I suppose this could be moved to general series forum if we're not careful, so let's try to keep it Vegas-centric. This thread inspired by some stuff we talked about in the "I miss Behemoths" thread.

This thread is to look at stuff that doesn't make sense or is unexplained within the game universe (no real world realism, please); point them out, explain them, or let us know if the game does explain them while we weren't paying attention. This is just for fun, not to bash developers of F3 or F:NV.

Examples:

Who boards up all those buildings?

Why doesn't the pre-war food rot?

Why are there still sodas in machines?

Why don't light switches work?

You get the idea.

Who boards up all those buildings? The people who lived there who did'nt want to get raided or something.

Why doesn't the pre-war food rot? Who says it does'nt? lol.

Why are there still sodas in machines? Because people did'nt take them!

Why don't light switches work? No power possibly.

1. Radiation magic.

2. Radiation magic.

3. Radiation magic.

4. Radiation magic.

Everything is answered by radiation magic.

Seriously though, light-switches probably don't work cause the wiring has rusted over the years.
Soda's in machines is ridiculous game-design.
And I have no idea who would board up a house.
After 200 years it would be more likely that no door would still be intact rather than them being boarded up, so I say that Bethesda either didn't give them enough time or it's not very good logic behind the design.

1) people boarded up the windows
2) well people use radiation to make food last longer so i'm guess all the radiation from nuke maybe made the food last longer and who said the food is not off
3) people don't take them
4) no power possibly

I agree with the OP. I mean, maybe some of the answers to those questions are to be assumed, i.e. why the lights don't work and why there are still sodas in the vending machine. But I would like for at least a few of the 30+ caves/abandoned shacks/gas stations to have a story.

Most of hose irrelevant locations, like "______ cave" and "_____ gas station" have a few crtitters and some random ammo. I would love it if we entered an abandoned shack and maybe found a skeleton with a note to a loved one, leading to a quest. Or hell, I don't even need a quest. Just give us something to find that gives us the story of that place. You know how we always find those terminals that you can find log entries and get an idea of what happened? Well, to make some of those abandoned shacks and caves a little more interesting, maybe consider giving the place a little history and it's own story. Let us go into a cave and find a dead treasure hunter like Chester Copperpot from the Goonies (LOL), and find an old treasure map in their hands or something.

So many of those empty locations that aren't tied to anything at all, giving them some history might make it a little more interesting to where you might possibly want to return. Because out of all those irrelevant gas stations/abandoned shacks/caves, after i first walked through them, 95% of them I'll never return to again. No reason to.

Wow... gabriel77dan being sarcastic and hyper-critical... I must be reading a thread on the Fallout forums at Bethesda...


Most of the pre-war tech (and consumables, clothing, books, etc) have survived this long due to manufacturing techniques we are unfamiliar with (but would have mastered by 2077 had we followed the divurgence), as well as unfamiliar yet highly durable materials...

Pre-War food remains edible due to high levels of chemical preservatives (some may be natural also, as foods like honey do NOT spoil... and high salt and sugar contents can effectively preserve a food long past it's BEST BEFORE date).
Pre-War Clothing benefits from the advent of super-indesctrucible materials like SpiderWeb Cotton© (1 million times stronger than standard cotton fibers) and TarnishFree Steelings© (keeping your jean rivets sparkling and your jumpsuit zippers gliding since 2025).

I wouldn't have minded some kind of random encounter (similar to one in Tactics) that explained the refilled soda machines by introducing a character who's inherited task involved cycling around the wastes refilling the machines... Could be that the same hunched and be-robed ghoul that scrabbles from shady rock outcropping to the next with his Santa Sack of Sunset Sarsaparilla, has also boarded up the wasteland houses to hide his massive stockpile of sodas...

Nice. I was thinking robots, myself.

Some encounters would have been welcome.

I just had a thought while getting ready for work--

Those invisible walls everyone loves so much?
Malfunctioning missle defense system.

Some kind of ingame explanation of them like that might have actually made them palatable.

