Fan Answered Questions, compiled from the knowledge of people who have been around Fallout and listening to the original developers since BEFORE Fallout 1's release. This is by no means currently complete.
Mini-mushroom-clouds from exploding cars?
Yeah, I'm wondering about this, too, since the only working car in Fallout 2 was a miracle of stored parts in a Vault. In addition, nuclear weapons are supposed to be scary and impressive in the setting, since y'know, they ENDED THE WORLD. Mushroom-cloud cars seem to be even a bit too campy for Postal 2.
What the hell is with the humor in the demo?
No idea, but "Local Cult" is Pete's favorite sign in the game. The game is being created with care.
Oh, and that is NOT slapstick and follows Fallout's style of dark irony. </sarcasm>
"Dark Irony"? What is that?"
A desolate, nobody wins kind of feeling, but with a possibly very disturbing twist.
Here it is in a nutshell: The Great War was a result of oil shortage leading to a build up of land aggression over Alaska, along with several biological weapons. As a result of this, the pan-immunity virion project was born. In other words, the FEV, Forced Evolutionary Virus, as it would be later known. The Great War happens, destroying most of the civilised world, through nuclear exchange depicted as bombs in the first Fallout. The world is shattered.
The Master starts as normal human exploring the wasteland with a friend, who would later turn into the radiation-scarred mutant known as Harold (voiced by the beloved Charlie Adler). One falls into the FEV, while the other escapes but is lost in the wasteland, evolving into the long-lived "ghoul". Both survive, one looking like a freakshow that made his way to The Hub; the other intact but otherwise with several additions from other beings that fell into the viral muck. The latter's mind and awareness grow, through his minions, and through his powers gained by dominating everything he...it...absorbed. Grew. Evolved. The Master housed his Children at the Cathedral, where they were led by the masterful Morpheus (voiced by David Warner). The Master saw the decrepit state of the world, and saw the dangers it presented. If coaxed to talk, he is sometimes too glad to explain his reasons, citing that the world has changed and so must the human race if it is to survive. It preys too much on the weak, so all must become strong through the influence of the FEV, for all to become more than human. The human race also needs order, which The Master provides, is the Cathedral not peaceful and ordered enough? The death that resulted above was from your own bringing, as all were held in peace under Morpheus and The Master in the pursuit of mankind's survival. Here wa As so the wastelands should be united in Peace, Unity, and The Master. Unfortunately, there was a flaw, and The Master found out that he was in fact causing more harm due to the side-effects of the FEV. Cue mushroom cloud.
The ghoul? He simply lives long, some say forever, growing wise with his journeys.
Here are the complexities of the dark ironies present in Fallout:
The FEV is created to combat biological warfare by making the "infected" subject completely immune to viruses as we know them. Along with other neat gifts and prizes, including sterility. This isn't known until later, from the rather professional Brotherhood of Steel.
The world basks in a healthy nuclear glow.
The wasteland claims nearly all forms of civilization that remain, pitting the few remaining humans against each other in numerous barbaric ways. This shows how society, technology, and everything in between would be in decay and ruin. Only a few bright lights remain, clinging to the last hopes of humanity. Be it fairness and helping each other out to provide a safe home for everyone (Shady Sands -> NCR), to those who cling to technology (Brotherhood of Steel), to those who still would have people kill each other for profit and status (Boneyards), to those who consider knowledge to be the last hope (Followers of the Apocalypse),
All of those lights of hope are in danger of being snuffed out, perhaps unknowing of what he would destroy, by The Master's plan.
Some may sympathise with The Master's plans, simply because except for a few flaws it may make sense. To save mankind from itself. After all, mankind's biggest threat in the wasteland is really...mankind. The super-mutants are just a by-product.
The Master's plan includes using the same FEV to threaten the wasteland, when it was meant to be a protector before.
To stop the spread of The Master's plans, the Vault Dweller saves the wasteland with the very same device that created the wasteland. Cue Mushroom cloud.
The Vault Dweller, for all of his heroic or otherwise efforts, is kicked out from Vault 13.
The Vault Dweller has the last laugh, if you so choose.
The original ending for Junktown has Killian being a very rigid sheriff. Kind of like me on the forums and being quick to shred. Gizmo, however, made the place a prosperous town that needed a bit of help getting started, and despite some of the regrettable deeds he might have needed to do, he made it work.
This ending was meant to give a twist to players who rushed through the game and didn't quite look at what each social element was doing. Killian was so focused upon Gizmo that he and his people neglected the entire gang, Doc Morbid, and who knows how many others, in his pursuit of Gizmo - the agent of Gizmo's might have just been a revenge action from something Killian did earlier that the Vault Dweller was not aware of. Killian might have overstepped himself along the lines of "illegal search and seizure", as it may exist in the wasteland, or planted one of Gizmo's boys on a false charge. But with all of the other things going on in town, I doubt rigged machines are anywhere on the top of the priority list for Junktown. The original design, which is still quite in there for the most part, was to have the player judge the NPCs and react accordingly to the depth the player had to dig for. Unfortunately for the planned depth, someone wanted it a bit more straightforward and predictable, and to keep just the vault exile twist instead.
Professional Brotherhood of Steel?
Yeah, at the time this fiction is styled upon, the US military is still quite beloved and supported. There wasn't such crass slacking of discipline depicted in a lot of fiction, instead they were our heroes. It wasn't until "babykillers" did the uniform get such a public spot put upon it. That was a regrettable time for our military, and I support our troops enough to say get them out of Vietnam II. Instead of the Viet Cong, you have more than half a dozen looking to take you out, because guess who gave Al Quaeda and others such a boost in the first place? Oops!
What the fuck is a "portable mini nuke catapult"?
Got me on this one... But Pete says it follows canon because of the rarer ammo. No, I don't understand that logic, either. Got a straw?
Fallout fans are living "eight years ago"?
You better fucking believe it. In fact, I'd like to say I live 20 years in the past, when vision and dreams were given to the CRPG genre. When depth was possible with the technology, so followed clever design decisions that are the cornerstones of EVERY CRPG made today. In fact, I'd like to think I still live in the era in which Fallout was inspired from, around 1988. This was the year many great games were already released, impressing the hell out of people, or were in development and close to seeing the light of day. Fallout was a return to good, core ideas, away from the flood of console-like action slashers weakly churned out by many development studios (no, not talking about TES, it didn't suck then.) In 1988, Ultima had brought moral questions to the table, which Fallout does well. In fact, if they kept the original Junktown ending, it would have been even more beautiful. 1988 was when Wasteland was impressing many, combining a good setting along with good gameplay. Fallout went back to the roots of the genre, tapping into what made each great and expanding upon it a bit, and adding it's own charm via Talking Heads and location-based endings depending upon the player's actions. In other words, REAL innovation. They didn't do much new, but instead did a lot of things right and simply added a couple of brilliant ideas, which the old-school loved, and it gained popularity by word of mouth given how even Interplay of that time couldn't figure out a way to hype out the game to the much more discerning and critical gaming media of that time and the console-heavy craze of action games. Those that touched it, however, fell in love. It was like greeting an old lover. Bow-chicka-wowowww...
