Fallout has always been a post-apocalyptic sci-fi series, but the genre of each game is also deeply affected by its setting. Fallout: New Vegas, for example, took the game to the Mojave Wasteland, giving the game a distinct western influence as players became noble rangers exploring the west or cruel outlaws exploiting its people at every turn.
Fallout 5’s location should have a big impact on its genre as well. While Fallout: New Vegas leaned in to its backdrop of a revived Wild West, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 didn’t take as much advantage of the opportunity to explore how their settings could influence the game’s genre as well. That’s something Fallout 5 could experiment with by investing in the location and genre which could come with them.
Chicago has yet to appear in a Fallout game outside of the intro to Fallout: Tactics. Fallout 4 already experimented with the gangster genre with fan-favorite companion Nick Valentine, who migrated from Chicago to Boston to help take down notorious mob boss Eddie Winter. Chicago, however, could provide a setting for Fallout 5 to explore the gangster genre to the same extent that New Vegas rooted itself as a western.
Some of the most famous early gangster movies were set in Chicago, like 1931’s The Public Enemy. Mob movies – like the mob itself – began to flourish thanks to the Prohibition Era, leading to the rise of famous gangsters like Al Capone. Though alcohol can be found all over the Fallout games, the series has plenty of other fictional substances, known as chems in Fallout, which could easily provide the basis for bootlegging plotlines.
There’s a rich history of mob fiction from the ‘30s through to Scorsese movies and TV shows like The Sopranos which the developers could engage with and be influenced by. Not all mob movies take place in Chicago, but it’s certainly the USA’s most notorious mobster city, at least in fiction. It’s a genre ripe for Fallout’s trademark satirical edge, and gangster-run Chicago could provide a breath of fresh air while still sticking to the 1930s through early ‘60s aesthetics that the Fallout games are known for.
New Orleans would be a great setting for a Fallout game, as it has an incredibly distinct identity as an American city. This city has been a setting for melodramatic noir movies like 1956’s Nightmare or 1950’s Panic in the Streets.
Not only that, but New Orleans famous jazz scene would provide the game with a unique sound while the city’s iconic French Colonial architecture would make New Orleans stand out against the other Fallout games even in ruins, especially lit up at night. New Orleans is far from the only noir setting seen in movies, but could also add a healthy dose of southern gothic influence as well, while also taking players to a rarely seen part of Fallout‘s post-Great War world.
The Fallout games have already explored California, with Fallout 1 taking place in the southern part of the state. However, Fallout 5 could not only render the New California Republic as a fully explorable 3D world, but could also show something the culture of Fallout’s world has seemingly resisted for centuries: cultural change.
A game set in California could explore influences from famous countercultural biker movies like The Wild Angels and Easy Rider to revolutionary dramas like Rebel Without a Cause. Fallout takes place in a world where intense technological progress massively outpaced cultural change, and even by the late 2200s much of the culture still resembles the culture of the post-War American economic boom. California would be a great setting for a new Fallout game that begins to explore some of the change that began to take place in the 1960s as Fallout’s inhabitants begin to solidify their existence in the post-War world. Fallout hasn’t entirely avoiding the ‘60s before – Dion’s “The Wanderer” featured in Fallout 4 and its trailer showing off the Sole Survivor.
However, a Fallout 5 set in California could explore the aesthetics of the youth counterculture that began to develop as a reaction to the culture of the ‘50s. While it would go against the Fallout feel to start introducing songs by The Beatles, some of the first countercultural movies–often set in California–could provide a great basis for a transition that is only just beginning to take root.
Fallout 2 already took place in Oregon, but a Fallout game set in a post-nuclear Pacific Northwest could be a cryptozoologist’s dream come true. Washington State is known for its cryptids from its most famous, Bigfoot, to a plethora of lesser known monsters from Caddy the sea-serpent of Cadboro Bay to the Monster of Patridge Creek.
While Japanese Monster Movies like Godzilla and Mothra would later transform the genre, earlier horror films like Creature from the Black Lagoon might serve as a better basis for Fallout 5’s genre shift. If nothing else, Fallout’s lore and cartoonish way of dealing with mutation makes all of the area’s legendary creatures make perfect sense in the game’s story, while still adding a completely new feel to the series that could see everyone from scientists to big game hunters flocking to the region.
There are plenty of other places Fallout 5 could takes fans of the franchise, and plenty of other genres to give the game local flavor. The point, however, is that Fallout 5 can’t simply present players with another irradiated city scape. The Fallout games already present a heightened image of a post-War America that borders on silly at times, from Fallout: New Vegas’ Wild Wild West to the existence of old-timey Boston mobsters well into the 23rd century.
Fallout 5 could explore the aesthetics of pulp comic characters like The Shadow, already heavily referenced in Fallout 4’s Silver Shroud questline. The games could take a trip down to sunny Florida, though modders have already made significant progress on Fallout: Miami. Wherever the next game goes, Bethesda needs to make sure it doesn’t just incorporate local landmarks, but also invests heavily in the genres of fiction generated in those places.
Fallout 5 has not been announced.
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