Fallout Post War Realism Resources

[charwo]

This is a thread to collect ideas and disseminate modder's resources that will aid in creating a new, more rationalized vision of Fallout New Vegas in the modding Community. On my end, I am tired, plum tired of the Elder Scrolls hack and slash game design. Though I never played a pacifist either in Fallout 1 or 2, the option was there, in Fallout 2 there were cars. The post war realism resources isn't about making things look pre-war or at least not only about that: I think we as modders should take the premise of Fallout seriously: the premise is the Resource Wars of 2051-2077 and the world that was built in that time. Therefore, we can challenge any and all themes and designs that seems to conflict with the premise. The dead world is one of the major ideas, so are the exclusive presence of mutants. Another would be the rate of decay and rust in pre war buildings, the design of railroads, locations of weapons, design of weapons, and pretty much anything, Most importantly in the Bethesda era, we must create mods that reduce the necessity and centrality of combat, and focus more on the prerogatives of the character to change the Mohave as they see fit. New Vegas has done a decent job of that, but we should push the envelope.

 

Links will be listed below for resources to that end. More importantly, below that, I hope to stimulate a discussion of the things that Fallout New Vegas does without realism and then fix it.

 

Mods:

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Modder's Resources:

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[charwo]

Problem one: the industrial paradigm of the New Vegas Factions:

 

Before anything else comes up, we need to have a discussion of what the societies of the Legion, Vegas and NCR are like on the civilian end: how they get food, how they transport goods, who dominates the economy and why, and the centrality of manufacturing. This will give us all a better idea about what is realistic in the factional struggle and thus what needs to be fixed.

 

The Tribe:

Any discussion of the new Vegas is going to touch on the notion of what constitutes a ‘tribe.’ It’s quite clear that though often nomadic; the tribes of the West are quite civilized. Some of the most primitive, like the Sorrows, and the Blackfoots that became the Legion are hunter gatherers with pidgin languages. From there you get the White Hairs, who have a mystical sense of things, but were sedentary pastoralists and subsistence farmers. They lived close to the land, but in terms of secularization and rationality is roughly that of non- Intellectual Europeans before the Age of Enlightenment. Ulysses in the Divide speaks of a spiritual side of America, the missiles and such, but it’s largely a rhetorical flourish as he has a largely scientific understanding of both technology and history.

 

From there you have tribes like the Khans and the Boot Riders and the pre-White Glove cannibals. This notion of being rehabilitated trials is a bit of a misnomer. These are sophisticated, intelligent people with civilized attitudes and tastes. There is less sink of primitivism on Benny and Marjorie (that is none) than there was on the Chosen One (Tribal in name only, with only a slight accent to mark him). Then you have the New Canaanites, who though religious, would fit into any community in modern America that would welcome those of the Mormon faith. They are completely modern and mostly secular, as is most of modern America. In New Vegas itself, tribal doesn’t denote a ranking of sophistication or social organization nor education: it marks a localized ethnic identity, versus the larger ethnic identities of the NCR (American), Enclave (American), House (Vegas city state) and the Legion (A new people looking for the land of milk and honey). As such, we can then begin to assess what kind of technology they might be bringing to the Mohave:

 

The Legion:

The thing we must all understand about the Fallout world is that due to the prosperity and over-engineering of the prewar world, value added products are not nearly as valuable as they are in a genuinely pre-industrializing society. A chair, for instance can be made from scratch or in Fallout, a torn, dirty chair can be salvaged, have the legs replaced or refurbished, and because rot in the material is minimal to none, the thing can be reupholstered into something nice and useful for a fraction of the cost of total manufacture. What this means that niche cottage industry will dominate these societies for quite some time, as the economics of mass production are not yet there. A standard product is never called for, but things to repair something that existed before the bombs fell on a case by case basis. This means that artisan skilled labor is the most productive.

I am short on time, but let me illustrate how this would work with the Legion: Most of the Legion Armor has to be taken from salvaged prewar armors: Motorcycle football leather, motorcycle helmets, combat armors, and derelict power armors. This is critical because without preexisting super engineered armors as a base for Legion combat wear, the NCR with a massive firepower advantage would slaughter them something like the Zulu Wars. The emphasis on melee combat and physical fitness requires the armor hold to close with firearms armed NCR troopers. This not may be the case with all Legion armors, but at least the Veteran and Prime Armors have to have bullet resistant characteristics that pre industrial armor (made the Roman way with Roman materials) could not hope to do.

More later.