Nick Valentine, the Detective Archetype, and the Mettle of a Man
If you browse social media, chat to your friends, brave what old-school forums are left or plunge into comments of various subreddits, you will find a fair amount of people who truly, earnestly enjoyed Fallout 4. It has been the subject of numerous (earned) critiques regarding everything from its convoluted story to its oversimplification of once interesting game mechanics. This isn’t an essay that focuses on those elements, numerous though they are, but something I noticed as I did my best to grapple with the unwieldy main plot and the significantly better Far Harbor.
If you gather a crowd of people who have played the game and ask ‘how many of you had a great time?’ some people, by merit of how taste works, will happily raise their hand. That I’m writing this at all is a sign that, for all the faults I found, I genuinely engaged with it in a way I didn’t expect to as I (apparently a lawyer) slogged through the opening with my assigned soldier husband and Apple-Cheeked Infant You Will Love. In that respect, I suppose, I’m raising my hand.
If you peruse those same places, with the same people, and ask ‘how many of you really liked Nick Valentine?’
The number of hands up will be significantly higher.
In fact, it isn’t uncommon for people who didn’t enjoy any part of Fallout 4 to instinctively throw in a ‘Nick was cool’. But, as somebody who agrees, why is that? He’s got a lot of cool elements, sure. He’s a wisecracking robot detective. He has the most fleshed out backstory of any companion and, come Far Harbor, is the deuteragonist. Stephen Russel delivers an incredible vocal performance. He has a sick-ass fuckin’ detective name. What’s not to like? But he isn’t just a well-liked character in a game with many failings, he’s one of the most beloved characters in the entire franchise. That takes some doing. So how the hell did they do it?
Valentine is a character defined by contrasts; man to machine, past to future, ‘me’ to ‘not me’ and, less obviously, ‘archetype’ to ‘antithesis’. Nick Valentine is both a stereotypical gumshoe, the hardboiled detective of the neo-noir setting of Fallout 4, and every element of what makes up that stereotype turned completely on its head. He is, and is not, what he claims to be. He is noir and neo-noir. He shouldn’t be well-written. But, by accident or miracle, he is.
He is, and is not, Nick Valentine.
Let’s pull back a little and talk about noir, detectives, and detectives in noir:
The role of The Detective isn’t to solve crimes in the seedy underbelly of whatever city he lives in, seducing dames and cracking wise as he goes toe to toe with gangsters. That’s the window dressing. Press your cheek up against the glass and squint a little and you’ll make out a murkier shape, something that wraps around all the others like chiffon. It accentuates, highlights, is easily overpowered by the glitzy parts it surrounds. It is vital to the context of what makes or breaks a noir detective yet makes an effort to avoid your scrutiny. It is, and is not, the point.
The role of a detective is to suffer.
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