Developing World: You stole our water and supported the installation of brutal but market friendly leadership that's friendly to exploiting our resources and people for foreign profit! We're desperate and dying!
Market Capitalist World: glug glug glug sorry, we couldn't hear you over all this thirst quenching!
I personally think you could very easily divide the main series fallout titles (and 76 because IDK if it's main series or just a spin-off or what) into the west vs east coast games. Not gonna say one is objectively better than the other, but I personally like the story of the west coast games better.
I always wondered why on towns they still had dirty broken houses full of skeletons.
In lore? The East Coast was struck a lot more compared to the West Coast, there are many more population centers and important strategic assets to bomb compared to the East. Therefore the people were set back much farther and rebuilding civilization takes a lot longer. Also, the lack of a unified government forming and rebuilding caused major delays in rebuilding on the East. The NCR really jumpstarted the West Coast’s recovery. The closest we can see in the East was the Provisional Comminwealth Government but that was swiftly destroyed by the Institute and all that remains are small settlements.
In Real Life? Bethesda is bad at dates and times and wanted to do funny things, it’s the same reason why food is on store shelves for the player to find and every ammo box still has stuff for you.
It's actually kind of my major (and basically only) beef with the show. The West Coast was basically recovered, it had this whole story arc where the NCR was playing out the American cycle again including a Manifest Destiny idea, humanity never learns etc, and then it just collapses because Todd can't be trusted with other people's toys. Like, the NCR had more than one city, and more than one important city, it was like pretending 1812 America would collapse because Washington DC got burned.
On the other hand, it was fun, so, whatever.
Again, deep diving into the lore, the NCR was on the decline already. We see it in New Vegas. The Bear was bloated and encumbered itself with pointless wars of expansion and major corruption. The Boneyard Seperatists were gaining traction, and other parts of the country were in economic distress. The Mojave Territory is simultaneously over and underfunded, and is being used as a distraction from the major internal problems. If Shady Sands was nuked in a non-NCR ending to New Vegas I could see every city rising up and forming their own states.
That's the thing, all that shit is true about Manifest Destiny America too. And if the NCR had dissolved into semi-functional city states that'd be a cool element but we didn't see any evidence of it.
Maybe next season?