Hey everyone! Wanderer101 here. I am setting up a little series of threads I like to call Lore Discussion! In this we all take an element of Bethesda's lore an try to make it somewhat consistent with the rest of the games! Because consistency must be a forbidden topic at the Bethesda Offices... well that or they are simply forgetful.

Most likely that. They might be Fallout fans but they are nowhere near our level an fandom-ness that making mistakes is something that will occasionally happen.

Today's topic is the US Army of Fallout's standard issue weapons. Throughout the new Fallout games (3, 4, New Vegas) and even in the originals we find a variety of weapons that are said to be military but the sheer number of them means it can't be true could it. They all can't be standard issue for the army. We're going to dig through our crates of plundered guns and see which ones are actually used the US military

Let's start off with the R91 Assault Rifle. If you played Fallout 3 this baby is your standard weapon for much of the game.

Chambered in 5.56mm ammunition this weapon is both stated and shown in-game to be the US Army and the US National Guard (or at least those stationed in DC's) main weapon. Despite that it isn't seen or heard of at all in the west coast.

No one interested? No one?

Lets start off with why is it only in the DC area? I think that is is primarily due to the fact that it was being produced near the end of the war. I say this because it is called the R91 and not an M91. I believe that the M series rifles like the M16 and what not were being replaced by the r91 and that the R91 was primarily being produced there in Washington DC. That’s why when you look at fallout new vegas you have rifles that look like the M4 and M16.

That is a good explanation. They could have been manufactured in Pittsburgh which is why you only find them in the DC-Pittsburgh area.

Though the Operation Anchorage DLC shows that it was the standard weapon for the US Army. Just about every US soldier you see is carrying one. Since the US Army was deployed domestically before the war to put down food/energy riots you should be seeing alot of them scattered around the wastes.

speaking of the operation anchorage dlc theres the alloy steel r91. Now this kind of ties into theResource war because alloy steel is just steel that has different metals mixed in with it like aluminum for example. I find the alloy assault rifle important because of the resource war, the US is running out of regular steel for the war effort so they had to come up with new ways to make weapons hence the alloy steel assault rifle.

"R91" Assault Rifle is good at far situations, it has it's best in accuracy, but terrible in Rate of Fire and Damage. This AR would be likely comparable to M16.
The rifle's ammo type and receiver makes this gun a mid-terrible tier.

I'm likely just blanking, but did F1/F2 ever show an AR that was supposed to military standard issue? In F1, the only assault rifle around was the AK, and that surely wasn't standard issue. F2, I can't remember its weapons much, because I don't like that game's dumb tone, but maybe it introduced such a thing. The closest thing I can think of to military weapons in F1, at least, were the big guns, energy weapons, probably, and the DKS rifle. Those seemed pretty fit for a military.

The thing is, if F1/F2 never introduced such things, then for me, the R91 is an easy retcon. After all, you don't see any of F2's new weapons in F1, despite some of them making sense. In which case, I would say the weird part is FNV introducing the M4 and M16 as common weapons, when you would think the West Coast, with all of its military facilities, would include more standard issue military weapons like the R91. This applies doubly so for Vault 34, which includes all sorts of other weapons, but not a single R91?

If you want easily retconned the look no furthur than the Assault Rifle in Fallout 4.

This thing looks like it just stepped of the battlefield of World War 1 or World War 2 if your feeling generous. I don't see the US Army continuing to use this bulky thing though if you insist on keeping it in the lore you could say it was an assault rifle designed to be used by power armor forces.

I don't really see how the F4's Assault Rifle would be standard issue, though. I'm pretty sure that the US Military would prefer a nimble weapon over such a big clunky thing, even at the cost of a lower rate of fire.

Wanderer101 wrote:

This thing looks like it just stepped of the battlefield of World War 1 or World War 2 if your feeling generous.

I'm not sure anyone could be generous to say it came out of WWII. That water jacket immediately draws my mind to the Lewis gun every single time I see that big, ugly, dumb piece of shit, and the Lewis gun, predictably, was used a fair chunk in WWI, but was utterly replaced by WWII with the Bren. To be honest, I think most of F4's weapon design is absolutely garbage, and this is certainly one of the biggest offenders. The R91 had clear inspiration from the G3, and looks, therefore, like a proper military AR that troops would use. I can't even pretend that F4's AR is from Fallout's version of WWI, because until the late '50s to mid '60s or so, the Fallout timeline doesn't break from our own. So it's just a fuckup. Next time I install F4, I'm installing the R91 mod as a replacer and retconning the whole thing out of the game.

