Between the years Fallout has spent exploring the nuclear post-apocalypse of America and the knowledge that Fallout 5 is somewhere on the horizon, fans might be wonder if the series will ever go globe-trotting, moving beyond the United States. Fallout never straying from American soil is made only more noticeable thanks to the announcement of Fallout: London, a fan-made passion project that highlights the untapped potential Bethesda is leaving on the table. But even with ample demand among fans, taking Fallout outside the United States erases the ideas at its heart.
A straightforward explanation as to why Fallout games are always set within America is because they are marketed toward a predominantly American audience. But while this may have been true several decades ago, Bethesda and Fallout have enough name recognition for the series to be taken in any direction without fear of losing players, not to mention how globalized the gaming industry has become. With each new game maintaining the series' American backdrop, a better reasoning for this trend is that Fallout has cultivated a particular narrative with certain political and social commentaries centered around the United States, which will continue to shape Fallout 5 and beyond.
Fallout Turned The Cold War Hot
One of Fallout's key defining story elements is that, per its namesake, it takes place in a version of America that is recovering from the nuclear fallout. But unlike the real-world parallels of America versus Russia, Fallout took a different approach and created a hypothetical timeline that ultimately replaced Russia with China, with some wondering if Fallout 5 could expand on China and its place in the story. However, the motivations behind this were still the same, modeled on the Cold War and the Red Scare that beleaguered the United States after the Second World War, a political sentiment that has been suffused through the various Fallout games.
Crucially though, Fallout does not strictly endorse an anti-communist message, but instead uses this reactionary political stance to satirize the societal attitude of American exceptionalism and uncritical patriotism. There is no better example of this than Liberty Prime, a robotic superweapon built not only to serve on the front lines, but also to act as a propagandist mascot for the Americans. Despite the absurdity of its concept and design, Liberty Prime went on to become a key part of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, as various forces tried to get a literal giant automaton to work no matter how impossible it seemed.
Fallout Let Capitalism Rule The World
But Fallout didn't restrict its commentary to politics, as the limitless capitalist nature of 1950s America is the clearest criticism the series aims for. Though there are many examples throughout the series of companies being given free rein to do as they please, the most immediate example is Fallout's Vault-Tec. Feigning to have humanity's well-being and safekeeping at heart, its various vaults were inhumane, unethical, and even included unscientific experimentation on their unwitting test subjects, with the outcomes of these tests demonstrating the dangers of what unchecked capitalists will do to further their own goals.
Arguably, there are few other places in the world where Fallout could capture the perfect blend of unfettered capitalism and patriotic exceptionalism, as the United States was at a turning point in geopolitics ahead of Fallout, priming it for The Great War. While other countries could emulate the level of technological advancement, political ideologies, and higher corporate and world powers, none would be able to compare to America in the 1950s onwards. Setting a Fallout game anywhere else would undermine the very ethos that the series embodies, especially when its most recent games continue to pull back the curtain on modern-day America.