Fallout: The Socialist Connection

T

Tannhauser

Venerable Relic of the Wastes
Orderite
If your secret desire was a review of the Fallout games focusing on their socialist aspects, the Maoist Internationalist Movement is here to deliver! With their 'revolutionary communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,' they bravely analyze the social commentary and the harsh message about capitalism that the Fallout games bring us.<blockquote>The New California Republic [based on Shady Sands from FO1] is a prototype police state and the player can judge whether its existence is a good thing compared to the elitist Vault City and loosely-run Broken Hills. Given the post-nuclear survival situation, NCR guarantees survival rights bettar than other areas and the level of repression may be justified. In NCR, police patrol the streets to prevent any violent acts from occuring. The locals are relatively friendly to mutants, tribals, etc... compared to other cities. A Maoist state might be able to form here given some social progression amongst the locals.</blockquote>The review is mainly positive, pointing to Fallout as a 'Maoist Role Playing Game.' Though there are also various criticisms against the Fallout games, a notable one being that they are too individualistic, as there is little 'observable mass action.' This review is a must read for any budding revolutionary.

Link: MIM reviews Fallout 1 and 2.

Thanks Briosafreak.
 
I have no idea what to say...

I mean I didnt even know they would care let alone bother to actually "review" it.

We have fans in the strangest places.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Heh, there should be a fascist review as well: 'It's survival of the fittest, the weaker are eliminated, as Gecko is by Vault City.'

They really didn't get much of Fallout itself, though:
in an interesting contradiction, some year-2077 Americans are smartly beginning to buy primitive, low-energy 1950s-style electronics that are also more resistant to ElectroMagneticPulse
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You mean the fifties style electronics that the game was built around because, y'know, transistors were never invented?

This differentiates Fallout from Role-Playing Games such as Myst
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Myst is an RPG? Que?

Playing as either sex can dramatically affect the outcome of the game.
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Oh? Dramatically affect the outcome of the game? Where? How?

Pessimistically, the game's creators state that Vault City/Vault 8 was a group of normal humans unsubjected to any special tests, and yet the sad situation in VC was the result. Experiments were malicious and included a Vault without any entertainment tapes and another one with only tapes from a single bad comedian. The psychologists postulated that the people in the vault with the tapes from the bad comedian would go insane first. Such sick experiments on captive populations demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of psychology under capitalism.
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Sick, twisted experiments. Nothing so sick and twisted as messing with people's entertainment. Man, they should be hanged for that. Bad comedians, twisted!

The closest thing the PC has to real survival skills in the game is the needlessly gender-specifc "Outdoorsman" skill that allows the PC to find (or avoid!) interesting things in the wasteland.
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Outdoorsperson, damnit!

Maoists won't like the extreme (however adjustable) amount of violence that exists in this depressing and decayed post-capitalist world.
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Post-capitalist? If that's what post-capitalist looks like, I'll just stay with capitalist, thanks. No need to go post on that.
 
Best Fallout review ever.

Their other reviews are awesome as well. Check out what they had to say about Star Wars: Cossacks of the Old Republic.

All in all, the Cossacks/Knights of the Old Republic is one of the most manipulative pieces of software ever devised. It leeches morality of young minds and prepares them to kill their peers to prevent a revolution. After all... the strong fascist knight shall always win.
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Like the way that as the article goes on "U.S." changes to "U.$.", and the apparently all Maoists are female.
 
Mikey said:
Like the way that as the article goes on "U.S." changes to "U.$.", and the apparently all Maoists are female.
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If you look at the other reviews, you will find choice words as 'Hindui$m,' 'Judai$m,' 'Confuciani$m,' 'Buddhi$m' (I notice a certain trend), 'KKKhristianity,' 'Amerikkka,' 'Amerikkkans,' besides the aforementioned 'United $tates.'

Pointed out at RPGCodex: it is sort of funny to see an Amazon 'Buy it now!" link at the bottom of most of these reviews.
 
The_Vault_Dweller said:
I have no idea what to say...

I mean I didnt even know they would care let alone bother to actually "review" it.

We have fans in the strangest places.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
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Yeah, strange to believe it though. It's amazing how Fallout is still recognized, worshiped, played, and loved by even after all these new fangled high-end games like F.E.A.R. and AoE 3 came out, and after like what, 9 years?
 
dagorkan said:
Briosafreak said:
Actually thanks to Sheek from RPGCodex
http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=13011


Keep coming with the comments, this one deserves it
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That's me by the way. Lol.
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Don't know how i missed it, i found the weirdest fallout pages in many sessions of searches through the net. The more curious one was an academic paper on Comunication a brazilian fan once send me, i pretty much disagreed with everything the guy that wrote the thing was saying but seeing Fallout with an analytical scientific aproach was lots of fun, i must say.
 
I found that website years ago looking for the review of some game. I only read the Fallout review the other day (I didn't have a clue what Fallout was two weeks ago).
 
Quote from article:
"Later in the game, the player can learn that the underground vaults are actually a massive psychological experiment. The company that created the Vaults, Vault-Tec, was working in conjunction with psychologists who now had captive populations on which to test their social experiments. Pessimistically, the game's creators state that Vault City/Vault 8 was a group of normal humans unsubjected to any special tests, and yet the sad situation in VC was the result. Experiments were malicious and included a Vault without any entertainment tapes and another one with only tapes from a single bad comedian. The psychologists postulated that the people in the vault with the tapes from the bad comedian would go insane first. Such sick experiments on captive populations demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of psychology under capitalism."

emphasis:

"Such sick experiments on captive populations demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of psychology under capitalism."

Pass me the maoist bong, man, this is radical... :p
 
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