Fallout 4

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Fallout 4 is an open world action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The fifth major installment in the Fallout series, the game was released worldwide on November 10, 2015 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Sanctuary Hills, Massachusetts, circa 2077 is a pleasant place to live in. You've done your service to your country and are just happy to settle down with your spouse and newborn son. And despite the worries of the age, it seems at long last that peace has finally come. That is, until the Great War finally arrives, forcing you and your family to flee to nearby Vault 111, making it just in time...only to be frozen as part of the Vault's experiment. By the time you wake up, your family's gone, centuries have passed, and you're desperate for answers in what's left of the old Commonwealth.

Fallout 4 is set in a post-apocalyptic Boston in the year 2287, 210 years after a devastating nuclear war, with a prologue set on the day the bombs fell in 2077. Gameplay is similar to Fallout 3, though significantly builds on the improvements introduced in Fallout New Vegas. The player completes various quests and acquires experience points to level up their character. With first- and third-person perspectives available, players can explore the Fallout 4 open world setting at will, allowing nonlinear gameplay. Companions can accompany the player on their voyages to assist them in battles and help with scavenging. Players have the ability to construct and deconstruct buildings and items, and use them to build a settlement, which can attract and be inhabited by non-playable characters.

Fallout 4 was rumored several times prior to the game's announcement. The game was announced on June 3, 2015, and the first gameplay footage of the game was shown at Bethesda's own conference at the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo. The game features full voice acting for the protagonist, a first in the series.

On February 16, 2016, Bethesda revealed details on the planned DLC for Fallout 4. The first of these, Automatron, was released on March 2016. This was followed by Wasteland Workshop in April, Far Harbor in May, Contraptions Workshop in June, Vault-Tec Workshop in July, and the final DLC, Nuka-World, in August.

Tropes used in Fallout 4 include:

• Adorkable: Travis, the owner and DJ of Diamond City Radio, is very shy and constantly bumbles his delivery yet still tries to do his job. His questline eventually leads him to become much more confident and having a matching smooth radio voice to boot.
• Alas, Poor Villain: If the Sole Survivor hasn't killed him before the final quest, then this happens with Father/Shaun in any ending where the player doesn't side with the Institute. Father dies knowing that his own mother/father is about to destroy his life's work, still convinced that the Institute was the only hope left in the world. His last interaction with the Sole Survivor isn't to scream in rage or pointlessly shoot at them - it's to just let out a bitter, weary sigh and quietly tell them to leave so he can die in peace. Even if you strongly disagree with his mindset and the Institute in general, it's really hard not to feel bad for him.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The titular town in the Far Harbor DLC exists in real life Maine as Bar Harbor.
• Alternate History: Further expounded upon, in addition to the existing lore. Scollay Square, where Goodneighbor is located, was a major Boston attraction before it was demolished and remodeled in real life. Likewise, in the Fallout continuity, the Boston Red Sox still hadn't won a World Series since 1918 by 2077, when in reality, the team finally did so in 2004.
• Artistic License Nuclear Physics: As in every other game in the series, the laws of physics have more in common with 1950s pulp Science! than reality.
• Best Served Cold: Nick Valentine's questline eventually leads to a confrontation with a ghoulified gangster boss named Eddie Winter who was responsible for killing the fiancee of the original Valentine. By then however, he's largely forgotten about it, having taken place over 200 years earlier.
• Big Bad: Downplayed, as the game's new Grey and Gray Morality makes it so the game's main antagonist is solely based on the different factions. However, depending on the faction the Sole Survivor chooses to side with, you'll have to go to war with one (or more) of the most powerful factions in the game - These include Elder Arthur Maxson, the Synth-discriminating leader of the Brotherhood of Steel, or "Father," the leader of the mysterious Institute.
• Big Good: Desdemona, leader of the Railroad, is rendered this by default since she's in charge of the only faction opposing the Institute at the game's beginning.
