Fallout Loreists, explain something to me.

[happyninja42]

So, I never played FO before 3. I tried one of the isometric ones, but I found it to be quite dull. But, when I started playing FO 4, I noticed something that kind of puzzled me.

So, the bombs went off in 2077....but the fashion/music/culture is still 1950's? So, it basically just stopped changing for 120 years? Or were they saying that the 50's style was what happened in 2077 instead of the 50's? It just, seems very strange.

Because for the longest time I thought they were running it simply as an alternate universe, where this high technology was created in the 50's, and then the bombs went off. Which made sense culturally. But no, its 120 years after greasers and sock hops...and there were still greasers and sock hops.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I know some people complain about it. I think there was an article written saying that fashion changes too drastically for it to not have moved on from the 50s after 100-200 years.

On the flip side, the people in the Fallout universe probably don't care much about fashion and are just taking what they find. It's also likely a stylistic choice by now, rather than one with incredible lore behind it.

 

[DefunctTheory]

The entire idea behind Fallout was to make a dystopian wasteland from the perspective of the 1950's generation.

Think of it this way - When we usually make future predictions in Sci-Fi, how do we do it? The music is usually just like our generations, but just a little changed to be futuristic. The robots are the same, only a bit more futuristic. And weapons, and so on. Fallout is the same thing, just from the 1950's.

EDIT: You may also notice that most of the in game stuff follows 1950's sci-fi logic, not modern sci-fi logic.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

This topic is kind of complicated, so I'll provide a brief explanation and a long one:

Brief: The timeline diverges from the real world around 1955, at which point US culture stops progressing and remains basically the same in 2077 (alternatively, 1950's aesthetics were having a real Renaissance in 2077).

Long: The initial concept for Fallout (back in the mid-90's) was basically a mix of a bunch of aesthetics'. US 50's Americana/Propaganda was one, but 80's comic books and action films were also major sources of inspiration, as well as early 90's RPGs, several GURPs expansions in particular. The idea was that the game world was supposed to run not on real science, but Science! as it had been envisioned in the late 40's and early 50's. This meant that cars had their own nuclear power plants, robots did menial work, computers were all vacuum tubes and punch cards (as the transistor was never invented) and soldiers used laser rifles and walked around in giant suits of armor. For both Fallout and Fallout 2 the 1950's Americana vibe was fairly muted (particularly in 2) and a lot of the game world owed more to 80's Post-Apoc Sci-fi, Mad Max in particular, then it did Americana. Fallout: Tactics, which is considered semi-canon, had pretty much nothing of it and Van Buren, Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3, seems to have largely forsaken it.

It was first when Bethesda acquired the rights to Fallout that the whole "USA was stuck in the 50's"-thing became a prominent thing. Apart from some locations (like the Vaults, Mariposa/Sierra Military Base and the Glow) in Fallout 1 and 2 there was very little focus on the world prior to the bombs, as the focus was on how the world looked after the war. Fallout 3 changed this by making a lot of locations that tied into the history of the world. Bethesda also up-played the 50's aesthetics as far as they possibly could. This is particularly noticeable when you compare Fo3/4 to Fallout: New Vegas, which was made by Obsidian, a company largely made up of old Black Isle employees, and written by several of the old Fallout writers. In NV the 50's aesthetics are very much muted again, apart from re-use of assets due to NVs short development cycle, in favor of playing up the post-apoc wild west shtick.

So, it was not always a thing in Fallout, but Bethesda has canonized 50's Americana as the de facto state of the Fallout world in 2077.

 

[happyninja42]

I know some people complain about it. I think there was an article written saying that fashion changes too drastically for it to not have moved on from the 50s after 100-200 years.

On the flip side, the people in the Fallout universe probably don't care much about fashion and are just taking what they find. It's also likely a stylistic choice by now, rather than one with incredible lore behind it.

That would make sense, if we didn't see them obviously wearing 50's fashions in 2077, prior to the nuke's dropping, in the FO 4 opening. If it was just scrounging, then sure, fine, whatever. But that's not the case.

The entire idea behind Fallout was to make a dystopian wasteland from the perspective of the 1950's generation.

Think of it this way - When we usually make future predictions in Sci-Fi, how do we do it? The music is usually just like our generations, but just a little changed to be futuristic. The robots are the same, only a bit more futuristic. And weapons, and so on. Fallout is the same thing, just from the 1950's.

EDIT: You may also notice that most of the in game stuff follows 1950's sci-fi logic, not modern sci-fi logic.

