Operation: Anchorage ISN'T a Reliable Storyteller
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- In this video, we take a bit of a dive into some of the lore surrounding the Operation: Anchorage virtual reality simulation and I do my best to prove why the O:A sim isn't the most reliable storyteller. And remember, nothing is ever that deep.
I mentioned that I was working on this video idea in a comment on one of my shorts and it's finally here.
If you have any other video ideas, let me know in the comments. I'm always looking for ideas and would love some input from you folks!
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Cheers!
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Also wanted to point this out in case it wasn’t clear enough: this isn’t a shot at the developers, the story of the add-on was likely developed with all this in mind. Bethesda is known for adding a lot of ambiguity into their games. I just thought this was a neat topic that not many people have covered.
To me Bethesda would be perfect for map design on a game, especially if they had little details involved because they are great with those. Also N_orte there’s a possible SpongeBob Easter egg although it’s unknown if it is one (it’s in nuka world)
I can only imagine what the real Alaska battlefield looks like in the Fallout universe. Likely littered with some very impressive war machines even hundreds of years after the bombs fell. Id love to visit Alaska in a future Fallout game, maybe in one of the dlcs or something.
I agree it probably be a treasure trove of military technology, but also a hellscape from nukes being dropped on the US last remaining oil reserves.
Oh yeah. Never thought of that. That would be neat. Power armour suits littered about, chimera tanks in pieces
@@N_orte I'm sure there's even some newer technology we have yet to see in any of the Fallout games. You know how Bethesda likes to add stuff with each game. Something about seeing 200 something year old war Machines just sitting around rusting that's very intriguing. Not to mention how cool it is that some of them still work all these years later.
I would imagine that this was one of the places that despite not having major cities would be bombed to hell. As it would have been a huge crippling to the US with any oil left as well as a big f.u. specially since I can imagine there would still be a standing force and could demoralize people as they fought so hard for it.
Oh yea, they might have a pretty decent society up there with all that, might be war based though
One thing to mention: the flag of the fallen you find in the Jamaica Plains is the flag of the soldier who gets sniped when you first encounter the Crimson Dragoons.
That's cool AF. Sick reference
I'd say it's probably a combination of hero complex storytelling(the lone badass hero turning the tide for propaganda), and amalgamation storytelling(as you suggested about combining multiple characters/soldiers together).
several real stories of real soldiers, smashed together, and 'gamified' to be more cool
Yeah that’s the feeling I get too. Obviously from a meta perspective, the OA add on wouldn’t be much fun if it was just trench sitting for hours
Norte is a living, breathing Fallout Encyclopedia. Love your content. Please keep them coming.
Thank you so much! That means a lot! Comments like these keep me making videos!
So I guess graenolf and fudgemuppet can go fuck themselves
"my first day as a member the US army regiment it was cold,icy and chaotic it wasn't like the simulation back in Washington dc of course that is pretty much the way it was for all of us wasn't it
All those months and weeks of training it doesn't really prepare you for all the screaming and bloodshed does it thankly I am still amazed I made it thro through the first hour not the first day"
-unknown anchorage trooper
I can actually confirm that the events we play through in Operation Anchorage DID HAPPEN, but they didn't happen as you think. I... had to actually research this in detail while designing the world cell on my end and that means figuring out the map content itself. The events of the simulation don't actually take place around Anchorage itself, but are actually a collection of events that took place throughout the last year of the Anchorage military campaign. There are various details that give this away such as the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline ending in Anchorage... when in the real world it ends in Valdez.
This alone; however, wasn't what sold me on my research being accurate. Instead, the Mining Listening Post and Trainyard were what gave it away. There is only ONE trainyard that is next to any sort of major underground tunnel system in all of Alaska and that's the Ponage Glacier Tunnel that leads South to Whittier. So, the US Army toehold to the South of Anchorage was historically in Whittier, but the amphibious assault to take it played out like it did in-universe with the Guns of Anchorage still being in Chugach State Park.
It's just for about the first 9 years of the war the US Army operated out of Valdez... which makes sense not just from the design of the actual DLC with the pipeline ending there, but also because it allowed both China and the USA to resupply with open sea lanes for most of the conflict.
The Mining Outpost was also the Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark... which is the only Mining Complex that shares the same art aesthetic as the one seen in the DLC. It is to the Northeast of Valdez.
