CIU210 Audio/Visual Essay
The Fallout series created by Bethesda Softworks depicts the idea of what could have in reality been the result if the Cold War had gone to the worst result: nuclear war and the fallout that followed in it's wake, while adding fictionally mutated creatures including man as the inhabitants of the wasteland. To date and being released in November of 2015, Fallout 4 to the current date is the newest and most anticipated release of the series, both to fans and to gamers in general. Like many popular video games of the current era that are almost so technologically advanced they are almost on-par with movies in terms of storyline and CGI animation, Fallout 4 offers the player to take on the role as a man or woman that has survived unscathed the nuclear fallout of a atomic war in a vault beneath the earth, giving them the option upon entering the nuclear wasteland the chance to test their survival skills to the extreme as well as shape the world and it's future with their own choices. Sadly however as much as society has crumbled in the lore of this world and been re-invented after the nuclear war, Fallout 4 maybe intentionally or subliminally has replicated how our modern society in the real world views it's dominant ideology: and in this essay I argue that the ruling ideology is still being a society ruled a patriarchy of wealthy white men.
It is abundantly clear when you first enter the ruins of Boston years after the wake of being hit with atomic bombs in Fallout 4, that most of the buildings are either abandoned or occupied by hostile beings trying to survive. What remains left of any civilized society in Fallout 4 has retreated and survived in very few fortified settlements within the city itself, the first one the player is instructed to go to as part of the main storyline is called 'Diamond City', which is not the shining city it sounds like but is actually a refugee settlement within a re-enforced baseball diamond stadium. When the player first enters the stadium to see the settlement, before them is sprawled out a large diamond-shaped marketplace mixed with shops, a school and houses within back-alleys on the stadium field where the baseball diamond previously was. Beyond the alleyways, those too unfortunate to afford accommodation have no choice but to sleep on mattresses and sleeping bags in a refugee camp underneath wall-less shelters, and quite clustered and cramped together. What becomes clear after the player hs looked around is next to the entrance after the player has entered Diamond City are walkways and elevators that take the player to perhaps a more cleaner part of Diamond City where the housing is elevated above the baseball field and marketplace in the stands, including the mayor's office, and it's here where it becomes vastly clear the contrast of the class hierarchy in the city. The housing and mayor's office buildings are built and claimed to overlook, and perhaps look down on, the lower class of less wealthy citizens and refugees. Talking to the populace both in lower Diamond City and upper Diamond City, you get very much as the player that generations of people living in the city have become used to their quality standard of living, with the lower half being mostly bitter and harshly frugal towards the player's business transactions and inquiries while the upper half are rudely snobbish and vastly discriminatory to anyone they deem as having wealth or status below theirs. This is very much represented when the player meets the random encounter of a non-playable character named Ann Codman, one of the upper-class residents of Diamond City, who when the player attempts to talk to them immediately greets them with "Well, hello there. Another one of the poor and stupid of Diamond City come begging for table scraps?" (Codman/Bethesda, 2015), not even getting to know the player further than face value. This is very much a great example, and not very different to, how the majority of upper class Diamond City residents address the rest of the settlement and passerby's.
This ideology is further cemented as the player first attempts to enter the city, and automatically encounters an event where they are pulled into a conversation between the city guard and a journalist named Piper, the latter using the player as a cover to re-enter the city against the mayor's wishes. Thus further revealing in the storyline the resentment between her trying to uncover the truth of missing people, verses the city's mayor quelling the citizens by conforming them with reminders of unity, and keeping the peace beyond reasonable doubt because of his position of power versus Piper's position as a journalist living in lower Diamond City. Posting articles that question the mayor's leadership, after many people have gone missing and he has failed to take any action, he promptly further ignores this by making an address to Diamond City abolishing the notion of the rumors and any notion of finding truth to the rumors is disruptive and chaotic. Seeing the reporter trying to get to the truth behind the disappearances of people in the city as troublesome and chaotic, the reporter aligning their interests with the player's also looking for a missing character quickly contrasts the mayor's hold of power over the city as a upper-class white/Caucasian male as a dominant patriarchy over the lower Diamond City residents who are powerless to ascertain the truth. And when the news comes to the player's ears of incidents that the missing people are being replaced by a race called 'Synths', which is short for synthetically organic humanoids replicated to be indistinguishable between themselves and the people they are cloned to look like, it very much pits the player to be influenced to see the upper class of Diamond City to suspect them as corrupt. Or at least holding the majority of wealth and the influence that comes with it at the expense of lower Diamond City.