I know that. I don't have issue with the idea that they are using the "Wave of the Future!" kind of pop culture ideas from the 50's for their concept. My issue is that it seems that they apparently maintained a fashion level (clothes, hairstyles, music, mannerisms, etc) from a decade over 120 years ago. That would be like us still walking around wearing stuff from the Victorian Era. And not just people at a steampunk convention, but everyone.

This topic is kind of complicated, so I'll provide a brief explanation and a long one:

Brief: The timeline diverges from the real world around 1955, at which point US culture stops progressing and remains basically the same in 2077 (alternatively, 1950's aesthetics were having a real Renaissance in 2077).

Long: The initial concept for Fallout (back in the mid-90's) was basically a mix of a bunch of aesthetics'. US 50's Americana/Propaganda was one, but 80's comic books and action films were also major sources of inspiration, as well as early 90's RPGs, several GURPs expansions in particular. The idea was that the game world was supposed to run not on real science, but Science! as it had been envisioned in the late 40's and early 50's. This meant that cars had their own nuclear power plants, robots did menial work, computers were all vacuum tubes and punch cards (as the transistor was never invented) and soldiers used laser rifles and walked around in giant suits of armor. For both Fallout and Fallout 2 the 1950's Americana vibe was fairly muted (particularly in 2) and a lot of the game world owed more to 80's Post-Apoc Sci-fi, Mad Max in particular, then it did Americana. Fallout: Tactics, which is considered semi-canon, had pretty much nothing of it and Van Buren, Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3, seems to have largely forsaken it.

It was first when Bethesda acquired the rights to Fallout that the whole "USA was stuck in the 50's"-thing became a prominent thing. Apart from some locations (like the Vaults, Mariposa/Sierra Military Base and the Glow) in Fallout 1 and 2 there was very little focus on the world prior to the bombs, as the focus was on how the world looked after the war. Fallout 3 changed this by making a lot of locations that tied into the history of the world. Bethesda also up-played the 50's aesthetics as far as they possibly could. This is particularly noticeable when you compare Fo3/4 to Fallout: New Vegas, which was made by Obsidian, a company largely made up of old Black Isle employees, and written by several of the old Fallout writers. In NV the 50's aesthetics are very much muted again, apart from re-use of assets due to NVs short development cycle, in favor of playing up the post-apoc wild west shtick.

So, it was not always a thing in Fallout, but Bethesda has canonized 50's Americana as the de facto state of the Fallout world in 2077.

Yeah, see I was thinking it would maybe make sense, if they justified it as a resurgence of that fashion, if it wasn't so ubiquitous you know? I mean I've seen kids embracing previous decade styles and musical themes (but with new bands playing them), but not everyone does it. Which is what I found strange. And again, I'm not confused about why they chose the SCIENCE!! concept. I'm fine with that, and embrace it fully for it's humor, and creativity in story ideas. My issue, my head turner was the "And they kept that era's cultural fingerprint for 120 years without any change." That's where I was like "buh?" I mean I still enjoy the games, it just felt really strange. If they had simply said "It was the 50's when the bombs went off, but they had like crazy better tech than us, because SCIENCE!!" I'd have zero issue. But the idea that everyone decides that poodle skirts and greaser jackets were the height of fashion for over a century is where I was having problems.

So basically "it's Bethesda's fault". Got it. I can live with that, even though their idea doesn't make sense.

 

[Saelune]

I like the aesthetic. Plus New Vegas is still very much old US, though perhaps more spread out from 1920's to the 60's. Gives Fallout more style and flavor than standard post-apocalypse world.

 

[pookie101]

in the fallout universe some tech advanced a lot faster and better than we have like nuclear fusion, etc but culturally the USA at least stagnated as they there were no revolutions, etc like vietnam pushing for change also constant and well fed consumerism kept everyone happy and sedated.

 

[Kyrian007]

Realistically, it was much cheaper to license a 50's song for the theme than contemporary music or paying a composer to write new music. And Interplay just went with the 50's aesthetic to establish that as an ongoing visual and audio theme. I'd bet that they were even surprised that "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" and "Maybe" weren't public domain.

And when Bethesda took over, and added to the soundtrack, they were already well aware of copyright issues and doubled down visually as well. After all, they licensed the song Interplay wanted to use on Fallout 1. The real reason for the 50's style is "Fallout has always had a retro-futuristic visual aesthetic." The in-universe reason... that was just the style in that alternate universe, why overthink it?

 

[Mister K]

Fallout creators chose a distinct style for their game, called Retrofuturism. This style is used when author wants to show the future, but in a way our ancestors imagined it to be.

