Fallout 3 Fireside Chat

Our own Brother None has penned an article on No Mutants Allowed that analyzes some of Bethesda’s design decisions with Fallout 3 and why today’s gaming journalists seem to overlook the inconsistencies being introduced into the franchise.

With its DLCs, Fallout 3 has fallen into inconsistency roughly as much as Fallout 2 had (though with a significantly less plausible game world), but unlike Fallout 2 it seems to be evading a lot of criticism, both of blatant internal inconsistency and of missing the mark thematically. And that, my dear friends, is the second idiosyncrasy: game journalists want to have their cake and eat it too, they wish to claim Fallout 3 has a great world design and writing – design elements that necessitate adherence to internal consistency – and yet shrug their shoulders whenever Bethesda follows its main design philosophy, which Istvan Pely essentially described as slapping on cool li’l bits and at the end of the day, “as if by magic, all of this comes together in a consumable form that is hopefully entertaining”. Anyone who thinks that is a valid design formula needs to go back to college.

But it really falls apart when we start ascribing philosophy to this obvious mess. A closing speaker at The Philosophy of Computer Games 2009 will speak on Fallout 3 and Philosophy Amidst the Ashes. It is one of those pieces that is instantly recognizable to connoisseurs of semi-professional literary or cinematic criticism: one that takes an obviously flat and badly thought-through piece and ascribes philosophic meanings by ignoring bits that don’t fit their own theory. The speaker – Sarah Grey – cites one of my favourite moments of Fallout 3, and one of the few occasions when I felt Bethesda “got it”, Signal Oscar Zulu. But despite the fact that they’re right next to Oscar Zulu’s location, she opts to completely ignore the Republic of Dave and Canterbury Common’s The Superhuman Gambit, a pair of locations that can honestly only be described as “lulzy”, events the author opts to ignore in her attempt to present Fallout 3 as a preconceived juxtaposition of violent moments with dark stillness.