JustAShcookius
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Fallout is a game of uneasiness. The player is not so much horrified at the game as he is simply "put off", humbled, or launched deep into depressing thoughts. It may get creepy at times as you unearth secrets from many years ago that may better have been left forgotten:
ie: the holotape in the trash bin in the sierra army depot that details damning reports from galaxy news.
Before I continue, the character Anna Winslow, even though she is a ghost and can be interacted with, seems more like atypical fallout 2 humor than actual cannon.
However there were elements of the supernatural present even if they were not directly confronted. Such as the track "Desert Wind" and the track "City of Lost Angels", which contained the moaning and shrieking of tormented souls who seemed to be unable to pass on to the next life.
More importantly I seem to get the impression that they are repeatedly reliving their last moments before they were vaporized or died from acute radiation exposure.
Los Angeles, or The Boneyard was described as being hot, windless, and littered with bones of people from years before. The Vault Dweller gathered info and "only killed when he must". This statement and others in his memoir give the impression that he was genuinely afraid to disturb the area or even make sounds.
Boneyard? Graveyard is more like it...
This may be just me, but the majority of the characters in Fallout seem to exhibit a spectrum of three things:
Depression (understandably), Insanity, and most importantly, Paranoia.
These are all recognizable symptoms of one thing: The people are haunted. They hate to be looked at, talked to, or even helped.
200 years have passed. No one remembers the way the world looked like before the war except a few unlucky people who were granted immortality through various means.
THE POINT IS IS THAT THESE PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE EXHIBITING ANY OF THIS MENTAL PHENOMENON BECAUSE THE WORLD WAS WASTELAND FROM THEIR EARLIEST MEMORY.
Take WW2 soldiers for example, even through all the shit they went through, they fought off depression and horror and even maintained cordiality and joked around with each other during miserable camping and marching.
Feudal Peasants had hard lives and were basically slaves, yet they had celebrations and dances and they had their religion which was Catholicism at that time. They were happy because they didnt know any better, than the cow shit they lived in.
Back to the bold type above, we have to make any interesting conclusion:
THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE WORLD OF FALLOUT. THERE ARE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS INFLUENCING HUMANITY AND PREVENTING THEM FROM GROWING AND MOVING PAST THE PAST.
Some character examples seem relevant here:
Ulysses - Clearly an intelligent man and a resourceful one, is driven delusional by the destruction of a little known settlement known as the Divide. It changed him until he was basically another man, unable to leave or help the landscape around him. He cites Old World ghosts as the reason for everything he does. Nothing Ulysses says should be taken at face value, but maybe he let more truth slip in his words than he meant to when taunting the Courier through ED-E. You have to wonder...
Hakunin - Mr cocaine face as I like to call him obviously has telepathic abilities. He also communicates with his ancestors and can sense impending doom. He also mysteriously is able to tap into the Chosen One's dreams and tell them things.
Ghost People - are humanoid mutants which descended fron Sierra Madre construction workers. They are difficult to kill and even when downed rise back up from the "dead" to accost the Courier. The idea of "ghost" people comes too close to my point to ignore. Specifically the point being that the writers of New Vegas wanted to draw attention to the ghost moniker. They are ghosts in all ways except that they are actually in our world instead of being spectral.
Fallout technology in general - are ghosts in that they capture the emotions and trials of past sufferers. They are not (usually) creepy, but the wealth of knowledge on them can be unsettling. Some machines became sentient when they were not supposed to. Some machines even captured the personality of their masters with astonishing similarity. Hence the machines are ghosts in that they are dark shadows of the past that just happen to talk, clean and serve just as they did hundreds of years before.
Bethesda did one thing right though (off with me head!) in that they maintained this mysterious dark power in the rest of their games. Dunwhich Building and the Dunwhich Borers are excellent examples of this.
Do you think this almost overlooked part of Fallout should be addressed in the next game?
I must have missed something or some important example. Please expound additional evidence in the comment section.
IN SHORT
The fallout world is haunted by actual ghosts of the past.
Certain characters profess and prove knowledge of supernatural happenings.
Something fucked up was happening in the Dunwhich building.
The writers of New Vegas put special emphasis on the word "ghost" for a good reason.
ie: the holotape in the trash bin in the sierra army depot that details damning reports from galaxy news.