As for the ingame reasoning, I think others have already covered it nice enough.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

To put it rather simply, Fallout exists within an aesthetic known as "retro-futuristic", which is basically a style that uses deliberately outdated ideas of the future as imagined by past generations. In this case, it's what the people of the 50s imagined the future as; basically the same as the present (now past) except with better technology in the same style of current technology.

Edit: You were probably talking about in game justifications. As for that, I don't think there really is one outside of either "the culture stayed almost the same" or "the culture just so happened to go back to 50s style before the bombs fell". Retro-futuristic styles are kind of supposed to be unrealistic, because part of the point is examining how people extrapolated their present culture into the future, and how drastically different these ideas were to the actual results. It's often a point of humor to see the contrast between the overly optimistic assumptions, and the hilariously pessimistic ones, like how the computers in Fallout are these hideous outdated computers they we've left far behind, yet they exists right next to robots with true AI, and plasma rifles.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Culture goes in waves sometimes. I remember a few years back it was all the rage among a lot of people my age to dress and act like hippies, which is weird because the generation they were "rebelling" against are the ones who were the hippies. I could see the 1950s getting popular again. It wasn't exactly a great time for most people, but no time has been and it had some pretty cool stuff.

 

[Trunkage]

One thing that I can say that the old Fallouts didn't have was character. Probably more caused by the lack of depth of world lore as was par for those days, I'd don't remember anything that stood out other than the BoS being aholes.
For example, I totally forgot that the Great Khans even existed, and to be far, I wish they remained so.
Its the reason why Daggerfall could be randomly generated but Morrowind had to build something more concrete. You cant build world like Bethsheda does with random generators.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I get the cultural stagnation, but not the technological. War is the mother of invention, and innovation. Fallout verse had been preparing for war for almost 100 years, technology should be way more advanced than what it appears in game. The televisions should be in HD colour, the computers should have touchscreen interfaces, and the Pipboy should be a slightly bulkier smartphone with a wrist harness. I think a 50's era slim LED t.v would look very cool.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I get the cultural stagnation, but not the technological. War is the mother of invention, and innovation. Fallout verse had been preparing for war for almost 100 years, technology should be way more advanced than what it appears in game. The televisions should be in HD colour, the computers should have touchscreen interfaces, and the Pipboy should be a slightly bulkier smartphone with a wrist harness. I think a 50's era slim LED t.v would look very cool.

Well, here's one of the biggest differences with our universe; in Fallout the transistor was only developed in 2067 and microchip processors not at all. Hence why a lot of the tech is so weird compared to ours. Of course a lot would be impossible (good luck getting AI without that) but y'know, 50's retrofuturism-campyness and all that.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

To be lazily blunt; because the developers (and probably fans too, i guess) like it that way. Perhaps i mean, how far along an alternative timeline can a fiction writer invent literally everything to an acceptably logical standard while not comprimising the identity that has endeared itself a fanbase along the way? There are bound to be mistakes, contradictions, pointless weirdities only to be analyised by even more pointless weirdities...the amount of work involved in attempting so would be delaying work on assets, gameplay script/story, coding etc etc. Although I did wonder a very similar question a while back, but decided the answer was as obvious as it was illogical in-universe and the time spent musing upon it is best spent on one of the more productive endeavours one endures oneself into. Plus, the style is kind of cute. Reminds me of my steampunk fascination that lingers behind a veil of vague humanity.

 

[Alcarohtare]

I think I remember reading/ seeing somewhere (possibly in intro to FO4) that the reason the theme is 50s is because the timeline split immediately after the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. In our timeline the atomic power was used for weapons and large scale nuclear reactor power.
However in Fallout the timeline went a different way - the power of the atom was used to benefit everyone by making cars/ households etc run off nuclear energy. This left the Fallout universe to stagnate in the 50s style as they had everything they wanted and had no need to develop new technology.
This doesn't really explain why the fashions don't change for so many years though....

 

[Ragsnstitches]

The Fallout Universe, as others have said, has a retrofuturistic design. So already any pretense for realism has been abandoned so don't get too hung up on it.

Basically, possibly as a result of the unprecedented peace and prosperity at the dawn of the nuclear age, the world seems to have experienced a severe case of arrested development, particularly in terms of cultural development, that lasted over a century. For America this means 1950's art, clothing, styles and general values carrying on into the late 2000's. There are also certain technological advances that never developed in the Fallout time line, such as micro processing, which affected various developments like computing (weird that they managed to make AI though).

