BTW:
One interesting vision I always have while playing any Fallout game, is that Europe wasn't destroyed at all, they just lean back in their 23rd century cities and ignore those savages in devastated US and China, they brought it to themselves after all, and used up all their natural resources anyway, no point in disturbing them. Would fit perfectly to the general cynicism of the series

I don't see a problem there because to rebuild cities you need menpower, resources and knowhow. 200 years without all three means nothing.

It seems reasonable to stay close to once inhabited areas for scavanging usefull stuff. It was never said that areas further away from cities were less hostile and safer to live. This way you at least have more chance to scavange need materials to rebuild small settlements like those nuts did Megaton around atomic bomb.

Considering the European Union destroyed themselves with war. I have to turn down your vision.

Uh, no. Everybody has small radios, large installations like Black Mountain are still in at least partial working order, and the Enclave has both satellite uplinks and working aircraft. If there was any bastion of civilization overseas it would be known about, if not liased. Either we would hear their radio broadcasts, see them on satellite surveillance, or have to fight off exploration parties sent to find out what is worth scavenging.

Don't underestimate the ingenuity of mankind. Even in ancient times, people managed to rebuild metropolises after disasters or sieges, having neither machines nor outside help. Wiping out rose raiders and resettling Springfield would have been a good start, but living for 200 years in shacks around an undetonated bomb, doesn't really make that much sense. Stagnation and hopelessness for a generation or two is okay, but at latest the grand-grand children of generation doomsday should try to make a better living. (Speaking of children, how big is the next generation of DC inhabitants? 5? Luckily Dave does his best to repopulate the capital wasteland! (Yes I'm ignoring Little Lamplight on purpose.)

All in all, 50 years after the bombs seems fine to me, FO1 was 80 years after the bombs, and the west was taken by surprise, and still civilisation had recovered much farther than in FO3.




Well, those nuts weren't even able to loot a nearby supermarket for 200 years, and they make a living from one brahmin and lots of glowing water, that would kill a wimpy vault dweller within a few minutes just by standing in it. Without agriculture and lifestock breeding, a settlement like Megaton can be a temporary scavenger outpost at best.

Does it feel like a post-apoc world right after the war happened? No. Does it feel like a post-apoc world over 200 years after the war? Yes.

I think we're pigeon-holing the "post-apoc" setting here. 200 years is a long time. There's nothing saying that a post-apoc setting needs to be completely devoid of life. Besides, holding up FO3 as a believable post-apoc setting is odd to me. As much as I liked FO3, nothing about that setting was believable.

you are perfectly right with what you are saying. too much realism ruins a game. but still, the things i mentioned in the "spoiler" section of my first post focus on things i find unrealistic and could have been designed in a more convincing way without making the game a drag.

many people have been posting here stating that 200 years might change a lot. but imagine a world where only 2 or 3 out of 10 people are still alive. and imagine a world where your first concern is to survive and build yourself a save haven. no police, no medical service, only you and a couple of other eople. i think all the villages and stuff in FO:NV is perfectly fine. but still the wasteland feels kinda like it has been swept clean already. despite coyotes, radscorpions and so on which make the desert still a dangerous environment.

how come there are still car wrecks and other salvageables around the towns and out in the desert there is hardly ever a car. how come there is a huge traffic jam up the road to the mojave outpost that hasen't been scavenged (+ it blocks the important caravan road) while the roads in the desert are almost completely empty?

or the airplanes i talked about, lets say there were only like 10 planes grounded when the bombs fell. one plane weights about 35 metric tons. who could have moved 350 tons of airplane? in a world where people would rather scavenge things they could carry. and where to? a single engine weights about 1.5-1.7 tons. who or what could lift that and what for? what do you need a 3000ps engine for in a wasteland? oO

i totally agree with the people saying that humanity has moved on and started to rebuild. but the way the game pictures this rebuilding process is rather questionable in my opinion.

in my opinion it would have been perfectly fine to have some areas which already have been swept clean or scavenged. around towns and settlements for instance. but out in the deserts, at remote places, there should be a lot more stuff and locations to explore (and by explore i do not mean an airfield with no building to enter next to a radioactive ghost town - u know which place i'm talking about^^ )

anyways,thanks for all the imput and keep on posting. i like where this tread is going =)

More importantly we're dealing with a post-apoc setting defined by the Science! of Fallout. Sure there's inconsistencies, but they follow a quirky form of making sense in a fictional way. There's just certain science fiction elements that shouldn't be questioned to much, because they are entertaining. I think the further into the future, society would be less reliant on the pre-war things. The remains of the Roman Empire are still evident today, but in most places, they are just Tourist attractions or interesting relics of history. There are still places that use Roman aqueducts and what not, but I believe them to be the exception. At some point, the Post-apoc setting should be more self made than scavenged. We should see those sky scraqers reduced to mounds, as the bricks, metal, glass, and other amenities should eventually be recycled or just plain eroded away. The flip side of that sort of progression, is the world would cease to look like the Fallout we are familiar with, and lose much of it's charm. So FO3, maybe isn't believable, but it's recognizable and accomplishes the illusion of a post-apocalyptic world.

You know, I was genuinely concerned about this before F:NV was released.

After playing it I feel it definately has a post apocalyptic feel.

However, with the next fallout title they need to be really careful. There were definately times in F:NV that it felt more like a 3rd world country in civil war than post apocalyptic america.

The Nellis question is intriguing, considering there are more planes at McCarron than there are at Nellis, I think. There might even be more planes at Searchlight.

Speaking of Searchlight, I was pretty upset that you couldn't do anything there other than find some caps. Was it nice to get those, sure, but I wouldn't have minded an open-able door or two...

The other thing I agree with you about, is perhaps more traffic jams in certain areas. There's one near Mojave Outpost, but why just there? If you want to say that the cars were all salvaged/scavenged and used, then why not those cars as well?

Vegas wasn't heavily hit by nuclear weapons, Mr. House shot down or deactivated most of the missiles heading for the area, Vegas wasn't so much rebuilt as spared from the worst of the devastation.