When I first got into Fallout and was delightfully babbling to my friends about all the fucked up vault experiments and such they looked at me like I was crazy and asked why the hell I liked it so much. At the time I didn’t really have an answer other than I liked the contrast of how silly it could get compared to the darker qualities—how it bounced between the two or combined them into a wonderful satire on capitalism.
After watching and rewatching the show, logging hundreds of hours across multiple games, and several posters up on my wall later, I think I finally understand why.
The games are set up for you to be the hero, to make your slice of the wasteland a better place, but unlike a lot of other media, being the hero is an active choice that you have to make over and over again. You are presented with a cruel, violent world that brings out the worst in humanity, and yet these games ask you to be kind, to help out an NPC with a small favor, or sacrifice something important for the greater good. It isn’t easy. A lot of times the best choice isn’t going to be perfect either, with many ethical decisions boiling down to harm reduction or the lesser of two evils—whatever gives the wasteland the best chance at survival. Sometimes you need to bloody your hands, but other times the better outcome results in maybe not forgiveness but refusing to act on revenge. Heroism is often challenging and morally grey at times.
Sure, you could choose to be evil, but it’s almost too easy—I find it so much more satisfying to be empathetic, to surprise characters with hope that the world doesn’t have to be so bleak. I guess in many ways it’s a type of Superman fantasy, having not only the desire to be kind but the power to be so in a world filled with darkness.
And it’s not just the player character vs the world, there are plenty of companions and other NPCs surviving and working to make things better. Here you are at the end of the world, yet people endure and life goes on. People grow crops, tend to livestock, and set up trade. They build communities and carve out homes in the ruins of the old world.
I guess in simpler terms, I like Fallout because it’s a hopeful display of humanity persevering. War may never change, but men can. I think a light in the dark is always going to get me, especially when that light is a spark trying to illuminate an entire sea of darkness. That spark may be hard to find, but goddamn how impressive is it that it’s trying so hard against all odds.