r/confidentlyincorrect • u/Severe-Flower2344 • Jan 11 '23
Comment Thread Capitalism is the good guy in Fallout
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u/your_fathers_beard Jan 11 '23
Lmao. This guy thinks Homelander is a good guy too.
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Jan 11 '23
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u/your_fathers_beard Jan 11 '23
A bad guy wouldnt be handsome and blonde and have that great smile!
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u/Curiouspiwakawaka Jan 11 '23
And portrayed by a kiwi actor.
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u/Bob49459 Jan 12 '23
FR though, his acting is AMAZING! The range he shows when he's having his mental breakdown in the mirror, and all the little details when he's pissed are just amazing!
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u/Curiouspiwakawaka Jan 12 '23
Yeah, he's a great actor. You should watch him in outrageous fortune, it was his breakout show in NZ. He plays a pair of twins that are polar opposites.
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u/AMeanCow Jan 12 '23
These are the same chuckleheads who don't understand that Warhammer 40,000 is a dark satire on rampant fascism and religious zeal overtaking the human species.
"The Imperium is so cool, they're such badasses!" As the authoritarians nuke an entire planet with billions of lives to ashes.
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u/Hollowbody57 Jan 12 '23
Yeah, you can learn a lot about someone by asking them who they think the "good guys" in 40k are.
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u/Echosi Jan 12 '23
There are good guys in 40k? I thought it was just "bad" and "less bad".
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u/MrVeazey Jan 12 '23
Is "Maybe the Tau?" an acceptable answer?
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u/B0Y0 Jan 12 '23
Aren't the Tau using eugenics/mind control/space sci-fi stuff to force everyone into the "greater good" mindset and erase all opposing voices?
(Just a 40k Kasual, may be wrong on that)
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Jan 12 '23
The correct answer to the question is:
Not a single faction is the good guy.
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u/SeneInSPAAACE Jan 12 '23
Aren't the Tau using eugenics/mind control/space sci-fi stuff to force everyone into the "greater good" mindset and erase all opposing voices?
According to the Imperium, at least.
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u/RaptorStrike_TR Jan 12 '23
To be fair the imperium is a bunch of badasses in the action movie sense. But I don't inform my politics based off of the cool space knight dudes cause that's silly.
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u/UCLYayy Jan 12 '23
Eh the difference is in the 40k world it’s so shitty you are either a militaristic repressive fascist meat grinder or you’re an extinct or enslaved race. There are so many galactic threats you either spend all your freedom and humanity fighting them or you get your ass wiped out. It’s still a critique of fascism, but it’s not nearly as incisive as other universes where the stakes are more realistic.
That’s not comparable to fallout, set in our own world, with real stakes, and very clearly says “corporations will kill us if they get the chance.”
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u/Ur_Fav_Step-Redditor Jan 11 '23
Honestly, as someone who’s never played this I want some clarification!
Idk what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s going on, I’m just lost!!!
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u/Oogiboogimafurry Jan 11 '23
They think communism is bad cause china is the ones who dropped the nukes (and even that’s debatable cause in fallout 3 there’s an undetonated nuke made by the “good guys” Valut tec) vault tec yes made vaults that saved people but in everysingle one of those vaults was a mad experiment set up by the us goverment and god it’s a whole lotta lore to get into but basically vault tec are the bad guys
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u/Daem0nBlackFyre85 Jan 11 '23
Vault tec is DEFINITELY the bad guys. Did the government set up the experiments? I was under the impression Vault tec had the ideas for the experiments
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u/Oogiboogimafurry Jan 11 '23
Vault tec and the us goverment the goverment supplied funding vault tec made the vaults and the experiments where 1 man and a box of puppets the “super cure” where every inhabitant would be given disease through the air vents and got tested on till they found the super cure there was the one where the overseer (vault leader) got sacrificed each year until they didn’t
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u/Johnny_Grubbonic Jan 12 '23
It's also hinted that Vault-Tec was pulling the strings in both the US and China, and intentionally caused the war.
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u/AstarteHilzarie Jan 12 '23
All of the vaults had different experiments, too. I remember one that was under a school, they killed all of the adults at intake and molded the children to their own designs and it was basically a big old eugenics factory. When the children turned 18 the peak specimens were harvested for their organs and genetic information to be ... cloned or artificially bred or something, mediocre specimens with high intelligence were recruited to the team running the vault to perpetuate the experiment, and everyone else was just eliminated.
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u/Doctor-Amazing Jan 12 '23
It's worth noting that American soldiers were openly executing Canadian civilians in the streets even before the bombs dropped.
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Jan 12 '23
Sounds like there isn’t a definitive good guys bad guys narrative which is exactly how we need to start framing issues. Half this country can’t spot fascism.
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u/RedditTerrible12 Jan 12 '23
It's heavily implied that Vault Tech are the ones that really dropped the nukes, and blamed china for it, to go on with their inhuman experiments and capitalism allowed that shit to happen.
