Gamr Drivl: "Fallout New Orleans"

War. War never changes.

In the beginning, there was conflict. Whether you believe one brother killed another out of jealousy, or that one tribe of risen apes slaughtered the next, there has always been war. The details don't matter-- the peoples involved, the weapons they used, or the stakes in play-- there has always been war in the pit of the human heart.

But in the 21st Century, these were the specifics-- mankind had depleted the world of resources. As forces like Russia and the European Commonwealth crumbled under their hungry infrastructure, the last two remaining superpowers, China and America, were at each other's throats. Then, on the 23rd of October in the year 2077, it all came to an end. Nuclear fire consumed the lands, the seas boiled, and radiation baked the skies. The world died.

But somehow, it didn't. There were survivors, eking out an existence in the wasteland. People band together to form new tribes, towns, cities, even new nations. New beliefs. A new world born out of the ashes of the old. But even in this new world, filled with both despair and hope, there will be strife. Because war... 

War never changes. 

I think and expound for some length about ideas for a new Fallout game below the break.

The Fallout Universe

I started developing an interest in the Fallout universe when Bethesda Software released Fallout 3, which was set in the Capital Wasteland, essentially right in my backyard, as I live in Northern Virginia. (Hell, I live within a couple miles of Tranquility Lane. Legit.) Naturally, I was intrigued at seeing how Fallout's nuclear apocalypse would change the landscape, both figuratively and literally, of the area.

For those who don't know, the Fallout universe is set in an alternate timeline that diverged after the 1960s. Great advancements happened in technology, especially in the early 21st century, with the development of such technology as holographic media, robotics, and military equipment such as the T-51b power armor. But all of this advancement came at great expenditure of resources, leading to the "resource wars." Tensions between the United States and China led to "The Great War," the final nuclear exchange that ended the world as they knew it. The games since then have been set a century or later since the War, in the wasteland left behind by the nukes.

I'll admit I haven't played all of the games in the Fallout franchise, but I'm endlessly fascinated by the lore available for the dedicated explorer of any part of the Wasteland. Reading up on information found on old computer terminals and from artifacts left behind will show how screwed up the world was even before the bombs fell. There are plenty of sources out there for this information. Lately I've taken to watching Oxhorn's Fallout lore videos, as he'll do comprehensive explorations of nearly every location there is to find in the more recent games of the franchise, though he's started delving into Fallout and Fallout 2.

So far the franchise has explored California (FO1 and FO2), the Midwest (FO Tactics), the DC Metropolitan Area (FO3), Las Vegas and the Mojave (FO: New Vegas), and New England (FO4), so where to explore next?

I'd say, let's put it in New Orleans. 

Why N'Awlins?

As I've made plain in some of my other blog entries, both about video games and wrestling, I like the potential for story-telling. I also love world-building and even with a lot of the established history of the Fallout universe known, there's plenty of room to add to it.

New Orleans is a city with a great deal of culture to it. Even if a lot of that culture won't have survived the Great War intact or in the same shape, there's lots of opportunity to show how it could have been warped by the wastelanders who don't understand it. We've seen how this can happen already. In FO4, you can meet Moe Cronin in Diamond City, a baseball fan who honestly believes that his favorite sport was essentially gladiatorial combat where the two teams beat each other to death with bats, among other things. (And if your Sole Survivor, who lived before the bombs fell, tells him how the game was actually played, Moe just grumbles, "I like my version better.")

Now, I'm no expert on how the world would change geographically in the wake of a nuclear apocalypse, though I accept that coastal flooding would play a major role. And maybe in such an event, New Orleans would basically be doomed in reality. But this is a video game, and an alternate timeline besides, so in the words of Adam Savage, "I reject your reality, and substitute my own." It can easily be fudged how N'Awlins would be spared the massive flooding that would utterly destroy the city. Maybe some kind of coastal wall was constructed, at great expense, to protect against coastal tides or something, in the wake of a Katrina-esque hurricane that struck before the Great War.

Indeed, it's been established in the Fallout canon that governmental overspending was a thing, and resources were starting to get scarce, leading to the kick-off of conflicts between America and China that triggered the war. It wouldn't be much of a stretch for some Louisiana governor to build the coastal wall, only for the project to go over-budget, and possibly also have some construction issues to allow for flooding to happen anyway. (Albeit at lesser levels, so the map is still navigable.) This shoddy construction, combined with the bombs falling, would lead to damage in the wall, allowing for flooding issues, and creating the "Bayou Wasteland."

Furthermore, such a project and the lore that would be available for it in exploring buildings and locations would be a great way to also show off the governmental corruption that was also present in great force in pre-war America. I know that my friend Allan Craig, who lives in Louisiana, could attest to how corrupt things are in New Orleans. (Disclaimer: This is just hearsay, I have no knowledge of how true this is, so spare the hate. Again, this is alternate timeline stuff, not reality.)

New Gameplay: Underwater Combat

One thing that a new Fallout game would need is something new besides just location. Something to make it more than just a "re-skin" of old content. Fallout 3 brought us into the first-person perspective realm. Fallout 4 introduced the concept of not only a player-character who had lived before the war, but gave the player-character a voice as well. It also brought crafting into the franchise, with not only crafting armor and weapons and chems for yourself, but also constructing homes and communities for the various settlers in the Commonwealth, to try to rebuild society.