But also talking to the citizens of Diamond City eventually reveals another dominant ideology; most of the citizens at least of the majority are white/caucasian human beings. This becomes irrifutably concise when the player is guided to visit another settlement further into the abandoned skyline of Boston to a fortified series of alleyways called 'Goodneighbour', where the player immediately upon entering encounters an event where they are about to be mugged, only for the mugger to be interupted by the town's mayor who talks down then viciously stabs the mugger to death. After a conversation with Goodneighbour's mayor, who like the reporter Piper from Diamond City also eventually becomes a companion to the player on their journey, the player quickly learns that Goodneighbour houses all the people which Diamond City has forcefully outcast and all other miscreants who don't fit into any other settlements. This includes the mayor who himself is one of the first major encounters the player has which introduces to a new race called Ghouls, humans who were caught in the raditation left by the atomic bombs but 'cooked' in appearance to have lost all hair, ears and nose to become 'ghoulish' in appearance, hence the name. Because all Ghouls look very much like Wade Wilson after he became Daredevil in his unmasked appearance, with skin like the folds of a Shar Pei or a hairless cat, all of the residents that were Ghouls that used to live in Diamond City were cast out as a election political promise as soon as Mayor Donahue became the mayor in Diamond City. Which the player learns eventually is the brother of the Mayor of Goodneighbour, who took the inspiration namesake of John Hancock and appearance as a way to reinvent himself from his drug addiction, and lead the ghouls out of Diamond City to found Goodneighbour. As Hancock becomes the player's companion and some time has passed, Hancock offers the player to lend an ear to tell them these stories about his past and very directly the social divide of both class and species in Diamond City, describing the exile of the Ghouls from the settlement as "There'd always been a pretty clear divide between the folks living in the stands and those down on the field. I'm not convinced they didn't do it just to improve their view." (Hancock/ Bethesda, 2015) which he says his brother McDonough utilized the majority of Diamond City's ideology to incorporate into his political slogan for leadership 'Mankind for McDonough.'
The player in the present timeline after being introduced to Handcock is shortly after witness to the latter giving a speech from a courthouse balcony which basically entails they are not afraid of the city's threats, the xenophobia that Mayor McDonough and the people who agree with him that cast them out of Diamond City, and the new threat of the Synths which the player now forms the identity of being manufactured by a group of scientists called 'The Institute'. Compared to Diamond City as the player explores after the speech, Goodneighbour is very much more-so run down in appearance like a slum within a fold of backstreets, with mentions of a drug den being dealt openly in the lobby of the hotel, and much like the mugging of the player crime taking place in events in the backstreets where the tommy gun-wielding mafia-like guards are not present. The aforementioned guards along with the citizens, including Handcock and his town hall staff, in contrast to Diamond City have no division between upper and lower class (with refugees even notably sleeping in the upper floors of the town hall) but can treat the player with cautious threats and warnings they're got their guard up around them as if treating them like they're a resident from Diamond City looking down on them. Some of the people of Goodneighbour are human and some are even advanced humanoid androids built in this age, but the majority of them are ghouls who have animosity towards Diamond City and their mayor. With no Ghouls present as residents in Diamond City, and other humans and futuristic robots in Goodneighbour who deal in nefarious and sometimes illegal acts, it is crystal clear Goodneighbour is the place in the game that attracts crime and the most shady characters in Fallout 4 due to having a repuation being founded by outcasts from a idealistic Utopian society. Again with Hancock as their mayor and his staff Goodneighbour seems like a patriarchy, but in comparison to Mayor Mc Donough in Diamond City who only has a secretary as his staff and not a bodyguard who Handcock leaves in charge once he leaves Goodneighbour, it's hierarchy becomes a matriarchy and in hindsight more of a democracy in comparison to Donahue holding off any further reelections so he can remain solely in charge. The Ghoul's estrangement and further isolation from humanity is also due to the fact that there are two types of Ghouls, the more radiated and mutated 'feral' Ghouls having lost all rationality and identity, much like zombies to attack and kill anything which is not their own.