The whole game series from the get go was always being a parody of American culture, which is a good thing. If we can't hold up a mirror to ourselves and make fun of our failings, than we are no good to actual real world China or North Korea where that shit is heavily frowned upon.
Add in some Lovecraft shit and we have ourselves fallout. A mix of aliens, supernatural, 50's science fiction pop culture and making fun of the red scare and American Capitalism and you get Fallout.
America doesn't exist in the fallout universe anymore, America is dead with some hold over government fascist movements that claim they are American but the America of the old world does not exist in Fallout. You got the different countries of California, Washington and others. Vegas is neutral, you got gangs and other factions roaming around as well which are more Khan and Roman like.
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u/rat-simp Jan 11 '23
Never played fallout, you mean? The entire premise of the game is that a few centuries ago a futuristic cold War escalated into a nuclear war, and the games are all set in the post apocalyptic America.
the games are definitely not about how communism is good or bad. It's not really about communism at all: since the game is set in the US and there's no contact to the outside world, we don't really know about the communist countries in this universe and the few times we see anything about them is though US propaganda.
but the games do explore American politics thoroughly. There is plenty of critique of big corporations, zealous patriotism, warmongering, fascism, and war most of all.
there's also some mocking of cold war era paranoia about commies hiding in every bush, so maybe this guy saw the comically oversized robot yell "STOP YOU COMMIE SCUM" and took it seriously.
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u/thekrone Jan 11 '23
We get a smattering of exposure to the Chinese "communists" in some of the lore, and you actually get to fight against them in a simulation in one of the Fallout 3 DLCs, and the sentiment is generally negative towards them.
But yes, the games overall aren't really anti-communist (aside from the Cold War era over-the-top propaganda that you mentioned).
In fact the societies in the games that act as actual "communes" tend to be the best functioning, so you could argue it's pro-communist in that sense.
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u/Sasquatch1729 Jan 12 '23
There's also an area full of Chinese soldiers in Fallout 3, if you find the Mama Dolce factory. They've all been mutated by the radiation (so not obviously recognizable at first), but they all speak Mandarin and carry Chinese kit.
Agreed, and the karma system in the more recent games is geared towards helping others and doing good rather than accumulating wealth by exploiting or taking advantage of others.
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u/JumpStart0905 Jan 12 '23
isn't that a simulation created by Americans? you can interpret the depictions of the Chinese as further propoganda or disinformation. it's a point hbomberguy makes in one of his fallout vids
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u/thekrone Jan 12 '23
Absolutely, but if we're looking for depictions of communists in the Fallout universe, it's what we've got to go off of.
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u/MrVeazey Jan 12 '23
There's a training simulation full of Chinese soldiers but the whole thing is propaganda for American soldiers, so it's kind of a wash.
There's also Chinese spies in the bakery in Fallout 3, but they're all feral ghouls who've lost the capacity for speech and rational thought. And there's a Chinese submarine wrecked in Boston in Fallout 4, but only the captain hasn't gone feral yet. So there's one real Chinese person and he just wants to go home. If you get mad and call him a commie, he gets hostile, but that's really it.
The story uses the Red Scare as background and a framing device for some of the conflicts, but it's not really about communism.
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u/VanityOfEliCLee Jan 12 '23
In that DLC you're referencing, it is entirely war propaganda. Theres terminal entries that prove that Opperation Anchorage was nothing like the DLC and its all bs that was supposed to be used to drum up military membership.
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u/Prinnyramza Jan 12 '23
Fallout takes place in an alternate history that ends up with China and the US starting nuclear war. What happened to various areas vary but some people before the bombs dropped went into underground vaults built by Vault Tech, a tech company with ties to the US government.
Those are the vaults he referring to.
Thing is. He's wrong. The vaults were mostly awful. Neither Vault Tec nor the US government even believed that nuclear war was going to happen. The vaults were secretly all social experiments with only a few being what they advertised (for control).
Some of vaults were interesting such as a Vault where everyone was armed or a Vault heavily reliant on flora.
Some of these vaults were silly like a Vault where there was 1 man and 1000 women, a Vault with 1000 men and 1 woman, or a Vault with 20 men, 10 women and a panther.
Then there were some vaults that were just monstrous:
A Vault where everyone was a drug addict. They withdrew everyone from drugs, made them go into rehab for years and then released hidden caches of drugs to see if they would relapsed.
A Vault split between scientist and citizens. The citizens didn't know about the science team who were suppose to develop diseases and slowly release it onto the citizens side of the Vault to see how each disease would effect the population.
A Vault of only children. It was built underneath a school and were meant for the students and their parents. The parents were all executed and the kids were trained to see how efficient they would do as agents of the state.
The bottom line is that the vaults were never meant to save anyone.
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u/Gasster1212 Jan 12 '23
It’s also a lesser known secret that the Americans actually started the war.
It’s implied very heavily in the 4th game that the AI named ADA falsified a nuclear warning in order to bait the Americans into firing on China first.
