(no subject)

[camwyn]

Apparently the Fallout Bible 5 indicated that penguins were extinct in the Fallout universe, but that the status of hippos and elephants was unknown. Normally I try to use material from the Fallout Bibles (interviews with the developers/programmers/etc., mostly) for background material where I can, but I had not thought to search for the status of either penguins or hippos before this, because really, why would you.

I am now debating whether to go back and edit the OOM that mentioned penguins or not. I am mightily entertained by the image of the Camden Aquarium/Philadelphia Zoo's most incongruous wildlife having survived and wound up on the menu- my original plan for the post-nuke penguins- but I have a few other species I can put in the same space instead. The alternative is, FOB5 came out in 2002, and a lot of other Fallout material from that time frame was invalidated when the license got sold to Bethesda, so either the extinct status of penguins can be invalidated as well or it can be said that the only places any penguin species survived were all in areas no one ever expected and therefore did not think about.

Third alternative is, reassign the meaning of 'penguin'. I haven't mentioned anything about them in a culinary context yet so I can just as easily say 'there's things in the river that aren't penguins' was referring to some kind of funerary practice involving dumping the corpses of nuns and/or Pittsburgh sports fans into the Schuykill. I kind of like that one.


.... look, just- if you ever had the idea that you might want a look inside my brain, you probably ought to reassess that, okay? I'm just sayin'.

Comments

[genarti]

I have to admit, given the context of the sentence, I did take a moment to remember whether the "penguins" comment was a reference to flightless waterfowl or Pittsburgh sports. For whatever that's worth.

[camwyn]

yeah, as much as I like the idea of penguins in the Schuykill winding up as the foundation meat for cheez steaks, I have other options for that. I think I'm just gonna have one of the Knights ask whoever their local guide is about the penguin comment and get told about what happens to losers from the Pitt...

[chanter1944]

I kind of figured it was a sports reference, myself. Sort of a trace callback to the vaultful of football fan people Voodoo and his companions ran into.

I've been meaning to say, speaking of vault-dweller football people: Your "We! Are! Penn! Shit!" line as one Wildcats opponent met another head-on had me in absolute cackling fits, I swear. XD On the other hand, the football chants turned battle rallying cries really were rather shiver inducing, in the 'ooooh, that's sharding cool and way more powerful than probably intended' sort of way.

[camwyn]

The penguin idea was originally the result of some extended conversations with Toaster, who had found some interesting speculations on different kinds of mutated penguin, and some pictures of prehistoric penguin reconstructions, which resulted in things that would not have been out of place in At The Mountains of Madness (which featured giant albino eyeless underground penguins as part of the scenery). I had been planning on making the descendants of the Camden Aquarium's penguin population the primary meat used in cheez steaks, and only remembered afterwards that they were a Pittsburgh sports team. Even with the statement that penguins are extinct in Fallout, I may still put them in the world somewhere- just so mutated that they've speciated. Depends on what they do with the Commonwealth in Fallout 4, because if you think I'm passing up the opportunity to use the New England Aquarium as a source of OH DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT THING, you're crazy.

As far as the sports callbacks go, though, I'm gonna be expanding on that some. There was an encounter in-game that I don't think I ever put Ellen through and I've been meaning to implement things to do with it in Philly. Glad to know the college sports Vault produced a good response, though!