Summary
Fallout 4takes place in a universe full of rich lore, much of it established in the originalFalloutgame, then expanded on over various installments and spin-offs. Of course, with so many titles and now a newFalloutseries on Prime Video, more than a few plot holes have been noticed over the years by eagle-eyed fans of the franchise. While some can be hand-waved away as minor inconsistencies, others can leave people scratching their heads as they try to figure out things that just don’t add up.
Fallout 4is set 200 years after the bombs fellduring the brief Great War, the culmination of the decades long Resource War that plagued that version of Earth. Although civilization was they knew it ended,the people of this world endured and made strides to rebuild, despite how dangerous the wasteland is now.Fallout 4’s Commonwealth is one such dangerous place, where death is common place and every day is a fight for survival.
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Fallout 4’s Skeletons Don’t Make Sense At First Glance
There Might Be Good Reasons They Aren’t Dust
One particular plot hole had Reddit userTypeWriterFoodso baffled they posted in an effort to get an answer. As they recounted their recent new adventures inFallout 4,they mentioned how strange it was that 200 years after the bombs,settlement locationsand other areas were still littered with skeletons. Ultimately, their question for the community was:Why, after all these centuries, have the dead gone unburiedand people happily build next to skeletons? While at first glance this does seem like a glaring oversight, there might actually be some good reasons, both realistic and in-game.
Real World Reason For Skeletons In Fallout 4
They Enable An Extra Level Of Storytelling
The most obvious reason why the Commonwealth, and the Capital Wasteland ofFallout 3, still have skeletons all over the place is environmental storytelling.Using elements of the world, be it skeletons, graffiti or other objects, to paint a picture of what could have happened in that spaceand allow the player to fill in the blanks. This is a staple of many Bethesda games and there are countless great examples, not just in the studio’sFalloutinstallments, but alsoSkyrim,and more recently,Starfield.
InFallout, it is used to effectively convey the decaying nature of the world by incorporating the deceased into the narrative that is being alluded to.Each tableau tells its own story of those individuals while still adding to the overall themethat civilization is dead. Although the setting ofFallout 4realistically looks like only 25–30 years after the bombs, with many wooden buildings still intact and pre-war skeletons that should have decayed after being exposed to the elements for 200 years, creative license is used to allow them to be a part of the story.
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Compelling In-Universe Reasons For The Many Skeletons
Cultural Attitudes & Priorities Have Changed Over 200 Years
Of course, real world and game mechanic reasons don’t fully explain away plot holes in a satisfactory way. However, there are a few in-game reasons why people living in theFalloutuniverse have turned a blind eye to the numerous skeletons dotted around. With one reason indicated in theFalloutTV series being thatpeople just don’t care and no one does any maintenance beyond the bare minimum.
This could be seen as an attitude shift in the population towards “not my job, not my problem,” whereif something isn’t impacting them directly, then people will just ignore it. There could also be an aspect of simply getting used to how the world looks and becoming accustomed to seeing the dead all around. However, there could also be an element of the lack of resources needed to properly clean up and bury the millions of dead after the bombs were dropped, since the pre-war US had been involved in the Resource Wars since the 2060s.
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There is also the possibility that some of the skeletons and deceased have been removed and buried over the 200 years since the bombs fell. Ignoring the reality of their bones simply not surviving two centuries, some pre-war skeleton must have been moved or there would be far more of them around given the predicted death toll of the Great War.Not every skeleton seen inFallout 4’s Commonwealth could be 200 years old.After all, the wasteland is very dangerous and there are scavenging animals such as packs of dogs, bloodbugs, etc.
When settlement building, skeletons and some other objects are not scrapable without using mods or console commands.
However, one of the more compelling arguments against the skeletons’ presence being a plot hole is that in the 200 years since the bombs, there have been several cultural shifts.200 years would allow for roughly six generations of people to form their own attitudes towards the deadthat would have been informed by their parents and grandparents immediate concerns following the bombs. The immediate focus in the aftermath of the Great War would have been on survival, not clean up.
This could easily bleed through into the next generation to the point thatthey don’t see skeletons and the dead in the same way pre-war society would have. Influencing this could be the fact that, immediately after the bombs, handling the dead may not have been safe and that the idea of staying away from the skeletons or just leaving them might have been passed along through generations. All of these theories feed into the idea thatFallout 4’s skeletons might be indicators of new social perspectives on the dead rather than blatant plot holes.
Source:TypeWriterFood/Reddit
Fallout 4
Bethesda’s action RPG Fallout 4 puts players into the vault suit of the Lone Survivor, a pre-war soldier from an alternate future cryogenically frozen inside Vault 111. After their infant son is kidnapped, they venture out into the irradiated wasteland of the Commonwealth to scour the ruins of Boston for any sign of him. In doing so, they encounter various factions and companions and use an array of skills and abilities to navigate the apocalyptic remnants of society.