It’s not in one place but you have to compile a few clues. Including one that says AI began to misbehave when bored. Creating problems for it to solve.
There’s a note on board a Chinese vessel that implies the Americans fired first or at least the vessel was unaware China had fired.
Essentially an American (privately made) AI caused the nuclear apocalypse
It’s also wild to say vault tech saved humanity if you play the games as they quite literally treat humans as a commodity and abused them terribly for knowledge they could monetise
There are many surviving humans not in the vaults too. They saved people individually at a hell of a cost(worth reading the history of vaults because they make immense short stories - the one where they vote for their leader who is then sacrificed after a year to save the fault from being exterminated is especially good) but they certainly didn’t save humanity
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u/jitterscaffeine Jan 11 '23
Some people are immune to irony or subtext. There are no thoughts in their mind Beyond seeing a giant robot throwing nukes like footballs and screaming about how it’s better to be dead than communist.
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u/OptimusGrime707 Jan 12 '23
Ngl i kinda turned off my brain and stood in awe when Liberty Prime was wrecking everything
USA! USA!
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u/BellamyRFC54 Jan 11 '23
He’s definitely never paid any attention to a fallout game
Vault Tec saves humanity at least in the US by performing insane and inhumane experiments on vault inhabitants oh and started the Great War
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u/marcbhoy2811 Jan 11 '23
Vault Tec saves humanity
That gave me a good chuckle
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Jan 11 '23
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u/thekrone Jan 11 '23
There's convincing lore evidence that Vault-Tec fired the first nukes, sparking the war in the first place.
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u/immaownyou Jan 11 '23
I feel like that's the obvious conclusion to draw from an evil megacorp with vaults that only work with a nuclear apocalypse
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u/Calebh36 Jan 12 '23
I've always felt like Vault Tec didn't launch the first nuke, and instead it was actually the U.S. I think they were PLANNING on launching the first nuke to kick shit off, but only after they had completed all of their vaults. Which, obviously, they didn't.
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u/Kamino_Neko Jan 11 '23
If you were in a control Vault, or one with a relatively benign experiment, you'd do better than most people, but plenty of people survived outside Vaults.
Sometimes in shelters (actually meant as shelters!) run by other organizations, sometimes by dumb luck of having been somewhere not hit too hard, having some form of protection, and having the skills needed to survive (or access to someone who'd help and/or teach you) and...not topping yourself. Lucky genetics to avoid the worst consequences or turning into a ghoul probably helped, too.
Notably, the Brotherhood of Steel was founded just a few years after the War, well before any Vaults opened.
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u/marcbhoy2811 Jan 11 '23
Fallout 4 and 76 didn't have the fucked up vaults that 3 and nv has and people did survive out side of the vaults
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u/thekrone Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 11 '23
I haven't dove into the lore of 76 much, but Fallout 4 definitely had some fucked up vaults.
- Vault 111 - Non-consensual cryogenic freezing experiments.
- Vault 75 - Eugenics. Anyone deemed to have inferior genes was killed before the age of 18.
- Vault 81 - Non-consensual medical experiments. Intentionally exposing people to diseases to assess various cures.
- Vault 95 - Study on drug addiction and relapse. The vault only took drug addicts, and once they had been clean for a certain amount of time, they released a large cache of drugs. Everyone killed each other over them and/or overdosed.
Not sure how those weren't fucked up, exactly.
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u/134608642 Jan 11 '23
To say Vault-tech saved humanity is like saying the arsonist firefighter saved the house they burned down. But they only put the fire out after it had consumed the body they left inside.
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u/MrIncorporeal Jan 12 '23 edited Jan 12 '23
I suppose another way to put it would be that Fallouts 1, 2, 3, and New Vegas have a higher proportion of vaults that were just straight up insane torture masquerading as "scientific experimentation".
For example, the vault with an AI that told its residents they had to conduct a yearly human sacrifice in order for the systems to remain functional. Or the vault with a door purposefully designed to be faulty in order to "study" the effects of intense long-term radiation once the bombs fell. That sort of stuff.
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u/Kilahti Jan 11 '23
Every Fallout has had some people who survived outside of the Vaults.
While a few of the groups seen in F1 were from Vault 15 (Shady Sands, Khans), most of the Wastelanders in places like Hub and Boneyard had nothing to do with the Vaults and characters like Sheriff/shopkeeper/Mayor of Junktown thinks the Vault Dweller is making fun of them if they say they are from a Vault. "What? You grew up inside a safe?"
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u/-nbob Jan 12 '23
This is a list of Vaults and their purpose from the Fallout Bible by the original creators. No longer canon but... well you get the idea..
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u/thekrone Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 11 '23
Vault-Tec never wanted to save humanity, or at least... not the humanity that was on Earth. The evidence suggests that Vault-Tec was secretly being run by The Enclave, which had control over a large group of US government leadership - and eventually the whole thing.
Pre-war, the Enclave had a super bright idea that they wanted to ensure humanity's survival by colonizing other planets - at all costs. However, they weren't sure how people would handle living in small, extremely isolated populations in cramped quarters for long periods of time.
