Fallout 4 Zex Skeleton Download
Tyler Janicke
I started Far Harbor yesterday and stumbled upon the Aldersea Day Spa. I decided to go in to explore and went down the baths and saunas. And there, there's a couple of skeletons, visibly people from before the war, siting in the spa.
Now, not all skeletons in the games are badly represented. Some make at least some sort of sense. In FO4 too the first few corpses that you find going out of the vault make at least some sense. They are the people that didn't make it into the vault in time arguing about packing their shit in a suitcase.
Now I know, you'll say "But who says they even died from the nukes". Sure, there are lots of skeletons that make plot or logic sense like the skeleton of Vera Keyes, but not all of them are as lucky as her being a named skeleton and all.
Skeletons can be found all across the Commonwealth, ranging from the remains of U.S. Army soldiers to citizens, and even vault dwellers. They can be moved both physically but cannot be searched. There is also a large skeleton of a marine animal on the collapsed second floor of the oceanarium in Far Harbor.
Were the world to stop right now, we would all be compromised, the secrets of our lives laid bare, our skeletons standing (or lying, or crouching) testament to the ways we lived. The creators of Fallout have always understood that. But so much is lost over time, the powers of decay and degradation twisting forms out of shape, making each frozen death captured by the sudden blast inexplicable, devoid of their context.
Like this: in Fallout 4, as in other Bethesda games, skeletons tell stories without whispering a word. But there's something special about the post-apocalyptic skeleton. It offers a glimpse at humanity pre-war, before the bombs fell, sometimes, you imagine, as the bombs fell. They capture a moment in time, as the world turned to dust, as the fire blew the flesh from the bones of billions of people. What if Sarah Connor's nightmare becomes reality? You get Fallout.
The skeletons also do a better job of showing us the horror of post-nuclear war than pretty much everything else in the game. Bethesda's Boston is packed with burnt out buildings and bust up fusion cars, but it's the skeletons that hit closest to home. In these troubled times, Fallout 4's skeletons bark a stark warning: play nice, they croak, or you'll end up a bag of bones just like me.
I love a surprise encounter with a skeleton. I stop to study them, letting my imagination run wild. Never mind the quest I'm on, the junk I'm searching for or the Raiders I must kill, it's the skeletons that demand attention.
The other night I stumbled upon two skeletons huddled together at a broken bus stop. I imagined them as husband and wife, embracing each other for the last time as the burning bright light engulfed them.
Last week I found a sole skeleton sat in a chair, a pistol nearby, bullets placed carefully on a table. Chems and beer were strewn about the place. I imagined the skeleton plucking up the courage to end it all, no doubt as an army of Ghouls tore at the door.
But what I love most about Fallout's skeletons is they're sometimes - often! - hilarious. They encapsulate perfectly the brilliance of the Fallout tone, as set out by Interplay in the late 90s and, for me, hammered home by Obsidian's wonderfully-written New Vegas: dealing with the apocalypse is a ridiculous folly, so we may as well have a laugh while we're at it.
Brilliantly, Fallout 4 has an Easter egg that references Cheers, the long-running and hugely popular sitcom set in a bar in Boston. Fallout 4's version is home to a pair of skeletons who are, quite obviously, meant to represent Cliff and Norm, sitting where they should, propping up the bar. If Cheers was real, and the nuclear apocalypse actually happened, Cliff and Norm would no doubt stubbornly refuse to budge. There they would stay, propping up the bar, burnt to a crisp, until their bones turn to dust.
Fallout 4 skeletons also pose mini mysteries. Redditor Optimus-Christ posted the screenshot below and wondered: "Whatever is in this safe must be good." Did the bombs fall as they were throttling each other? Also, why is one of the skeletons clothed and the other not? The mind boggles. Theories welcome.
I wonder if it's someone's job at Bethesda to be "boss of skeletons". This person is in charge of all the silly positions, I imagine, all of the props, the lighting, the scribbled notes and the terminal journal entries that reveal the back-stories to the skeleton vignettes players uncover as they creep about in the dark. Perhaps this person leads a team of environmental artists who specialise in skeletons. Imagine the meetings! What a world we live in, that such storytellers may exist. What do you do for a living? I tell stories with video game skeletons. I'm not being sarcastic here. I'm jealous. What a fun job!
Some people don't like Fallout's skeletons. I've seen threads on Fallout 4's Steam forum where people ask how to get rid of them. Those fussing over base-building want to clear out skeletons from their settlements. You can't pick them up, so players resort to pushing them and blasting them with grenades. There's even a video guide.