• Big Screwed-Up Family: The Cabot family as shown during their mini-questline.
  • The Sole Survivor's family also counts as this, considering how the Sole Survivor is a Fish Out of Temporal Water suffering from PTSD, their beloved husband/wife is long dead, their son Shaun is now the main leader of the Institute (and potential main antagonist), and their "replacement" child is a Synth copy of the original Shaun at 10 years old.
• Call Back: In Far Harbor, High Confessor Tektus claims that "the great prophet" Confessor Cromwell told his chapter of the Children of Atom to go north and "spread Atom's word", which is how they eventually got to the Island.
• Central Theme: A few different ones are offered over the course of the game.
  • Continuing on from New Vegas, the game has a central theme of letting go of the past and beginning again.
  • Who/what do you define yourself as when you can't define yourself as that anymore? This is mostly related to the Sole Survivor themselves and their companions. All of these characters are in some way traumatized by their past, struggling to reinvent themselves, working through some serious baggage from the past, or combination of the above.
  • Who deserves to be a part of society? While this is most obvious with the questions surrounding the Synths on how sapient they are, this really applies to all of the Wasteland's different "races". The very few "pure" humans left, irradiated humanity, Super Mutants, Ghouls, Synths, all variants of mutated folk - it ultimately doesn't matter, as they all have to live together. Unfortunately, some think they're better than others.
  • What do you have to give up/are willing to give up in order to make the world a better place?
• Cool Airship: The Prydwen. Also, potentially, the USS Constitution.
• Cool Boat: The USS Constitution. Can also count as a Cool Airship.
• The Conspiracy: Because of their relative lack of resources, the Institute controls the entire Commonwealth through a complex network of Synth spies and hired informants.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The East Coast Brotherhood of Steel incorporate elements of the Midwestern chapter in addition to some of the reforms Owyn Lyons implemented in Fallout 3. They're also mentioned as being in contact with (and ultimately answering to) the original Lost Hills Elders in the West Coast, who haven't been seen since Fallout 2.
    • The Prydwen, the Brotherhood's Cool Airship and HQ in the Commonwealth, is mentioned as being built using parts from Rivet City and assembled in the former Enclave stronghold at Adams Air Force Base. Their airship is also mentioned as being based on the designs of airships used by the Midwestern Brotherhood.
  • The Institute can be described as what the Think Tank and Big MT would be like if fully sober and sane.
  • The Minutemen are akin to a prototypical NCR crossed with the Desert Rangers seen in the first Fallout games. The founding of the NCR itself is captured in a flashback sequence via someone else's memories. Conrad Kellogg's.
  • The Railroad were previously introduced in Fallout 3 but play a much larger role here in opposing the Institute and its "slaving" of Synths.
  • In one particular section from Kellogg's memories that's accessible later on, news of the formal founding of the New California Republic and Aradesh's election as its first president can be heard on the radio.
  • Dunwich Borers, the same company that owned the infamous Dunwich Building in DC (as seen in Fallout 3), had operations around Boston that are just as Lovecraftian.
  • Quite a few characters from Fallout 3 make a return.
    • Arthur Maxson, who was just a young boy and very minor character in 3, is now Elder of the East Coast Brotherhood as well as leading the fight against the Institute. And he's brought an almost refurbished Liberty Prime with him, which can actually be brought back into action.
    • Dr. Madison Li, who's now a chief scientist at the Institute.
    • Robert Joseph MacCready, last seen as the annoying, bratty mayor of Little Lamplight, has grown up to be a mungo. And a rather handsome, pleasant, and skilled one, at that.
  • It's implied that Travis Miles of Diamond City Radio is friends with Three Dog from the Capital Wasteland, given how he's taken "fighting the good fight" to heart.
  • The family TV in the Pre-War sequence will occasionally play some of the Retraux viral commercials for Fallout 3 before returning to the news broadcast.
