The development team scouted real-world locations to gather authentic visual references for the game’s environment.
While navigating the world of Fallout 4, many players noticed a distinct “autumnal” atmosphere. The wasteland often feels desolate and monochromatic, with bare trees stripped of their leaves, yet this bleakness is frequently contrasted by bright sunlight and clear blue skies.
Lead artist Istvan Pely explained that this specific look was entirely intentional:
At the very start of the project, I organized a field trip for our art and environment teams to Great Falls Park, which sits on the border of Maryland and D.C. It was late autumn; the foliage had vanished, the grass had turned a dull brown, and the trees appeared skeletal and lifeless.
At the time, Istvan gave the Fallout 4 team a clear directive:
“This is exactly what our world should look like.” We conducted a full scouting session, capturing a vast array of reference photos to define the grass textures, the overall color palette, and the general visual tone.
Fallout 4 was designed around themes of resilience and reconstruction. While the game introduced more vibrant colors into man-made elements—such as architecture, vehicles, and props—the team was careful to maintain a sense of mourning and melancholy in the surrounding landscape:
It was crucial that the environment still felt barren. It needed to evoke the stillness of mid-winter, where life is suspended; humanity is attempting to recover and rebuild, but nature hasn’t yet followed suit […] The devastation was so absolute that it essentially purged the natural world. Even centuries later, it remains unable to flourish. That late-autumn aesthetic became our team’s primary inspiration for the Bostonian wilderness.
Source: iXBT.games