Mutually Assured Destruction: Part One

The Cold War was a time of paranoia across the globe. The nuclear arsenals of NATO and Warsaw Pact countries grew and grew, proxy wars fought all around the world, revolutions, counter revolutions, inflation, domestic strife, the question of whether flared trousers were ever fashionable; the latter half of the 20^th Century was a truly terrifying place to be!

Thankfully, the Cold War ended with worldwide nuclear arms reductions and the rejection of totalitarian and authoritarian governments in favour of civil liberties and democracy, even though some current heads of state did not get the memo. The 1990s and the early 21^st Century have been some of the most peaceful decades in human history, and have allowed us to reflect on the past and explore its impact on the world.

But the way that this period of world history has been portrayed in video games is interesting. We have Metal Gear Solid and Call of Duty: Black Ops that looked at the proxy wars fought between East and West, along with tales of espionage and avoiding doomsday in the various 007 and Tom Clancy games. But for today, we’re going to put these games to one side and look at how the politics of the era informed depictions of nuclear Armageddon. This article will focus on how Western prosperity and Capitalist ideals informed the outlook of the Fallout series.

In terms of world building, the Fallout franchise is steeped in Americana style and culture. The games exist in a universe where the culture of the 1950s never ended and the transistor was never developed and miniaturised like it was in reality. Instead, technology has relied on the miniaturisation of nuclear fission, allowing the predictions of Tomorrow’s World to come true: there are nuclear powered cars, vacuum cleaners, and even household and military robots.

Aside from the robots, in the real world these items were, at the time, considered expensive luxuries and a sign of a person’s wealth. With the Post-War economic boom, more and more households had a refrigerator, a washing machine, a television set or a radio, and allowed the ideas of American Exceptionalism and the values of Conservatism to flourish in white, middle class America. This period of prosperity has clearly influenced Fallout, because these sorts of labour saving devices are found in every house, demonstrating the overall financial state of American’s before the nuclear war.

Bethesda Game Studios, 2015

In fact, in the days before Fallout's war American life appeared to be recovering from a period of intense social upheaval and conflict, but the paranoia and fear of the bomb remained. In reality, the 1950s and 60s saw a surge in the number of private and public fallout shelters being constructed. The emergence of the ICBM and the numerous points of tension between America and the Soviet Union, such as the Berlin Airlift and later the Cuban Missile Crisis, led to nuclear war with only four minutes to find shelter a very real possibility. Fallout mirrors this shelter building craze but on a far larger scale; a US company builds “Vaults”, vast underground complexes to house people for an indefinite period of time: some remain for only a few years, whilst others remain sealed for centuries, the inhabitants giving birth to the next generation inside the Vault. There are even some Vaults that are equipped with cryogenic pods for the inhabitants, and even one that will simply clone the survivors.

But it’s not just those lucky enough to find a space in a Vault that survived. The player, for the most part, steps into the shoes of a Vault inhabitant but once in the Wasteland finds people have survived in this irradiated and bleak new world. There’s a large variety of surviving groups out here, from altruistic collectives using pre-war medicine and technology to help fellow Wastlanders, along with expansionist republics and marauding tribes intent on enslaving their enemies. This weird and wacky mix of ideologies and cultures, whilst vastly different from the old United States, shows that even 200 years into the apocalypse people can survive and even thrive.

There are some elements of pre-war American society that remain, however. Whilst the complex, international financial systems are long gone, replaced with a rudimentary bartering system, currencies have emerged in the Wasteland. New Californian Republic Dollars for one, but more famously the Wastelanders use Bottle Caps. Oddly, this is not as ridiculous a concept as it may sound – Caps are a finite commodity in this new world and can’t be forged or reproduced, which is useful to avoid inflation and economic collapse. This also shows that the idea of capitalism has stayed with the American population even after all the systems that maintained it have been torn down.

Bethesda Game Studios, 2015

So with the continuation of currency based trade and the survival of some pre-war technology, such as nuclear or even wind powered electrical generators, robots, and even laser weaponry, we can see that Fallout still has not lost that optimistic outlook on life that was prevalent in 1950s America, the nuclear paranoia notwithstanding. The game also appears to revolve around the idea of the American Dream, that working hard throughout your life will lead to great reward later down the line; owning your home, having a family, and a comfortable retirement. In terms of gameplay, the player can see this outcome as they level up. Reaching a high or max level can be seen as an analogy to the idea of a comfortable retirement, as the player becomes the most powerful being in the Wasteland and can handle most mutant-related problems with ease.

With Fallout 4 came the settlement building mechanics, which allowed the player to indulge in the fantasy of owning their own home, filled with all the labour saving devices and sets of armour and clothes as they want. The player is even able to have a family at home through the relationships mechanic, allowing them to be accompanied and fall in love with an NPC character. This mechanic doesn’t allow the player the 2.4 children that usually accompanies images of the nuclear family, but that’s by the by. Fallout demonstrates that even the end of the world cannot end American Exceptionalism or snuff out the American Dream, only a world that suffered through the 2008 global financial crisis can do that.

This all comes down to, in my point of view, the idea that the developers and producers at Black Isle and Bethesda Games Studio created and expanded the Fallout universe in the way that they did because the American Dream and Capitalism has informed their collective worldview. Everything about the series is layered in the same optimism and hope that hard work will, eventually, payoff. The luxury, labour saver items may have changed from being a washing machine in the real-world to an automatic Laser Rifle, but they have the same meaning behind them – that Capitalist systems and working hard for your caps and survival, will ultimately reward you.

The effect the American Dream has had on the Bethesda staff has led me to ask; what effect did the Soviet system, and its ultimate collapse, on the outlook of games from the former Eastern Bloc? How did the lies, manipulation, and misinformation of Communist regimes influence the tone and gameplay Metro series of games? Come back next week to find out!