  • Combined with Brick Joke. But long after being teased at in one of the viral promotional videos for Fallout 3, you finally get to see Jangles, the Moon Monkey.
  • The Mechanist from the Automatron DLC is implied to be from the Capital Wasteland and shown to have taken inspiration from the same comics that cause the mess in Canterbury Commons.
• Crap Saccharine World: The Pre-War world is this, in keeping with classic Fallout tradition. But this time though, it's deconstructed, as you get to glimpse for yourself how life in Pre-War America was like. On the one hand, America is shown as rife with near-constant shortages and economic turmoil even as the stand-off with China intensifies, with civilization elsewhere on the verge of collapse; and that's not getting to the Enclave's original plans of leaving Earth altogether. At the same time however, society has noticeably changed since The Fifties, with the American Dream being pursued by anyone regardless of gender, race or even sexual inclination so long as they're not Communist. For all its flaws, people still managed to live good lives before the world as they knew it ended.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: The Institute fancies itself as this by 2287, with even its scientists' attire looking more like futuristic togas. Its shadier actions however suggest otherwise.
• Dead Man Writing: Not only Kellogg's memories. But also Kellogg's last, unspoken thoughts to the Sole Survivor before he's killed.
  • Averted in the case of Arlen Glass however. As while his logs can be found across the Commonwealth, it's revealed that he's still very much alive as a ghoul.
• Death From Above: Getting in the Brotherhood's good graces can allow the Sole Survivor to not only call in a Vertibird but also use it as transport. Defeating the Brotherhood with the Minutemen meanwhile also involves this, albeit by calling in a massive artillery strike.
• Death World: The Glowing Sea, ground zero for the nuke that was intended for Boston during the Great War.
• Defector From Decadence: Of sorts. Grand Zealot Brian Richter was the sole survivor of his Enclave squad before joining the Children of the Atom.
• Dirty Communists: Downplayed with Captain Zao, a ghoulified Chinese naval officer who's been stranded with his Yangtze submarine off Boston since the Great War. Although he's far more concerned with getting back to his homeland than continuing a conflict that ended centuries earlier, he still refers to the Sole Survivor as "capitalist" and an "American."
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: A rather subtle example; The game takes place in Massachusetts, where most people are just ordinary settlers and farmers trying to scrape by while struggling against nature in a hellish Death World. Organized society is only recently starting to form, and everyone is terrified of their loved ones being replaced with "evil" copies/infiltrators - to the point where people are turning on their families and friends, getting countless innocent people killed in the crossfire. Taking out the surprising lack of religious symbolism (relatively speaking), and the Commonwealth's clear struggles over the identities of Institute Synths can be seen as an analogue to the Salem Witch Trials.
• Driven to Suicide: The dark secret of the once-exclusive Boylston Club. Where it's revealed that just after the Great War ended, the Club's patrons (made up of some of the most distinguished figures in the Pre-War Commonwealth) committed suicide rather than face the post-apocalyptic world.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The Institute is so well hidden that the only ways to access it are either through special teleportation technology or sending in Liberty Prime to the CIT ruins to break a big hole in it.
• Empire with a Dark Secret: It's a relatively open secret among the Commonwealth's denizens that there are some shady goings-on within the Institute, enough to prompt the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel to intervene. But the full extent of its plans are so insidious that even those within the Institute try to downplay it, instead focusing more on their pretensions of progressing humanity.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Similar to Fallout 3, cars will still explode if shot more than a few times. Also counts as an example of Artistic License Nuclear Physics, as said cars are fusion powered, and produce a miniature mushroom cloud.
• Fictional Counterpart:
  • The Parsons State Insane Asylum is this to the real-world Danvers State Hospital.
  • CIT, the Commonwealth Institute of Technology, is an alternate version of the real Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aka MIT. It's no coincidence that the Institute's is hidden under it.
