Megaton (Fallout 3)

Megaton is a fictional settlement in the 2008 action role-playing game Fallout 3, created as part of the Fallout franchise by Bethesda Game Studios. It is one of the first locations that the player, controlling the Lone Wanderer, may encounter upon exiting out of the Vault 101 fallout shelter in search of their father James. Megaton's exterior is a cone-shaped structure with an automatic gate to protect its residents from hostile outsiders, although it will open to allow the Lone Wanderer in. The town is run by a mayor and sheriff named Lucas Simms, who will ask the player character for help in defusing an undetonated nuclear warhead at the settlement's center. The interior of Megaton is a hole-like shape and is made up of bent pathways and wooden sheds held by girders that surround the bomb. Although the main quest of the game is finding their father, early on by asking Megaton's residents for clues, they can trade with local vendors and perform side quests like fixing water pipes for a handyman named Walter and helping out a mechanic and vendor named Moira Brown in writing the Wasteland Survival Guide by performing various tasks at the outside world, effectively serving as a "secondary tutorial" for in-game features.

Megaton
Fallout location
Megaton, as seen facing towards the town's center from above
First appearance	Fallout 3 (2008)
Genre	Action role-playing game
In-universe information
Location	Virginia, United States
Characters	Lucas Simms, Moira Brown, Confessor Cromwell, Colin Moriarty, Manya Vargas, Walter

In the game's lore and prior to the main events, the crater served as both a shelter for people who needed protection from sandstorms and failed to seek refuge from Vault 101 and a trading post. Megaton was founded by multiple people who based its construction on the wealth they accumulated during trade and sought to build a fortified structure around the bomb to protect themselves from hostile groups. The warhead also became a center of worship for a religious faction called the Church of the Children of the Atom. The player is presented with the option of either defusing the bomb on behalf of Lucas Simm and the rest of Megaton or detonating the bomb at Tenpenny Tower at the request of Mr. Burke and his boss Allistair Tenpenny, both of whom want it destroyed because they disliked its view.

Megaton has been positively received by critics who argued that it was one of the best and most memorable locations in the Fallout series given its early game presence and perceived liveliness and usefulness of the town. Writers have highlighted Moira Brown as a standout character within the settlement due to her quirky but friendly personality, usefulness as a mechanic and vendor, and her questline involving her to-be completed guidebook. The side quest around detonating or defusing the bomb has also been described by critics as showcasing the large-scale consequences that the player character and others are exposed, with many expressing guilt for detonating the warhead and thus destroying the settlement and killing nearly everyone there in the process.

Appearance

Concept art of Megaton by Adam Adamowicz. Note the intentional portrayals of the cluttered structural nature of Megaton's buildings and the cultlike attention to the nuclear warhead shown, being parallel to Megaton ingame.

Megaton, located just south of Springdale, Virginia,^[1] is a relatively large-sized settlement area within the Capital Wasteland in the 2008 action role-playing game Fallout 3, developed by Bethesda Game Studios as part of the Fallout franchise. In 2277, 200 years after the United States was obliterated by a nuclear war as part of an alternate world history, the Lone Wanderer (the player character) finds themself exiting Vault 101 in search of their father James who fled the fallout shelter to resume a water purification project called "Project Purity" to provide radiation-free water for the area's residents.^[2][3] After the Lone Wanderer exits the vault, players may tend to notice Megaton as one of the first structures while setting out for exploration; the location may be difficult to miss unless the player character heads down an opposite road. The exterior of Megaton appears as a cone-shaped structure on a small hill with arches around it pointing upward towards the sky, serving as a gate. Guarding the gate is a robot called a Protectron, which greets all human visitors like the Lone Wanderer upon approaching it but protects the area from other creatures like giant ants. Once near the structure, the bulky metal sheets will be automatically lifted so that the Lone Wanderer can enter the settlement. As opposed to the exterior cone-like shape, the interior area is shaped more like a large hole in the ground.^[4][5] Upon first entry into Megaton, Lucas Simms, its mayor and sheriff, will greet the player and ensure that they did not arrive to cause trouble. He will also ask the player that if they are interested, they could disarm a live bomb in the middle of the town.^[6] The name Megaton is derived from the undetonated bomb that Lucas asks them to defuse.^[7]

