Y’all remember in Fallout: New Vegas where one of the antagonists was that snotty rich bozo who made himself live forever and refused to share the secret of immortality with anyone? And he thinks he should get to rule the world because nobody else could possibly be super smart and special enough to understand his boring, banal ideas or carry out his boring, banal, utterly common vision for humanity?
That’s basically a blow-for-blow on how the ultra rich plan on dealing with climate change.
And y’all remember also how if you figure out how to kill Mr. House and eat his corpse you get a special achievement?
Fallout: New Vegas is a very good video game, is the only thing I’m saying here.
Not to mention, this is the game where after killing and eating said snotty rich bozo? You can look at the two big, powerful nation-states who want to conquer New Vegas for themselves, play them against each other, kick the NCR’s ass with robots, and then make New Vegas an independent, free territory.
And the quest name is literally, “No God, No Masters”.
Anarcho-Courierism
Fun fact? Josh Sawyer has actually made several statements in support of communist and anarchist ideals, and expressed a lot of interest in that one game design company that was run as a cooperative.
I know people would probably prefer I don’t stink this post up with more developer criticism, but I have to wonder if this isn’t at the heart of why Fallout has, post-New Vegas, become the very thing it was originally parodying and criticizing.
Josh Sawyer, one of the original developers, as you say, could possibly support anarchist and communist ideals.
But then you have Todd Howard, who is clearly a capitalist, and has made statements (in particular, the “degenerates” comment at E3, which is a HUGE red flag) that hit at possible support, or even harboring, of fascist ideals.
Given that possibility, the portrayal of the Brotherhood in Fallout 4 makes a horrifying amount of sense. The once-noble faction from Fallout 3 was warped beyond both reason and the willing suspension of disbelief into blatant fascists, because Todd sees no problem with that.
Same with Skyrim’s Blades. A formerly noble faction in Oblivion, turned into blatant fascists with a genocidal agenda for no reason whatsoever. Because Todd doesn’t see this as a problem.
He, and all Bethesda writers obviously knew that many players – for whom Oblivion and Fallout 3 were their first Bethesda games – would default to seeing the Blades and BoS as they saw them in previous games; as noble, heroic, and gravitate to following them. Only to find out that they’re nothing of the sort.
But if anything, the overwhelmingly negative community reaction to the Skyrim Blades, and the less overwhelming but nonetheless present negative reaction to the FO4 Brotherhood, shows that Todd’s gambit didn’t work. People saw these factions for who they are, and have rightly criticized them exhaustively.
And I mean, even for people who do like the FO4 BoS, most of them are either diehard Danse fans, or they’re people who made AUs or mods where Maxson can be overthrown.
That leaves the small remaining minority of FO4 BoS fans, usually the same ones who also like the Blades, as alt-right types and literal fascists.
Friend, I am ALWAYS in favor of anybody stinking up any one of my posts with Todd-shaming. By all means.
BTW, in case anyone thought I was exaggerating when I said that the bourgeoisie all want to be Mr. House when they grow up: I was. Only some of them want to be Mr. House; others want to be the Enclave.
Last
year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a
keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment
bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a
talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some
insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”
I’ve
never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end
up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest
technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential
investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely
interested in learning about these technologies or their potential
impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them.
But money talks, so I took the gig.
After
I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But
instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat
there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five
super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge
fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest
in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They
had come with questions of their own.
They
started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum
computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into
their real topics of concern.
Which
region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand
or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain,
and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die
and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house
explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground
bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security
force after the event?”
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