@McSeeven
You'd be correct. Any trooper would tell you that a clunky bastard in your hands when the enemy doesn't have a clunky bastard in theirs just makes you that much easier to kill, and them that much harder. There's a reason why weapons like the BAR weren't missed much when they were replaced, even if it was a good weapon. It was just too damn heavy. Not to mention another HUGE problem with F4's AR being standard issue: Look at all the metal and overdesigned elements of that fuckin' thing. This is what normal people would call 'expensive as hell'. Keep in mind, in WW2, the US was spending something like $220 - $250 per Thompson it produced. Today, that's between 3k to 3.5k per gun. The entire war, the Thompson was altered to be made cheaper and cheaper, eventually needing a quicker, cheaper alternative instead, which became the Grease Gun. Point being, the military doesn't like guns that are expensive and slow to mass-produce. They want a bunch of guns quickly and cheaply. Between the tons of metal and the wood on F4's AR, it's certainly neither and, as established, it's ridiculously heavy, as well. This would never get adopted by a post-WWII America.

InnocentClarke wrote:

Wanderer101 wrote:

This thing looks like it just stepped of the battlefield of World War 1 or World War 2 if your feeling generous.

I'm not sure anyone could be generous to say it came out of WWII. That water jacket immediately draws my mind to the Lewis gun every single time I see that big, ugly, dumb piece of shit, and the Lewis gun, predictably, was used a fair chunk in WWI, but was utterly replaced by WWII with the Bren. To be honest, I think most of F4's weapon design is absolutely garbage, and this is certainly one of the biggest offenders. The R91 had clear inspiration from the G3, and looks, therefore, like a proper military AR that troops would use. I can't even pretend that F4's AR is from Fallout's version of WWI, because until the late '50s to mid '60s or so, the Fallout timeline doesn't break from our own. So it's just a fuckup. Next time I install F4, I'm installing the R91 mod as a replacer and retconning the whole thing out of the game.

@McSeeven
You'd be correct. Any trooper would tell you that a clunky bastard in your hands when the enemy doesn't have a clunky bastard in theirs just makes you that much easier to kill, and them that much harder. There's a reason why weapons like the BAR weren't missed much when they were replaced, even if it was a good weapon. It was just too damn heavy. Not to mention another HUGE problem with F4's AR being standard issue: Look at all the metal and overdesigned elements of that fuckin' thing. This is what normal people would call 'expensive as hell'. Keep in mind, in WW2, the US was spending something like $220 - $250 per Thompson it produced. Today, that's between 3k to 3.5k per gun. The entire war, the Thompson was altered to be made cheaper and cheaper, eventually needing a quicker, cheaper alternative instead, which became the Grease Gun. Point being, the military doesn't like guns that are expensive and slow to mass-produce. They want a bunch of guns quickly and cheaply. Between the tons of metal and the wood on F4's AR, it's certainly neither and, as established, it's ridiculously heavy, as well. This would never get adopted by a post-WWII America.

I agree, overall F4 was a bit disappointing, especially the weapon design. It has a lot of potential, even if relying on mods though. I'd take an M4 over that big piece of shit any day.

McSeeven wrote:

overall F4 was a bit disappointing.

Man, I'd go way further than 'a bit', personally. When that E3 reveal hit, I was excited like everyone else. Almost immediately after that happened, I rewatched it in excitement, but also to check if certain things were still in place... when I noticed the Pip-Boy didn't have a 'Skills' tab, I knew F4 was fucked, well in advance of that game's launch. By the time it was coming out, I'd altered my mindset to keep myself from being depressed that Fallout as I loved it was about to die. I was hoping it'd be a huge mess so that I could laugh at it. I even got the game so I could at least have fun hating it. Ultimately, actually playing it, that facade decayed into my true self, and I played it, being as objective as I could, giving credit where it was due. By the time I was done, I'd alt-tabbed out to tell my friend of some new thing that didn't make sense about ever 5 - 30 minutes, depending on where in the game I was. That depression I was hoping to avoid set in anyway, though. The game is Ultima IX levels of betrayal. I was pissed at the game for well over a year, where talking about it for more than a few moments just made me pissed off.

I've calmed down on the game now, helped by the fact that I just headcanon F3 and F4 as their own continuity that I don't give a shit about. It has its fun moments, but man, I've likely never had a feeling of disappointment in a piece of media before in my life, and likely never will again. F4 made me, ultimately, a lot more hardline as a Fallout game, to the point where the only Fallout games I think are genuinely fantastic games are 1 and NV.

But I digress. F4's art problem stems from Adamowicz's death, I think. Some things were better, like the look of the vault suits, which I think are second only to the original design, but most things just look worse, including additions to Bethesda's own things. For instance, T-60 is uglier than T-45d, and the version of the Pip-Boy 3000 in F4 has an uglier model (not helped by the plug thing) and less intuitive interface than F3's. The architectural design is also waaay off, apparently forgetting that Fallout's art style is not '50s retro-futurism all the time, but includes elements like art deco mixed with gothic stylings.