The town's structure is made up of irregular pathways and a cluster of wooden sheds held up by girders where its residents live in that surrounds a crater and an atomic bomb that failed to detonate upon impact. The bomb itself is worshipped by a religious organization led by Confessor Cromwell called the Church of the Children of Atom, which worships a monotheistic god and personification of atomic power named Atom. Cromwell loudly preaches about Atom directly at the bomb site to his praying followers and baptizes himself with the nearby irradiated water.^[1][3][8][9] The multiple buildings that the player can visit within Megaton include several townhouses, two pubs, a waterworks, a church, a hostel, an armory, a shop, and bathrooms.^[10] The Lone Wanderer can visit Colin Moriarty of Moriarty's Saloon to gain information regarding the whereabouts of James; Moriarty will redirect the player towards visiting Three Dog of Galaxy News Radio for clues.^[11]

Also residing in Megaton are vendors who the Lone Wanderer can sell their collected items to in exchange for bottle caps, a form of currency. The player can also pursue side quests given by the town's residents. For instance, they can visit the area's water processing plant and talk to its handyman Walter, who will ask the Lone Wanderer to fix some water pipes. To do so, the player character needs a high-enough Repair skill stat of 30, which can also temporarily be enhanced from eating a "mentats" drug or wearing a Vault 101 Utility Jumpsuit. If the player successfully fixes the pipes, Walter will offer a deal in which buy scrap metal for ten bottle caps each (along with experience points).^[12] Another significant character living in Megaton is Moira Brown, a quirky and cheerful vendor and mechanic who runs the Craterside Supply. In addition to being able to sell items or buy ammunition from her, the player character can help Moira Brown write a guidebook called Wasteland Survival Guide. To complete her book, Moira will task the player with performing dangerous tasks at the outside world so that she can write about how to survive based on the player character's deeds. Many of these tasks involve exploration far from Megaton and may likely require encounters with hostiles like raider groups and irradiated creatures. Some task examples include scavenging for food and medicine or exposing oneself to heavy amounts of radiation. The quests from Moira effectively act as a "secondary tutorial" for the player so that they understand the game's mechanics not taught from the early game sequences from Vault 101.^{[1][12][13][14]}

The nuclear warhead at the middle of Megaton is the center of focus for a side quest potentially given by Lucas that the Lone Wanderer can address. To disarm it at the request of the town's mayor, the player character needs an Explosives skill of 25; this stat can also be temporarily boosted by items like mentats or an equipped raider blastmaster helmet. Once the Lone Wanderer successfully defuses it, Lucas will reward the player with 500 caps, a slight karma stat boost, and a key for a house within Megaton that the player character can reside in; the house can be upgraded by Moira to the player's liking.^[7][12][11] Alternatively, the Lone Wanderer can visit Moriarty's Saloon to talk to Mr. Burke, an individual under the distant employer Allistair Tenpenny. Mr. Burke and his employer want Megaton wiped out via the nuclear warhead's detonation because they believed that they disliked seeing it from the faraway Tenpenny Tower, where they reside. If the Lone Wanderer agrees to blow up Megaton, Burke will hand the detonator to the Lone Wanderer and tell them to meet him at the tower after they set the bomb to explode. After walking to Tenpenny Tower, the Lone Wanderer can detonate the warhead from the balcony of Allistair Tenpenny, destroying the settlement and killing nearly everyone in Megaton. The Lone Wanderer will be rewarded with payment of 1000 caps and access to a suite at the tower but also lose massive amounts of karma points in the process. The only survivor of the explosion at Megaton is Moira, who becomes "ghoulified" (mutated massively as a result of large amounts of exposure to radiation) but is still willing to forgive the Lone Wanderer and continue with her Wasteland Survival Guide.^{[4][11][5][7]} If the player chose to disarm the bomb, the Lone Wanderer will later encounter hitmen sent by Tenpenny who will attempt to kill them.^[11] A localization team of Bethesda Softworks revealed in 2008 that they tweaked the Japanese version of Fallout 3 to remove both Mr. Burke and the ability to destroy Megaton by activating the nuclear warhead. This was due to the cultural sensitivity regarding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 during the end of World War II, in which Japan was the only nation to have been hit by nuclear attacks.^[15]