From Talking Heads, to complex speech trees, to solid RPG gameplay, Fallout had few faults. The bugs and other problems folks found with the game at the time were...*gasp*...addressed! They offered a patch after they shipped the game that caught the handful of issues a few encountered. This is long before OS compatibility issues, and I loved this game for being able to play it on a laptop without much problem at the time. I also loved how the completeness showed that there was a real QA cycle or two put behind it before it hit release. But that is also the beauty of using a TB combat system.
*sigh* Turn-based combat, I knew you were going to get to that. So what gives?
As someone who has actually programmed an algorithm or three, I know how complex you can make your AI cycles and what limitations you run into by having resources divided up by the number of simultaneous calculations being performed at the same time.
The mechanics of turn-based and real-time are pretty much set in stone. Everything claimed to be something else is just some combination of pre and post command interpretation and command intervals of real time combat. In layman's terms, unless one character (or a character with the same timing, in the case of games with initiative) is acting at a time (turn-based), it's some form of real-time, pausable, with or without a command interval for the player to input.
The distinction is VERY important when programming the AI. When someone programs AI in turn-based, they can do many things you CANNOT in real-time:
One character at a time is calculated, with full possible resources available to those algorithm calculations at that time. Real-time has to calculate EVERYTHING's algorithms at the same time. Many sleazy programmers often take "team shortcuts" in real-time, where the AI tends to act like one entity, based upon the same universal results. Such..."scripting" tends to be superficial and quite stupid.
Results obtained from one character's algorithms may be grandfathered into another character's AI routines
Turn-Based AI routines may be sequenced instead of being looped at the same time as everything else. Hell, in a full second, you could run several instances of the same algorithm, returning a more complex, refined result.
NOT POSSIBLE IN REAL-TIME WITH A HIGH NUMBER OF SIMULTANEOUSLY MOVING CHARACTERS AT THE SAME TIME.
You don't get close in terms of computational depth. No way possible. Turn-Based is far superior because the AI can be programmed to do far more complex routines, instead of being scalped like the Oblivion AI because too many objects are in the algorithm at the same time; hazard algorithms, movement algorithms, attack algorithms, and of course decision algorithms - OF EVERY CHARACTER, RUNNING AT THE SAME TIME.
So, yes. Real-time AI is literally exponentially dumber than turn-based. Special thanks to David Gaider of BioWare for teaching us the meaning of exponentially. I thought I'd just give him another good example.
Fallout was meant to be a return to a thinking-man's game in the genre of so many twitch-based games.
That is how some games, notably chess, can offer really bastard AI opponents. It can also provide for decent party AI.
The retarded party NPCs in Oblivion fail to impress. They make people laugh. Not in a good way, but in a "I have to laugh because that stupid clown did an obnoxious trick and maybe it'll go away soon..."
Me: "Move it, Corky, or eat a fucking arrow to the back of the head!"
NPC, affectionately named "Corky": "GHURRRRRRRR!"
*THUNK* *THUNK*
Me: "Good boy, Corky, you make great bait." *loots two bodies*
How many objects in the AI register and the AI is THAT fucking stupid? Pitiful.
On the other hand, if they do revisit New Reno, watching a legendary Prostitute vs. Gangster War would be pretty entertaining in the...forgettable AI they are using. Damn, I can't even be bothered, it completely fails to impress me in any other way but tears of laughter as how stupid things get. Then I load up Postal 2 and have fun, as it positively frightens me to think of how fugly an army of hookers from the hands of Bethesda could turn out...all leering with the expression engine giving them the appeal of a drooling coma patient and the chin of a lumberjack.
Corkette: "I thaw uh radthorpion duh uther day....huyrrrr! GIMME KITTHHHH!"
Frightening to think of more than one.
Now onto the RPG mechanics side of the issue. The point of a role-playing game is that you play the role, yet you are limited/enhanced by the character's stats and abilities, the only thing that should be required of the player is the ability to play the game. As they get better, they learn how to better build a character to provoke certain reactions from the game in the style of the created character, and thusly become even more proficient at it and see a new side of familiar material. Hence, replay and added depth. Yet they are still playing the character within the bounds of the system. With real-time, it depends a lot on player reflexes, and there's nothing sadder than watching a BioWare junky whack the space bar like a crack rat every five seconds and then listen to them try to tell you it's a great role-playing game.
So what the hell is up with killing children?
It's not so much the ability to KILL CHILDREN, but just another aspect of the game that responds to how you play, and makes the world feel a bit more raw and desolate. The page for child kills in Fallout's character stats page speaks remarkably about this. There are so few, yet so lively, that when they and the rest of the town are gone, it feels that much emptier.
Also, if you're an evil bastard who would kill children, you'll be hunted down. This was present in both Wasteland and Fallout, Red Ryder in the former, and a bounty hunter wearing a comical button in the latter. I sometimes like to refer to it as "degrees of villainy and sainthood", of where all moral questions can be placed within the chaotic gray area in betwixt the two for the player to decide which shade they will pick.
What the fuck is up with the modern military stereotypes?
Some moron at Bethesda still thinks the BOS should be like Full Metal Jacket, despite the really unfavorable tone it sets the soldiers as undisciplined, and also given the fact that some Bethesda employees can't tell the difference between Fallout and Fallout Tactics. Who knows, they probably liked Fallout: POS as well.
Back in the era where the fiction style is placed, as if written by a 50's pulp science fiction author but given several additions that fit the setting along the history of post-nuclear fiction yet along a parallel universe where the silicon semiconductor was never invented, the US Army was NOT loathed by the world. They were quite disciplined, loved for their sacrifice during WWII, and were proudly supported during the Korean War. Full Metal Jacket was placed in the Vietnam era, which is not quite apropos for this fiction placement. This is why Fallout Tactics is not considered canon by many.
What do you mean by "Remember Wasteland?" being on the Fallout box cover?
Since it would have taken a bit of resources for Brian Fargo to re-obtain the license for Wasteland from EA (sometimes this is a pain, for good or bad), Interplay decided to make a whole new Intellectual Property. One they could use and support without requiring extra licensing. Fallout was born. Now to make a game worthy of being called a successor to Wasteland...ouch, that's a big bill, especially after Fountain of Assclown Dreams.
Seriously, Rosh, what impressed you about this title since you find most of the market to be 99% derivative shit claimed to be "innovative"?
Ah, the best question of the bunch. One of the reasons why I considered the BioWare Infinity Engine games to be heavily uninspired was due to playing something exponentially more complex and with much more detail put forth into the effort. It was called "Ultima", namely U6-7, and how they predated the BioWare development house by half a decade. That is where I consider "old" development to be bad, when modern developers like to call themselves innovative yet their game isn't really that impressive to someone who has played better, yet the cattle moo, impressed. Better that had so much attention put into it, the developers obviously lived the game through its development to make the game feel like a world. Then a see a game with far less detail and some ignorant kid says it's "the bestest game ever".