There are few other major settlements in Fallout 4 which reflect the class ideology of Boston, such as a trader settlement around Bunker Hill lead by a woman and her caravan guards, which their settlement ultimately becomes one of the major battles in the game as a plot storyline. But further into the game as the player follows the storyline they ultimately have to decide who they must side with in order to finish the game with four factions, which battle around and are independant of the other aforementioned social settlements, each which not only have their own ending resulting from the player's choices but also their own class ideologies based around their base hierarchies.
The first faction the player encounters early in the game are the altruistic Minutemen, 'there in a minute's notice, of the people, for the people' to the people of the Commonwealth of Boston, which in this future point in the game's current timeline is now simply called the Commonwealth. The player comes across a crossfire in the first ghost town between raiders and settlers including one of the last of the Minutemen, a human male of African-American descent named Preston Garvey, who after the player chooses to aid him protect the settlers he is pinned down with offers the player to refound the Minutemen. He further explains the summary of the history of the Minutemen were the militia or the police of the Commonwealth founded to protect people from the threats produced by the atom bombings, but their name was tanished after a pivotal battle in a town killed the general of the Minutemen and the rest disbanded in cowardice leaving the innocent and vulnerable they were defending to fend for themselves in overwhelming odds. If the player decides to ally themselves with the Minutemen, they become the General after Preston decides he is not leadership material, and ultimately setters the player saves in settlements willingly join to become Minutemen. This includes a variety of humans that are both male and female, Caucasian and African-American and all ethenicities in between, but even though some settlements include Ghouls and even robots they do not join the cause among the ranks of the Minutemen even though the Minutemen themselves do not show any hostility or disrespect towards any race they endeavor to aid.
This is in contrast to the second faction the player is introduced to the storyline, the Brotherhood of Steel or the Brotherhood for short, if the Minutemen are considered the police then the Brotherhood is very much considered to be the remnants of the military before the world was bombed. The Brotherhood also have the resources and appearance of a military faction, having many helicopters or 'vertibirds' and suits of power armor as well as their main base of operations being a massive blimp the player witnesses entering the Commonwealth, but also a ranked hierarchy where soldiers where not addressing their superiors refer to each other in the Brotherhood ironically as 'brothers and/or sisters'. The Brotherhood see themselves as the greater good, and it is deeply engraved in their beliefs that the 'American way' is to eliminate without hesitation any 'abominations' created by the atomic war, which not only includes the threat of the Synths but also makes them prejudically racist and slanderous towards all other races in the Commonwealth except for human beings. Not surprisingly, like the Minutemen, their hierarchy includes ranks of only humans of both sexes and all races. If the Player chooses to side with the Brotherhood of Steel, they can ascend to the ranks of 'Knight', 'Paladin', and 'Sentinel', the latter only if the player achieves the Brotherhood ending of the game. Of their superiors in their ranks, only one is notably female however, the rest comprising mostly of men like our real world militia and so disappointingly another majority patriarchy. Under the leadership of Elder Maxson, a fan favorite from Fallout 3, the Brotherhood is extremely prejudicial against all non-humans and those who use any technology which they see as a threat to the future of humanity and any they evaluate as the latter are eliminated without question.