• Film Noir: Nick Valentine's whole persona and questline are a Fallout rendition of this, which goes beyond having his own office in Diamond City or being a synth with a Pre-War police officer's memories. Though unlike most Noir protagonists, he's rather friendly and kind-hearted for a gumshoe detective, especially compared to most everyone else in the Commonwealth.
• Fish Out of Temporal Water:
  • The Sole Survivor himself/herself, being an American citizen from before the Great War.
  • Nick Valentine, a Synth gumshoe detective who, despite his appearance acts like he's straight out an old Film Noir piece ala Humphrey Bogart. It's justified however in that his personality is that of a Pre-War police officer, whose memories and final case form part of his personal quest.
  • Vault 81, one of the handful of (if not the only) functional Vaults left, is a living microcosm of Pre-War America frozen in time. Of course, there's much more beneath the surface than meets the eye...
  • Averted with Shaun, the Sole Survivor's son. Not only was he too young to really remember what Pre-War life was like, but he was thawed out decades earlier by Kellogg and the Institute before his last living parent comes to. And by the time the Sole Survivor meets him, he's long since become known as Father, Director of the Institute.
• Foil:
  • The Minutemen are this, after a fashion, to the Enclave. While both evoke patriotic memories of Pre-War America and were thought to be dead, the Minutemen legitimately seek to help the Commonwealth and make a difference, all the while harkening back to what America wished it was. They also serve as this to the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel by being everything Lyons wished he could turn the Brotherhood into but ultimately failed in achieving, and with far less technology, resources, and influence.
  • The Brotherhood are this to themselves, or rather their incarnation in Fallout 3. Although concern for the people and their well-being remain part of the East Coast Brotherhood's creed, the main priority is once more the acquisition and preservation of advanced technology, much like the Midwest and West Coast.
    • Surprisingly, the Brotherhood are now one to Caesar's Legion. Both are powerful military organizations that have been easily conquering the entire Wasteland around them, but have recently met their match at the story's start (the Legion was soundly trounced by the NCR at the First Battle of Hoover Dam, and the Brotherhood is struggling against both the Institute and Railroad in the Commonwealth). They're also both led by charismatic authoritarian leaders with grandiose ambitions for a better world (Elder Arthur Maxson and Caesar/Edward Sallow) that have gained cults of personality (although Maxson finds them unnerving and tries to suppress them), and stylize themselves after older cultures - the Legion emulates Imperial Rome, while the East Coast BoS invoke feudalistic imagery to make themselves like both medieval Europe and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. However, the Legion deliberately refuses to advance themselves technologically, are profoundly misogynistic, and try to purposely annihilate the records of the past. The Brotherhood infuse their feudal culture with advanced Pre-War tech, are egalitarian considering the genders, and honor the memories of their US military origins. Also, the Legion was ultimately unstable and overly desperate when trying to firmly establish its "Nova Roma" in New Vegas. Meanwhile, the East Coast BoS under Maxson have already managed to pull off this need for a homeland with their control over the Capital Wasteland, and have been able to do so without making life hell for the locals (in contrast to what the Legion would've done to the Mojave's inhabitants).
  • Vault 81 is this to Vault 101. Whereas the latter was slowly dwindling into oblivion with each generation while following its stated purpose, Vault 81 remains a thriving and sane, if secluded community despite not following its intended directive.
    • There's also one to Vault 21. Both were experimental Vaults that were fully expected to result in the demise of their inhabitants (one way or another). However, while Vault 81 decided to abandon its experiments for the sake of its inhabitants, Vault 21's experiment proved to be perfectly compatible with its inhabitants' comfortable survival until Mr. House came along.
  • The Far Harbor DLC reveals DiMA to be this to the "current" Nick Valentine. Being an intelligent, old-generation synth forsaken by the Institute, albeit much more cold and robotic than Nick could ever be.
