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I first played Fallout in junior high and early in high school, some ten years ago, but it was not until this past summer that I took the time to sit down and beat the game. A lot has changed since I made my first foray into the wastes in search of a water chip, both in the world at large and in my own life and person. When I returned to the world I'd seen before, I came back not only with recollections of bits and pieces of my first journey, but I also came back with an education: new knowledge that afforded insights into the world of Fallout. Further, I noticed that, like a good work of literature or art, Fallout challenges the player to ask questions about his or her own world, raising important questions about choice, control, and the illusion of authority. I wrote this essay to explore and share these insights.
From the outset, I loved the role that choices played in the game. Fallout presents a moral universe, and not a simple moral universe where a single decision determines whether you get the "good" or the "evil" ending; Fallout presents a complex moral universe, confronting the player with decisions, forcing him to consider the ramifications of his actions. It's a gritty world of necessity. One of my earliest games involved trying to go without killing anyone. That didn't last long. You meet humans like Garl's Raiders, living by violence and exploiting the weak. You can turn a blind eye if you like, but in the end someone's going to die. Will you leave it alone, or will you choose who lives and who dies? What happens when your goals are at odds with those of others? Are you willing to put a bullet through the head of another man, when it could save the lives of your brothers back at Vault 13? There are ways around killing and violence…but they are often much harder.
I remember when I first ran into the Children of the Cathedral, and their religion and worship of the "holy flame." Initially it struck me as a poor projection of what religion might be like in a postnuke future (how did all major world religions manage to get eradicated in the war?), but then it occurred to me that, rather than risk offense by portraying real religions, the Fallout designers would prefer to make something up: it's just good marketing sense. Furthermore, I realized that the CoC's religion did have its roots in a present-day religion after all: the hodgepodge of pop spirituality, cults, new-age philosophy and feel-good mysticism of Southern California. Additionally, one can see the influence of Eastern religions seeping in from the Pacific Rim in the quasi-pantheistic sense of connectedness to all things that CoC members frequently mention.
Though it has nothing to say about specific religions, Fallout offers a commentary on religion in general—as my old poetry professor Bob Day would say, it has a 'tude about religion. Religion in the Fallout world is by no means immune from the power hierarchies of society, a tool of control and riddled with hypocrisy. It's full of manipulative cynics and devout believers alike, both the deluded sincere and the puppet masters who only use it to get what they want from others. Will this "made-up" religion make anyone ask whether the same critique might apply to his own religion, dissimilar as it is to the CoC cult? I don't know.
Sincere belief. There are many of the CoC who believe in the good of their religion, believe in its truth and benefit for humankind. The word "brainwashing" comes to mind: the cult's followers talk of how they used to be and how their decision to join the CoC has changed their life, using overblown emotional language to describe their turn from hate and blindness to light and love. Is this a world with free will? Is our own a world with free will? To what extent are we responsible for our own beliefs and convictions?
(On a side note, the line "Once I was wandering blind, in a land that was so unkind" sung by one of the CoC's chanters is almost certainly a commentary on the emotional vapidity of contemporary Christian worship songs.)
Devotion. Even the Master, the once-human amalgam of organic life and bizarre mechanical life-support, believes devoutly in his goal of Unity. He does not consider himself to be spreading lies or doing anything detrimental to his followers for his own selfish gain, in contrast to some of the CoC's conspiratorial higher-ups. No—the Master thinks he is securing a better future for the race, as One. If you read the diary of Richard Grey, you see the slow degeneration of his human body and human sanity, until he isn't even aware of the unreal bizarre delusions he dwells in. Who deludes the Master? It's the free will question again. No external sentient agent exerts control over his mind for ulterior ends. Does the impersonal universe delude him, as if by accident—or does he delude himself?
Actually, I think the game's answer is pretty clear on that one. His actions are an inevitable deterministic result of the Forced Evolutionary Virus—the chemical effects that immersion in the virus has on his body and psyche—and all of his grandiose, megalomaniacal, paternalistic plans are pure accident. The Master is an outgrowth of the material conditions of his existence, nothing more.
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