The player can interact with Megaton resident Manya Vargas, an elderly granddaughter of one of Megaton's founders, to hear about the history of Megaton. In the early ages, she tells the Lone Wanderer, wasteland survivors used the crater to avoid sandstorms and as a shelter because they were rejected from refuge in the largely isolated Vault 101. Some of them began to worship the bomb there, thus forming the Children of Atom religion. She explains that back when her grandfather was born, the crater became a significant location where people set up a trading post. Her grandfather, using his wealth gained from caravan trading, worked with several other people to cofound Megaton by building walls around the crater to protect themselves from hostile groups like raiders and super mutants, with more residents deciding to move in.^[16] According to the epilogue of the Fallout 3 Official Game Guide, Moira in 2297 confirms that the Lone Wanderer helped to save Megaton from the warhead and complete her Wasteland Survival Guide, which became a popular book in the Capital Wasteland.^[17] In an interview from IGN, the director of the 2024 show Fallout, Jonathan Nolan, revealed that the Californian town of Filly was largely inspired by Megaton given the "trashy" appearance of both and that the protagonists of both Fallout 3 and the TV show likely arrive at their respective areas early on.^[18]

Reception

Gameplay image of the Lone Wanderer with the detonator and Mr. Burke at Tenpenny Tower witnessing the destruction of Megaton. This moment has been highlighted as one in which the game exposes the player to devastating consequences done by them.

Megaton has received positive attention among game critics, with Ritwik Mitra of Game Rant referring to the Fallout 3 town as "easily one of the most iconic locations in video gaming history" and one that any new player should visit.^[19] Screen Rant's Kyle Gratton said that Megaton's "odd location" made it memorable and "a big contribution to Fallout 3's world design". He also wrote that its "close proximity to certain death" (the nuclear bomb) is a good representation of the harsh life in the Capital Wasteland.^[16] Diego Arguello of Inverse remarked that Megaton is easy to get lost in given its unconventional pathways, which he said was ironic because it was much smaller than another Fallout 3 location called Rivet City. He argued, however, that the smaller size of Megaton was no negative quality because of the townsfolk who make the settlement "a world of its own" from "the Children of the Atom religion to Moira Brown's excitement over creating a survival guide for the world outside these walls". Furthermore, he stated, it was "a strong example of a design philosophy that few open-world games have since managed to replicate, one in which density trumps scale, creating a sense of place that strives to be remembered", being an early example of a game that emphasized space over time as early as 2008. In comparison, he felt that neither Fallout 4 nor Fallout 76 were able to replicate the feeling of livelihood for a residential area.^[20]

The A.V. Club writer Drew Toal discussed Vault 101 as an authoritarian location in which freedom is sacrificed in exchange for security, then comparing it to Megaton. He argued that Megaton was like "an enormous flaming trash barrel" that lacked the protections and hygiene from the fallout shelter but was "the ideal post-apocalyptic neighborhood" because of the residents depending on each other to get along. Toal felt that while Megaton had obvious flaws that it was better than the Republic of Dave (with an unstable government), Rivet City (with high amounts of classism), and Vault 101 (of which it and Megaton represented "two competing visions of society").^[21] GB Buford, writing for Kotaku, argued that the area between Vault 101 leading up to Megaton made it easy for new players to ease into the world of Fallout 3 by understanding where to go without immediate distractions. He said that while he found the side quest involving defusing or detonating the giant bomb interesting that the real highlight of Megaton is Moira Brown. Buford acknowledged that Moira has been a subject of ridicule from some players but voiced that he never understood why; he argued that she was quirky but always friendly, was the game's best mechanic early on, is a good vendor for selling items to, and has quests that unlock notable in-game perks. He continued that most importantly, Moira's side quests for her written work, Wasteland Survival Guide, is a "fantastic way to get an introduction to the world" given that her quests normally have the player going far and getting distracted by in-world events and locations, therefore both teaching the player additional in-game mechanics and encouraging them to seek out exploration.^[13]