Bah! Those who wish to sweep away Fallout 4's skeletons like troublesome leaves on a blustery autumn day are missing the point. I love the skeletons and they should stay where Bethesda placed them, sometimes sad, sometimes cool, sometimes funny, always Fallout.
That was when it happened. I came upon a skeleton. It was sitting in a recliner. There, on the chair's armrest, was a bottle. This scene introduced so many questions. What was going on with that bottle? How did he die in that chair? Incredible."
Later, I was shooting an enemy. After pumping four bullets into its head to take its health down by one quarter, I had to reload. That's when I saw another skeleton. This skeleton was laying on a blanket with its hands casually behind its head, wearing sunglasses.
This is actually the most depressing thing I've found in the wasteland. A tiny little child's skeleton hiding in a barn with a text book. Was she going to school? Coming home? Did she run inside the nearest building hoping it would protect her? Its okay to have a sad.
Professional skeleton finders call this The Bioshock - after the old Rapture couple you find dead in bed together surrounded by photos. The message is clear - they made their peace with what was happening and laid down together to face it. Oh God, this is depressing isnt it?
Clearly, if the end of the world brings on anything its lots of fighting as people take the chance to finally air long held grievances. That certainly seems to be the case at the Concord Workhouse. The skeleton bent over the safe has been pulled from a large office desk and clearly appears to be the boss. Obviously not a good one either if one of his employees chose throttling as his last act on God's earth.
I can only assume that this soldiers last command was to protect the bomb. From, er, the other bombs. The fact that this one-man fallout shelter is surround by other skeletons who look like they were trying to get in suggests he followed his orders at the expense of civilian lives. Which is bad for them but good for me, as I now have some extra ammo for the Fat Man.
Environmental Storytelling Skeletons refer to skeleton NPCs or in-game models placed in specific poses and locations, particularly in Bethesda video games like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, to subtly suggest their story to the player and make the world feel more "lived-in." Throughout the 2010s, storytelling skeletons became the subject of memes for their prominence in open-world games.
One of the earliest known references to environmental storytelling skeletons online is in a January 23rd, 2013, article on Jethro Jongeneel[1] about environmental storytelling in video games. The article lists Fallout 3 and Tomb Raider as examples of games that use skeletons in this way and cites a specific example from the former, writing:
On November 17th, 2015, Something Awful[2] user Dennis Farrell published a sarcastically written article titled, "Fallout 4 Takes Environmental Storytelling to the Next Level," where he pokes fun at the perceived over-abundance of environmental storytelling through skeletons in Fallout 4. On January 15th, 2016, a Redditor made a post to /r/Fallout[3] discussing their distaste for environmental storytelling skeletons. On March 14th, Twitter[4] user @torahhorse posted, "in game design, 'environmental storytelling' is the art of placing skulls near a toilet," garnering over 3,700 likes and 1,100 retweets in six years (shown below).
On November 26th, 2015, the GamesRadar YouTube[13] channel published a video about the skeletons in Fallout 4, garnering over 600,000 views in seven years (shown below). On May 26th, 2017, Games Radar[14] published an article titled, "Fallout 4's skeletons have a story to tell" sharing some of the best uses of environmental storytelling skeletons in Fallout 4.
On July 25th, 2018, Twitter[5] user @shackle_ton posted a meme about hearing nukes drop outside then running to the bathroom to become an "environmental storytelling toilet skeleton," garnering over 40,000 likes and 10,000 retweets in four years (shown below). On July 30th, 2020, What Culture[6] included the "Skeleton With The Audio Diary" trope in a list of one of the "9 Most Overdone Clichés In Modern Video Games."
On October 25th, a now-deleted Redditor posted an image to /r/fo4[7] of a skeleton on a stage surrounded by tomatoes from Fallout 4, writing, "Environmental storytelling skeletons are the best thing in gaming," garnering over 100 upvotes in two years (shown below).
On January 23rd, 2022, Twitter[8] user @DreadXP_ posted an image of a skeleton dead on a toilet, writing, "You either perish as a hero or live long enough to become an environmental storytelling skeleton," garnering over 650 likes in seven months (shown below, left). On August 15th, Facebook[9] user Unsolicited E-Girl Bathposting posted a version of @shackle_ton's tweet with images, garnering over 40 shares in four days. The post gained viral spread over the following days, including a repost to Facebook[10] page Catmin's Anticapitalist Treehouse of Solidarity the next day, garnering over 11,000 shares and 16,000 reactions and a post by Twitter[11] user @99rainbowcakes on August 17th, garnering over 118,000 likes and 14,000 retweets in a day (shown below, right).
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