Between these two details, I've confirmed that the events of Operation Anchorage did happen just not around Anchorage itself and spread out over 10 years of the conflict instead of just following the conquest of Whittier by the US Army. The only thing that I haven't been able to figure out yet is if the Chimera Depot was Fort Greely and which oil refinery was the real one seen in the DLC.
I agree with all your points, except I believe the inaccuracy of the simulation matters greatly, as it shows how little we the player know about the war that is the main driving force behind the world of Fallout. Also, I’d extrapolate from what we do know about the war and pre great war america to say that the average civilian also knew very little about the war.
And with a lot of our sources being from possibly misinformed civilians, news organisations in a country we see actively hostile to reporters who don’t fall in line with what the government allows them to write about, and the US government who has a keen interest in lying to its people, I think its safe to say that the US was faring much worse than what the text would lead you to believe. So that leads me disregard the “China dropped the bombs as a last ditch effort to win the war” theory.
The theory I subscribe to is that The Enclave and Vault Tec launched the nukes because they were actually loosing. Not that China was close to coming and taking over America or anything like that, but the US was going to run out of fuel, manpower and goodwill from its people, and the government was going to collapse or get overthrown. And the Enclave, the ghouls they are, took the easy way out and just sent the nukes.
Well, I rather think they influenced both US and Chinese intelligence agencies into thinking an attack from the other side was imminent until the both attacked around the same time.
I think the ambiguity of the actual events of OA lends to theories, and I agree 100% that the US was faring much worse than what the population was led to believe. I have a script in progress about the inevitability of nuclear destruction in the Fallout universe, and I believe that the moment the Euro-Middle Eastern war saw limited nuclear exchanges was the moment that full on nuclear war would occur globally. So, to me, it didn’t really matter who launched the nukes, as the global economy was in such utter shambles that if your country didn’t quickly eliminate other threats and harvest/hoard resources, you were going to die off anyway.
@@N_orte Thats a fair interpretation. I just think its silly that a common thought among some fans when theorizing about the great war is just “the commies did it” which feels like the themes of jingoism, corporatism, and if we look at for example Josh Sawyers contributions, anti-capitalism, entirely go over their heads.
Hopefully this is coherent I’m very tired lol
I agree 100%. Far too often the satire of the series is overlooked. The reality is, the fate of the Fallout universe is a product of consumerism and nationalism among other things. Countries were terrified of sharing technology and working together to overcome the resource crisis, and ended up in a hoarding contest, where your only options were take what others have(China invading US, US annexing Canada) or die(Much of the Middle East).
@@N_orte I think the tragic irony of the series is that the Chinese and the Americans fought a war ostensibly to secure petroleum and their energy independence but all that war did was destroy what little ability those countries had to survive the rapidly dwindling resources they had in the first place. It was their own short-sightedness that destroyed both, and the whole world with them.
I grew up in Alaska (specifically in Anchorage) and I always thought it was funny that Elmendorf Air Force Base was spelled "Elemndorf" in terminals. I always just assumed it was an accidental typo even though the misspelling came up multiple times 😂
weird how this showed up in my recommend seconds after the upload but im glad you covering this. cant wait to finish the video
Did it meet your expectations? Lol
Got to love the fact that we are debating the status of fiction inside a fictional object.
I like to think that the unnamed solder of the sim is Nate from fallout 4 and he did do all that
What if the male protagonist of Fallout 4 is who we're playing as in the Operation Anchorage DLC? He took part in the war during its late stages, he's reasonably young and seems to only recently have been discharged given his child was less than a year old when the bombs dropped.
It's stated in-game he was a decorated war hero, and that he'd basically pulled some medal of honor worthy bullshit to earn those decorations. Op Anchorage may not be accurate to what actually happened, but if everybody's gassing up his heroics then it definitely makes sense
Funnily enough i just completed this DLC for the first time yesterday, so this video was way cooler after just playing it
Haha thanks. Does the DLC hold up after all these years? I tend to look fondly at the games due to nostalgia. Many of my IRL friends can’t finish the Fallout games due to the games age.
I like to think we watched Nate's time in service.
Operation Anchorage and the entire Anchorage lore reminds me of the fight with Japan for Alaska in WW2
I always figured the Sim was to train Special Forces, not frontline infantry. What army sends regular GI's to sabotage artillery, fuel depots and listening posts? None. They send specialists to do things like that to clear the way for the frontline soldiers afterwards.
I think a pip boy video would be amazing. This video makes it sound like Olin has found pip boys are non removable. But they appear to be. The history, the models, the pimp boy 3000 is a fun tidbit
Yeah that sounds like a good idea. To the excel sheet it goes!