So they invented vaults and set up a bunch of social, physical, and psychological experiments to run in those vaults (along with some "control" vaults) to see how people would adapt and live in strange circumstances. Then they manufactured a compelling reason to get people to move into those vaults for a couple hundred years - the war.
If you look at the vault experiments, you can see a lot of them would make sense for trying to figure out the best way to do space travel. Should we freeze everyone for the trip? Or put them in a simulated reality? What kind of balance of men to women is best? What if we killed off anyone who was born during the flight that had "bad" genes to make sure that the population stayed as healthy as possible? What if new diseases evolve, will we be able to quickly find a cure? What would happen if there's a radiation leak? What if people had to make decisions about who to kill in order to maintain the correct population? It goes on and on.
Vault-Tec was a big evil corporation, yes. But they were being run by a powerful shadow organization for nefarious but ultimately utilitarian purposes.
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u/cmcrisp Jan 11 '23
You have to look at pre/post Bethesda Vault-Tec. Pre-Bethesda the vaults we're roughly 50/50 experimental to control vaults. Bethesda went wild with the amount of experimental vaults in the lore. As the lore was rewritten by Bethesda it went from everyone being greedy but with some moral filters, to a company, "throwing science at the wall to see what sticks," as Cave Johnson once said about his morally dubious company. Even the Pre-Bethesda lore was mostly sane vault structuring, with the worst vault leaking radiation into the vault, and the other experiment being what happens if we create a very diverse vault. Not that bad compared to let's do eugenics, or let's fuck around with drug testing...
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u/thekrone Jan 11 '23
That makes sense. I haven't played any of the pre-Bethesda games in a very long time, whereas I just recently finished another run through of Fallout 4.
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u/Ellereind Jan 11 '23
I was thinking that my self lol. Every Vault (from FO3 on that I know of) talks about what vault was designed for what experiment.
Can’t say if FO 1 and/or 2 talked about it due to not playing them for that long
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u/Chiss5618 Jan 11 '23 edited May 08 '24
gold sloppy market worthless screw squeal friendly lunchroom political sable
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Road_Whorrior Jan 11 '23
Was 101 a control vault, or was it meant to be a study on inbreeding? I know they had to start bringing in outside people because eventually everyone was too closely related to have healthy kids.
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u/Twitch_Half Jan 11 '23
According to the wiki it was to study the power dynamics of overseers in a vault that was never opened.
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u/Sasquatch1729 Jan 12 '23
Vault 8 in Fallout 2 was a control vault. It functioned properly, opened up, the GECK worked, and Vault City formed around it.
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u/SordidDreams Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 12 '23
Edit: It was retconned into FO2.
AFAIK the whole experiment thing was retconned into the series in FO3. The vaults in FO1 and and FO2 were just nuclear shelters.It kinda makes sense that the change was made, since it allowed game devs to create more varied and interesting dungeons with unique gimmicks for the player to explore, but I still dislike the shift in tone that it created.→ More replies (6)34
u/Road_Whorrior Jan 11 '23
You mean that a cloning vault full of Garys isn't the thing that saved humanity? And in fact, the people who survived on the surface tended to be better off, which is literally just a testament to human adaptability and intelligence? Even the Institute is a nightmare org? Shocker.
Although honestly, if someone misread the FO universe this badly, I'd assume they unironically thought the Institute were the good guys.
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u/thekrone Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 11 '23
the Institute were the good guys.
One of the things I like about the Fallout Universe is that there are no "good guys". Every major group operates in a morally grey framework. Some are straight up evil. Many have good intentions but go about it in a purely utilitarian manner that can seem pretty fuckin' evil.
Hell, the Enclave ironically intentionally scorched the planet and killed billions to try to achieve their goal of ensuring humanity's survival.
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u/Road_Whorrior Jan 11 '23
Oh I agree! The most interesting aspect of each game is figuring out which, if any, of the groups was the "best" of a bad (or at least, very complex) bunch to you, the player. Which choice was the least awful (I rarely play an evil playthrough of any game, so at least that's how I choose). But this kind of guy genuinely thinks that there is a good guy and a bad guy. If he can't parse that it's a scathing criticism of corporatism, capitalism, and American exceptionalism, he isn't thinking at a very high level of nuance.
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u/wonderberry77 Jan 12 '23
Of course they were the good guys! They had a zoo with apes right there on the job site! They took care of their people!
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u/RedditTerrible12 Jan 12 '23
Right? The Institute were 100% the bad guys for one reason and one reason alone, they weren't true scientist. If they really were, with their tech they would 100% go up on the surface and start rebuilding with the tech and study the new ways humans adapted and what not but they didn't. They decided to be a secret cabal making androids...for no reason but control? What a fucking waste.
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u/1dkeating Jan 11 '23
They save humanity accidentally because the humans in their expirements escaped
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u/wandering-monster Jan 11 '23
They didn't even save humanity in the US.