The distinction I am referring to, is love. Love for the setting of the game, love for the work, and love for the way the developer didn't stop until they could be entirely proud of it.
When I first touched Fallout, the official release, I noticed the detail given to the box. Most modern games have a really generic feel to their description offered on the box, because marketing departments are really clueless about game development. They are simply the failures that couldn't get a real job and big bucks working for an application development company (which is usually held to MUCH higher standards than the game industry), and so they will go to whomever will take them.
While the outside was quite impressive and complete in my eyes, giving a deep description and examples of the gameplay to be expected, what dropped my jaw was the "Remember Wasteland?" printed on the inside flap. Here was a game I was waiting to play since...Wasteland! Pretty damn cool since Wasteland was considered a dead title by then, having been given the poor sequel of Fountain of Dreams, and Meantime went the way of vaporware. I was looking forward to a game that had the complex combat of Wasteland, the detail Brian Fargo and others gave to Wasteland, but the game would be a logical but maybe regrettably an unofficial sequel. Fallout had enough strength on its own to make a fandom last strong for about a decade without a decent sequel that befit the original vision and purpose of the original.
I opened the box. The first thing that touches my hand is the manual, which is often safely discarded because most are illegible after merely touching their print. Not this. THIS was a work of art. I hadn't seen attention to detail like this since Ultima. A grin touches my face as I look at the cover, then open the book, and instead of reading it I just greedily go from page to page noticing all the neat details and illustrations, and then all the additions of notes that made it look like an in-game item. Fucking beautiful. The very FIRST thing I end up reading is the recipe page, because it caught my eye. My jaw drops again, because this level of detail in game publications hadn't been seen in years when Fallout was released. As a chef, I enjoyed the recipes and even made some variations of my own, including chocolate-dipped "mushroom cloud" popovers. Here was a game that had love given to every aspect of its release.
Then I install it, admiring the pulpish art styles shown during the installation process. That was what really set the tone of the game for me, because it showed the dark tone, the art styles, and the time placement of the fiction.
10c American.
Fallout is not about modern. Fallout is about retro.
Then I play Fallout.
Yeah...I know this game. Wasteland, but...given the support of modern technology, and none of the trendy crap that was killing off game series like Ultima, Might and Magic, and a few others like Wizardry looked dead since 1990. But the control and interface is much better. So are the graphics, too. The gameplay is much the same, but...oh, wow, THAT took me by surprise, they can offer much better writing and technical advances to the game, it feels like Wasteland, but...better, dare I say it. They can do more and offer a lot more complexity to the game given modern technology. But it's the same great gameplay and gameplay style I have been missing since the early 90's and before, since most of the game series had essentially died out by then, or everything was action-based and not really an RPG but instead a mis-labeled Action-Adventure game. Any good developer can tell you that stats exist in all genres of games, and progression in stats does not make a ROLE-playing game.
Choice and consequence.
I watch and listen to the intro, giving a nod to what looked like generic CGI animation, though well lip-synched. I had to grin at the setting placement of tubes on the needed water chip, giving further reinforcement to the fiction style. I then go through the introductory maze and out the outside. The glare of the light made it obvious, but it was the description that gave it a bit more emphasis and emotion. Bloom effects and lens blur can only convey so much before it becomes a nauseating ad nauseum effect.
I then saw another Talking Head later on in the game. And another. The most complex character portrait for a conversing NPC before this would have been from Ultima, which has a small picture for nearly all conversations. Except...this was like Wasteland's character portraits from the encounters, because they moved. But holy shit, were the detailed and constructed so much better, it stuck with everyone who saw them.
On that note, graphics can't convey *everything* that may be described about an object. Some description is necessary, and also serves as a beloved reference to games where everything was described in text. Most games around 1994-97 were about action. Action isn't everyone's cup of tea; for instance I play a LOT of action games, and games from nearly every genre. FPS games are some of my favorites when done well. But when I want a solid RPG, I look towards a series that offers such.
What do you have against Bethesda?
Lies. Lies. Hype. Bullshit. More lies. Ego-polishing. Ignorance in spades. Lies that result from ego-polishing. Willful ignorance and delusional cherry-picking from original design docs, misquoted to give Bethesda their "mandate of heaven" approval of how they are skullfucking the series, despite direct quotes of the original developers themselves proving Bethesda is in fact, lying and misrepresenting the design docs and original designs of the original developers. You know, the people Bethesda didn't feel the need to contact in any form regarding this license. Ever. In addition, none feel the need to fulfill their promises and claims they've made in the last decade to any respectable degree. We're expected to believe there's talent and experience left at Bethesda when there's so much leaving talent, loads of noobs were hired on in time for Morrowind or shortly thereafter. Check the huge thread about the lies around Oblivion on RPGCodex and you'll be there for awhile. The list is long and makes Romero, Smart, and Molyneaux all look honest and forthright.
And yet, people seem to expect them to do better with a far more complex game than their own intellectual property, and do it right? The preview already proves that they are not on the right track, and making a shitty hybrid of the Infinity Engine meets a Deus Ex clone is NOT the answer for Fallout. Or should I say it, Morrowind with Guns.
Look at it this way. When graphics become nearly photorealistic across the industry, and with the increase of online voice talents, Bethesda is going to be completely punted out of the market. It is the only thing they really know how to use. At that point, they will either have to learn about solid game design, or fail as their hype engine runs out of ignorant shits to use as grease.
Why do the fans revere Fallout so much?
Many fans are developers themselves, of several different kinds of game studios. Many fans are also in professional software development themselves, and appreciate that for once a long while a game seemed to have the testing and polish of a software release to be proud of.
1997 was a very important time in RPG history. Not many games were being made then, because the old, great series had died off.
Wizardry: MIA since 1990 and then a CD remake in 96. Not until many years later did it see a sequel.
Ultima: Trendwhored courtesy of EA's suits "getting tough" on EA projects. And since EA was doing *SO* well on console sales...a lot of otherwise decent Origin titles went down the shitter. First with Ultima "7.5", Serpent Isle, being cut down to squeeze out another game the fans might like in that playstyle. Because holy shit, look out, here comes Super Avatar Brothers of Ultima 8. Mostly a platform puzzle, many people hated what the gameplay had become. Ultima IX earned the nickname "Virtue Raider" for obvious reasons. If you don't get it, congratulations, you're Bethesda's target audience, stop boring yourself with the history lessons.
Might and Magic: The Xeen games around 95 were the last ones before the abomination that was the RT + TB switchable engine of Might and Magic VI. Don't get me wrong, the game design of that one and later ones were fun and I enjoyed them, but the game mechanics made Castle Darkmoor a bastard of a dungeon.