Before I continue, the character Anna Winslow, even though she is a ghost and can be interacted with, seems more like atypical fallout 2 humor than actual cannon.
However there were elements of the supernatural present even if they were not directly confronted. Such as the track "Desert Wind" and the track "City of Lost Angels", which contained the moaning and shrieking of tormented souls who seemed to be unable to pass on to the next life.
More importantly I seem to get the impression that they are repeatedly reliving their last moments before they were vaporized or died from acute radiation exposure.
Los Angeles, or The Boneyard was described as being hot, windless, and littered with bones of people from years before. The Vault Dweller gathered info and "only killed when he must". This statement and others in his memoir give the impression that he was genuinely afraid to disturb the area or even make sounds.
Boneyard? Graveyard is more like it...
This may be just me, but the majority of the characters in Fallout seem to exhibit a spectrum of three things:
Depression (understandably), Insanity, and most importantly, Paranoia.
These are all recognizable symptoms of one thing: The people are haunted. They hate to be looked at, talked to, or even helped.
200 years have passed. No one remembers the way the world looked like before the war except a few unlucky people who were granted immortality through various means.
THE POINT IS IS THAT THESE PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE EXHIBITING ANY OF THIS MENTAL PHENOMENON BECAUSE THE WORLD WAS WASTELAND FROM THEIR EARLIEST MEMORY.
Take WW2 soldiers for example, even through all the shit they went through, they fought off depression and horror and even maintained cordiality and joked around with each other during miserable camping and marching.
Feudal Peasants had hard lives and were basically slaves, yet they had celebrations and dances and they had their religion which was Catholicism at that time. They were happy because they didnt know any better, than the cow shit they lived in.
Back to the bold type above, we have to make any interesting conclusion:
THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE WORLD OF FALLOUT. THERE ARE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS INFLUENCING HUMANITY AND PREVENTING THEM FROM GROWING AND MOVING PAST THE PAST.
Some character examples seem relevant here:
Ulysses - Clearly an intelligent man and a resourceful one, is driven delusional by the destruction of a little known settlement known as the Divide. It changed him until he was basically another man, unable to leave or help the landscape around him. He cites Old World ghosts as the reason for everything he does. Nothing Ulysses says should be taken at face value, but maybe he let more truth slip in his words than he meant to when taunting the Courier through ED-E. You have to wonder...
Hakunin - Mr cocaine face as I like to call him obviously has telepathic abilities. He also communicates with his ancestors and can sense impending doom. He also mysteriously is able to tap into the Chosen One's dreams and tell them things.
Ghost People - are humanoid mutants which descended fron Sierra Madre construction workers. They are difficult to kill and even when downed rise back up from the "dead" to accost the Courier. The idea of "ghost" people comes too close to my point to ignore. Specifically the point being that the writers of New Vegas wanted to draw attention to the ghost moniker. They are ghosts in all ways except that they are actually in our world instead of being spectral.
Fallout technology in general - are ghosts in that they capture the emotions and trials of past sufferers. They are not (usually) creepy, but the wealth of knowledge on them can be unsettling. Some machines became sentient when they were not supposed to. Some machines even captured the personality of their masters with astonishing similarity. Hence the machines are ghosts in that they are dark shadows of the past that just happen to talk, clean and serve just as they did hundreds of years before.
Bethesda did one thing right though (off with me head!) in that they maintained this mysterious dark power in the rest of their games. Dunwhich Building and the Dunwhich Borers are excellent examples of this.
Do you think this almost overlooked part of Fallout should be addressed in the next game?
I must have missed something or some important example. Please expound additional evidence in the comment section.
IN SHORT
The fallout world is haunted by actual ghosts of the past.
Certain characters profess and prove knowledge of supernatural happenings.
Something fucked up was happening in the Dunwhich building.
The writers of New Vegas put special emphasis on the word "ghost" for a good reason.
One could argue that this would seem to be supernatural, but I would argue that if it was, then it is the only thing supernatural, and that it stems from their own fears and misgivings. Remember: They used Forbidden Planet as a touchstone for the setting; obviously for the visual aesthetic of the world, but the main threat in Forbidden Planet also stemmed from a man's inner fears and emotions—made manifest by alien technology. If it wasn't intentional, it's a striking coincidence that both worlds would be bent to the way of such similar influences.