@@N_orte you could cover the history of all the pip boy models, not just the ergonomics of the ones in the 3d games. I'd watch the crap out of that
Honestly, I question the in game lore. You have an actual army guy saying what's there, and some programmers doubting him. I think I'm inclined towards what the army guy says.
The Fallout 3 lore is full of retcons, things that don't make sense given the context of the game, and most of the lore is ass pull bullshit.
@@yujunkonarukami The problem is that people forget, Fallout was designed as a game, to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Nukes? Sure. Mad Max? Sure. Aliens? Sure. Zombies? Sure. Giant ants? Sure. Time travel? Sure.
The thing is, it's the lore that holds it all together. I'm inclined to believe that the original simulation was too easy, and that's why soldiers fall apart in the field. Then the general shows up to fix it, and the programmers seem like it's over the top, because they weren't there, or at least haven't seen real combat.
Army guys tend to flatter themselves when looking back at their experiences. A lot of books written by soldiers are often completely false.
@@bimss7969 true, but I think this is simple pragmatism. "Hey, make this thing harder. No, harder. Look, in a real war, you can die in one hit. Those last guys who used this for training? We had to send condolences to their families. Make it harder so they know to keep their heads down. Oh, and fix that whole 'dying in real life' thing. That's just dumb."
Ah, but don't forget the one true constant of the Fallout universe: US government and army personnel are all egomaniacal, jingoistic criminals whose blatant disregard for the truth and nearly psychopathic need to make America and its troops "look as good as possible" were major contributing factors that ultimately led to the Great War in the first place. The fact that this general had an entire build scrapped because "his face wasn't right" tells you all you need to know; the way the program made him and America look was more important to him than it being true.
The Fallout Bible - an actual person now
😂 i died at "Who's to say i cant do it for realsies."
As a huge fan of the fallout series(and the scrolls of the elderly) and a huge lore nerd i appreciate the (other word for poo) out of your lore videos. Some of them i had already figured out, sure.. but i love when i see someone share information that i myself was too social anxious to nerd out with others over at the time of discovery. Also your voice is always pleasent and easy to listen and pay attention to. Keep doing you dude, you're amazing at it. 👍👍
just say "I enjoy the shit out of your lore videos". It's not that hard and typing it the way you did is almost as dumb as people capitalizing every word in their sentences
@@95DreadLord well jeez. Someone had a bad day 🥴 taking the time to complain like that is actually worse than someone typing in all caps.. but u do u, afterall only one of us has a problem with strangers speaking the way they feel like speaking while attempting to spread positivity.
A thing to add is that though the simulation itself is most likely propaganda the logs found throughout it most likely aren’t. Both in the tone shift between the CoD style campaign and the dark atmosphere of the notes, and the fact that the story half told through said notes is that of struggle and hardship. So even when they pretty up the past the reality still seeps in
I loved the Anchorage DLC. Was great being in an pre nuked world and feeling as if you were really fighting in the war. Deffo spent longer in the simulation than was required
Remember you can drop all the weapons and keep changing to the other kits and do every mission with all kits.
“Hey, sir, I accidentally dropped my gun, can I have another?”
You son of a b****. Thaaaank you.
Could the source code of the simulation come from another simulation. Such as a power armor training simulation
Tank operations training sim
Flight Training Simulation (fallout new vegas)
and a civilization life simulation (retraining soldiers to return to civilian life or to train rear guard to defend their homes from a Chinese invasion. But was used to create memory lane, but that's my theory).
So for expedient development time, the majority of the code be reused and re-purposed for each. the operations Anchorage sim pod is a more advanced pod design (the pod used a fully encapsulated monitor as apposed to memory lane in 3 and flight sims in NV, which have a articulated CRT monitor.)
7:20 Rookie may be used here as not a "fresh on the field", but in a "new to the squad" sense. Much like the Rookie in Halo 3 ODST
That speech check has always confused me 😂
Very odd indeed
Training every single infantryman who was scheduled to take part in the battle would take too much time. That said, I do think you're right that it was meant to train soldiers, but instead of training infantrymen, it trained specialists. Note that the soldier you play as in the DLC is a paratrooper with stealth and demolition skills. It would make sense that specialists with a very specific mission goal would train in the months leading up to the battle (just like how in real-life JSOC troops train incessantly before conducting their mission). That would explain why only one simulation pod was ever constructed.
