Fallout 4: 10 Biggest Questions Answered For New Players

5. Is Anyone In Charge Here?

Nope. The United States government pretty much dissolved just before the bombs dropped, with key politicians hiding out in shelters around the country in anticipation of the Great War. These scattered members of the government went on to become the Enclave faction, zealously believing that they still had a claim to running the country. Even though the Enclave was arguably the most powerful faction in the US until the events of Fallout 3, it still wasn't accepted by any other group as the true government, and never really came close to being in a position to run the entire country. It's also worth noting that in the Fallout timeline, the United States was divided into 13 'commonwealths' some time after World War II, so regional power dynamics are based on these, rather than the 50 states that we're used to. Fallout 4 takes place in the New England Commonwealth. Though there is no one faction that controls the region, it looks like the tech-savvy Institute could be dominant. A key facet of the Fallout games is that the power vacuum in the US is behind many of the conflicts and intrigue in the series, with the player getting to have a key role in how these struggles pan out.