Fallout Chicago: A Fallout Tactics Reckoning

Fallout Tactics is the unsung gem of the Fallout series. That's why I constantly vouch for how good, and how influential it was. Radroaches, Brotherhood airships, Enclave power armour in Fallout 3, continuing to use former Star Trek actors as voice actors, etc. Fallout Tactics is surprisingly full of things that are important to the franchise.

Tactic's Brotheehood of Steel Summary: - Abandons old dogma for the sake of practicality - Helps others to get help in return - Strives to master and understand technology - Harsh but effective justice - Allows outsiders to join their ranks - Basicly Brotherhood only in name

1. There is a whole German WW2 U-boat in a museum in Chicago. Big quest potential there. 2. Cloud gate: all hail the silver bean 3. Maybe the Elevated Trains for some interesting housing/ settlements/ transport? (I actually had a similar idea for a game set in the Southeastern US called Fallout Seared South.)

I can imagine a really dark outcome where Chinatown gets “re-organized” into a hyper-patriotic Americatown that exemplifies the worst of Prewar America’s eco-fascist attitude towards its neighboring nations and the consumerist drive that lead to nuclear oblivion.

You really f*-king got me. I, a Chicago resident, was taking notes while listening to the video. I started to tune in more when heard you talking about uptown. I go to uptown all the time to catch live shows or get a drink. My mind started to wander. "Wow! I'd love to see 'The Riv' in fallout. Or walk The Redline from there down to Addison. I'd love to build a-" "WrIgLeY'5 fIeLd" and I broke from my trance.... "an 'S? There is no-" "Home of the White Sox!" and my face turned red. I skipped back and listened to it again so ready to correct you.... Then I saw the picture. I had been punked! You knew what you were doing, and you got me.

I think it would be interesting if we could find that after the events of Fallout 4, Nick Valentine goes to find what happened to the original Valentine, and finds him goulified and has a reunion with himself.

Since trains are nuclear powered in the Fallout world, it would make sense that major post war cities would form around rail yards. Locomotives are 6000 horse power in our world (towards the max) which would keep a small town running on its own. Let alone having hundreds of them laying around. Especially given Fallout world nuclear technology effectively runs forever.

As a chicagoan, i have several thoughts on this i felt like sharing. For one, while yes we do have an Irish presence, i feel it'd be remiss to ignore our SIGNIFICANT Polish population. We had more polish people than any city outside of Poland (til new york took that because they have such a massive population; we still have a higher rate per capita), and we have an important city holiday celebrating a prominent polish figure in the history of chicago, Casimir Pulaski day. Another thought is that it feels criminal to try to recreate the chicago skyline without the sears tower (i know it's the willis tower now but too bad) and the hancock center. I'd LOVE to see a fallout-ified version of those iconic skyscrapers, maybe in ruins or maybe with somewhat more wacky architecture similar to the skyscrapers in fallout 4's boston. A fairly important aspect of downtown chicago that didn't get mentioned here is the iconic elevated train system (the L), which of course includes the Loop. Imagine a faction that uses the loop as a border of their territory, maybe building down from the elevated tracks to make it into a border wall like New Vegas, or just using it as a way to travel the city with some elevation on your side. Maybe this faction is what grew from the remnants of chicago's organized crime, and you can live inside their territory with their protection from outside threats, but also with the downsides of being ruled over by the mob. One major downside of a game set in chicago is the distinct lack of wilderness. the chicagoland area stretches for a HUGE area around the city proper; it'd be pretty hard to find forests or plains or any undeveloped space within a realistic distance from the downtown area. Undeveloped, untamed, and unknown wilderness is a pretty big part of the fallout series, so i think it would be pretty difficult to make a game without that still feel like fallout. Maybe it'd therefore be more important for DLC to focus more on that nature & wilderness, maybe with a national park like you mentioned, or going up into surrounding states' rural areas (hey, the bristol renaissance faire is right over the wisconsin border. it'd probably feel off in fallout but hey i loved it as a kid so i'm gonna mention it). If you want to get political (which the fallout series often does), chicago is a GREAT option for that. you can touch on the rampant corporatization of public life as a result of capitalism (A lot of public transit is managed by a private company (metra), many parking spaces in the city are owned by private companies, etc), the history of racism in housing (chicago has a LONG and awful history with redlining and other racist housing laws & practices), or just the overall divide between the rich and poor. I'm not sure how much of that bethesda would really want to tackle, but hey, it's there. last couple thoughts: 1) it's just very funny to think that i could visit the spot where my irl house is but in a fallout game, maybe live in whatever exists on that spot lol 2) hey, maybe due to some nuclear mishap the chicago river is PERMANENTLY green, instead of just on saint patty's day; that could also create a pretty interesting gameplay mechanic where swimming in the river is incredibly dangerous so you have to use the many many bridges if you want to get around safely, and therefore different factions fight for control of said bridges. 3) as usual, this was a fantastic video and evidently really got me thinking about my city and how it might appear in one of my favorite fictional worlds. keep up the great work Your Majesty