• Grey and Gray Morality: There is no clear-cut "good" or "evil" faction in the Commonwealth - the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel, the Institute, the Railroad, and the Commonwealth Minutemen all make pretty compelling arguments for why they should control the Commonwealth and guide humanity. Instead, the conflict between the Brotherhood and Institute falls more along the lines of Romanticism Versus Enlightenment, with the Brotherhood as Romantics and the Institute as Enlightened. The Minutemen and Railroad, while not actively fighting each other, also fall along the above lines.
  • Even Raiders are significantly humanized via conversations the player can overhear between them when they haven't been detected, and terminals in various Raider-controlled setting show countless shades of villainy among them.
  • There's also the conflict between Honest Dan and the town of Covenant. Dan is just trying to rescue Amelia Stockton as per his contract with Bunker Hill. However, the citizens of Covenant are made up of the survivors of Synth assassins, who infiltrated their families & friends before brutally killing them. As a result, they're trying to develop a psychological test to root out Synths. However, not only are they torturing dozens of innocent people in the process, but their test doesn't discriminate between the innocents rescued by the Railroad and Institute infiltrators.
  • The Far Harbor DLC has the conflict between the Church of the Children of Atom, the inhabitants of the titular Far Harbor, and even DiMA's Acadia. Far Harbor's inhabitants are distrustful of outsiders (particularly the Children of Atom), but the main reason for their hatred and ignorance is that they've lost numerous loved ones as the radioactive Fog drove them to the docks. The Children of Atom, despite their Church Militant nature and wish to blanket the entire Island with the Fog at the expense of Far Harbor, are not responsible for the Fog and only became more hostile due to being led by an extremist leader like Tektus. While DiMA and the Synths of Acadia live in peace and even provided Fog Condensers to Far Harbor to help them hold back the Fog, DiMA himself killed Captain Avery and replaced her with a mind-wiped Synth in the manner of the very Institute he had fled from. Despite his reason for that being peace between Acadia and Far Harbor, he can get called out on being Not So Different from the Institute. The story does have a Golden Ending, but it involves either killing Tektus or convincing him to leave so he can be replaced with a Synth to prevent a war between Far Harbor and the Children of Atom.
• Great Offscreen War: Averted, as for the first time, you get to witness the Great War as it happened.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: It's possible for the Sole Survivor to do this against the Mechanist in the Automatron DLC while dressed as the Silver Shroud. The ensuing dialogue is practically a contest on who can overact who.
• Happy Ending Override:
  • Played with for Fallout 3. The East Coast Brotherhood of Steel seized the day in the Capital Wasteland, with no small thanks to the Lone Wanderer. On the other hand, both Owyn and Sarah Lyons died not long after, many (but not all) of their reforms undone as the current Elder, Arthur Maxson once more reunited with the Outcasts and the previously estranged West Coast Brotherhood in the Lost Hills. It's also implied that the Brotherhood rules over DC like feudal overlords.
  • Averted for Fallout New Vegas: It's strongly suggested if not outright stated that the New California Republic crushed Caesar's Legion at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. It's even shown in-game that people in the Commonwealth are at least aware of Caesar's failure and the NCR's existence. The continued existence of the West Coast Brotherhood (it's even mentioned that the Brotherhood is operating on the surface again back out west) also implies that the peace treaty between the Mojave BoS and NCR has expanded to include all western BoS chapters.
• Heroic BSOD: The Sole Survivor is strongly hinted at undergoing this through a good deal of the game suffering from PTSD. Which can plausibly explain his/her at-times muted emotional reactions.
• Husky Russkie: Vadim and Yefim Bobrov in Diamond City are this, giving the impression of being a post-apocalyptic version of The Mafiya despite actually being rather amiable and friendly. They're likely descended from Soviet immigrants or delegates around Boston when the Great War happened.
• Insistent Terminology: Due to a case of Future Imperfect, the residents of Mount Desert Island in Maine (the main location of the Far Harbor DLC) only refer to it as "the Island."
