It has been a glorious week for fans of Bethesda games and all things post-apocalyptic with the release of the Fallout 4 announcement trailer on June 3rd, 2015. It has since been confirmed that Boston will be a primary game location; the trailer provided awe-inspiring footage of many historical Boston landmarks and sites we can expect to see including the Bunker Hill Monument, the USS Constitution, Fenway Park, and more.
Little else has been revealed about what else we can expect to find in Fallout 4‘s expansive world. Further details will likely be teased during Bethesda’s first ever E3 press conference on June 14th (Sunday) at 7pm PT / 10pm ET / June 15 – 3am BST. Additionally, an article published by Game Informer has announced a separate Fallout 4 panel with game director Todd Howard at its live stage booth on June 16th (Tuesday) at 2:30PM.
Until the arrival of E3, we can only imagine, speculate, and debate on where Vault hunters could explore across the state of Massachusetts. This feature suggests and highlights five iconic sites in Boston, Massachusetts that should definitely be part of Fallout 4′s ravaged and war-torn environment.
Harvard University
While the trailer appears to showcase the famous Arnold Arboretum, which is owned and maintained by Harvard University, we have yet to see any images that confirm or deny the existence of the school within the game. One would assume with its prestige and status as a perennial Boston institution that it would make an appearance. What would Harvard University be like in this post-apocalyptic world?
Perhaps similar to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (known in this world as the Institute), it has become a bastion for incredible knowledge, research, and development. Harvard University’s library is known to be the largest academic library system within the United States – mayhaps in this world, invaluable tomes have survived and been preserved. What is left of the greatest minds and intelligentsia may continue to reside within its borders. While a more optimistic fellow may assume such a cadre may be working together to preserve knowledge & rebuild civilization to its former glory, this is Fallout we are talking about – some sort of twisted underpinning has to be at play.
I’d like to think that access to knowledge gives way to create a disturbing caste system causing its scholars, colleagues, teachers, and students alike to hoard, deceive, and kill each other over mere intellectual disputes and disagreements. Such conflict can only be resolved in one way – gladiatorial combat, in the spirit locations such as Fallout 3‘s the Pitt, the Laurifer Gladiator quest in Fallout: New Vegas, or the Gladiator Pit from Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.
And where can such well-informed savagery take place? How about turning the Harvard Stadium into a gladiatorial coliseum?
The Boston Government Service Center
Even if you have never stepped a foot within the city limits of Boston, Massachusetts, the chances that you have seen and recognize this building are good. The Boston Government Service Center, home to both the state government Charles F. Hurley Building and the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center, is the filming location for the Massachusetts State Police Headquarters in Martin Scorsese’s crime drama, The Departed.
Even to the untrained eye in matters of engineering and architecture, a person can immediately tell that the Boston Government Service Center’s design is undeniably unique – it is futuristic, rugged, solid, cavernous, labyrinthine, and as imposing psychologically and physically. For more examples, check out these thumbnails below:
None of these design or aesthetic elements are by accident. Designed by architect Paul Randolph, the unfinished building’s structure originates from a school of architecture called Brutalism. Defining characteristics of Brutalist architecture include the preference & utilization of tough, rugged, building materiel (e.g. concrete, stone, brick, steel), having designs and shapes evoking the images of having strength and/or a solid mass or bulk, and ensuring designs express and maximize functionality.
It is no surprise that many of these buildings are made to look and feel like urban fortresses. This style became readily popular and was adopted in the construction of American government buildings, universities, and high-rise apartment buildings. Its true heyday beginning in the 1950s (thus connecting it to the overall classic retro culture that so heavily influences and permeates the world of Fallout), Brutalism was particularly popular in post-World War II Europe as they needed to quickly rebuild their national infrastructure ravaged by war inexpensively yet functionally efficient. It is not unreasonable to extrapolate that a similar mentality could have diffused into the minds of survivors of a nuclear apocalypse; if Brutalist structures have survived the nuclear fallout, such buildings in Boston may be a source of promise and preference to these folks.
A key element within the world-building of Fallout, in particular to the Vaults designed by the Vault-Tec Corporation, is that there belies a secretive social scientific maxim that guides the particular design and function of any given Vault. Sometimes, the results and implications are outright horrifying as elaborated in an excellent piece written by resident Fallout expert – Stan Guderski. Eerily enough, the Boston Government Service Center also follows this logic. As revealed in an excellent analysis of the building’s architecture in a treatise written by Michele Kol called “The Architecture of Insanity: Boston Government Service Center”, we are given a glimpse into the mad logic of Randolph that sought to mirror the building’s Brutalist architecture with mental health disorder psychological states, as referenced here:
In designing this post-war urban renewal mental health facility, Rudolph experimented with the idea of the “psychology of space.” The Lindemann Center, a Brutalist mammoth of jagged stone appears cold, intimidating and alien and was the perfect location for the paranoia-inducing 2006 Martin Scorsese crime film The Departed. With its sci-fi looking exterior, cave-like corridors, amorphous passageways and spiral staircases, it can often be disorientating and psychologically disturbing…
…he had hoped to create a landscape that would reflect the interior mental states of inmates suffering from Alzheimer’s, dementia or schizophrenia. Armed with his theory of psychology, Rudolph tried to recreate the hallucinogenic or exaggerated mental and emotional states of the insane with neverending inchoate corridors, a chapel with a dismal atmosphere and macabre twisting stairways, one of which, like an oubliette in a medieval keep, leads nowhere…
Judging from what Kol had written, Randolph and his Brutalist creations would be right at home under the employment of Vault-Tec Corporation.