I feel like the canonicity of Tactics can be summed up like how Metroid: Other M is. The events of that game happened, but not as they were portrayed.

I think an interesting concept would to make Chicago highly irradiated, much like the Glowing Sea in Fallout 4, as a reference to how in the original Fallout Tactics, you never really get to visit Chicago proper. Maybe this could be why. Perhaps there can be a Vault located underneath Chicago, with the original entrance being on lower Wacker Drive, a street in Chicago which is unique for going underneath Chicago and along the riverfront. The nuke would be detonated in Millennium Park, leaving a massive crater, and exposing part of the Vault from the damage. It is the only way to enter the Vault as the original entrance is entirely underwater. It just so happens to be where the Vault's reactor was, which explains why the area is still highly radioactive around 2 centuries later.

A Fallout set in chicago would be awesome! You could have prohibition era tunnels and survivors, dig into the F:Tactics lore with remnants from the robot army (can't remember the name now). But Your Grace RadKing I would like to suggest Houston Texas for another episode of this series, I think the Lone Star state has a lot of potential for the games

I could very much imagine that the Children of Atom created some kind of pilgrimage course that starts on the Memorial statue, goes through 2 or 3 locations (like the Bullfrog Lake) and ends in the universities Fission Lab, where they have created some kind of "Cathedral of Atom".

the line about the detachment in Chicago going rogue kinda works with an idea i had for a raider gang founded by an ex BoS unit, with the gang's original identity being lost to time, but with the BoS culture intact, but mixed with raiding and chems. they'd also be operating in a region with no former permanent BoS, so to everyone there it'd be a mystery where they came from, but to the player themselves it'd be subtly hinted that they're BoS

Dark black soot-covered buildings, rampant organized crime, secret passages, weird cults, and psycho killers? My Brother in Atom, you've described Gotham City. FALLOUT: ARKHAM

I think the brotherhoods main base being the crashed airship would be cool

I think an interesting approach with Chicago being the transportation hub it is would be to use Chicago as something of a hub world, for a lack of a better word. Take a boat down the river to St Louis or a train to one of the surrounding cities. Something like Point Lookout or The Pit being smaller maps but mesh in a bit more sensically for the setting. Fast travel on the trains to go to other hub areas and cover more area without having a larger map. You could even get a bit whacky with the factions. Railway nomads, that go from city to city trading and scavenging whose origins are old train staff or something. Or turn Gary Indiana into a Vault City situation where it's (kinda) thrived post war. Canadian migrants from across the lake.Not sure what you'd do with said factions but it'd be neat I guess.

If you keep plotting out more of these great, plausible game areas, Bethesda may finally get smart and hire you! I really dig how you touched on so many aspects of what makes Chicago special. This is the kind of game design that can lead to a memorable, even legendary, player experience.

Funny you mention this my writer showed me this video, our team is currently working on a Fallout NV Expansion set in Chicago

Because of the Chicago fires, maybe having burned/burnt/Smoldering/torched/chard/ as prefixes for harder variants of wasteland creatures would be fitting. Also have Mysterious Rad Fire storms that pop up with irradiated (green?) fire in certain locations would be interesting. As always great video Rad.

I would love a crime faction you could join similar to the trigermen from f4. Just on a larger scale and joinable especially due to their presence in Chicago during the mafia golden age and probation, it would also work due to fallout 1950's vibes