The third faction the player can discover optionally earlier or lead to later in the game from the other factions, which see the rights as Synths as a organic lifeform even created still have the same rights as naturally birthed human beings, and are named the Railroad much like the 'underground railroad' of the history of America safeguarding the rights of African-Americans. As such they put the rights of synthetic humans before themselves, perhaps to a fault, as the rights of the other races including even humans are not mentioned if only second to the freedom and protection of their movement. They are a underground guerilla group as opposed to the law and military groups of the Commonwealth, having finite resources comprised solely of their talented staff, and as a guerrilla group rely solely on stealth and hiding within plain sight via safehouses hidden across all of Boston to operate. As such, if the player chooses to align themselves to the Railroad, they can amusingly choose their own designation alias like a spy but there are no titles or promotions given in their cause. Like Bunker Hill, this faction's settlement is one of the few that is a matriarchy as opposed to a patriarchy, and unlike the other factions in the game comprises of members which are not only human but also robots and even Synths themselves liberated from the Institute.
The Institute themselves are the last of the four factions the player will inevitably encounter in the storyline via a plot twist, which are the scientists in label only in the Commonwealth, founded by a group of surviving scientists which went underground after the bombings after being betrayed and violently shunned by the rest of society, in order to carry out their scientific experiments without interruptions and the restrictions society's laws placed upon them. Seen as a unlimited brain trust of Boston's and the world's greatest minds, generations of the Institute lived underground isolated from the rest of society, until their technology surpassed that of the surface and began to create organic robots so indistinguishable from real humans they began transporting them to the surface in order to both observe experiments and replace certain individuals to plant spies for intelligence and positions of power to control society on the surface. As such their beliefs are with their robotic Synths as creations they can do whatever they want on their own authority, seeing themselves as the salvation of humanity's future, and seeing everything else on the surface as both the squalor doom of humanity among the monstrous threats created by the bombings. Unabided and unregulated by any authority figures than their own, their hierarchy of course of only generations of human survivors before the bombings is like the Minutemen and the Brotherhood comprised of both male and female scientists of all creeds and races, and as aforementioned the Synths are their creation they treat them as the lower class to do tasks deemed of a lower intelligence such as security and maintenance. There are four main divisions of robotics, bioscience, synth retention and advanced systems all have head scientists under one patriarch known as 'The Father', however if the player chooses to side with the Institute, much like games like Mass Effect 3 the player can choose their own gender and as such the leadership can become a matriarchy since the option can become available for the player to assume leadership.
As the last three factions only have the goal of looking out for the interests of a certain kind of species or group within that species such as themselves, the more the focus of their goals of way of life is away from larger groups of people or species they see as threats or enemies, the more likely the leader is to be the dominant ideology within the species they support, strive or trust to share their beliefs of a common goal for within that niche. If we are to examine this further that the dominant ideology of leadership corresponds in direct opposition with who they oppose, we can clearly identify the reverse that who they show bias to and who they perceive as a threat or the enemy gives us a shared belief or hypothesis who more than likely is that group's shared dominant ideology is. We can then easily take a look at each leader's address of what they can expect of their factions.
Such an example for instance is when the player encounters and decides to join the Brotherhood, the leader of the Brotherhood Elder Maxson makes a compelling address of what the Brotherhood's purpose in the Commonwealth truly is, comparing the emergence of the newly created Synth race to the creation of the atomic bomb with "They call their creation the "synth", a robotic abomination of technology that is free-thinking and masquerades as a human being. The notion that a machine could be granted free will is not only offensive, but horribly dangerous. And like the atom, if it isn't harnessed properly, it has the potential of rendering us extinct as a species. .... The Institute and their "synths" are considered enemies of the Brotherhood of Stel and should be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. This campaign will be costly and many lives will be lost. But in the end, we will be saving humankind from its wost enemy... itself." (Maxson/Bethesda, 2015) Here it is important to note that Maxson as the leader of the Brotherhood voices the shared ideology of the Brotherhood itself, especially since he also expects all Brotherhood soldiers to follow him without question in a military fashion, thus also cementing the Brotherhood's beliefs that all threats technological and atomic to save humankind from itself are all other races including humankind itself. But since the Brotherhood feel entitled in the right to appropriate all technology in their view of 'of the people, for the people', of course the brotherhood would accept and follow the guidance of only humans of their own species they are trying to save the future of.