Woody’s L Street Tavern
As a Vault Hunter, your prime directive is to survive the wasteland and all of its horrors. You are likely to do anything just to keep your body alive and functioning long enough to see the next sunrise and sunset. Survival isn’t cheap though. You may find yourself foraging, looting, taking on jobs and errands, or straight up murdering & looting others to fill your personal coffers with bottle caps. Once in while though, fortune may smile upon you and land you with a generous payday. Where could you possibly spend your newfound wealth – preferably on drinks and questionable life decisions? Look no further than Woody’s L St. Tavern.
If this bar looks or sounds familiar to you, your instincts are correct. Its real life counterpart, Woody’s L Street Tavern in the neighborhood of Southie, is the filming location for the famous bar scene in Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon promptly embarrasses and humiliates a collegiate poser. In the Fallout world its patrons may be less pretentious, stuck up, or reek less with the stench of bourgeois – but you can bet that petty bar fights will be as common an occurrence as ever. The tavern will always have its share of wild, colorful, and shady characters to interact with, but would be an invaluable hub of information, jobs & side-quests. But most importantly, you can take a load off here and crack open an ice cold Nuka-Cola!
All we have to say is – how do you like ‘dem apples?
The Boston Harbor Islands – the “Shutter Islands”
In February of 2010, Martin Scorsese’s psychological thriller Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and Ben Kingsley was released in theaters. The movie follows the disturbing events of a U.S. Marshall criminal investigation gone awry taking place at the fictional Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane on Shutter Island in the Boston Harbor. While Shutter Island is a fictional place, the film’s hospital and island backdrops were inspired by Long Island (one of the various Boston Harbor Islands) and the author’s (Dennis Lehane) experiences visiting it as a child,
Nevertheless, the Boston Harbor Islands are hosts to a dark and disturbing history. According to the Union Park Press, a local online blog in Boston that reported on the history of these locales, the islands have had the unsettling reputation for being a Boston’s “dump” for undesirables and outcasts. Many of these islands became the de facto founding sites for prisons, poorhouses, youth detention centers, and psychiatric hospitals. In the 18th century, numerous island chains were used as major quarantine zones to protect the mainland populations from the risk of smallpox and other deadly outbreaks.
In a way, the islands are a mass gravesite spanning many generations from that of the original Native Americans who inhabited it, the ruins of numerous and decrepit military bases and bunkers, to the cemeteries of those who died by disease.
Imagine in the world of Fallout 4, leading up to and including its trademark 1950s flavor and beyond into the post-nuclear apocalyptic age, these “Shutter Islands” were still being used as reconstituted Alcatraz-like sites. The old rundown military installations, detention centers, and psychiatric hospitals have been reopened. Except now it is home to the very worst of the wasteland’s psychotics, mutants, criminals, the sick & infected patrolled by robotic wardens with ferries or airships being the only way in or out. Swimming isn’t an option because the waters are irradiated and highly toxic. And you find yourself stuck on one of these islands in need of escape. Let’s just hope the story doesn’t end with you on a date with a doctor, a scalpel, and a lobotomy, shall we?
The Baudelaire Mansion – 28 Prospero Place, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
The Baudelaire Mansion is the first and titular setting audiences are introduced to in the 2004 black comedy film, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. The movie stars Jim Carrey as the titular Count Olaf – who attempts to usurp the family fortune from its rightful young heirs, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, after a mysterious fire had killed their parents.
While influenced by Lemony Snicket’s famous novels, the film (and therefore its setting in Boston, Massachusetts) is not considered canon. Nevertheless, the movie remains faithful and consistent in establishing the secret and cryptic nature of Baudelaire Mansion. The books had mentioned that the majestic manor was home to every sort of book imaginable, and has also contained secret passageways to other locations in the town. By the end of the film, it was discovered via a letter (with an attached address that confirmed the film’s events taking place in Boston) that there was more to be discovered about their home and their parents. The letter had revealed that they were members of a secret society.
The idea of secret societies is one that has been visited before within the Fallout games. For example, in Fallout: New Vegas, players can encounter members of the White Glove Society. The White Glove Society is an organization that works at the Ultra-Luxe (an opulent hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip) with a fanatical obsession in providing the best service, food, and comforts for its patrons. Its membership and its ruler makes it feel like a cult – one that is lead by Marjorie, the premiere manager of the Gormand, a famous meat restaurant. The Gourmand is famous for serving steaks which may or may not be made out of ground up meat once belonging to innocent hotel & casino guests. Best not to mention or make accusatory statements concerning cannibalism – it’s impolite, you know.
In the same darkly comedic execution of the former, it would be fascinating if Bethesda would revisit and revitalize themes of secret societies, cults, and clandestine cabals that may have, or still, operate in the Bostonian underworld such as that of the Baudelaire family & their mysterious abode.
With its incredibly rich history, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg of what is possible to see and explore in Bethesda’s vision of a post-apocalyptic Boston. What sites, locations, and landmarks do you think should be included in Fallout 4? Feel free to comment and share below!
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