Bethesda's upcoming addition to the Fallout series is bringing an entirely different tone in Fallout 4 with the lighting, and it's because Fallout 3 was so darn dark. Fallout 3 definitely had the depression of being in a nuclear Fallout down to a T, but Fallout 4 will be showing us how we live on through the destruction.
Speaking with PC Power Play, Bethesda's VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines detailed the different in mood between the two games. It should be noted that while the world might be brighter, that doesn't mean the story will be about prancing through fields of flowers and appreciating the smell before it rains — this is still a Fallout game.
"The team was very self-aware that Fallout 3 was a depressing-looking world, but that was part of the motif that they were going for, which is, you emerge into this world having lived in the vault and it was very much, your father is on this quest to save humanity. Like, humanity needs saving. Look at all this. It’s horrible. Somebody has got to do something. This has got a slightly different tone to it. And not specific to the story, but just, the mood of the world is more of a, this is life, like, this is normal. This is reality now. There is no more nicely manicured lawns or white picket fences or going back to that. This is what home looks like now."
The thing about a home is that there's almost always work to do and Fallout 4's home-world is no different. Just because it's bright and cheery looking with all that sunshine, there's still the problem of living in a post-nuclear fallout world, like no housing, monsters, lack of basic necessities for existence, despair, monsters, civil war, and more.
"We now have a job to do. That’s the ‘Welcome home’ tagline [for Fallout 4], which was part of Todd’s contribution, because it does have this slightly ominous thing to it, like, ‘Welcome home.’ And you’re like, ‘Oh, home looks kind of fucked up.’ It’s also, ‘welcome home’ sort of underscores this is what home looks like. This is where you live and the whole settlement thing allows you to do a little bit of rebuilding the world and so forth, but still within this context. It’s not like you suddenly make it clean and perfect and everything is back to pre-war."
With this kind of explanation of the world of Fallout 4, it's hard to imagine not spending the next year of my life exploring every crevice and crafting amazing towns.
