Fallout season 2 settles a longtime fan debate over vehicles (the games need them)

There's a need for speed in the Wasteland

Fallout season 2’s finale edges closer, and with it, the answer to several questions that have plagued fans ever since season 1. However, what surprised me the most about the latest Fallout episode is how much it kick-started an old desire of mine: drivable vehicles in future Fallout games.

In Fallout season 2 episode 7, Hank MacClean (Kyle MacLachlan) and his daughter Lucy (Ella Purnell) are on their way to reverse the brainwashing machines Hank’s cooked up at the Vault-Tec office in New Vegas. Instead of walking to the mainframe, however, he suggests they take the golf cart.

Viewers will remember Hank’s been using the cart to go back and forth to the lower reaches of the vaults to grab mice for his experiments. Having been around during the Pre-War times, he handles the cart with the ease of riding a bike. Lucy, on the other hand, almost drives straight into a wall and struggles to distinguish between acceleration and braking. It’s a fun scene that highlights how the father and daughter were raised in their respective worlds.

It’s also a scene that served to remind me that, outside of being used as set dressing while players explore the Wasteland and being objects that you can blow up during combat encounters, drivable cars aren’t a thing in the Fallout games. The closest players get is Fallout 2’s Highwayman car and the various jeeps and tanks in Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. But the former vehicle can only be used for fast travel, whereas the latter is one of the few in-game instances where players can actually drive vehicles.

Both Bethesda and Obsidian have explained why that’s the case. At the time of making games like Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Fallout 4, it just wasn’t possible to include them without wreaking havoc on the games’ engines. There are also lore reasons. Fuel for the cars that are still around has already run out years ago, and considering most other vehicles like the New California Republic’s trucks and the Brotherhood of Steel’s vertibirds rely on nuclear power, actually driving a car — or any vehicle — is a death trap waiting to happen. All it takes is a raider who has a gun and isn’t afraid to use it and your vehicle (and you) go up in a mushroom cloud of smoke.

The main argument against drivable vehicles, however, seems to be that the franchise’s exploratory nature would be ruined by their inclusion. Fans have argued time and time again that being able to just jump into a car would ruin the immersion in a world where high-tech cars symbolize a past humanity could have had but ultimately lost due to the greed of its world leaders.

However, I disagree that the inclusion of drivable vehicles, particularly cars, would fundamentally change Fallout beyond a gameplay level. For one thing, we’ve seen vehicles in all the games — not just husks, but actual vehicles in use such as the NCR trucks and the monorail you can take in New Vegas. There’s also the boat in Fallout 4’s DLC, Far Harbor, which takes you to Mount Desert Island, as well as the abandoned monorail in Nuka World. Transport still exists in Fallout’s setting; players just haven’t had the opportunity to take control of one for a very long time.

Furthermore, adding a drivable vehicle doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be easy to acquire. Like with the Highwayman in Fallout 2, making the player perform tasks like rebuilding it to its former glory, looking for fuel, and crafting items and armor to ensure it doesn’t blow up would be a fun way to make the vehicle feel earned.

Better yet, look at it from a role-playing perspective. In Fallout season 2, Lucy struggles to figure out how to drive the golf cart. What if you had to have a certain level of intelligence to be able to drive something in future Fallout games? Sure, the possibility of being locked out may increase, but it would add an undeniable level of flavor, making drivable vehicles interesting features rather than just an easy way to get around.

There’s also the Fallout show to consider. With the series taking place further into the timeline than we’ve ever gone before in New Vegas and Fallout 4, could cold fusion and its infinite energy play a part in the future of the Fallout franchise beyond the show? Could there, in fact, be a real reason why cars might have a place in Fallout’s future? According to Bethesda’s director and executive producer, Todd Howard, Fallout 5 will exist in a world where “the stories and events of the show happened or are happening.” If infinite energy can be brought back, drivable vehicles don’t seem like a far-fetched choice after all.

The first seven episodes of Fallout season 2 are available to stream on Prime Video now. The finale will release on Tuesday, Feb. 3.