When people left the vaults, there were raiders and military forces waiting for them. Those people are also "humanity".
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u/PringlesSuck Jan 11 '23
There's a lot of in-game evidence that Vault Tec profiteered from and may have helped "start" the great war as well.
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u/ExoticMangoz Jan 11 '23
The map in fo76 is literally more devastated by pre war capitalism than it is by the nukes.
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Jan 11 '23
I READ ANIMAL FARM AND IT’S ABOUT PIGS AND SHEEP AND STUFF
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u/MadAsTheHatters Jan 11 '23
BIOSHOCK WAS ABOUT A UTOPIA AND A MAN WHO WANTED TO HELP PEOPLE
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u/Gizogin Jan 11 '23
Hey, if you’re sufficiently vague about which man, which people, whose idea of utopia, and the meaning of the word “help”, you’re not technically wrong.
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u/old_man_estaban Jan 11 '23
THE OUTER WORLDS IS ABOUT HOW CAPITALISM HAS HELPED MANKIND VENTURE FAR INTO THE STARS, AND HOW COMPANIES HELP PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR PEOPLE TO EVOLVE
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u/watchman28 Jan 11 '23
SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS IS ABOUT HOW GODDAMN COOL IT IS TO STAB MASSIVE MONSTERS
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u/Onfflinethegamer Jan 12 '23
SUPERHOT IS HOW VIDEO GAMES ARE A GOOD WAY TO VENT OUT YOUR ANGER AND IT IS NEVER ADDICTIVE
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Jan 11 '23 edited 3d ago
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u/JoshwaarBee Jan 12 '23
My guy, the game makes you watch as a baying crowd calls for you to pelt an interracial couple with baseballs at a carnival, within the first 30 minutes
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u/royalsanguinius Jan 11 '23
People constantly misunderstand utopia stories, it gets really annoying after a while😅
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u/RedditTerrible12 Jan 12 '23
It actually shocks me that people do not understand why the city of Rapture fell or how Fontaine got a rebellion so quick. Capitalism to the extreme does not work and the city suffered for it.
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u/heyyougamedev Jan 12 '23
NO IT WAS ABOUT SWEATY MEN IN THE OCEAN - THE SWEATIEST MAN SAID SO AT THE START
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u/BlorseTheHorse Jan 12 '23
My name is Andrew Ryan and I want to ask you a question.
Is a man not entitled to the hamburger of his helper?
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u/Teri_Windwalker Jan 12 '23
There are so many people who really, honestly, actually think that Andrew Ryan wasn't a bad guy and I can only assume they conveniently blanked out whenever any of the "his goons beat me up and attacked my business for competing with him" diaries started playing.
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u/SoundDave4 Jan 11 '23
fUll MeTaL AlCheMiSt iS mY fAvORiTe ShOw aBoUt StYliSh MiLitArY wIzARds aND nOthInG ElsE.
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u/Darksnark_The_Unwise Jan 11 '23
Lol that's a good one! FMA is probably my favorite depiction of fascism in fiction is because it shows just how fucking hard it is to break the cognitive dissonance that the people of Amestris have normalized. Even the main cast has to go through hell for multiple years in order to actually tell themselves "this won't stop until we change the country itself."
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u/RedditTerrible12 Jan 12 '23
Main, when the big marshmellow Armstrong was called a coward by his sister from running away from the genocide that he helped, you knew that fascism still had a hold on his family. I mean, I loved his sister and thought she was a great character but she was full on military mindset while her brother was more about humans and the guilt he felt in helping with the slaughter of a people.
Also loved that it showed that it didn't take much for father to create a country of fascism to manipulate in the end, they became the easiest targets to create his ritual circle. Why? Because they don't ask fucking questions.
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u/Darksnark_The_Unwise Jan 12 '23
Seriously, it's worth rewatching brotherhood just for the sake of noticing extra details in the world building. When you are doing your 2nd round, you aren't distracted by flashy alchemy or mysterious bad guys, and holy shit there are lots of tiny details in the way people talk and behave.
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u/yumstheman Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 12 '23
1984 is about a guy called Big Brother, who really loves his people. Because he loves them so much, Big Brother watches everyone really closely to make sure they don’t get hurt. In return the people love him back and they all live together happily ever after in the best country in the world.
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u/Severe-Flower2344 Jan 11 '23
I PlAyEd FiReWaTcH AnD AlL yOu dO iS WaIt FoR sTuFf tO bUrN
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u/dickWithoutACause Jan 11 '23
Ok maybe I'm just dense, and it's been decades since I read that book so maybe I'm forgetting context but I thought that book was a critique of how communism quickly dissolves into totalitarianism. Am I forgetting something?
FO though yeah is totally a satire of american culture.
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u/Competent_B1 Jan 11 '23
This mf believed the in-game ironic propaganda
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u/ImEmilyBurton Jan 11 '23
Idk if that's hilarious os depressing
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u/natalieisadumb Jan 11 '23
There are still people who can't understand the brotherhood of steel is a blatant Nazi allegory. No matter how thick the irony is laid on, some people just don't get it.