Loads of others: Some were designed action based from the start, like Baldur's Gate, TES: Arena, and Eye of the Beholder. Each one was great at what it offered, but at some point some they started to suck. TES when it lost the wide-open design of many countries of Arena and Daggerfall in favor of a hollow design, but there's a lot of erosion detailed landscape for you to wander around aimlessly in. Eye of the Beholder when it lost the design people liked in III. Baldur's Gate when I realized it was a rather simplistic low-scale D&D RTS, but without much of the detail I had come to expect from such games as Ultima, Might and Magic, and the SSI D&D games that came out a few years before.
EDIT I:
RKO, Howard Hughes, Orson Welles, the Illuminati, Kissinger, conspiracy, WTFITHINKMYHEADJUSTEXPLODED!!!
Careful of the harmful mind rays that are about to begin, they are awesome and thought-instilling. You may want to put on your tinfoil hat and share whatever 4too is smoking, because it's going to help. A little.
It expands a bit more into Fallout's dark ironies, namely through movie influences. This is where I pull out some obscure shit, because it is another aspect of Fallout that MY father could recognize as "somewhat RKO production style". Which is full of darkly amusing unintentional parallels that include RKO's rocky treatment by rich investors, namely another speed nut (like Herve is the car nut for Interplay/Titus/(Insert Soon-To-Be Fucked Company Name Here), and how quality names are treated.
The intro for Interplay was a fairly unique one, I'd say MADE for Fallout. Most companies go with a standard company logo and don't show that appreciation. It had a cigar-rocket, and seemed to hint at the "station calls" seen in the style of RKO's productions.
Another rich dark irony:
Check out this page for some VERY interesting background information about a MAJOR Hollywood related event of that time.
IRONY! The nation's love for nukes kills the nation's own beloved star, or at least might have helped what was already going on. Hell, maybe the Duke could have spat out the tumer eventually and just choked on it before he could chunder it out. He might have been alive and staying rich by selling Duke Chunks on Ebay if it weren't for a lot of ironic things.
Invisible in this would have to be the "unnoticed people" - those whose deaths the country did not really care to note until it was frankly too late. It was like a careless kid playing with a gas can in the back yard and now holy shit the whole neighborhood is on fire!
There just went a few thousand Native Americans. While the Pentagon later still cares about the Duke, of course.
Reparations for the "unwillingly migrated people of African ancestry forced into degrading slavery" is one thing...but allowing casinos is the reparations for the remnants of the Glowohshit Tribe?
Mmmm, democracy at its finest. The unofficial motto of which is "Nobody's blame." Which is also a key feature with other such associated events that have a *little* to do with Fallout's background feeling. Check out some background on McCarthyism if it is unfamiliar, and also the Rosenberg couple. Their role was extremely minor and they were fried for it (several times in the case of Ethel, three to be precise, and she only apparently knew about her husband's role and had no active part), and it must be noted that in the grand sense of things, these people evened the sides and did cause many eventual conflicts that caused many seriously fugly skirmishes and wars all over the world that cost many soldier and innocent lives...
...but if it were not for that equalization of arms and nuclear power, the US was ONE step away from making anything Red wake up under a mushroom cloud in the sky. Just because they could, and Communism was evil. This is about the time Kissinger was sniffing around nukes, and I can only be thankful that The Other Side had them too. Otherwise, I doubt we'd be able to handle cancer as well as the Duke.
Speaking of cancer, the Duke, and Howard Hughes:
Now we have the Homeland of McCarthyism Security and the War on Terrah. Blacklists are being made, and happens all the time in the owned giant media outlets. Hmm, history does have a fondness for repeating itself because people are indeed too stupid to learn from the mistakes of previous decades. Since, y'know, they weren't there then and so they didn't happen, of course. Who is back? Kissinger! He's the actual Sith Emperor in this sad misplaced Fallout
OS (the console game, so don't think this really means these references should be used in Fallout) Star Wars parody, with many puppets leading up to his current duo, Lord Dick and Darth D'huh!
This feeling of McCarthyism was also a bit felt in much of the fiction...and a distrust of scientists. For after all, radiation and The Bomb were BAD things, and scientists brought this upon us. The horrible mistakes of mankind brought back upon them was a recurring theme in much of the fiction of the period setting Fallout is taken from. Then the country went a bit pacifist, got a bit toasted out of their minds, and disconnected with reality. Along came the shiny lights of the 80's and a new, shiny, empty business and fake US was born, ready to believe anything as the country spends itself into debt fighting the same thing they promoted years previous. For political reasons, of course, as the tobacco barons were still demanding a part of America. They still do. What they have paid is chump change while America goes through the addiction chain fed to them from birth.
Caffeine is clearly the first. I've seen kids be given caffeine at a young age, and it calms them down. You know what that is? A chemical dependency they have come to know since before birth. I would easily bet that most of the mothers drank caffeine in some form on a daily basis when pregnant. Scarily enough, it does matter. I've know few Native Americans and people outside of the US to be "afflicted" with ADHD. It's simply caffeine dependency.
Nuka-cola. Who the HELL knows what is in it?
Then, to be cool, the cigarette companies get you after you're fully hooked into a chemical dependency cycle on caffeine. They don't even offer a decent product - they give you some additive-filled shit that addicts you to so many by-product chemicals, nicotine is the LEAST of your worries. That said, I enjoy a good wrapped cigar, and most of George Burns amusing wisdom.
"I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty."
The "smoke" of the Fallout region is a designed habit-forming drug, designed to make the person buying it poorer and addicted. This is a good parallel of the continued increase of additives by the tobacco companies through the decades, and a partial combined reference to crystal meth and crack. While Ronny Raygun and Wife were cracking down on the green stuff that allows people to eat (still a schedule 1, I think), Mayor "Cracklin'" Barry was enjoying life in D.C. a few miles away.
Now add in some Illuminati references and some ties between rich-ass Howard Hughes-like characters, the US government to nuke the world and be the only survivors with only the ones they WANT to survive dependent upon them, kind of the like commercial and government designs for vaults through the scare of The Bomb (the govt could preserve a fighting force and round up the scav survivors and use them as "preserved labor"), and you'd have another aspect of the design planned for Fallout, but only preserved in limited form. Remember, the Enclave WERE working with New Reno on several levels, IIRC. However shite the premise of New Reno fit into the setting, tying it into other locations was worked well, and into a larger background storyline. It was made well, but didn't quite fit into the post-apocalyptic premise, and is where most of the harsher canon sticklers tend to shake their heads at how campy it got. Fallout is more about dark ironies, the occasional groaner (like when you killed Kenny, naturally), and more sinister underlying details. Like Iguana-On-A-Stick, a staple of the wastelander's diet. ;D
Back to the setting and The Enclave. It was as the government had planned, establishing cooperative and yet invisible ties into the remaining populace, able to exploit them at will. Arroyo, for example, and The Enclave's activities elsewhere in the region.
Humans are so willing to prey upon each other.
Here is another good movie reference. Howard Hughes, despite his hunt in his own staff for Reds, made/edited/WTFed some decent movies, though was a bit...odd about it. It was also an RKO picture.
You may now take off your tinfoil hat. The harmful mind rays have ceased. Until next time...
Watch the skies!
