That sharp prick of discovery when you see a can of pre-war Cram sitting on a picnic bench is a delight, and arenвЂ™t you _really_ playing a modern Fallout just to get to pick through detritus for loot?Д«ut 210 years? ItвЂ™s like someone made a typo during the writing of FalloutвЂ™s canonical timeline. ItвЂ™s great to walk beneath towering suspended highways and through deserted city streets. Its wastelandsвЂ™ tangles of buildings, sometimes weirdly intact and sometimes frozen in deterioration, are pretty much about two moments: the emotional impact of the point the bombs hit and the point you happily wander through the wreckage, possibly accompanied by a Shakespeare-quoting super mutant, perhaps brandishing a Fat Man and wearing novelty glasses, and about to stumble on a bar that references Cheers.ДЄnd thatвЂ™s mostly OK вЂ“ I think? Because open-world, because videogames, and because FalloutвЂ™s visual identity is so strong. Elsewhere, terminals chatter and glow, lights burn, radios buzz, and floors are scattered with paper.ДЇallout seems quite resolute in its lack of care that this stuff makes no sense. While weвЂ™re at it, that neon sign works? The vinyl on the boothвЂ™s seats is weathered but still bright red, the window frames are only dusted with rust. The year Napoleon claimed the crown of Italy, and the start of Thomas JeffersonвЂ™s second term as US president. If weвЂ™re in 2287 and it all kicked off in 2077, there it's been sprawled, half on the seat, half off, for 210 years. But not also clear rooms of skeletons and filing cabinets? Are they just that anarchic?Д«ack to the skeleton in that diner, judging by the rolled-up pre-war newspaper in front of it, itвЂ™s a casualty of the Great War. WhatвЂ™s this? Some raiders have taken care to put glasses on a teddy bear, prop a newspaper in its lap and perch it on a toilet seat in their base. Why wouldnвЂ™t he have cleaned up a little? He tapes his broadcasts the guy had time.ДЄnd yet the wasteland is home to all kinds of weird personal touches.

HeвЂ™d presumably been broadcasting his radio station from his bunker for a good while, having apparently established it in 2272, five years beforehand, but for some reason his rooms were filled with rubbish and broken filing cabinets. The neglected skeleton reminded me of the time I visited Fallout 3вЂ™s Three Dog. Instead of enveloping myself in all its detail, it just gets me wondering, absently, is this how it would be? Little things that nudge me out out my suspension of disbelief that this is a place.

ItвЂ™s just one of the weird little things about the world of Fallout 4 that I find confusing and alienating. Because why would you remove a skeleton from your shop? Or any of the filth thatвЂ™s accumulated on the floor? But, looking down, I notice that, despite trading from this place, she hasn't thought to remove a skeleton from one of the booths. I go inside, aiming to resolve the problem between the dealer and the son, and get into conversation with the mother. There's a guy outside called Wolfgang, a leathered drug dealer, who explains that a mother and son have set up a shop in this diner, and that he wants paying for goods he's sold to the son. So I'm wandering through Fallout 4, and I come across this old diner, sitting there, neon still lit, almost jaunty in a destroyed land.

Fallout 4 the forged