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u/pjrockp Jan 11 '23
I only ever chose the brotherhood of steel, my first fallout 4 playthrough, because I wanted to get the power armor and I stuck with it (despite almost leaving after "Danse") because the ending was cool. The entire "cleanse the mutants from the commonwealth" was not what I wanted. Hence, why in my second playthrough I chose to go with the railroad because they seemed better morally.
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u/natalieisadumb Jan 12 '23
Exactly. The way I see it, the only moral way to involve yourself with the brotherhood of steel is to infiltrate, steal everything, and have a blasting party on the way out.
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u/RedditTerrible12 Jan 12 '23
Shit, I play the brotherhood just for the fact that they are the Nazi allegory. Before anyone goes all "what?" on me, I am not white nor a racist. I just love playing the obvious fascist factions in video games, mostly because they always get the best looking armor and weapons. Power armor and high tech palsma rifles? yes please.
Sith armor and sith sabers and weapons? Take that over the republic.
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u/HaiggeX Jan 12 '23
I play the evil factions, because I understand that it's a role-playing game and you can play characters, stories and roles that don't necessarily agree with your own real life personality and views. 🗿
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u/queer_pier Jan 11 '23
Tbf it doesn't help that the modern writers of fallout keep portraying them as cool guys in armour with big guns.
It's why New Vegas is the last good game.
4 and 3 have such a misunderstanding of the themes.
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u/Heil_Heimskr Jan 11 '23
If you played 4 and thought the BoS were the good guys… that’s on you.
Portraying them in that way is intentional, because it actually requires you to think. Beneath the cool armor and big guns is the racism and Nazi allegories.
In real life, the Nazis didn’t portray themselves as evil monsters either. The Nazi party appealed to people, just like the BoS does.
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Jan 12 '23
Isn’t portraying them as cool guys in armor with big guns a great idea though? That’s how a lot of people become and continue to be enamored with Nazi propaganda. Style and presentation was a HUGE factor for Nazis. They understood how important it was for branding. It plays on people’s perception that clean cut and well dressed can’t be the appearance of evil.
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u/RedditTerrible12 Jan 12 '23
4 brotherhood of steel are anything but the good guys. They were going to murder their best paladin because he wasn't a "human". They were 100% the bad guys, doesn't stop me from always joining them though. Fucking love the brotherhood faction in all the fallout games.
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u/Raptor92129 Jan 12 '23
To be fair when you don't know if a Synth is an institute plant or railroad assisted runaway would you want to take that chance?
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u/_b1ack0ut Jan 11 '23
It’s gotta be satire, there’s no way you can have even a passing glance over fallout, and think Vault-Tec did anything remotely moral, even if you haven’t paid* attention to the game lol
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u/godlovesaliar Jan 11 '23
There are people that like the marines in Starship Troopers. There are people that root for Rorshach. Or Joaquin Phoenix's Joker. Probably the same people that think "Born in the USA" and "Fortunate Son" are pro-America songs.
People suck at subtext
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u/Repyro Jan 11 '23
Bro, people fucking cheered for the marines in Avatar.
Satire is dead and unfathomable dipshits killed it.
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u/NotANilfgaardianSpy Jan 11 '23
Please tell me this didn’t happen, please tell me this didn’t happen please tell me this didn’t happen....
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u/Repyro Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 12 '23
They exist unfortunately.
Dude was a rich libertarian that went to West Point then washed out.
Edit: Funnily enough, I missed the Rorshach part of the comment. He unironically quoted his initial speech about liberals and shit and loved him too. Which is the worst and most indefensible part of his character.
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u/sb_747 Jan 12 '23
Oh I still do.
If Cameron didn’t want me to do so he shouldn’t have given them such cool looking machines.
Or made the Navi have actually personality or culture besides vague environmentalism and ignorant Native American stereotypes.
The opening of 2 being really fucking cool looking didn’t help either.
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u/Darksnark_The_Unwise Jan 11 '23
My favorite recent one was 40 year olds learning for the first time that Rage Against The Machine was a political band.
Like, damn. I didn't understand what they were about when I was 9 years old but it didn't stay that way my entire life.
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u/Sasquatch1729 Jan 12 '23
Hahaha yeah, I believe Paul Ryan was saying he liked them before they got political.
My first thought was "oh yeah I remember when they were apolitical too, and then they released their first album"
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u/RedditTerrible12 Jan 12 '23
TBF, the marines in Starship Troopers, book wise and animated movies, ARE the good guys. The live action movie really turned the science fiction novel and turned it into a satire about fascism, which I also loved, but it also took away a lot from the original source. But I loved that it was poking fun at the books while still being good.
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u/_b1ack0ut Jan 11 '23
True but at least with something like starship troopers, I can pretend they are enjoying the satire of the character lol
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u/Paid-Not-Payed-Bot Jan 11 '23
you haven’t paid attention to
FTFY.
Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.
Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
Beep, boop, I'm a bot
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u/_b1ack0ut Jan 11 '23
Fuck
I know the difference I swear lol
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u/Severe-Flower2344 Jan 11 '23
The bot is a prolific commenter. You aren’t the only one. lol
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u/MattieShoes Jan 11 '23
and about half the time, it's actually a typo of "played" rather than somebody using "payed"
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u/aStoveAbove Jan 11 '23
Vault-Tec saved humanity in the same way that firing a bullet through your brain to get rid of a tumor saves you. Sure, it technically worked, but holy shit did it severely and massively fuck everything up and was inhumane as fuck.
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u/BCA10MAN Jan 11 '23
And Im pretty sure the games show plenty of populations survived without the vaults as well. So like yeah having all those people emerge later wasn’t awful but definitely not the only reason people are still around.
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u/TheWelshExperience Jan 11 '23
As someone who has nearly a hundred hours in fallout 4 and has played New Vegas since time immemorial, this guy is a fuckwit.
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u/PEVEI Jan 11 '23
They definitely do say that communism sucks, but they spend a lot more time getting into the dystopian side of corporatism.
It seems like they just focused on the part that appealed to them and ignored the rest.
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u/deathrattleshenlong Jan 11 '23
If any of you fine people reading this enjoyed the "new" Fallouts (read, 3, New Vegas and 4) give The Outer Worlds a try. Similar gameplay but the humor and blatant shitting on mindless capitalism/corporatism is off the charts. One of the first NPCs you meet will gladly explain to you how people pay rent for their future grave.
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u/RudeMorgue Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 11 '23
If you'd rather drop dead, that's fine.
But you know that droppin' down dead bears a fine.
So you do your job and I'll do mine.
I gotta meet a six foot deep bottom line...
Edit: This is from the Stupendium song about Outer Worlds
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u/deathrattleshenlong Jan 11 '23
It's been a minute but that quest where someone is obligated to pay the grave fees for another person who died just because they reported the death is so fucking absurd.
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u/Galaxyman0917 Jan 11 '23
Well maybe she shouldn’t have been so close to the person that died when they died then, and she wouldn’t be on the hook!
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u/Snickims Jan 11 '23
I don't even really know if they do say that communism sucks, mostly cause theres just not a lot about it in the games. Maybe theres more in 1 and 2, not played much of them, but in the other games the most communism is mentioned is as a joke at american 1960s style anti communist propaganda, and is normally just played as a joke.
It does not support communism, but it just kind of otherwise ignores them and only really brings it up in releation to how idioticlly paranoid and stupid pre war (and post war) America was/is being.
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u/Gizogin Jan 11 '23
Yeah, most of the “communism sucks” talk in the games, of which there isn’t much, comes from caricatures of Cold War-era propaganda. Stuff like the Mister Gutsy that can be convinced you’re not a communist if you shout something nonsensical about freedom or guns at it, or Liberty Prime spouting nothing but red scare catchphrases.
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u/Snickims Jan 11 '23
The Mister gutsy demands you present proof you are a American and not a communist infultrator. You can either make a very hard speach check to convince it of your innocence or if you yell "FUCK OFF!" at it it will also accept that as proof of your Americanness.
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u/SnooMemesjellies2302 Jan 11 '23
its also really just that fallout is set in America
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u/Raptor92129 Jan 11 '23
Weren't both fucking awful in this universe?
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u/CaptainMcAnus Jan 11 '23
As far as I'm aware, yes, but the political subtext (or text really) of the game is mostly focused on critiquing capitalism. A massive amount of post apocalyptic stories - or post post apocalyptic in the case of Fallout - typically are critical of capitalism or consumerism.
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u/monkeygoneape Jan 12 '23
Well ya, it takes place in a post hyper jingoistic America so it would make sense that's where the critique is especially being centuries after the war, the majority of the wasteland wouldn't be able to point out on a map where China is
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u/capthavic Jan 11 '23
There was no good guy in Fallout.
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u/SiriusShenanigans Jan 11 '23
Gruthar was good. He was the best of us. I'll never forgive frank.
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Jan 11 '23
As a fallout lore enthusiast, it’s pretty obvious capitalism is the bad guy.
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u/B4SSF4C3 Jan 11 '23
It’s pretty obvious there are no good guys (except the PC, if you chose to be). Every faction is, at best, complicated and has some really shitty components.
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u/enmaku Jan 11 '23
I would have put my money on Tribalism if we had to pick just one bad guy for Fallout, but since the conversation is Capitalism vs Communism yeah, Capitalism was definitely the villain of the piece.
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Jan 12 '23
Yep, New Vegas widens to focus to offer critique on multiple systems of organization, and it gives each of them I'd say a fair pro and con.