What I would add in Fallout New Orleans is underwater exploration. You can technically explore underwater in the previous games, from swimming around with a rebreather or Aqua Boy perk, to walking along the underwater surface in your power armor. But what I'd propose is not only this, but new, specialized equipment, along with some element of underwater combat.

Special weaponry would obviously be required for underwater combat, modified guns or spears/tridents for melee. (Energy weapons wouldn't work underwater for obvious reasons, and I have this mental image of someone forgetting that trying to use them anyway ending in electrocution for the poor bugger.) Maybe there is some specialized power armor that is more maneuverable underwater, and can even function more like a submersible than just "sink like a stone and walk."

What kind of enemies would you find underwater? Mutant sea creatures. Mirelurks are an obvious one, along with various adaptations of other swampy creatures such as could be found in Fallout 4's Far Harbor DLC. Indeed, that DLC also hints at the existence of things such as ghoul whales, so a ghoul shark or squid would be a nice, terrifying high-level threat to encounter.

I almost wanted to add the possibility of underwater ghouls, but despite their somewhat zombified appearance, ghouls are not actually undead, just horribly mutated and burned people who still need to breathe and eat. So the prospect of some mission including an underwater "hold the line" combat section, fighting off a horde of shambling and lurching ghouls, sadly wouldn't be possible.

The Factions of the Wasteland

One thing that there's never any shortage of in the Fallout universe are enemies to fight. From ever-present raider gangs, to ghouls and creatures, to hostile factions, to Super Mutants. This wouldn't change in Fallout New Orleans.

Super Mutants, being one of the iconic enemy types of the franchise, would of course make their return. Some Vault in the Bayou Wasteland could have been conducting experiments with the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV) that created the Super Mutants, who now have set up shop in various locations throughout the map.

The Brotherhood of Steel would also have to have a presence here. They are also an iconic part of the franchise. I'm up in the air about how friendly they'd be, however. The B.O.S. from FO3 were pretty close to heroic, but the faction we met in New Vegas was insular, xenophobic, and all but refused to share their knowledge with outsiders. And in FO4 their xenophobic tendencies had been dialed up, so anything non-human-- which included ghouls and synths-- was to be exterminated. Part of me wants to say tone back those latter versions and bring back some of their more noble aspects.

As for your "big bad" faction, that I'm still not sure about. FO2 and FO3 gave us The Enclave as the bad guys for the story campaign, the remnant of the pre-war government and military-industrial complex that held themselves to be "the last bastion of pure-blooded humanity." FO4 introduced the Institute, created out of an MIT-like university, who had been trying to replace the humans living in the Commonwealth with synths and struck down hard on anyone that took too great an interest in their business.

New Vegas introduced us to Caesar's Legion, which had been based on a post-war intellectual's study of the Roman Empire and its military, but which enslaved those it defeated and was brutal in its tactics. The Legion controlled territory east of the Colorado River and had been expanding westward until bumping into the New California Republic, leading to one of the central conflicts of New Vegas.  It wouldn't be much of a stretch to see them turning their sights eastward after what went down there.

Or the big bad enemy faction could be someone totally different. Some new group that's sprung up in the time since the war, or someone that's a significant threat locally that never blew up to national attention.

Underlying Themes

I think it would be important to show that, in spite of the conflicts between (and within) factions, the Bayou Wasteland is getting back on its feet. This was a theme that Bethesda put in Fallout 4, partly in response to the bleak "brown-ness" of Fallout 3. Timeline-wise, it's now getting on at least 210 years since the Great War, and things are gradually getting better. Establishing hope for the future should be a key story element for the "good" playthroughs. And that's partly down to me generally being optimistic about the future.

A lot of other themes for the game would depend heavily on what kind of central storyline the developers would want to create. And by that, I mean what the inciting reason for the player-character entering the wasteland. The Vault Dweller from FO1 had been sent out to find a replacement water-chip to repair a vital piece of equipment for their Vault. The Chosen One from FO2 had been sent by their home in Arroyo to find a Garden of Eden Creation Kit to save their dying community. FO3's Lone Wanderer was more or less exiled from their home in Vault 101 and were just trying to find their missing father. The Courier from New Vegas was looking to find the Platinum Chip they'd been tasked with delivering, and with getting some measure of revenge on Benny, the scumbag who'd betrayed them. FO4's Sole Survivor wanted to find their kidnapped son and get some revenge for the murder of their spouse.

Those were all the basic inciting story for the player-characters, but obviously players will do whatever they want once they set out into the wasteland. But with the exception of New Vegas, at the core of each character's drive to explore the wasteland was family and community-- saving one's home, reuniting with family, building a community. So whoever the Fallout New Orleans character would end up being-- a Vault-dweller or otherwise-- this same theme should drive their initial reasons for heading into the Bayou Wasteland: family and community.

Wrapping Up

Obviously, this is all just very basic stuff, and no real story to any of it, but it's something that's been bouncing around in my brain for a while. I'd toyed with the idea of setting it somewhere else, like the Midwest (even dubbing its locale "The Midwastes" and having the major nearby city be Chicago), but I feel there's untapped potential with a New Orleans setting.

I don't know when the next blog post will come, or what it will be about, but as always, watch this space for more drivel dribbling from my dome.