not become a reality in our real world.

 

Won't happen. At least not China vs USA over a trade disagreement. Having grown up in the middle of the cold war the Iron Curtain just 20 miles removed from my home, I've grown a pretty thick skin when it comes to the danger of nuclear confrontations. Too much to lose for both sides.

 

As far as Fallout goes, you have to suspend disbelief in many instances. 200 years since the bombs fell and they can't even manufacture a set of clean cloths? Living in Shanties instead of solid houses, music stil the same old records from centuries ago and nothing resembling public order outside of small pockets of borderline civilization. No international travelling, but we still have Russians with a thick accent or an Irish Cait as a companion. Vegetation still rotten grass and trees, no green. If you look at places like the irradiated surrounding of chernobyl, everything's green an lush and also the fauna seems to prosper.

 

True, we haven't seen the NCR territory or the main base of power of the BOS, but everything else just screams for suspending disbelief.

 

Not to mention that after 200 and change years of zero upkeep, 99% of the buildings in downtown boston would simply be gone. The area would revert to what it once was, forest. You would barely be able to tell that mankind was ever there, without digging a bit, and finding refined steel, and concrete, etc.

 

There is a LOT to the FO universe that is inaccurate...... but, that's the nature of the beast. It's a game, there are no rules. Any rules applied to one game, may or may not apply in subsequent games.

[lazerus48]

And then you have something like the Covenant settlement with well build/repaired houses, and a realy well build wall around it that makes you question if ALL other people around the Commonwealth are just incompetent.

[taryl80]

And then you have something like the Covenant settlement with well build/repaired houses, and a realy well build wall around it that makes you question if ALL other people around the Commonwealth are just incompetent.

 

Countless dangers out in the wastes throw the settlements and societys always back in the Fallout games.

 

Covenant is a great example btw., because we can be there the reason why this settlement gets a setback.

 

If we decide to kill everyone there, then this settlement had get a serious setback :smile:... And if we decide to not make a settlement from it for whatever reason - then this settlement will again lost for the people in the Commonwealth (and decay over time).

 

You can put that story on countless other towns, villages, settlements and so on. Just that in the most cases raiders are the reason why a settlement got overruned, or a big faction like the Legion, animals, 2 meter high insects, mutants and so...

 

It's pretty damn hard to wipe the hallway when you are dead :wink: :smile:.

 

Edit: As said before by other people in this thread, one of Bethesdas biggest mistakes with Fallout 4 was imo to not really show how despaired the settlers are (at least after what we can assume, if we think on the situations they are in).

Edited August 23, 2019 by taryl80

[Di3sIrae]

I will never forget playing FO3 and going to Arefu or Big Town (pardon me if the names are wrong)... FO3 really show how disgraced everyone is. They are so f*cked up that they don't even care anymore. And they have reasons, the game shows reasons. People are being kidnapped and eaten by Mutties, or being bullied by raiders. You rescue people from the bad boys. You try to help them.
In FO4 you go rescue a girl that was actually not kidnapped but went there by herself, from a gangsta... People ask for help but nothing really happened... Kid go try to enter the Forged and nothing really happens... just like "hey kid i told you not to go"... They did create a Fallout in Boston, but most things are just childish and looks like people are complaining with their bellies full. In DCity, the quests are all something you could see in GTA. Bad radio guy and owner of bar kidnapped... but no torture, nothing. You don't find him in pieces. Husband angry because his wife is cheating him...
Farmers talk about raiders, say their daughter got killed and you get a locket back... And that's it... So much wasted potential to create a desolate world...

[taryl80]

I guess, a problem was also the story of the commonwealth.

 

In Fallout 3 we already learn that the major player of the commonwealth is the institute. So, there was no way around it and that comes with its own problems:

 

While the Enclave, the master and the Legion are to seen from far away and they also not holding back to put their middel finger in your face, the institute is something completley different.

 

They try everything to hide their core secrets and let only enough knoweldge of them coming up, so that the people of the commonwealth are afraid of them. I guess it is harder to show all the possible atrocities with a evil faction like the institute in mind.

 

That said... We should have seen more of it, when we finally arrive at the institute and also the atrocities of the other factions like the raiders, gunners should have been shown more. A way in the right direction was Nuka World, but I guess from a serious standpoint out, it would be have been better if the things we have seen in Nuka World would have been the norm for every raidergang, also in the commonwealth and then the raider in Nuka World should had even top that.