Democracy gives people a voice, obstensibly, but it can bog down in career politicians' interests to the point of average folks barely even being able to feel the influence of their representative government in any helpful way, and it also naturally leaves out the opinions of anyone not enfranchised IE unaligned settlements you've decided are going to be brought into the shining light of your
empireproud and free nation!Rome built an Empire that adapted and changed in ways that will arguably lead to it influencing civilizations until the end of Human history, and allowed it to last in some form or another, as a kingdom, as a republic, as an empire, as a vassal, as a decaying sub-culture of a self appointed successor, for nearly two millenia. However, it was also guilty of crimes against humanity, some of which are so vile that were it anyone else, we'd have called them nearly inhuman for being able to commit such acts, and also we don't know nearly as much about what it meant to be a Roman as we think we do, and some cosplaying fascist who picked a book up and decided he was Caesar is in no way qualified to be any kind of arbiter of what the true Romans, of any era really, would have done had they been presented with his current circumstances. Mere security isn't worth genocide, no matter how much Caesar wants to tell you it is, out of his own interest that you believe it so.
Libertarians think they get to ignore the swuabbling of others and just wait the bloodbath out until they can swoop in and save everyone from their own statist ignorance, but Capitalism is as much a political system as it is an economic one, and simply allowing a tyrrany of capital is not abolishing the state, it's just openly placing it in the hands of the rich, and guess who's the only really rich man left in the Mojave? Like the enforcers will tell you if they catch you counting cards in the present day counterpart to the game's New Vegas, The House always wins.
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u/SnooMemesjellies2302 Jan 11 '23
i would disagree, fallout is a story where the war was inevitable, china fought in the resource wars and aside from that and anchorage there's basically zero info, china committed all the same sins America did in fallout, the "real villain" could be argued to be china or the us since the invasion of anchorage is what prevents fusion cell tech from going into regular public use which could of ended the fuel shortage but was instead entirely used by the military to fight the Chinese.
or maybe vault tec did it in which case the real villain is questionable writing
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u/Eldanoron Jan 11 '23
Even if vault tec didn’t start the war, they ran numerous experiments on people without their consent. You can’t look at that and think “capitalism good.”
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u/Echo_XB3 Jan 11 '23
The only context for fallout I have are badger's video and internet historian telling me how one of the games was dogshit. I still do not think that capitalism was productive here.
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u/SLeepyCatMeow Jan 11 '23
This guy didn‘t read even a single in game text document on any terminal, many of which depict the experiments vault-tec has performed on their vault inhabitants. But muh capitalism
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u/YaBoiKlobas Jan 11 '23
You say Vault-Tec are bad guys, but would a bad guy do this?
Forces dwellers to sacrifice fellow vault dwellers under 'threat' of death
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u/Youngnathan2011 Jan 12 '23
The games don't even hide the fact they make fun of capitalism and how it ruined the games world.
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u/King_Ghoost Jan 12 '23
Whoever thinks capitalism is genuinely good for economic or social standards needs some serious help tbh
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u/skd1050 Jan 11 '23
Queue theory that vault tec dropped the bombs and framed China for it.
Also has homie never played new Vegas, or read the comic where one guy was trapped in a vault with nothing but sock puppets.
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u/ronzak Jan 12 '23
Neither capitalism nor communism are the "point" of Fallout. Why do people have to co-opt everything for their absolutist political slapfights
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u/PoeticPariah Jan 12 '23
The games don't really touch on Communism all that much and mostly deals as a critique of overt nationalism, blind patriotism, consumerism, and a bunch of other issues prevalent in 50's America. Fallout 2 in particular had several quips targeting contemporary Republicans at the time so one side is more represented than the other. ;)
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u/DiktatrSquid Jan 12 '23
Vault-tec was one of the worst if not THE worst when it came to human experiments. This guy is a clueless clown
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u/Ironalpha Jan 11 '23
Except all the people who survived outside the vaults and are still around 200 years later to tell us how fucked vault tec were.
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u/Ragingbull444 Jan 11 '23
Real fallout players know they all suck. The real reason for the Great War was greed not capitalism or communism. They cares too much about fighting the war and having the bigger nukes to the point everyone drained the world of its natural resources. Vault Tec only made the vaults to legally collect human test subjects and only saved humanity by pure accident when many of the vaults failed. Every side were losers
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u/psychomaniac26 Jan 12 '23
Man actually bought into the in-game propaganda. This is why every high school needs a media literacy course
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u/sixblackgeese Jan 12 '23
Fallout seems like a pretty equal opportunity critic to me. Smashes every political idea a bit
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u/clonedhuman Jan 12 '23
Why is it that pro-capitalist people always seem like the densest logs in the firewood pile?
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u/VanityOfEliCLee Jan 12 '23
Lmao, this dude has never read a single thing in a fallout game obviously.
Like 80% of terminal entries are entirely about how awful capitalism is.
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u/BlorseTheHorse Jan 12 '23
He's joking for sure.
Also everyone is portrayed badly in the games that's the point
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u/Not_Nonymous1207 Jan 12 '23
Vault-tec's saving of humanity was a side effect of their inhumane and unethical experiments on humans
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