Escapist Magazine calls Bethesda killers of Fallout

I wonder if perhaps I missed the theming of Fallout too. All of my player PCs I made for the Fallout games are science heroes. My VD was a doctor with hacking protocols downloaded into her Pipboy, my LW were twins, one doctor in training and the other a programmer, and my Courier was a pre-war Ghoul who was a playful hacker. And none of them are anywhere near as superstitious/reverent about ruins as a wastelander would be. The ruins aren't mysterious and ancient. Going into one isn't a dungeon crawl, it's a heist, with fat loot to score, and resources to extract.

That's because I've never seen Fallout as a scathing satire of the 50s, or consumerism. The narrator might say they ran out of resources, but that's obviously not the point. Jingoism is not the point. The fall of the prewar world was that Chairman Chang was a Hitler level monster who rather than accept defeat, chose to take his enemies with him instead of safeguarding the existence of his people. The problem of Fallout is ideology over people, or rather totalitarianism. And totalitarianism isn't about hubris, it's that the rules of the ideology must be allowed to proceed without human interference.

The problem of Fallout's world has never been hubris or indulgence, the problem is fanaticism. The problem with Fallout 3 is that the main factions are fantaics, and the final boss in 3 is the one moderate between Eden and Lyons. The problem with Fallout 4 is that ALL the factions are fanatics aside from the Minutemen. The reasons NV kingmaker scenario isn't nearly as offensive is only Ceasar is a self-admitted fanatic. The NCR is corrupt but also flexible and reasonable most of the time, House is legitimately a power-hungry jerk, but he's above ideology. Ultimately he's driven by moral pragmatism. So three of the choices are legitimate contenders.

The rifts on consumerism and government propaganda and government corruption I saw as gentle rifts of the normal costs of doing business in any society. At least in Fallout 1.
 
Charwo said:
The fall of the prewar world was that Chairman Chang was a Hitler level monster who rather than accept defeat, chose to take his enemies with him instead of safeguarding the existence of his people.
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Where in the series is this information from? Just curious.
Also, this seems to be suggesting that the United States bears no blame for the apocalypse, despite the entire first game being laced with all of the evils they committed in the name of expansion...

Charwo said:
The problem of Fallout is ideology over people, or rather totalitarianism. And totalitarianism isn't about hubris, it's that the rules of the ideology must be allowed to proceed without human interference.
Click to expand...

Read Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom, then read Hannah Arendt's work (she's the preeminent scholar on totalitarianism) for an explanation of how modernist, industrial capitalism led directly to the rise of totalitarianism. Consumerism is just a symptom of the former. These things are closely related in both our world, and Fallout's fictional version of it.
 
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-masks-in-fallout-76s-upcoming-seasonal-event
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...mode-survival-sounds-like-a-griefers-paradise

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Killers of Fallout? Cmon guys. LOOK AT THOSE MASKS! Fallout is just oozing off that screenshot.
 
Jabberwok said:
Read Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom, then read Hannah Arendt's work (she's the preeminent scholar on totalitarianism) for an explanation of how modernist, industrial capitalism led directly to the rise of totalitarianism. Consumerism is just a symptom of the former. These things are closely related in both our world, and Fallout's fictional version of it.
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Good cite. I think the escapist saw it clearly: Zenimax/Bethesda was actually only shopping for a retro-future Americana IP. They're in love with it as much as the Enclave and every new game is about REBUILDING, instead of just building, e.g. getting this or that prewar tech to keep rebuilding in the prewar gestalt. No lessons learned.

The Fallout world is stuck in old world blues (I suspect the name of the DLC is some meta-commentary on the franchise). Survive and ape prewar the best you can is the motto of the Fallout world now. If you put up a nice facade that looks reminiscent of prewar, maybe industry and industrialized agriculture will follow?

In more time than the industrial revolution took, Fallout is still filled with people poking sticks into the mud while squatting in a prewar building (but not actually exploring it, that's for the player). I get they've been handicapped by a nuclear wasteland, but that cuts both ways, there's enough leftover knowledge and resources, they don't need to reinvent the wheel nearly as much as we did the first time (+ working and miniaturized fusion, holy moly, the possibilities).
 
Okay, I have to ask this here, because I just noticed that the article does what so many people do, and attributes both Fallout games to Black Isle.

Is that true? It's my understanding that Interplay developed the first game, then Black Isle was formed with some of the same people, and developed the second with Interplay as publisher.
 
Jabberwok said:
It's my understanding that Interplay developed the first game, then Black Isle was formed with some of the same people, and developed the second with Interplay as publisher.
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This is correct.

Bethesda is pretty much stuck in the "Fallout series is all about exploring destroyed places, can't have anything that resembles actual civilization" mentality and that's a terrible mentality to have. Fallout is so much more than just the basic setting.
 
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Jabberwok said:
Okay, I have to ask this here, because I just noticed that the article does what so many people do, and attributes both Fallout games to Black Isle.

Is that true? It's my understanding that Interplay developed the first game, then Black Isle was formed with some of the same people, and developed the second with Interplay as publisher.
Click to expand...



 
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