• It Will Never Catch On: Conrad Kellogg's memories revealed that his parents didn't really believe that the then-newly founded NCR would really amount to anything. The Institute however averts this, doing whatever it can to keep a NCR-like Commonwealth from becoming a reality in part due to the failure surrounding the "Commonwealth Provisional Government" plan decades earlier.
• Jerkass Victim: The Mayor of Boston is revealed to have commissioned an underground shelter for himself, his family and a handful of guards using taxpayers' money. When the Great War finally happened, the survivors topside weren't too happy knowing about that, resulting in said Mayor, family and supporters dying a brutal death. Which would be tragic, if they weren't so sleazy.
• Just Before the End: The prologue sequence set in 2077, on the very day of the Great War.
• Large Ham: The Sole Survivor can be this, whether it's impersonating the Silver Shroud or taking too many chems. Not to mention the rebuilt Liberty Prime, who will guarantee that democracy is non-negotiable.
  • The Mechanist in the Automatron DLC is this to a tee. It's also revealed to be a way for the woman behind the mask to cope with her social phobias, which becomes evident once she drops the act.
• Lovecraft Country: This vibe is given off more and more the farther north you go. The Far Harbor DLC takes this even further, being set in post-apocalyptic Maine.
• Medium Blending: The game's intro is done in live-action. While gameplay-wise, it not only builds on the RPG/FPS fusion introduced in previous entries, but also incorporates certain elements like settlement construction.
  • The Automatron DLC meanwhile adds robot construction and customization into the mix. While the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC allows the Sole Survivor to become the de facto Overseer of his/her own Vault.
• A Million Is a Statistic: It's revealed in the Vault 111 logs that it was never meant to sustain the staff, guards and scientists overseeing the experiment for more than six months. As the Enclave intended to remotely observe the Vault, all the while lying to said personnel about an "All-Clear signal" coming from Vault-Tec. They were all expendable.
• Monumental Damage: Several historical landmarks in and around Boston are still standing more or less intact, and in the case of the USS Constitution, stuck on top of a building with rockets strapped on. It's justified in that the warhead meant for Boston never hit its intended target, instead landing in what's come to be known as the Glowing Sea.
  • Fenway Park has seen better days, though has long since found new life as the site of Diamond City.
• Multiple Endings: Based on the different factions the Sole Survivor sides with at the game's end.
  • The East Coast Brotherhood of Steel: The Brotherhood leads a brutal raid on the Railroad's secret headquarters and decapitates their leadership. Then, after repowering Liberty Prime, the BoS follow him on an attack on the Institute, culminating in the Brotherhood personally invading the facility before detonating the Institute's reactor.
  • The Institute: Using the Sole Survivor as their inside man, the Institute has them infiltrate the Railroad before assassinating their leaders. The Sole Survivor then leads a massive army of Synths on Boston Airport (the BoS' headquarters in the Commonwealth), reprogramming Liberty Prime to target and destroy The Prydwen.
  • The Railroad: The Railroad secretly infiltrates the Brotherhood, placing a bomb aboard The Prydwen and causing it to crash into Boston Airport. Then, using their contacts inside the Institute, the Railroad simultaneously launches an invasion and spark a Synth revolution, evacuating the Synths inside and detonating the facility's nuclear reactor.
  • The Commonwealth Minutemen: Essentially the game's "Wild Card" ending if the player sufficiently alienates the other factions. Using an abandoned maintenance tunnel, the Sole Survivor leads the Minutemen on an invasion of the Institute, storming their reactor and taking their technology for themselves in order to unify the Commonwealth. Some decisions made during this event can decide the fate of the other factions.
    • Minutemen-Railroad-Brotherhood: The "normal" ending. This ending requires the Sole Survivor to not only not become enemies with the Brotherhood during the game, but to also issue the evacuation order when destroying the Institute. This allows the Minutemen to join the Railroad in helping Synths and getting the Brotherhood's help in domesticating the region.