The companions that accompany the player throughout the game make observant opinions to the player, so they can weigh for themselves along with how each faction represents themselves, who their leaders are and what they think about each shared faction's beliefs. One of them named Nick Valentine comments to the player his thoughts while around Elder Maxson about the Brotherhood he commands, wanting to destroy his kind as a Synth that "'Protecting people from themselves.' The oldest excuse of any tyrant.", if the phrase 'Protecting people from themselves.' is a belief of the Brotherhood to protect humanity from all other species created by the war then this of course simplifies that their shared ideology would follow a leader among them that is the dominant example of that ideology of their faction's hierarchy: an elder upper-class Caucasian male.
And it's not just some of the companions in the game either. There are opinions from other players out there about their reactions to the Brotherhood of Steel, like Patricia Hernandez, who wrote an article on Kotaku identifying not only the distasteful and racist slander of the Brotherhood against other races in the game, but also recognizes that the Brotherhood of Steel's other hypocrital belief that they feel entitled to quote, "The Brotherhood of Steel is supposed to be about the preservation and protection of technology. Their leader, Elder Maxson, takes this to mean that the Brotherhood must destroy all synths." (Hernandez, 2015) , so if their goal and their means towards that goal are any indication about the shared ideology of who the Brotherhood feel should be in charge then this declaration of literal genocide to protect humanity speaks volumes of why Elder Maxson as a privileged Caucasian male is in charge.
In fact, it's the shared ideologies of these factions besides the Minutemen - the Brotherhood, the Railroad and the Institute - that radically undermine each other about whether they should destroy, liberate or control the Synth race respectively which brings them into conflict to eradicate each other in the first place and ultimately influence the player to choose a side to do so. Considering all this, the ideology of the Fallout 4 games is commentary which goes without saying a reflection of real world society, perhaps a bit less advanced than today's and a bit more backwards with settlements and factions all having one person running a dictatorship as opposed to a democracy of peers in a council. The genders are equal only in the sense of numbers of people within each society, with the ideology ruled mostly of patriarchies with the minorities being matriarchies, and the dominant race and creed being upper class or wealthy Caucasian males. There doesn't appear to be any discrimination towards gender, creed or race between a species, just among the species of human or robots themselves, with humans being the doministic species discriminating in the majority against the other species. It would have been nice to have seen more of a spread of species in each of the factions of Fallout 4 rather than just the city settlements for story purposes, and not just to have a human face to make the player feel more at home or being able to relate to the faction of their choice. Playing as a female character, realistically in comparison to the male character, the female is sexualized and/or objectified more than the male is but otherwise Fallout 4 and it's staff/crew mirror the ideology of today's real world. That, while improving and getting closer to equal rights of a democracy of all sexes and races of humanity, is still when it comes down to it seen to be dominated by the upper-class Caucasian males of today.
References:
fluffyninjallama,"Fallout 4 - Meeting Ann Codman, Nazeem 2.0 (All Dialogue Options)", Youtube video, Feb 19, 2016. Accessed from: https://youtu.be/11E9J0ia_bw
fluffyninjallama,"Fallout 4 - Hancock about his brother McDonough, after 'In Sheep's Clothing" *SPOILERS*', Youtube video, Feb 17, 2016. Accessed from: https://youtu.be/QjcNhl-CnHw
gamer gamer, "Fallout 4 - Elder Maxson" Youtube video, Nov 10, 2015. Accessed from: https://youtu.be/yU9TxyTMhDg
fluffyninjallama, "Fallout 4 - Nick comments on Maxson's genocidal tendencies", Youtube video, Jan 28, 2016. Accessed from: https://youtu.be/R7OjPav2Pvg
Patricia Hernandez, "Fallout 4's Brotherhood Of Steel Are Giant Dicks", Kotaku, 4 December 2015. Accessed from: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/12/fallout-4s-brotherhood-of-steel-are-giant-dicks/