Mini-mushroom-clouds from exploding cars?
Yeah, I'm wondering about this, too, since the only working car in Fallout 2 was a miracle of stored parts in a Vault. In addition, nuclear weapons are supposed to be scary and impressive in the setting, since y'know, they ENDED THE WORLD. Mushroom-cloud cars seem to be even a bit too campy for Postal 2.
What the hell is with the humor in the demo?
No idea, but "Local Cult" is Pete's favorite sign in the game. The game is being created with care.
Oh, and that is NOT slapstick and follows Fallout's style of dark irony. </sarcasm>
"Dark Irony"? What is that?"
A desolate, nobody wins kind of feeling, but with a possibly very disturbing twist.
Here it is in a nutshell: The Great War was a result of oil shortage leading to a build up of land aggression over Alaska, along with several biological weapons. As a result of this, the pan-immunity virion project was born. In other words, the FEV, Forced Evolutionary Virus, as it would be later known. The Great War happens, destroying most of the civilised world, through nuclear exchange depicted as bombs in the first Fallout. The world is shattered.
The Master starts as normal human exploring the wasteland with a friend, who would later turn into the radiation-scarred mutant known as Harold (voiced by the beloved Charlie Adler). One falls into the FEV, while the other escapes but is lost in the wasteland, evolving into the long-lived "ghoul". Both survive, one looking like a freakshow that made his way to The Hub; the other intact but otherwise with several additions from other beings that fell into the viral muck. The latter's mind and awareness grow, through his minions, and through his powers gained by dominating everything he...it...absorbed. Grew. Evolved. The Master housed his Children at the Cathedral, where they were led by the masterful Morpheus (voiced by David Warner). The Master saw the decrepit state of the world, and saw the dangers it presented. If coaxed to talk, he is sometimes too glad to explain his reasons, citing that the world has changed and so must the human race if it is to survive. It preys too much on the weak, so all must become strong through the influence of the FEV, for all to become more than human. The human race also needs order, which The Master provides, is the Cathedral not peaceful and ordered enough? The death that resulted above was from your own bringing, as all were held in peace under Morpheus and The Master in the pursuit of mankind's survival. Here wa As so the wastelands should be united in Peace, Unity, and The Master. Unfortunately, there was a flaw, and The Master found out that he was in fact causing more harm due to the side-effects of the FEV. Cue mushroom cloud.
The ghoul? He simply lives long, some say forever, growing wise with his journeys.
Here are the complexities of the dark ironies present in Fallout:
The FEV is created to combat biological warfare by making the "infected" subject completely immune to viruses as we know them. Along with other neat gifts and prizes, including sterility. This isn't known until later, from the rather professional Brotherhood of Steel.
The world basks in a healthy nuclear glow.
The wasteland claims nearly all forms of civilization that remain, pitting the few remaining humans against each other in numerous barbaric ways. This shows how society, technology, and everything in between would be in decay and ruin. Only a few bright lights remain, clinging to the last hopes of humanity. Be it fairness and helping each other out to provide a safe home for everyone (Shady Sands -> NCR), to those who cling to technology (Brotherhood of Steel), to those who still would have people kill each other for profit and status (Boneyards), to those who consider knowledge to be the last hope (Followers of the Apocalypse),
All of those lights of hope are in danger of being snuffed out, perhaps unknowing of what he would destroy, by The Master's plan.
Some may sympathise with The Master's plans, simply because except for a few flaws it may make sense. To save mankind from itself. After all, mankind's biggest threat in the wasteland is really...mankind. The super-mutants are just a by-product.
The Master's plan includes using the same FEV to threaten the wasteland, when it was meant to be a protector before.
To stop the spread of The Master's plans, the Vault Dweller saves the wasteland with the very same device that created the wasteland. Cue Mushroom cloud.
The Vault Dweller, for all of his heroic or otherwise efforts, is kicked out from Vault 13.
The Vault Dweller has the last laugh, if you so choose.
The original ending for Junktown has Killian being a very rigid sheriff. Kind of like me on the forums and being quick to shred. Gizmo, however, made the place a prosperous town that needed a bit of help getting started, and despite some of the regrettable deeds he might have needed to do, he made it work.
This ending was meant to give a twist to players who rushed through the game and didn't quite look at what each social element was doing. Killian was so focused upon Gizmo that he and his people neglected the entire gang, Doc Morbid, and who knows how many others, in his pursuit of Gizmo - the agent of Gizmo's might have just been a revenge action from something Killian did earlier that the Vault Dweller was not aware of. Killian might have overstepped himself along the lines of "illegal search and seizure", as it may exist in the wasteland, or planted one of Gizmo's boys on a false charge. But with all of the other things going on in town, I doubt rigged machines are anywhere on the top of the priority list for Junktown. The original design, which is still quite in there for the most part, was to have the player judge the NPCs and react accordingly to the depth the player had to dig for. Unfortunately for the planned depth, someone wanted it a bit more straightforward and predictable, and to keep just the vault exile twist instead.
Professional Brotherhood of Steel?
Yeah, at the time this fiction is styled upon, the US military is still quite beloved and supported. There wasn't such crass slacking of discipline depicted in a lot of fiction, instead they were our heroes. It wasn't until "babykillers" did the uniform get such a public spot put upon it. That was a regrettable time for our military, and I support our troops enough to say get them out of Vietnam II. Instead of the Viet Cong, you have more than half a dozen looking to take you out, because guess who gave Al Quaeda and others such a boost in the first place? Oops!
What the fuck is a "portable mini nuke catapult"?
Got me on this one... But Pete says it follows canon because of the rarer ammo. No, I don't understand that logic, either. Got a straw?
Fallout fans are living "eight years ago"?
You better fucking believe it. In fact, I'd like to say I live 20 years in the past, when vision and dreams were given to the CRPG genre. When depth was possible with the technology, so followed clever design decisions that are the cornerstones of EVERY CRPG made today. In fact, I'd like to think I still live in the era in which Fallout was inspired from, around 1988. This was the year many great games were already released, impressing the hell out of people, or were in development and close to seeing the light of day. Fallout was a return to good, core ideas, away from the flood of console-like action slashers weakly churned out by many development studios (no, not talking about TES, it didn't suck then.) In 1988, Ultima had brought moral questions to the table, which Fallout does well. In fact, if they kept the original Junktown ending, it would have been even more beautiful. 1988 was when Wasteland was impressing many, combining a good setting along with good gameplay. Fallout went back to the roots of the genre, tapping into what made each great and expanding upon it a bit, and adding it's own charm via Talking Heads and location-based endings depending upon the player's actions. In other words, REAL innovation. They didn't do much new, but instead did a lot of things right and simply added a couple of brilliant ideas, which the old-school loved, and it gained popularity by word of mouth given how even Interplay of that time couldn't figure out a way to hype out the game to the much more discerning and critical gaming media of that time and the console-heavy craze of action games. Those that touched it, however, fell in love. It was like greeting an old lover. Bow-chicka-wowowww...