I wonder how Victor reached Vegas without a scratch

I have one. FO3 Enclave: with all there power, advanced weapons, robots, vertibirds and numbers, why did they not just take DC and the area around it? I am sure they could have. Final quest they have outposts all over and tthose force fields they have. Why did they wait for the Wanderer to come along and hope he/she would help? Without him/her their plans would be useless.

Another question where did they get all that power, weapons and men from?

Edit I am talking about FO3 Enclave, I know all about Enclave in FO2.

See answer 3.



see answer 4.



See answer 1.



See answer 2.

Because they were Bethesda's Enclave, A.k.a. AI's arn't the best military commanders.

Question 2: In Fallout 2's enclave, They made their own Advanced Power Armor MKII by modifying the regular T-51B Power Armor, So they probably just used stored weapons/armor and the men? They have a military base, So they probably live there and repopulate...

Also to the question about Victor...

He did'nt, He gets killed along the way to Vegas, If you see him die you can ask him about it later, But he controls different Securitrons, So the one closest to where he died he started controlling so that kind of explains that.

This one is explained in the game.

Because you never miss an opportunity to criticize Fallout 3? Oh, sorry... :laugh: Peace, I'm kidding.

Because their leader was an insane computer. Remember the theme of Fallout? War. War never changes. There has not, to my knowledge, been a single competent military force portrayed in the series because the incompetence of leadership is a theme of the series. In F:NV, neither the NCR or the Legion would last a week against someone who knew what they were doing.

Where do they get their stuff? Not disclosed. There's a LOT of the world we have not seen.

1. My guess is that the buildings are boarded up because the resedents didn't want to be raided.

2. Irradiation is used as a way to preserve food.

3. The Mysterious Stranger refills all the soda machines

4. No electricity, or decayed/broken circuits

I understand th History of the Enclave in FO2 its FO3 I don't get. They got there butts kicked in FO2 they moved east. Within 40 years or so they end up with thousands of men more vertibirds then I can shake a stick at, energy weapons and force fields and Broken steal added a moble land crawler base!.

"Bethesda's Enclave" indeed

Navarro and Poseidon wasnt the only Enclave bases in Fallout......

Fallout 3's enclave.

They died again.

Preservatives. Have you ever had an old twinkie or a can of spam. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_shelf_life_of_spam If they can do it with twinkies and spam now just imagine how long they could preserve food in Fallout's alternate timeline of the future.

How the FEV reached to the East Coast?

How is possible that the Courier survived to a shot in the head?

how the unorganized Vipers reached to Nevada?

New Vegas shows how NCR is getting there weapons, shows Legion trying to get Energy weapons as well. Enclave don't strike me as people that would want outside help as in go to buy weapons from people. Fallout Two is the first we see them, we know they created Advanced Power Armour and Advanced MKII armour. Yet in FO3 they are making crap "Enclave Armour." I would like that explaned. Why the down grade? Clearly they have the resouces and supplies for thei very large army.

FO3 did show a Enclave civil war. Colonel Autumn finally clued into "why am I taking this from a machine?" Also again how stupid is that machine for not just taking DC by force?

Different FEV in FO3 got there before the Great War.

People can survive some pretty crazy stuff. I am not going to post the pics but google man with half his head shot off. A man got half his head blown off by a shotgun or some powerful handgun and lived.

Might not be the same Vipers or they multiplied like Rabbits.

I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted.

Questioned and explained long ago. As in Fallout ago.

The game is built on late '40s/early '50s understandings of science, often referred to around here as "SCIENCE!!" It is known to this day that irradiating something will kill off most any bacteria in it. But "back then," the belief was that this was the ultimate preservative: irradiate it, kill every microbe and bacterium that causes decay/rot, and it'll last forever. It's basically one of many "running jokes" that's as old as the series.

Who boards up all those buildings?

Obsidian cos they didnt want to program interiors for every building.


Why doesn't the pre-war food rot?

because you the gamer would be less immersed during gameplay.


Why are there still sodas in machines?

see 2.


Why don't light switches work?

because your pip boy light said so.