With the weapons, I like the 10mm pistol (though not as much as F3's or the 6520, but it's nonetheless a solid design), but the hunting rifle is dumb as hell with its left-handed bolt. The AR is, as discussed, godawful, the combat rifle is literally just the combat shotgun model slightly altered, and the combat shotgun model looks strangely awkward, despite it just being a high-poly remake of F3's combat shotgun, which looked fine. The minigun is okay, but the missile launcher has a new, utterly unnecessary design to make it look more like an RPG-7 than anything else. The laser pistol/rifle look okay, but share a common problem in the game where the view model is ludicrously large. The laser gatling looks like complete garbage. The alien blaster looks like a toy, the gamma gun is just dumb from a conceptual standpoint. I like the Ripper's redesign, but what the everloving hell did they do to the super sledge? I remember being stunned to the point of having to not play the game for about an hour the first time I found a super sledge. (The series now has, count 'em, THREE super sledges.)

The game is such a mess, honestly. Look at all I said on even weapon designs alone. Bah!

Yeah... Honestly, FO4's weaponry is a mess ! Good think the only guns I use are the .45 SMG and the Double Barreled Shotgun, which are properly modeled.

By the way, are both World Wars canon in Fallout Lore ? I always wandered...

Also, since we're talking equipment and the US Army in Fallout, I always wanted to do a Operation Anchorage Overhaul, by adding more outfits and weapons to the US and Chinese troops... but I don't really know where to look for inspiration. I don't think WWII stuff would fit ( and I know an awful lot about WWII uniforms and weaponry )...

FafnirEtherion wrote:

Yeah... Honestly, FO4's weaponry is a mess ! Good think the only guns I use are the .45 SMG and the Double Barreled Shotgun, which are properly modeled.

Only problem I have with the Thompson when I played F4 was that I found it after I found both the AR and the combat rifle, and .45 ammo didn't seem too common for me, so it was completely useless for me. It's damage output simply didn't compare, which is a shame.

FafnirEtherion wrote:

By the way, are both World Wars canon in Fallout Lore ? I always wandered...

They are, indeed. Like I mentioned, the timeline split is never explicitly stated, of course, but it appears to be in the late '50s at the earliest, to around '65 at the latest. After 65, you started seeing more hippie styles creeping in, and the 70s funk aesthetic being shifted into, so it's clearly not that late. My guess would be around '61 or so.

InnocentClarke wrote:

McSeeven wrote:

overall F4 was a bit disappointing.

Man, I'd go way further than 'a bit', personally. When that E3 reveal hit, I was excited like everyone else. Almost immediately after that happened, I rewatched it in excitement, but also to check if certain things were still in place... when I noticed the Pip-Boy didn't have a 'Skills' tab, I knew F4 was fucked, well in advance of that game's launch. By the time it was coming out, I'd altered my mindset to keep myself from being depressed that Fallout as I loved it was about to die. I was hoping it'd be a huge mess so that I could laugh at it. I even got the game so I could at least have fun hating it. Ultimately, actually playing it, that facade decayed into my true self, and I played it, being as objective as I could, giving credit where it was due. By the time I was done, I'd alt-tabbed out to tell my friend of some new thing that didn't make sense about ever 5 - 30 minutes, depending on where in the game I was. That depression I was hoping to avoid set in anyway, though. The game is Ultima IX levels of betrayal. I was pissed at the game for well over a year, where talking about it for more than a few moments just made me pissed off.

I've calmed down on the game now, helped by the fact that I just headcanon F3 and F4 as their own continuity that I don't give a shit about. It has its fun moments, but man, I've likely never had a feeling of disappointment in a piece of media before in my life, and likely never will again. F4 made me, ultimately, a lot more hardline as a Fallout game, to the point where the only Fallout games I think are genuinely fantastic games are 1 and NV.

But I digress. F4's art problem stems from Adamowicz's death, I think. Some things were better, like the look of the vault suits, which I think are second only to the original design, but most things just look worse, including additions to Bethesda's own things. For instance, T-60 is uglier than T-45d, and the version of the Pip-Boy 3000 in F4 has an uglier model (not helped by the plug thing) and less intuitive interface than F3's. The architectural design is also waaay off, apparently forgetting that Fallout's art style is not '50s retro-futurism all the time, but includes elements like art deco mixed with gothic stylings.