From Talking Heads, to complex speech trees, to solid RPG gameplay, Fallout had few faults. The bugs and other problems folks found with the game at the time were...*gasp*...addressed! They offered a patch after they shipped the game that caught the handful of issues a few encountered. This is long before OS compatibility issues, and I loved this game for being able to play it on a laptop without much problem at the time. I also loved how the completeness showed that there was a real QA cycle or two put behind it before it hit release. But that is also the beauty of using a TB combat system.
*sigh* Turn-based combat, I knew you were going to get to that. So what gives?
As someone who has actually programmed an algorithm or three, I know how complex you can make your AI cycles and what limitations you run into by having resources divided up by the number of simultaneous calculations being performed at the same time.
The mechanics of turn-based and real-time are pretty much set in stone. Everything claimed to be something else is just some combination of pre and post command interpretation and command intervals of real time combat. In layman's terms, unless one character (or a character with the same timing, in the case of games with initiative) is acting at a time (turn-based), it's some form of real-time, pausable, with or without a command interval for the player to input.
The distinction is VERY important when programming the AI. When someone programs AI in turn-based, they can do many things you CANNOT in real-time:
One character at a time is calculated, with full possible resources available to those algorithm calculations at that time. Real-time has to calculate EVERYTHING's algorithms at the same time. Many sleazy programmers often take "team shortcuts" in real-time, where the AI tends to act like one entity, based upon the same universal results. Such..."scripting" tends to be superficial and quite stupid.
Results obtained from one character's algorithms may be grandfathered into another character's AI routines
Turn-Based AI routines may be sequenced instead of being looped at the same time as everything else. Hell, in a full second, you could run several instances of the same algorithm, returning a more complex, refined result.
NOT POSSIBLE IN REAL-TIME WITH A HIGH NUMBER OF SIMULTANEOUSLY MOVING CHARACTERS AT THE SAME TIME.
You don't get close in terms of computational depth. No way possible. Turn-Based is far superior because the AI can be programmed to do far more complex routines, instead of being scalped like the Oblivion AI because too many objects are in the algorithm at the same time; hazard algorithms, movement algorithms, attack algorithms, and of course decision algorithms - OF EVERY CHARACTER, RUNNING AT THE SAME TIME.
So, yes. Real-time AI is literally exponentially dumber than turn-based. Special thanks to David Gaider of BioWare for teaching us the meaning of exponentially. I thought I'd just give him another good example.
Fallout was meant to be a return to a thinking-man's game in the genre of so many twitch-based games.
That is how some games, notably chess, can offer really bastard AI opponents. It can also provide for decent party AI.
The retarded party NPCs in Oblivion fail to impress. They make people laugh. Not in a good way, but in a "I have to laugh because that stupid clown did an obnoxious trick and maybe it'll go away soon..."
Me: "Move it, Corky, or eat a fucking arrow to the back of the head!"
NPC, affectionately named "Corky": "GHURRRRRRRR!"
*THUNK* *THUNK*
Me: "Good boy, Corky, you make great bait." *loots two bodies*
How many objects in the AI register and the AI is THAT fucking stupid? Pitiful.
On the other hand, if they do revisit New Reno, watching a legendary Prostitute vs. Gangster War would be pretty entertaining in the...forgettable AI they are using. Damn, I can't even be bothered, it completely fails to impress me in any other way but tears of laughter as how stupid things get. Then I load up Postal 2 and have fun, as it positively frightens me to think of how fugly an army of hookers from the hands of Bethesda could turn out...all leering with the expression engine giving them the appeal of a drooling coma patient and the chin of a lumberjack.
Corkette: "I thaw uh radthorpion duh uther day....huyrrrr! GIMME KITTHHHH!"
Frightening to think of more than one.
Now onto the RPG mechanics side of the issue. The point of a role-playing game is that you play the role, yet you are limited/enhanced by the character's stats and abilities, the only thing that should be required of the player is the ability to play the game. As they get better, they learn how to better build a character to provoke certain reactions from the game in the style of the created character, and thusly become even more proficient at it and see a new side of familiar material. Hence, replay and added depth. Yet they are still playing the character within the bounds of the system. With real-time, it depends a lot on player reflexes, and there's nothing sadder than watching a BioWare junky whack the space bar like a crack rat every five seconds and then listen to them try to tell you it's a great role-playing game.
So what the hell is up with killing children?
It's not so much the ability to KILL CHILDREN, but just another aspect of the game that responds to how you play, and makes the world feel a bit more raw and desolate. The page for child kills in Fallout's character stats page speaks remarkably about this. There are so few, yet so lively, that when they and the rest of the town are gone, it feels that much emptier.
Also, if you're an evil bastard who would kill children, you'll be hunted down. This was present in both Wasteland and Fallout, Red Ryder in the former, and a bounty hunter wearing a comical button in the latter. I sometimes like to refer to it as "degrees of villainy and sainthood", of where all moral questions can be placed within the chaotic gray area in betwixt the two for the player to decide which shade they will pick.
What the fuck is up with the modern military stereotypes?
Some moron at Bethesda still thinks the BOS should be like Full Metal Jacket, despite the really unfavorable tone it sets the soldiers as undisciplined, and also given the fact that some Bethesda employees can't tell the difference between Fallout and Fallout Tactics. Who knows, they probably liked Fallout: POS as well.
Back in the era where the fiction style is placed, as if written by a 50's pulp science fiction author but given several additions that fit the setting along the history of post-nuclear fiction yet along a parallel universe where the silicon semiconductor was never invented, the US Army was NOT loathed by the world. They were quite disciplined, loved for their sacrifice during WWII, and were proudly supported during the Korean War. Full Metal Jacket was placed in the Vietnam era, which is not quite apropos for this fiction placement. This is why Fallout Tactics is not considered canon by many.
What do you mean by "Remember Wasteland?" being on the Fallout box cover?
Since it would have taken a bit of resources for Brian Fargo to re-obtain the license for Wasteland from EA (sometimes this is a pain, for good or bad), Interplay decided to make a whole new Intellectual Property. One they could use and support without requiring extra licensing. Fallout was born. Now to make a game worthy of being called a successor to Wasteland...ouch, that's a big bill, especially after Fountain of Assclown Dreams.
Seriously, Rosh, what impressed you about this title since you find most of the market to be 99% derivative shit claimed to be "innovative"?
Ah, the best question of the bunch. One of the reasons why I considered the BioWare Infinity Engine games to be heavily uninspired was due to playing something exponentially more complex and with much more detail put forth into the effort. It was called "Ultima", namely U6-7, and how they predated the BioWare development house by half a decade. That is where I consider "old" development to be bad, when modern developers like to call themselves innovative yet their game isn't really that impressive to someone who has played better, yet the cattle moo, impressed. Better that had so much attention put into it, the developers obviously lived the game through its development to make the game feel like a world. Then a see a game with far less detail and some ignorant kid says it's "the bestest game ever".