11:09 They shoot someone in the head and laugh and then wave politely
I would like to point out that there have been plenty of battles turned by a single soldier and wars turned on a heel as the result of a battle, so if there was a talented soldier with some especially cutting edge amazing tech, it doesn't sound likely, but neither would I use the phrase "so far from reality". Great research and video though, Norte is always ftw. go Dallas!
dont forget the Skeleton of the PTSD soldier with a chinese pistol in wilderness that mentions anchorage was a hellhole basicly
Where?
@@theoneandonlydetraebean8286 Yeah that's a good question I don't remember that from anywhere either
I think it was over exaggerated seeing how a simulated experience would be made to be more difficult as to aid in experience with the mission what would making China week idiot’s help.
Bro I watched this whole video and then realized it was posted like 10 minutes ago lol
Regardless I think it’s fun canon to assume it’s based on Nate’s (male sole survivors) military tour, as he fought in anchorage and apparently had many accolades, enough to retire and preselected for the vault perimeters of 111.
But just a theory a very fun and sensible one that only increases the game connections.
What some people forget is sometimes it is one soldier who turns around a war by achieving certain objectives but they are not always a normal soldier they are a highly trained black ops operative who has years
Tactical Training and operational experience to enable them to compleat almost any mission with a very high degree of success
I’m sure there are instances of a single person achieving great wartime success, and maybe OA was one of those times, but if it was the case, one would think the Anchorage Memorial statue would depict that person, rather than a generic group of soldiers.
Thank you for this amazing content buddy. Hope you keep it up!:)
I loved this video. Bethesda also liked to hide a lot of details in Fallout 3 and so I see this simulation as being hyper unrealistic as a way to get people to enlist in the military. The 10 month time frame is also just way too short to get a historically accurate digital museum going on. We also play as a nameless soldier and we do well in the simulation cause of the experience of The Lone Wanderer at this time in the game. Bethesda probably wanted to add Vita chambers in the simulation like Bioshock has and yet they probably decided against it due to the troubles it might cause in the game like new bugs.
Great video and amazing points! Keep up the great work!
Thanks!
I think it's worth noting that animations, assets, most voice acting, and the like would more than likely nit need to be facired into the 10 month period after the conclusion to the war in Alaska. These could easily have been made in the pre-operation Anchorage versions of the simulations.
Yeah I suppose you’re right. Animating isn’t really reliant on the events of the sim.
@@N_orte thus isn't to say I disagree with you of course! Just something I noticed. Great video, you have a new sub :^)
I'm amazed by your research.
Thanks!
Not like the simulations
**Clone running away**
Not sure why I was recommended this but was good watch. Subscribed lmao
Thanks, Gepetto!
I think the simulation was just a training tool showing them how to use the new power armor (at the end of the simulation we get the power armour perk) but most importantly a propaganda tool showing to the young recruits how the US Army is strong and how by joining it you will become an unstoppable hero it's partly acurate showing real battle and real character but in a highly biased manner
I had the privilege of getting to play a real life U.S. military combat simulator. It's called DARWARS: Ambush! And it's a cross between operation flashpoint (the game that was before the game that was before the game that the DayZ mod runs on) and duck hunt
5 participants sat inside a real life Humvee with no wheels inside a room surrounded on all sides by projectors showing the game. Each person was equipped with CO2 firing, laser hitscanning M16A4s or a roof mounted M2 Browning or M240 machine gun
Sounds exciting but we drove for 15 minutes and nothing happened besides us driving through a village filled with civilians that we weren't allowed to shoot and then a barricade with 2 insurgents that we also weren't allowed to shoot until they shot at us. The instructors got bored too and sent 100 car bombs after us like they were left 4 dead zombies
Compared to America's Army that is more realistic then the normal FPS of the time but, being designed as a video game to recruit people, its much more forgiving, fast paced and arcadey then DARWARS
It's entirely possible that the people in the military got the realistic version of the anchorage simulation for training and the public got the dumbed down more palatable "Simulation" for recruiting purposes
I kinda love the reading this whole dlc is a long form takedown of the call of duty era of games.
I think it’s tough to kill the “linear on-rails mission style fps” genre, especially on consoles. Sometimes it’s fun to just run through a level blasting everything in your way. And I hate to admit this, but I actually enjoyed the story of MW2019, Cold War, and, to an extent, Vanguard.