    • Minutemen-Brotherhood: The Sole Survivor is still friendly with the Brotherhood, but fails to throw the evacuation order while destroying the Institute. Furious for the Minutemen letting countless innocent Synths die, the Railroad declares war on them. This requires the Survivor to kill off their leadership before teaming up with the Brotherhood and taking over the region.
    • Minutemen-Railroad: The Sole Survivor has both become the Brotherhood's enemy and still throws the evacuation order when destroying the Institute. This results in the Minutemen crushing the BoS by shelling The Prydwen with their artillery. They then team up with the Railroad and peacefully take over the Commonwealth.
  • The Joke Ending: If the Sole Survivor fails to leave Sanctuary Hills quickly enough in the Pre-War sequence, the nuke drops immediately and kills everyone.
• Not So Different:
  • The Institute have some surprising similarities with Caesar's Legion. For all its scientific, enlightened and technocratic pretensions, it also seeks to purge what remains of the "corrupted" Pre-War world and create a new order. All the while treating Synths as slaves and maintaining a rather effective network of infiltrators, much like the Legion.
  • Both the Minutemen and Railroad are rather similar in their outlooks, to the point that it's possible for the two factions to join forces.
• One Nation Under Copyright: It's implied that corporations under the Enclave's influence like Vault-Tec behaved like this in Pre-War America, to the point of feigning authority over the actual government in the event of nuclear war.
• Patriotic Fervor: Downplayed somewhat, but both the Minutemen and Railroad evoke rousing shades of America at its best. Also portrayed much more positively than both the hyperjingoistic, fascist Enclave of Fallout 3 and even the mostly positive and yet still checkered variety portrayed by the NCR of New Vegas.
• Punch Clock Villain: The Vault-Tec Sales Representative in the intro, the same one the Sole Survivor stumbles upon in Goodneighbor centuries later, had nothing to do with Vault-Tec's shady activities. Seems like the company didn't put much thought on employee benefits, especially with those out-of-the-loop regarding its true nature.
• Ragnarok Proofing: Utilities seem to have held up remarkably well, given a nuclear war and over 200 years of neglect. Some buildings still have working water fountains, and working lights, computer terminals, and recorded announcements are ridiculously common.
• Really 700 Years Old:
  • Technically, the Sole Survivor and Shaun aka Father/the Director, though they Slept Through the Apocalypse.
  • Several ghouls are around who were alive when the Great War happened. Examples include Arlen Glass (a renowned toymaker responsible for Giddyup Buttercup), Kent Connolly (a diehard fan of the Silver Shroud living in Goodneighbor), Eddie Winter (an intentionally ghoulified mob boss who was responsible for killing the original Nick Valentine's fiancee) and even the Vault-Tec Sales Representative seen in the intro, who's more than shocked to see you.
  • Thanks to implants and enhancements courtesy of the Institute, Conrad Kellogg is considerably older than he appears. Old enough to remember the day the New California Republic was formally established.
  • The enigmatic, intellectually-minded and seemingly human Cabot family have managed to maintain a Pre-War lifestyle and have clear memories of how life was like generation before. This is explained as due to an immortality serum that the family patriarch, Lorenzo Cabot, discovered in an alien wreck 400 years earlier, also giving him telepathic powers in the process. Said immortality however doesn't extend to bodily harm, meaning that they're just as prone to gunfire as most anyone else in the wasteland.
• The Remnant: Initially, all that's left of the Minutemen (at least who still openly identify as such) are Preston Garvey, a handful of volunteers and a small group of wasteland refugees. It's up to the Sole Survivor however whether the Minutemen can rise into new heights or disappear forever in blood.
• Retcon: Quite a few:
  • Vertibirds and power armor more advanced than the T-51 were around before the Great War, though only in limited quantities and present only during the last years before the bombs fell post-Battle of Anchorage.
