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this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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Bethesda has majorly diluted the already-potentially-liberal criticism of capitalism inherent to Fallout by making it consoomer treat slop
This is most powerfully noticed when you open Fallout 76.
Fallout 76 deals with the capitalist critique of Fallout way better than 3 or 4 do. It actually has some decent worldbuilding (not writing) and examines problems like automation and exterminating worker's strikes.
Then you press escape and hit the 'Atom Shop' button, and you're whisked away to listen to calming store music as you browse endless pages of in-game branded gear, all sold for Fallout 76 funbucks, all sporting the usual trappings of a manipulative in-game store.
Even when the text itself is trying to be earnestly anti-capitalist, you can't escape the capitalist incentives that drive the entire art project.
Capitalism subsuming criticism of itself
Art can't be fully realized under Capitalism, it must be an avid rejection in order to truly be art.
This hurts my heart...
Unfortunately, hard agree.
The originals were never overtly Socialist, they just criticized the worst of American liberalism.
New Vegas at least sympathetically showcases Syndicalists, cooperatives, and Anarchists, but never presents a truly Leftist solution beyond a doomer and ill-thought out Anarchist ending. No genuinely revolutionary solutions are available.
In Bethesda's hands, however, all critique is defanged and at least as much anti-Socialism is added. There are largely no sympathetic Socialist factions and Capitalism is somehow the status quo even in minor settlements.
Peopld are always saying this like it's a gotcha for Fallout being a liberalism, but New Vegas wouldn't have stuck and been so discussionworthy, would have had a harder time exploring the ins and outs of the shameful excuses for political systems it does, if it just had a "correct" option. Arguably the entire point of NV in particular is a tale about how doomed we all are without leftism. Would the game he better if it just had an objectively correct solution?
Also also I don't really take Wild Card to be "anarchist", more a refusal to participate and vow to do as much damage to all contenders as possible. Least bad given the material conditions.
This is the take I’ve been defending the entire time for FO. I have always believed that if there is no “correct” (socialist, Communist, anarchist) ending for the main story of a fallout game then it should focus on the failures of a world without leftism and be open about why that is. That is the entire point of war never changing.
"It's said war - war never changes. Men do, through the roads they walk. And this road... has reached its end." -Ulysses
Technically the Ending Slide narrator.
Honestly, that's a great point that I hadn't considered. I do think that unfortunately it has led to a bunch of unironically fascist Fallout fans, but the point about avoiding an objectively correct solution is a great one. And I do agree, Yes Man is the "least worst" option, but I do think that because the Followers support it and the Final Quest is "No Gods, No Masters," it is still showing what the devs consider to be an Anarchist ending.
Yeah that's the other side of the coin, you get people like sloptuber Sch*zoElijah unironically shilling the Legion, Starship Troopers effect of fascists liking satire unironically.
The Followers were meant to have their own ending once which had to be cut, and I find that very curious. Maybe NV had a best ending once?
that's probably overstating how much (if any) work was done on it. iirc they had some plans for the followers being a main faction instead of a side one, more legion content, etc but didn't have time or budget. Very little of that stuff was actually made in any appreciable sense, it's not like complete scenes cut from a movie.
Yeah that's about what I expected, hence the question mark. NV does have loads of near-finished stuff in its data tho c:
Yep, fuck SE and his followers. He even modded the Christchurch shooter's gun into his game, constantly slurs in his discord, and displays fasces like the Black Sun.
As far as I know, the Followers didn't have an "ending," but a permutation of Yes Man with Followers support.
The good karma main quest ending for fo3 is essentially a FOA ending.