I haven’t watched the new Amazon Prime series Fallout yet, but I’m caught up in its hype.
Fallout, for those who don’t know, is a video game series by Bethesda Studios. My particular favorite version of Fallout is Fallout 4. As you might guess from the title, it’s a open world narrative set in a post-nuclear time. It’s a grimy setting, full of radiated creatures and dilapidation. Like other Bethesda games like Skyrim, there is a main story line of sorts, but the fun is mostly in deciding exactly what type of quests and adventures you want to take part in. Do you want to play as a moral character, protecting those you deem innocent? Do you just want to run around with a shotgun blasting radroaches? Do you just want to collect as much loot as possible?
I hadn’t played Fallout in ages, but when I saw one of my favorite Twitch streamers start playing again in light of the TV show, I booted up my old character. In Fallout, I’m simply known as R. My character currently is wearing a giant protective coat and a top hat. You can find me using sniper rifles to pick off super mutants from a distance. My trusted companion is Hancock, a ghoul who wears a tricorn hat. Important for this story, my actions have pleased Hancock so much that he “idolizes me.”1
Even though I had plenty of weapons, companions, and loot saved on this character, I had to relearn the controls and settings. I couldn’t remember previous choices I’d made as the character. I had about ten open questlines and no idea what any of them meant.
So I did what anyone would do, I spent $10 on the deeply discounted DLCs (downloadable content) to add on some fresh areas in the game and headed off on yet another story line. I’ve spent the last week running around abandoned amusement parks and arcades collecting tokens and tickets to play games within the game. I met new characters and rediscovered my love of crafting items.
One of the functions of Fallout is that you can create settlements. The wiki tells me there are 37 total. Each settlement you manage has a workshop where you can create structures and machine gun turrets and funny little potted plants. I love settlements. There’s nothing better than storing all of my virtual junk in a virtual chest that I’ve created.
I had forgotten however just how needy these settlements are. Leave your settlement alone for too long and someone comes along and attacks it. Don’t go visit your friends at the settlement and their happiness goes down.
Or, do what I did. Prior me, when I was playing this game years ago, had claimed locations as an emissary of the Minutemen. Preston Garvey, the Minutemen leader, was always so happy when I captured a new settlement. I had forgotten my loyalties though. When talking to another character I gave one of the settlements over to his faction, the Pack.
Immediately, I got a little text notification in bright green up in the top left corner of my screen.
“Preston Garvey hated that”
and then in quick succession
“Preston Garvey hates you”
Well.
I was genuinely shocked in this moment. What had I ever done to Preston? Hadn’t I been such a good character, planting Tato crops and providing sleeping bags for all those settlers? What was one settlement among twenty?
Seeing this notification poked at a real life vulnerability. It had felt so good when Hancock idolized me. Despite understanding the mechanics of the game, I had been playing as if I could make everyone idolize me. I was prepared to have 37 functioning settlements and hoards of friends to take on the supermutants.
Instead I had a pocket full of dwindling bottlecaps, five settlements flashing warning that they weren’t receiving basic resources, and a new nemesis.
The post-apocalypse was teaching me what my mom has taught me all along: not everyone is going to like you.
Fallout is compelling not just because it’s an open world game where you can do anything. It’s compelling because in this open world your actions have consequences. If you choose one faction, you’ll make another angry. If you carry around a minigun, you can’t grab all the extra loot you find in the abandoned factory. If Hancock idolizes you, Preston might hate you.
Even as a top hat wearing vault dweller who is really good at picking locks with bobby pins, I have the delusion that I can do it all. How much worse it is then when it’s just me, in my jeans and baseball hat (although I still do have pockets full of bobby pins).
Next time I logged into play my spouse, Josh, was sitting on the couch with me.
“I think I’m going to try to let some of these settlements go,” I said.
“You’ve got enough to worry about just taking care of yourself,” he replied, “with all those feral ghouls and radiation out there.”
It’s a really good point.
What I’m reading
If you are interested in more video game talk, head straight to the essay collection Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games. This is a fantastic collection that I especially recommend to anyone who feels like they just don’t get video games. Here you can find people writing about how video games are an avenue for gender expression, for joy, and community building. It’s a great peek into what is often an intimate experience. Playing video games can been a deeply moving and immersive experience—through these essays you can share in that just a little bit.
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What life looks like
I did, in fact, romance Hancock which is a whole thing. Or as I’ve seen it described online, “I kissed a ghoul and I liked it.”