  • Drugs like Jet, which were implied to have existed prior to their discovery in FO2, are confirmed to have been around in the per-war world, implying their rediscovery in FO2 was a coincidence.
• Revenge: Part of the main plotline involves finding the man who killed your spouse and stole Shaun. And you get to confront that man, Conrad Kellogg, who even admits to expecting such a situation to be inevitable.
• Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns: Some of the guns are modeled this way, notably the Thompson and, particularly glaringly, the bolt-action hunting rifle.
• Scenery Gorn: In addition to the blasted ruins left behind by the War, there's the Glowing Sea, an irradiated hellscape where the nuclear bomb meant for Boston actually landed.
• Scenery Porn: Both the Pre-War and 2287-era Commonwealth are a sight to behold, to say the least.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: The biggest reason why Vault 81 continues to thrive is thanks to the first Overseer refusing to pull through with the Vault's true purpose, instead sealing off the few scientists who managed to make it in when the bombs fell with their lethal cargo. It helped as well that said scientists soon developed a conscience and accepted their fate.
• Shout Out: The Silver Shroud is an Affectionate Parody of old-time radio serials and comics like The Shadow.
• Tech Demo Game: Has become one for Bethseda, who have recursively used the improvements made in the engine for a backport to Skyrim, as well as serving as a test bed for their own built-in mod support and delivery platform. Nvidia even used the game with Bethseda's approval as a platform to show off their graphical capabilities with the Vault 1080 mod.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Vault 81 is a rather benevolent example. On the one hand, it's a rather upbeat time capsule of Pre-War America that's a control vault in all but name, though it's rather wary of outsiders. But its original purpose, as an testing ground for diseases and bioweapons, was never implemented in the first place. The first Overseer sealing away the few scientists meant to conduct the experiments, while said scientists developed a conscience and willingly accepted their fate.
• Troubled Production: An in-verse case. You discover that Hubris Comics was trying to make the Silver Shroud radio serials into a successful TV show. Unfortunately, it was rife with infighting, drama, and backroom passions - which proved to be all for naught as the nuclear apocalypse put said show and its creators off the air permanently.
• Wacky Wayside Tribe:
  • The Viking ghoul raiders around the FMS Northern Star wreck. They're much less wacky however in that they're strongly implied to be what's left of a Norwegian ship crew who've been stranded in the Commonwealth since the Great War. Their entirely Norwegian dialogue even highlights how they want to be left alone and just want to get home.
  • The Children of the Atom in Far Harbor, a formerly bizarre yet harmless Cult version of this, have become much more deadly and dangerous than they started as. Especially since they began as pacifists in Fallout 3, albeit with an obsession for worshiping nuclear weaponry like bombs.
  • The Hubologists, previously seen in Fallout 2 make a return in the Nuka-World DLC, only this time even more deluded. Somehow.
• Weak But Skilled: The Institute makes up for their lack of resources with a massive spy network and being excellent at espionage warfare.
• World Half Full: Compared to the Crapsack World that's the Capitol Wasteland and even the (relatively) thriving Mojave, the Commonwealth has quite a bit going for it. Only one nuclear warhead was ever launched at Boston and missed it. Despite the chaos and turmoil (as well as the deliberate machinations of the Institute), there is a stronger sense of continuity with the Pre-War world as well as a more stable semblance of civilization getting back on its feet.
  • Applies in a meta sense to what the player can do to change things, since they were unable to have a direct hand in actually rebuilding civilization, with they can now do, with the effects immediate and apparent due to the settlement mechanic.
• Wretched Hive: It's implied that at least some parts of America had become this by 2077, justifying the existence of pipe guns even in Pre-War times. With a gun magazine even featuring the "Street Guns of Detroit."
• Yellow Peril: Averted with Captain Zao. As while he hails from Pre-War China, he's an otherwise honorable if ghoulified officer who sincerely regrets his role in the Great War and just wants to return home.