The Mysterious and Mundane World of Fallout 4



The Fallout TV show and all the hype around it kinda got me interested in Fallout again. It’s been a while since I really got into any of these games, so it was nice to be able to explore the world again. For all the negativity the game gets, they really did knock the environmental design out of the park. Bethesda always gets that. Well except for Starfield, but we don’t really talk about that one…
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Music Used:
Intro – Way Back Home (Bob Crosby and the Bob Cats)
00:40 – World Map 3 (Legend of Dragoon)
07:57 – Mining Town (Final Fantasy VII)
13:48 – Forest of the Nopon (Night) (Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition)
18:15 – interspace garden (Yakuza 0)
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33 thoughts on “The Mysterious and Mundane World of Fallout 4”

  1. To be fair, society probably hasn't advanced much in those 200 years because of the massive groups that are so constantly battling over who rebuilds it all, and the people in this universe just really seem to love sabotaging each other overall…

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  2. the globe is weird, because the baltic sea doesn't exist. I tried to look at the central/eastern europe part and saw a few things:
    – Poland exists. At that point, Poland was not an independant country, gaining back independence in 1989. Actually, it should've all been Soviet Union
    – Also Poland is landlocked by a country between Scandinavia and Europe that doesn't exist
    – That country is… the baltic sea? So I guess the sea doesn't exist in fallout.

    Edit: Also it's worth noting that Diamond City feels much like a lot of today's rural villages in Africa or South America, with the wavy plates of steel covering the walls. I actually can fully believe that in 200 years this is what the city looks like. Fallout 4 does have this problem where it doesn't do timescale much, but on the other hand DC looks actually realistic. It's not like Concord, where the decorations from 200 years ago are still there, this is a place that people live in. Of course it's going to have trash. And clutter and mess is from a design perspective how you communicate that someone lives here.

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  3. With the globe, internal USSR borders were sometimes shown, just like some maps show internal US borders these days. But the big indicator this is not the 1950s is that is has a unified Germany.

    It's all a moot point anyway. Fallout's pre-war does not take place in the 1950s, it takes place in an alternate 2050s that has the style of the 1950s. IIRC Fallout 4's opening takes place in 2077.

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  4. your point about how the people of the post-apocalypse would want better / cleaner living + how it's an issue with the art direction of the series hits especially hard looking at how cleaned up + advanced a lot of places are in fallout 2 especially. seems like bethesda just doesn't like the idea of post-war society changing and moving on from living in nothing but wreckage and it makes me sad.

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  5. loved this! you should do garreg mach from fire emblem three houses, it's a really weird little environment. so much of it is barren but then there's all these little details in the characters' rooms. also, changes pre and post timeskip

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  6. It's been said before, but in a post apocalyptic, depopulated world, the negative connotations of trash become replaced with positive ones.
    Refuse is full of scraps. Objects. Materials that can no longer be manufactured.
    When monsters constantly try to eat you, civilizations that fuss about things like refuse die, and those that keep junk they can later use within their walls thrive.

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  7. One thing that bothered me about most of the interiors is they're all horribly dirty… even though you live in a metal shed, you can still pick up the scattered papers and beer cans off the floor?

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  8. Honestly, in the post apocalypse where the sturdiest lock seems to be only a mere suggestion
    Having a fully dressed mannequin that is just out of view enough is probably a good defense against potential burglars.

    You see what you think is a person in a poorly lit room to the side, you gtfo because you think your cover is blown

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  9. Regarding that globe, Fallout isn't set in the 1950's or based off the 1950's. It's inspired by Retro-Futurism from the 1950's, set in 2077. So the globe wouldn't be entirely accurate to the 50's, especially considering the global conflict of the Resource Wars at the time before the bombs fell.

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