With the weapons, I like the 10mm pistol (though not as much as F3's or the 6520, but it's nonetheless a solid design), but the hunting rifle is dumb as hell with its left-handed bolt. The AR is, as discussed, godawful, the combat rifle is literally just the combat shotgun model slightly altered, and the combat shotgun model looks strangely awkward, despite it just being a high-poly remake of F3's combat shotgun, which looked fine. The minigun is okay, but the missile launcher has a new, utterly unnecessary design to make it look more like an RPG-7 than anything else. The laser pistol/rifle look okay, but share a common problem in the game where the view model is ludicrously large. The laser gatling looks like complete garbage. The alien blaster looks like a toy, the gamma gun is just dumb from a conceptual standpoint. I like the Ripper's redesign, but what the everloving hell did they do to the super sledge? I remember being stunned to the point of having to not play the game for about an hour the first time I found a super sledge. (The series now has, count 'em, THREE super sledges.)

The game is such a mess, honestly. Look at all I said on even weapon designs alone. Bah!

I was hyped all the way through, I knew that it would be disappointing, but I still had hope. Then I had my first playthrough, which went pretty well, actually. But as soon as I finished the main quest, I didn't care for anything else anymore. And I went back to FNV

When talking about weapons in fallout 3 or 4 I think its important to remember that the people designing the guns are not gun users. The designers for fallout 1,2, and NV all had people on the design team that collected firearms but more importantly wanted a degree of realism. Bethesda went with the normal video game method of what looks cool which explains the left handed bolt action.

Oh, I realise the gun designer's problem. Therein lies my issue, however: If you're going to design firearms for a game universe that carries at least some degree of realism, then then how guns work and what is realistic and practical. A few little bits of artistic liberty are allowed, so some silliness is allowed (like the 6520's picture showing it to actually be a revolver, even if it had too many rounds for that in reality), but just having a nonsense design because it "looks cool" is simply objectively bad design when you consider the type of design you should be going for with a franchise like Fallout.

When talking about standard issue for the US military, you really need to defer to Fallout 3 Op Anchorage, and Mothership Zeta. The equipment we see US troops in these dlc using in generally the same: R91 assault rifle and N99 10mm sidearm.

I'd say that's probably standard field issue for US soldiers during the year 2077. As for Fallout 4's assault rifle, some people have floated the idea that it's the M199 assault rifle mentioned in Fallout 3, the progenitor to Fallout 3's R91, however I think that's not the case. The design of the F4 assault rifle would make it an awful field weapon. Most modern standard issue weapons favour versatility and light design for ease of use and simplicity of training. That weapon would make an awful field weapon for a regular trooper, but here's my theory: It wasn't designed for regular troopers. It's bulkier design looks far more like it was designed to be used by a soldier in power armour. It's scaled to be easier for someone in power armour to use, and the added bonus of power armour would negate the weapons bulky design flaws. I have to believe that this weapon would have been designed with power armour in mind. I've always thought that certain weapons, like pistols, would be extremely difficult to work with in power armour. Have you ever tried doing something intricate with your hand while wearing a pair of gloves? It's frustratingly difficult to manoeuvre properly when doing delicate tasks. Now imagine doing that with giant robotic gloves in the middle of a war zone. Not happening. The US army would need to design weapons that were made specifically for use with power armour to mitigate this. I'd say Fallout 4's assault rifle fits the bill.

That's not a bad theory, though the issue is that there's no other proper assault rifles in the entirety of the Boston region aside from ones made of pipe and converted combat rifles. Instead, the most plentiful AR is not the standard-issue R91, but (working with your theory), the AR made for the rarer power-armoured troops, which is very peculiar.

InnocentClarke wrote:

That's be a bad theory, though the issue is that there's no other proper assault rifles in the entirety of the Boston region aside from ones made of pipe and converted combat rifles. Instead, the most plentiful AR is not the standard-issue R91, but (working with your theory), the AR made for the rarer power-armoured troops, which is very peculiar.

Not really. Most special forces today use different equipment than regular troops. There's a reason it's called standard issue. Special forces teams are often equipped with weapons designed or modified for the highest level of performance.
Power Armour, when looking at the size and the way it is used, would, in reality, require specialised gear as well as training. The hands are larger than the average human by quite a bit. Fitting the finger through the trigger guard, holding the grip properly, let alone the entire weapon. When you go from a regular human's height, to the height of a power armour, taking into account that manoeuvrability is now completely different than it would be when not wearing power armour, wielding weapons would be completely different. The issue is never addressed ingame purely for simplicity's sake, but in reality, this would be a massive issue with the armour that would need to be addressed.

Edit: It's also worth noting that far more suits of power armour are found in boston than any other region in Fallout. Supposedly it was where T-60 troopers were deployed (T-60 which I still believe is entirely lore breaking, but still, that's what they've given us to work with) so it makes more sense that an increase in Power Armour would mean an increase in Power Armour specific gear.