For me, what makes Fallout so appealing is the setting; recognizable monuments and settings juxtaposed with devastation and war (Washington Monument, etc.) and the fundamental challenge of survival. Hardcore Mode in NV was a brilliant addition to the games.
The question I would as is: Is the fifties sensibility fundamental to the Fallout aesthetic? To me, not really. The fifties aesthetic is more of a symptom of the hypothetical social problems of the pre-war fallout universe. The fifties aesthetic is a symptom of a culture stagnating under the weight of its own success and excess.
And nowhere, my friends, stagnates like China. So because no-one seems to have done so, I give you my pitch for Fallout: Beijing.
First of all, Beijing municipality is huge, and there are so many things you can include in a potential game map. There are vast areas of parkland within the city itself, Beijing has a massive transit system, many of the empty areas on the maps of Beijing are actually filled with people. This would be a whole new kind of wasteland in that, instead of fighting raiders and mutants surrounded by relatively empty wastes, you would be in an environment filled with half broken houses, etc. Fighting through broken down Chinese tenements around the eighth ring road would be pretty badass.
The map will include the Summer Palace - nearly Rad free due to the fact that because it's basically a park, and not close enough to any major military target, it was largely ignored by American Military Intelligence, and therefore not bombed. It houses the remnants of the Chinese government, whose control is significantly stronger than that of the Enclave. It has, since the war, reestablished control over Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, etc. through a virtual monopoly of force, a monopoly on clean water, radio communications and pre-war science.
The Summer Palace has recently run out of fresh water due to the rise of a new super bug (tie in to FEV if need be), which is resistant to most forms of water treatment, and behaves like a flesh eating disease. Now that they are no longer able to withhold water in order to compel obedience within Beijing proper, numerous other factions have recently wrested control of certain areas of the City from the hands of the Proletarian Dictatorship or Proldict.
North of Beijing the Han (not to be confused with the ethnicity Han) have what's left of the military base hidden under Badaling - the most visited section of the Great Wall - they are ethnically Mongolian, and have named themselves after Genghis Khan (Han). They employ motorcycles and some kind of mutated horse... The behave like the Mongol hordes with the same kind of vicious and violent power structure and struggles. Their control does not extend to far into the city proper, but they will mount large scale raids that frequently penetrate far into the heart of the city.
In the Forbidden City (called the Forbidding City) the Undying Son of Heaven, the Chinese Emperor of Ghouls plots the overthrow of the Proldict and the coming supremacy of the Empire. He most closely resembles the Chinese emperors of old, and the Dragons Ghouls most closely follow traditional Confucian Values. They are currently seeking to discover pre-war technology that will allow them to control the process of Ghoulification, or some other way of reproduction (ghouls are sterile).
South of the Forbidden City in one of Beijing's many factory districts on the outskirts of ChaoYang is the Tong or Triads. A shadow power that has nonetheless managed to infiltrate all the other factions. They seek nothing other than the continuation of the present course, after all the Triads will always exist to profit from everything "war is good for business."
Finally there are the Yellow Turbans, centered in the Western section of Beijing in the Taoist temple district. They closely resemble the Yellow Turbans from the Fall of the Han dynasty (Dynasty Warriors, for those of you who would rather game than read). More of a fundamentalist, militant Taoist cult than any real organized faction. They seek to carve out their own fiefdoms to practice their own particular version of religious freedom.
Those are the main factions, others could include ones modeled on the traveling Shaolin monks, a group similar to the Taiping rebellion (some dude gets his hands on a poorly translated version of the bible, has some f-cked up dreams and thinks he's Jesus' little brother, killing 20 million people in the process). I could go on, but this is long enough.
In terms of music and environment and all those mood things: China was even more paranoid than the US. Hell, China IS more paranoid than the US.
I live in China, and there's a nuclear bomb shelter in the basement of my building. Same with most other big buildings in China. Most of them have been converted into parking lots. There is a massive network of military tunnels large enough to accommodate four tanks side by side...
Personally, I would rather fallout move to China than anywhere else (even Fallout: London wouldn't pull me in as much). Maybe that's because I live in China...
Salaam