Megaton's nuclear bomb and the side quest have both also been under critical commentary. Brendan Graeber of IGN considered that having to watch the destruction of Megaton that he caused because he decided to be greedy for a Tenpenny Tower luxury suite exposed him to large consequences not normally seen in many other RPGs and made him feel remorseful for the firsthand destruction and for paying back the hospitality of the settlement with a nuclear detonation.^[22] Eurogamer editor Robert Purchese of the opinion that no other moment of video game destruction compared to the nuclear warhead wiping out Megaton due to "some idiot atop a tower who stood to make only a measly 1000 caps for doing so". His return to the site made Megaton "the one, and only, virtual object [he had] ever felt guilty about destroying".^[23] TheGamer editor Jade King expressed that the bomb "acts as a compelling moral dilemma for the player to deal with" given how it easy it can be to use it for evil. She said that on her first playthrough, she refused to have Megaton's warhead be detonated and instead chose to kill Burke because she felt that it was justified despite lacking any reward. She then said that the player character being able to see the ruins of a destroyed Megaton and a ghoulified Moira showed how Fallout 3 was unafraid of showing people how evil they could be.^[5] In another retrospective, she reflected that moral polarity of the choices regarding the Megaton bomb was a flaw in Fallout 3 but one that reflected moral systems of other game series of the time like Mass Effect and Infamous as opposed to the later games with themes around moral grayness like The Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3. She additionally explained her interest in an option to sit out of the Megaton bomb conflict and see what happens to the town should a future remaster or remake come out.^[24]

Cameron Kunzelman of Vice compared Megaton to "a rusted metal flower blooming in the wasteland" where people could live normal and productive lives, citing both Moira Brown for her guidebook research with the intention of making the lives of people living outside safe shelter better and Lucas Simms for trying to maintain law and order to make life for his people better. He compared it to Tenpenny Tower, in which its wealthy elite intend to get rid of what they saw as a new world intending to replace the old and violent world favoring the rich, pointing to the player character as having potential agency in making their goal come true.^[4] The Edge magazine staff wrote that the consequences behind destroying Megaton teaches players in part that one should caution taking drastic in-game choices until at least after they have done all available and relevant side quests. They felt that the game also has the player question whether it was all along worth it to gain a suite in Tenpenny Tower in exchange for blowing up Megaton on behalf of some evil people. The staff remarked that the game would feel emptier and worse with Megaton gone and brought up the possibility that the player would just kill everyone at Tenpenny Tower before reloading to before the Megaton bomb was detonated.^[10]

Megaton and its nuclear bomb have also been the focus of several academic works. Marcus Schulzke, writing for the journal Game Studies, considering the side quest regarding the Megaton bomb to be entertaining but criticized it for the rewards being too parallel in experience points and residency along with the karma points given for disarming the bomb being disproportionately low compared to the massive karma loss for detonating it.^[25] Daniel Singleton, dedicating a chapter of a book to video games and science fiction, highlighted that while Fallout 3 intended to showcase the effects of nuclear destruction on the world, players can "transform" nuclear weapons into their own personal toys and decide how they want to use it. He elaborated that many players may choose detonate the nuclear bomb on behalf of Allistair Tenpenny just to see what happens before reloading the game just to defuse it and continue on afterward.^[26]