The distinction I am referring to, is love. Love for the setting of the game, love for the work, and love for the way the developer didn't stop until they could be entirely proud of it.
When I first touched Fallout, the official release, I noticed the detail given to the box. Most modern games have a really generic feel to their description offered on the box, because marketing departments are really clueless about game development. They are simply the failures that couldn't get a real job and big bucks working for an application development company (which is usually held to MUCH higher standards than the game industry), and so they will go to whomever will take them.
While the outside was quite impressive and complete in my eyes, giving a deep description and examples of the gameplay to be expected, what dropped my jaw was the "Remember Wasteland?" printed on the inside flap. Here was a game I was waiting to play since...Wasteland! Pretty damn cool since Wasteland was considered a dead title by then, having been given the poor sequel of Fountain of Dreams, and Meantime went the way of vaporware. I was looking forward to a game that had the complex combat of Wasteland, the detail Brian Fargo and others gave to Wasteland, but the game would be a logical but maybe regrettably an unofficial sequel. Fallout had enough strength on its own to make a fandom last strong for about a decade without a decent sequel that befit the original vision and purpose of the original.
I opened the box. The first thing that touches my hand is the manual, which is often safely discarded because most are illegible after merely touching their print. Not this. THIS was a work of art. I hadn't seen attention to detail like this since Ultima. A grin touches my face as I look at the cover, then open the book, and instead of reading it I just greedily go from page to page noticing all the neat details and illustrations, and then all the additions of notes that made it look like an in-game item. Fucking beautiful. The very FIRST thing I end up reading is the recipe page, because it caught my eye. My jaw drops again, because this level of detail in game publications hadn't been seen in years when Fallout was released. As a chef, I enjoyed the recipes and even made some variations of my own, including chocolate-dipped "mushroom cloud" popovers. Here was a game that had love given to every aspect of its release.
Then I install it, admiring the pulpish art styles shown during the installation process. That was what really set the tone of the game for me, because it showed the dark tone, the art styles, and the time placement of the fiction.
10c American.
Fallout is not about modern. Fallout is about retro.
Then I play Fallout.
Yeah...I know this game. Wasteland, but...given the support of modern technology, and none of the trendy crap that was killing off game series like Ultima, Might and Magic, and a few others like Wizardry looked dead since 1990. But the control and interface is much better. So are the graphics, too. The gameplay is much the same, but...oh, wow, THAT took me by surprise, they can offer much better writing and technical advances to the game, it feels like Wasteland, but...better, dare I say it. They can do more and offer a lot more complexity to the game given modern technology. But it's the same great gameplay and gameplay style I have been missing since the early 90's and before, since most of the game series had essentially died out by then, or everything was action-based and not really an RPG but instead a mis-labeled Action-Adventure game. Any good developer can tell you that stats exist in all genres of games, and progression in stats does not make a ROLE-playing game.
Choice and consequence.
I watch and listen to the intro, giving a nod to what looked like generic CGI animation, though well lip-synched. I had to grin at the setting placement of tubes on the needed water chip, giving further reinforcement to the fiction style. I then go through the introductory maze and out the outside. The glare of the light made it obvious, but it was the description that gave it a bit more emphasis and emotion. Bloom effects and lens blur can only convey so much before it becomes a nauseating ad nauseum effect.
I then saw another Talking Head later on in the game. And another. The most complex character portrait for a conversing NPC before this would have been from Ultima, which has a small picture for nearly all conversations. Except...this was like Wasteland's character portraits from the encounters, because they moved. But holy shit, were the detailed and constructed so much better, it stuck with everyone who saw them.
On that note, graphics can't convey *everything* that may be described about an object. Some description is necessary, and also serves as a beloved reference to games where everything was described in text. Most games around 1994-97 were about action. Action isn't everyone's cup of tea; for instance I play a LOT of action games, and games from nearly every genre. FPS games are some of my favorites when done well. But when I want a solid RPG, I look towards a series that offers such.
What do you have against Bethesda?
Lies. Lies. Hype. Bullshit. More lies. Ego-polishing. Ignorance in spades. Lies that result from ego-polishing. Willful ignorance and delusional cherry-picking from original design docs, misquoted to give Bethesda their "mandate of heaven" approval of how they are skullfucking the series, despite direct quotes of the original developers themselves proving Bethesda is in fact, lying and misrepresenting the design docs and original designs of the original developers. You know, the people Bethesda didn't feel the need to contact in any form regarding this license. Ever. In addition, none feel the need to fulfill their promises and claims they've made in the last decade to any respectable degree. We're expected to believe there's talent and experience left at Bethesda when there's so much leaving talent, loads of noobs were hired on in time for Morrowind or shortly thereafter. Check the huge thread about the lies around Oblivion on RPGCodex and you'll be there for awhile. The list is long and makes Romero, Smart, and Molyneaux all look honest and forthright.
And yet, people seem to expect them to do better with a far more complex game than their own intellectual property, and do it right? The preview already proves that they are not on the right track, and making a shitty hybrid of the Infinity Engine meets a Deus Ex clone is NOT the answer for Fallout. Or should I say it, Morrowind with Guns.
Look at it this way. When graphics become nearly photorealistic across the industry, and with the increase of online voice talents, Bethesda is going to be completely punted out of the market. It is the only thing they really know how to use. At that point, they will either have to learn about solid game design, or fail as their hype engine runs out of ignorant shits to use as grease.
Why do the fans revere Fallout so much?
Many fans are developers themselves, of several different kinds of game studios. Many fans are also in professional software development themselves, and appreciate that for once a long while a game seemed to have the testing and polish of a software release to be proud of.
1997 was a very important time in RPG history. Not many games were being made then, because the old, great series had died off.
Wizardry: MIA since 1990 and then a CD remake in 96. Not until many years later did it see a sequel.
Ultima: Trendwhored courtesy of EA's suits "getting tough" on EA projects. And since EA was doing *SO* well on console sales...a lot of otherwise decent Origin titles went down the shitter. First with Ultima "7.5", Serpent Isle, being cut down to squeeze out another game the fans might like in that playstyle. Because holy shit, look out, here comes Super Avatar Brothers of Ultima 8. Mostly a platform puzzle, many people hated what the gameplay had become. Ultima IX earned the nickname "Virtue Raider" for obvious reasons. If you don't get it, congratulations, you're Bethesda's target audience, stop boring yourself with the history lessons.
Might and Magic: The Xeen games around 95 were the last ones before the abomination that was the RT + TB switchable engine of Might and Magic VI. Don't get me wrong, the game design of that one and later ones were fun and I enjoyed them, but the game mechanics made Castle Darkmoor a bastard of a dungeon.
Loads of others: Some were designed action based from the start, like Baldur's Gate, TES: Arena, and Eye of the Beholder. Each one was great at what it offered, but at some point some they started to suck. TES when it lost the wide-open design of many countries of Arena and Daggerfall in favor of a hollow design, but there's a lot of erosion detailed landscape for you to wander around aimlessly in. Eye of the Beholder when it lost the design people liked in III. Baldur's Gate when I realized it was a rather simplistic low-scale D&D RTS, but without much of the detail I had come to expect from such games as Ultima, Might and Magic, and the SSI D&D games that came out a few years before.
