I'm in late game now (I'm really taking my time here) and I want to disagree with some of the critics considering Sonora' story and setting. Yes, it's not Planescape, but as far as your typical post-apo goes it's quite decent.
Villa. The place of your people was founded by a technophobic fella who escaped from one of the Vaults with some people and GECK. Often in the game people would comment on your place, like "How do you people manage to grow anything in those wates?" GECK! What and irony, all this happy little technophobic paradise wouldn't be possible without the finest pre-war technology.
You char is a simple hick who spent all his life cultivating maize and shoveling bramin shit. Leaving Villa you encounter the life outside your small and simple word. Akin to the beginning of Fallout 1, but when Vault Dweller was leaving clean and safe Vault, only to encounter that there is actually life in the Wastes, Peasant discovers life in ruined cities and small communities, with all the marvels of pre-war technology. Maybe dying from appendicitis or pneumonia in early thirties is not so unavoidable as it was at Villa? Maybe motorcycle is better than running around?
One of the main themes of the game is technical progress and the price of it. Yes, maybe you enjoy your simple tribal lifestyle, but it can't go on forever. Diseases, mutations, mutants, raiders, droughts - one of the characters in the game notes, how he seen entire community going crazy just because it's only water-pump was broken. There's a fine example of how too much isolation can degrade people: Jackals, cannibalistic tribe. But progress doesn't come for free: you had to abandon your old lifestyle, and someone has to work to maintain it. Someone has to mine Uranium, someone has to scavenge the ruins, and there's a plenty of risk doing that.
So, game really nudges you towards accepting the progress. You're not alone: one of your fellow villagers finds himself at home working for Tinmen. He doesn't want to go back. Or, of course, you can keep to your idealistic retrograde lifestyle: hard work, family values, strong sense of collective. But mind you, all of this is very fragile. One drought, one raid, and all is gone. You can get a protection from Rangers: just pay them with food and recruits. But this choice is as good as losing any independence whatsoever.
Later, during the Villa meeting you presented a choice. Garage City has old factory in good condition. This factory is ripe for relaunching and city could become a small industrial center, a second chance to this dying city. Your elders propose to you to destroy it and kill all hopes for local population just to keep Villa safe. Same proposition goes for Uranium mines in Flagstaff, thereby severely disrupting local power source balance. What, all ore is has to be bought from Redding now?
Well, of course, some more professional writers, like our beloved Chrissy or Timmy, would have executed this premise better, but they have no access to the franchise for it was engulfed by darkness and mediocrity. Yes, you could point out similar examples, like struggle between magic and technology in Arcanum, but, frankly, Arcanum suffers from ludonarative dissonance way more than Sonora. You keep hearing stories how magic is obsolete while magic being the most OP thing in the game.