One thing about this sim that bothers me is some soldiers in power armor wielding super sledges, while, judging by this weapon's appearance, I personally think it's a post-war makeshift weapon made from scrap (automobile parts in particular, I believe, and a piece of a dirty mattress to wrap its handle. Plus how efficient it would really be to use the infantry for melee combat in 20-freakin'-77? Even if the soldiers are in power armor, this doesn't solve all the problems, as chinese set up some pulse devices to burn the circuitry of any power armor. I'm OK with trench knives being used hence they were meant to be an auxiliary weapon and as such being used almost only in narrow spaces where firearms could possibly be not terribly efficient. But any big melee weapon, such as a super sledge, isn't suitable for such use since you need quite a big space to swing this thing. And in the open spaces... Do i have to explain how "efficient" such weapons would be there?
Playing through this recently I felt the whole time it was just blatantly propaganda though I didn't think as deeply as you did into it. I mostly just thought about it from a role play perspective for character so yeah. Cool beans.
It does feel quite like propaganda
A single rookie soldier single-handedly ending the stalemate with China in the universe, the same fallout universe we have the wanderer the chosen one the lone wanderer the courier And Volker from 111 lol yes
in my opinion OA is a simulation for a museum or is sold as a video game, and since nobody knows what really is acurate they just made it funnier and not that serious
Yea I do like the DLC cause I’m my opinion it’s quick and easy
Very quick. Nice way to get early Power Armour
No evidence of anyone else having access? I think you’re forgetting the only other person to enter the simulation. The 23rd of his kind
I’m not sure he ever went into the sim.
He sure did if you wanted to borrow his pockets for offloading some simulated gear
Fallout 3 my beloved
Fallout 5 BETTER be in Anchorage.
Visin! Visin!
What about the locations seen though? Could they possibly be real?
While not entirely reliable if it was used to train actual soldiers on the way its gotta be somewhat close to what they felt the soldiers needed to know. That being said id say its about as reliable in universe as anything else in the fallout universe. Drenched in propaganda
It was more bloody battle.
Likely, yes
@@N_orte love the videos keep it up 👍🏾 sorry for my bad writing.
Expectations. Just like the simulation!
Reality. 10:27
Please do mothership zeta next
Maybe I’ll do a video about MZ
I don't think development time is a valid point here... I don't see a reason to assume Fallout would go by a realistic dev time in game.
I think we all know this isn’t
Well now it’s out there. Didn’t see a lot of discussion about it during my research. Just a lot of “Chase altered the sim,” so I figured I would go a little deeper and add to it
Using a video game-esque simulation to train and entice soldiers into front line combat?
Didn't realize The La Li Lu Le Lo where a part of the Fallout time-line.
Just to confirm fans of the series; Bethesda is NOT obsessed with the 1950's (maybe except the arts-team who are literally that old!) nor they have a heavy bias on former Soviet states and their evolved relations with the Western-South, they purely created this franchise and lore to mock America's hyper-paranoia and anthethichal 90's marketing system towards fast-marketing in War-vet stocks and end of Russian-Communism. Bethesda was just a drunk-nerd in late college who wanted to see potential future if America gone lead-foot into Capitalism and China trying to revive Russia's superiority complex in a failed philosophy only to trick them into a resource war on other nations, itself as the sole ruler of the world. Bad things into Dumb things happened and now humanity has to survive the cosmic idiocy that the two nations brought upon them unstable horrors looking at humanity as food rather than its parent.
I play this DLC early and skip the missions
It IS a reliable storyteller....just not accurate battle simulator.
It's just a sim bro.
What happened to the other country's and continent's?
Still less terrible than Dead Money 😆.
I swear nothing to you really matters or really affects the story/gameplay. What’s the point of having theories n conspiracies or fact videos about a game when all ur gona do is brush off the theories n conspiracies. It does affect how we perceive the story and how our minds change about characters, friends, enemies and even places in the game so many places in fallout tell a story even if it’s just a rubbled building it has story’s just gotta have the imagination n open mind to create a deeper gaming experience
I say it doesn’t really matter, especially in the context of this video, because the OA sim is the best source of info we have on Operation Anchorage, even if the sim is not 100% accurate. Until a better source of info comes, we’re kinda forced to take the simulation at face value. Thus, the sim not being 100% true to events is moot.
And I’m fine with conspiracies and theories as long as they remain just theories and conspiracies. My biggest gripe with theories is when people claim their theories as fact, or speak their theory without disclosing that it’s a theory. It’s okay to take things at face value sometimes.