Fallout Meta - Blog Posts

(I'm gonna be replying here also to comments with the same general stance)

I don't agree. I think this heavily downplays the destructive quality of the MacCarthy era and 1950s anti-communist zeal. I agree that the world today is in regression, corrupt etc. But American anti-communism is not at the point it was in the 50s, we are not currently seeing mass deportation due to political belief and large trials where progressives are persecuted. The games display the setting as heavily anti-communist to a point we arn't at (yet) today.

Besides that, I agree that there are similarities to today, but also not really. We never see any pre-war outsider-cultures (like, resistance movements, punks, junkies etc) in any of these games, what's presented to us in the pre-war era is pure 50s Americana that includes everybody. To include everybody in the real world the status quo can't be that aggressively white and suburban, what we get in the pre-war setting is basically a colorblind world that's overwhelmingly white coded, but not textually that.

And to finally end of this response, if they just wanted to make the world like ours today, why bother with the 50s aesthetic? I get that it's fun, and while not really a real critique of the games, I think that you're just wasting potential. Having your pre-war world be aesthetically and culturally the 1950s but excluding the real world oppression that is inherent in that culture is a really boring choice, that also mythologizes the 50s in a weird way. It just makes the setting unexplored, and while visually compelling, thematically empty.

A devastating and confusing thing about the Fallout setting, when you explore the pre-war aspects, is what the creators think about pre-war America. In the first games we only get hints of the pre-war world, but they seem to be some sort of wild fascist nation invading Canada. In Fallout 1, the first thing we're introduced to of the pre-war society is seeing a soldier shoot civilians and laughing.

Now, for the first 2 games and New Vegas we don't really know much. What we know is that there's a fascist military group known as the enclave who were a sort of US deep state even before the war, and that the government teamed up with corporate interests to preform vaguely MKULTRA-ish experiments with the Vaults. Basically, the government was an extreme version of the 50s American jingoism and McCarthyism.

This is well and dandy, I guess issues come up more when we get to the later games, especially 4, where it seems like none of this extreme plotting and societal civil unrest which would exist is seen. The society as presented in 4 also seems quite progressive, gay people are featured in the opening, and none of the baggage of say, civil rights not existing are included. Now on a baseline, I don't want settings to be more conservative, homophobic and sexist etc., but it becomes a very confusing setting when it's displayed both as this jingoist extreme thing with fascist tendencies aswell as a progressive place where everyone is seemingly equal. If you're focusing on the 50s as your setting, and American nationalism in the 50s, then you can't have McCarthyism spoofs and anti-communism as a societal paranoia norm while also general equality is the norm without misunderstanding why McCarthyism and nationalist jingoism is bad. A massive harm done in anti-communist paranoia is how it degrades and vilifies any progressive movements (women's rights, civil rights, homosexuality) as being morally un-American and therefore connected to communism. To ignore this just makes any critique of MacCarthyism and jingoism weird!

Basically, pre-war America in Fallout 4 becomes this both sides thing where America is both pure and equal and white fences in every instance that we see as the player (the intro), while also supposedly being this dystopic MacCarthyist hellscape that's broadcasting gladly about their war crimes in Canada, and wants to root out communism. I guess the only fix for this issue without getting into the fine print like they had to do is just not to focus too much on the pre-war world.

I'm on episode 5 of the Fallout show; NO WHAT THE HELL I LITERALLY THOUGHT TO MYSELF "MAN I'M BEGINNING TO LIKE THIS SHOW" AND THEN THEY JUST REMOVE THE NCR FROM CANNON. WHY. THAT'S SUCH A FRUSTRATING CHOICE

also STOP PLAYING ON THE NOSE MUSIC I CAN UNDERSTAND THE PLOT WE DON'T NEED CONSTANT 50S MUSIC