Okay, so, for one of my capstones back in college (Yes, i have a degree in game writing, among other things) I did a design Bible for my vision for a Fallout game called Fallout: Great Midwest
One of the factions was the Union of Atomic Workers local 158, who've basically been keeping the majority of southeast Wisconsin up and running with power, clean water and working industry
Just a bunch of blue collar Joe's who watch out for each other and keep everything running
This sounds dope. I imagine Chicago is a nuclear wasteland at the bottom of the map, and Milwaukee is just... Exactly the same as it is right now.
Yeah, that was basically the joke, since I grew up there
that's awesome, now I'm thinking Appalachia could be a great setting as well, with the climax being the second battle of Blair Mountain
Boy do I have a fallout game for you
no kidding, which one?
Fallout 76 is set in Appalachia and the story has some decent beats. A conflict between miners and the company that ends with violent suppression of labor features in one plot line, for instance. I think it was handled by a different branch of Beth than the mainline games.
That's really cool!
You'll probably also appreciate that the villain was the Vault-Tec board of directors
Having used the information of all the vault experiments to make it so that they can basically live forever in their own personal supervault
Vault X
Vault X
I am gifted with foresight
Sounds like Fallout: Tactics
Less brains being plugged into a super computer, more organ theft and human blood bags
It's always bugged me that the Union of Atomic Workers has been in the story since '97 as a high-tech power-armor using faction and Bethesda is still like "Hmm what do people like about Fallout? The Brotherhood of Steel? Let's shove them in to everything no matter how little sense it makes".
"I figured that for every successful organization that made it in the Wasteland, there'd be ten that failed, and so I came up with some organization for Jake that explained where he got his weapons that wasn't "I used to be in the Brotherhood"... it's a throwaway bit intended to make the world a little messier; it's more believable if everything doesn't tie together neatly."
Yeah, it's such an interesting idea that there's just some guys who know how the tech works, but they're not weird about it
The main conflict with them is that they've settled into a comfortable place, they've never had to deal with a harder wasteland, so they don't really believe that the player needs any of their tech or expertise
They're not trying to keep people out, they think they can just offer safety and stability to everyone and it'll be fine
Not realizing that there are forces out there that might take advantage or even just try to take it away from them anyway
I remember someone saying this about Mad Max, like what if Australia is the only country that's fucked up and the rest of the world is doing just fine?
We never actually see china at all right? I like to imagine it's just perfectly fine, they just left america to play by itself in the irradiated wasteland
"Why did you never tell us, China?"
"You never asked. Also you tried to fucking nuke us."
Turns out that after America went into their shelters, all the surviving countries got together in the UN and agreed to treat us like an isolated island tribe in India.
The Wild Coast by Kim Stanley Robinson is basically about this; the US gets the fuck nuked out of it and then the rest of the world takes turns patrolling the US coasts to make sure nobody leaves
Is it any good? Loved the Mars trilogy but Aurora, Ministry for the Future and 2312 was disappoining.
It's one of his very early books and there isn't actually a ton that happens in it. As part of his Three Californias trilogy there was some interesting stuff but overall I'd probably consider it a pass. Though I really enjoyed Aurora and 2312, so our tastes may not necessarily align
If I remember correctly, basically every country except the United States got fucked by the war to the point of uninhabitability. The United States just got the least fucked.
The only places I remember being discussed in the story are North America, Europe, and China. Europe nuked itself to glass years before the great war. America was invading mainland China and apparently making significant progress. I don't recall anywhere else being discussed in any detail.
Sorry sweaty Fallout has to be set in ruined america and can't have functioning societies because that's what sells.
Sincerely, 
Hey, I'm going to use your comment to shamelessly self-promote my old post about how the conventions of American apocalypse media reflect the country's state as a settler colonial society!
Read through it and I agree. The lawless nature of the apocalypse results in the juvenile power fantasy of being the cool strong badass who changes the world all on their own (typically through violence), which fulfills a kind of libertarian dream where people are able to vicariously exercise their authority, which is of course in stark contrast to the real world where they are generally powerless. This is exacerbated by the structure in most RPGs due to having a single protagonist, and especially with Fallout due to Bethesda's design philosophy of making you the coolest biggest badass of all time around whom everything revolves. At the end of the day it all comes back to the yeoman farmer fantasy, where everybody (read: white men) would be able to own and work some tract of land (though in reality most of the work would be done by slaves, and the land was stolen through genocide), which has persisted since the founding of this hellhole.
The Postman by David Brin is more or less about this. Also, credit to the OG fallouts - You do change the world, a lot, but it's mostly incidental to what you were doing at the time. Like you save Tandy from some radscorpions early in the first game, and then she goes on to become President of the NCR. It's less "This guy is the only person with agency" and more that people whose lives you touch while you're passing through go on to live their own lives, but you helped.
GOOD post
Starfield is set 200 years in the future in a world in which we made earth completely uninhabitable and the two big factions always at war with each other are san francisco liberals and cowboy-cosplay libertarians. I don't think anyone at Bethesda even has the capacity to imagine anything other than 20th century american capitalism.
Lmao it cracks my up how ever since Skyrim every Bethesda game has factions that boil down to the most surface level version of the Democrats and Republicans.
Satire of a communist ex country from a leftist perspective sounds good on paper. But I wouldn't like any lib to see it. Hell, I would refuse to watch it knowing I'm too lib to enjoy it properly
I really want one set in Mexico for some reason.
Fallout Sonora, full conversion mod for FO2, with lore friendly sombrero power armor, check it out
with lore friendly sombrero power armor,
oh i don't think i've ever seen a better string of 6 words before
There was a good looking mod set in either Mexico or New Mexico that looked interesting but I don’t remember. Over all Mexico as a setting would fuck so hard.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Shi
Kind of already happened. It's 90s levels of racism, but the crew of the Shi Huang Di 
crashed in San Fran after the war and used the nuclear reactor and AI computer from their sub to build a nation in the ruins. 200 years later they're a high-tech powerhouse. They're also a kinda racist "what if Shaw Brother's Kung Fu movies were real and also plasma guns"?
But canonically, the Chinese just kind of shrugged at the nuclear war and immediately re-built a prosperous high-tech society while everyone else was fucking around eating geckos and throwing sharp sticks at each other.
Posadism simulator
I've had similar thoughts about Idiocracy. What if america is the only country suffering from rampant stupidity?
That game already exists, it's called Atomic Hearts.
Is Atomic Hearts good?
Its fine. The open world elements are annoying, and tbh it would be better if it was more pared down, but its very pretty, the gunplay is decent, and seeing all the Marx and Lenin statues throughout was nice. I can't really remember the plot too well, but its basically like, futuristic gay luxury space communism is cool, and then it gets sabotaged by bad guys for Reasons.
I wouldn't call it great but I also haven't finished it, though it was alright
Definitely worth playing through (or at least watching) the first half hour or so just because of what a beautiful vision of what fully automated luxury communism could look like is presented
Erm sweaty this already exists its called Tenpenny Tower
Back when Fallout 4 was announced, I actually thought the settlement system was going to be a step towards that and you would end the game by wiping out raiders and establishing the Commonwealth as a communal federation (with an obligatory evil option alternative, of course).
God, how wrong I was...
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
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