EDIT I:
RKO, Howard Hughes, Orson Welles, the Illuminati, Kissinger, conspiracy, WTFITHINKMYHEADJUSTEXPLODED!!!
Careful of the harmful mind rays that are about to begin, they are awesome and thought-instilling. You may want to put on your tinfoil hat and share whatever 4too is smoking, because it's going to help. A little.
It expands a bit more into Fallout's dark ironies, namely through movie influences. This is where I pull out some obscure shit, because it is another aspect of Fallout that MY father could recognize as "somewhat RKO production style". Which is full of darkly amusing unintentional parallels that include RKO's rocky treatment by rich investors, namely another speed nut (like Herve is the car nut for Interplay/Titus/(Insert Soon-To-Be Fucked Company Name Here), and how quality names are treated.
The intro for Interplay was a fairly unique one, I'd say MADE for Fallout. Most companies go with a standard company logo and don't show that appreciation. It had a cigar-rocket, and seemed to hint at the "station calls" seen in the style of RKO's productions.
Another rich dark irony:
Check out this page for some VERY interesting background information about a MAJOR Hollywood related event of that time.
IMDB.com said:
IRONY! The nation's love for nukes kills the nation's own beloved star, or at least might have helped what was already going on. Hell, maybe the Duke could have spat out the tumer eventually and just choked on it before he could chunder it out. He might have been alive and staying rich by selling Duke Chunks on Ebay if it weren't for a lot of ironic things.
Invisible in this would have to be the "unnoticed people" - those whose deaths the country did not really care to note until it was frankly too late. It was like a careless kid playing with a gas can in the back yard and now holy shit the whole neighborhood is on fire!
There just went a few thousand Native Americans. While the Pentagon later still cares about the Duke, of course.
Reparations for the "unwillingly migrated people of African ancestry forced into degrading slavery" is one thing...but allowing casinos is the reparations for the remnants of the Glowohshit Tribe?
Mmmm, democracy at its finest. The unofficial motto of which is "Nobody's blame." Which is also a key feature with other such associated events that have a *little* to do with Fallout's background feeling. Check out some background on McCarthyism if it is unfamiliar, and also the Rosenberg couple. Their role was extremely minor and they were fried for it (several times in the case of Ethel, three to be precise, and she only apparently knew about her husband's role and had no active part), and it must be noted that in the grand sense of things, these people evened the sides and did cause many eventual conflicts that caused many seriously fugly skirmishes and wars all over the world that cost many soldier and innocent lives...
...but if it were not for that equalization of arms and nuclear power, the US was ONE step away from making anything Red wake up under a mushroom cloud in the sky. Just because they could, and Communism was evil. This is about the time Kissinger was sniffing around nukes, and I can only be thankful that The Other Side had them too. Otherwise, I doubt we'd be able to handle cancer as well as the Duke.
Speaking of cancer, the Duke, and Howard Hughes:
Now we have the Homeland of McCarthyism Security and the War on Terrah. Blacklists are being made, and happens all the time in the owned giant media outlets. Hmm, history does have a fondness for repeating itself because people are indeed too stupid to learn from the mistakes of previous decades. Since, y'know, they weren't there then and so they didn't happen, of course. Who is back? Kissinger! He's the actual Sith Emperor in this sad misplaced Fallout
OS (the console game, so don't think this really means these references should be used in Fallout) Star Wars parody, with many puppets leading up to his current duo, Lord Dick and Darth D'huh! This feeling of McCarthyism was also a bit felt in much of the fiction...and a distrust of scientists. For after all, radiation and The Bomb were BAD things, and scientists brought this upon us. The horrible mistakes of mankind brought back upon them was a recurring theme in much of the fiction of the period setting Fallout is taken from. Then the country went a bit pacifist, got a bit toasted out of their minds, and disconnected with reality. Along came the shiny lights of the 80's and a new, shiny, empty business and fake US was born, ready to believe anything as the country spends itself into debt fighting the same thing they promoted years previous. For political reasons, of course, as the tobacco barons were still demanding a part of America. They still do. What they have paid is chump change while America goes through the addiction chain fed to them from birth.
Caffeine is clearly the first. I've seen kids be given caffeine at a young age, and it calms them down. You know what that is? A chemical dependency they have come to know since before birth. I would easily bet that most of the mothers drank caffeine in some form on a daily basis when pregnant. Scarily enough, it does matter. I've know few Native Americans and people outside of the US to be "afflicted" with ADHD. It's simply caffeine dependency.
Nuka-cola. Who the HELL knows what is in it?
Then, to be cool, the cigarette companies get you after you're fully hooked into a chemical dependency cycle on caffeine. They don't even offer a decent product - they give you some additive-filled shit that addicts you to so many by-product chemicals, nicotine is the LEAST of your worries. That said, I enjoy a good wrapped cigar, and most of George Burns amusing wisdom.
"I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty."
The "smoke" of the Fallout region is a designed habit-forming drug, designed to make the person buying it poorer and addicted. This is a good parallel of the continued increase of additives by the tobacco companies through the decades, and a partial combined reference to crystal meth and crack. While Ronny Raygun and Wife were cracking down on the green stuff that allows people to eat (still a schedule 1, I think), Mayor "Cracklin'" Barry was enjoying life in D.C. a few miles away.
Now add in some Illuminati references and some ties between rich-ass Howard Hughes-like characters, the US government to nuke the world and be the only survivors with only the ones they WANT to survive dependent upon them, kind of the like commercial and government designs for vaults through the scare of The Bomb (the govt could preserve a fighting force and round up the scav survivors and use them as "preserved labor"), and you'd have another aspect of the design planned for Fallout, but only preserved in limited form. Remember, the Enclave WERE working with New Reno on several levels, IIRC. However shite the premise of New Reno fit into the setting, tying it into other locations was worked well, and into a larger background storyline. It was made well, but didn't quite fit into the post-apocalyptic premise, and is where most of the harsher canon sticklers tend to shake their heads at how campy it got. Fallout is more about dark ironies, the occasional groaner (like when you killed Kenny, naturally), and more sinister underlying details. Like Iguana-On-A-Stick, a staple of the wastelander's diet. ;D
Back to the setting and The Enclave. It was as the government had planned, establishing cooperative and yet invisible ties into the remaining populace, able to exploit them at will. Arroyo, for example, and The Enclave's activities elsewhere in the region.
Humans are so willing to prey upon each other.
Here is another good movie reference. Howard Hughes, despite his hunt in his own staff for Reds, made/edited/WTFed some decent movies, though was a bit...odd about it. It was also an RKO picture.
You may now take off your tinfoil hat. The harmful mind rays have ceased. Until next time...
Watch the skies!
; after all I learned how to read by my uncle's programming in FORTRAN and early forms of Line BASIC. Technically, conversational English isn't my first language, either. 