Though we don't see China, we can also assume they had a similar arrested development, but instead they were stuck in a more traditional post-ww2 Communist system... though we only have American propaganda to go on (EDIT: well, not only, but largely).

Then Oil became severely depleted far too late for anyone to find a workaround and the world went to war over the few remaining drops. Then shit happened and now we have our beautiful post-apocalyptic wasteland with 1950's motifs to dick about in.

 

[MCerberus]

I think I remember reading/ seeing somewhere (possibly in intro to FO4) that the reason the theme is 50s is because the timeline split immediately after the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. In our timeline the atomic power was used for weapons and large scale nuclear reactor power.
However in Fallout the timeline went a different way - the power of the atom was used to benefit everyone by making cars/ households etc run off nuclear energy. This left the Fallout universe to stagnate in the 50s style as they had everything they wanted and had no need to develop new technology.
This doesn't really explain why the fashions don't change for so many years though....

In the lore the smaller-scale nuclear devices are actually somewhat new when the bombs fell. They were created because oil ran out. Even the nuclear-powered energy weapons are only second-generation. Power armor was a gamble to create a super-weapon to repel the invasion in Alaska (where there were drops of oil).

Society stagnated in Fallout because it was allowed to be comfortable right until it became untenable. Which could have been because there weren't any social revolutions stemming from the US's mistakes in the real world. Civil Rights were quietly moved in and accepted. Vietnam didn't happen as it did, and that changed stuff. But then this is the same level of reading as "Dune is an allegory for the post-war Middle-east". The surface-level reading is "50s robots look cool", which, honestly, is probably the right answer.

 

[LonePunman]

I like the aesthetic. Plus New Vegas is still very much old US, though perhaps more spread out from 1920's to the 60's. Gives Fallout more style and flavor than standard post-apocalypse world.

I love it, too. A rusted out, burned out shell of a 1950's futuristic nuclear turbine car is FAR more interesting to look at than, say, a Prius. Just some really creative art direction, the game designers probably really enjoy flexing their creative muscles.

 

[FalloutJack]

So, I never played FO before 3. I tried one of the isometric ones, but I found it to be quite dull. But, when I started playing FO 4, I noticed something that kind of puzzled me.

So, the bombs went off in 2077....but the fashion/music/culture is still 1950's? So, it basically just stopped changing for 120 years? Or were they saying that the 50's style was what happened in 2077 instead of the 50's? It just, seems very strange.

Because for the longest time I thought they were running it simply as an alternate universe, where this high technology was created in the 50's, and then the bombs went off. Which made sense culturally. But no, its 120 years after greasers and sock hops...and there were still greasers and sock hops.

Welcome, Ninja. Here is my take.

The first thing, of course, is that the story has not remained a total constant from start to finish, because of the franchise changing companies between Fallout 2 and 3. Not that the Fallout franchise maintains an airtight story, as is. It's a very tongue-in-cheek series that has been buggy from day one, understands it, plays with it against the fourth wall, and doesn't worry about it too much. But between the two, certain things changed. Equipment, powersuits, robots, deathclaws, etc. changed to fit with Bethesda's vision, the BoS became more dickish (Except for Elder Lyons' chapter in Fallout 3), and elements of the story itself change as it expands. I don't necessarily call them bad changes, but of course it takes some getting use to. Some Fallout fans never do. Moving on.

So, that's an outside-the-box reason. Inside the story...think of Batman: The Animated Series. Things are classy, and can get pretty darned advanced too. It's that scientific romance of the World Of Tomorrow, that life of a robot in every home, atomic super cars, and other stuff that would never work in our world or never remain that way. I've looked into this. This is the world where some of the greatest little computer advancements did not happen the way ours did. As a result, we got big clunky machines running facilities. I'm half-convinced that Fallout lives in the past history of the Aliens franchise, given how Alien: Isolation took us through a tour of 80s-style super technology, where everything's bulky and low-tech looking, but totally functional.

So, in a world where the computer did not advance like ours, where atomic energy really was seemingly limitless (until it wasn't) and became the staple for everyday life, where alot of mad science was allowed to prevale instead of normal science, you get Fallout. Fallout is the tale of a world that advanced differently and used up its much-needed resources much faster than we will. You could run it right alongside Mad Max, which was one of the many influences in Fallout. Resources are running out and people are fighting over it all? First movie. Bombs have fallen, law has fallen, and it's every man for himself? Second movie and third movie. (Mad Max being in Australia, probably very few nukes actually hit it, only enough to decimate it.) The world is poisoned and there's hardly anywhere left to go? Fury Road.

This has been Jack, talking about Fallout, signing off.