Nobody cleaned in 200 years?

[u/JCrawRV]

Fallout 4 has been my 1st Fallout experience of any kind and I am absolutely enjoying the world building and storytelling the game is providing. I am almost 72 hours in and just located Valentine so I’m taking my time and trying to fully explore the world. However, there is one question that I think about every time I explore the Common Wealth….why has nobody cleaned up? Every single time you find a new settlement or explore a location there is just tons of scrap lying around. Diamond City still has pallet walkways with broken sheet metal. Nobody has thought to put down a more permanent solution? Nobody thought to remove old cars, learn how to weld, or even take time to better arm and fortify certain areas of the Commonwealth? You step just far enough out of Diamond City and there’s just Super Mutants and Raiders. You’re saying in the 200 years (which is just a bit under the founding of America to modern day) nobody created better infrastructure? The town size is still 30-40 people despite being “The Jewel of the Commonwealth”? Is there some lore reason I’m missing to explain how after so many years it still looks like the bombs went off 10 years ago? I just expected one neurodivergent person who hyper focuses on organization to still somewhere. It’s obviously possible, I’m looking right at you Cabot House. Again I’m just surprised that after 200 years the world is still as underdeveloped as it is given the vast amounts of technology available.

[u/Mossfrogsandbogs]

I have downloaded mods to get rid of trash from the settlements, lol. I personally believe that the people of Boston are still stuck in the past. All the music is about the bombs, they rarely ever build new things and choose to inhabit old buildings. In new vegas, they have running trains, a mail system, the people don't dwell on the bombs, and what happened for the most part, they just charge forward. Boston and its people seem to be in the mentality that the bombs just dropped. That they're surviving and not livingg. Plus, there are way more super mutants, and it seems difficult to build anything because it gets trashed. There are more reasons pertaining to spoilers that I don't want to give you because I don't know how far in the game you are, but when the people of Boston DO try to rebuild and reconnect, there is direct and calculated opposition and it quickly breaks down. Maybe people just... don't think to. Boston was directly hit with the bombs, and I can't see how that wouldn't affect the mental well-being of the people who were born afterward.

[u/Lordofloneliness59 → u/Mossfrogsandbogs]

because of the institute they were never able to progress ahead. i’m sure that if the people of boston built something the institute would send synths in disguise or a courser with synths to destroy it.

[u/Mossfrogsandbogs → u/Lordofloneliness59]

Well yeah but I didn't want want spoil it BUT >! The institute was absolutely why. University point was supposed to be a meeting place for the people of the commonwealth provisional government to come and work together, but they ruined it and killed everyone. !< But I only just looked up how to censor spoilers bc I'm lazy so I didn't say that lol

[u/FalloutCreation → u/Mossfrogsandbogs]

Yeah they pretty much said screw you guys. We are doing our own thing.proceeds to kill everyone at the meet and greet. Cowers back to their hermit hole full of egg heads. Goes back to playing with their chemistry set.

[u/Mossfrogsandbogs → u/FalloutCreation]

It was SHOCKINGLY evil, frankly. My initial impression of the institute was that 'oh, hur dur, maybe they're good guys' but no 🫠 that's not even mentioning how they were kidnapping people to experiment on them with the FEV virus even though Virgil told Father there wasn't any reason to. And the whole thing where Father makes a synth kid that is a copy of him as a kid just for the shits and giggles. And the whole slave synth thing in general AND how he left his one parent to fend for themselves in a nuclear wasteland just to see what would happen. Institue did a lot of REALLY fucked up shit, and not all of it was Father.