196

I would come in here and say you're wrong, but out of both acknowledging that nobody agrees on what's "right" in a Fallout game, and a sense of refreshment and calm from sleep; I feel like you are owed something most internet comments don't get. A rationale.

A lot of my sentiment and feelings on Fallout's setting is not really informed by the game, but by the other post-nuclear fiction I've consumed over my life. Most notably, the film Threads which impact on me comes before Fallout (I only started playing Fallout in its wake, as I started to absorb this genre of work after seeing a friend's bootleg VHS). If Fallout is the sometimes bleak, but at least hopeful; Threads is just plain bleak. And there can be no confusion by the time its over, there is no sense of civilization coming back to save us. This was the resounding viewpoint of nuclear war sold to us from the 1980s onward: that to stop the inevitable, we had to believe that there would be nothing worth living for.

I feel like this conflict is why Fallout ended up being the way it is. Same with Mad Max, you have to provide some sense of life after the end to even have a story, and this changes how I perceive what's best. Any kind of civilization seems like a step up from, well, worst case scenario. Sure, the NCR is as has been pointed out, the return of all the old world's mistakes. But to a survivor who huddled into shelter watching the world end, a return to the status quo, as bad as it is, well that's an upgrade right?

We're probably far away on what we think is right for the Mojave Wasteland, and that's Obsidian's intent.