How come Enclave soldiers don't clad themselves in red, white, and blue?

Nodder

Nodder

It Wandered In From the Wastes
It wouldn't be very practical as camo, but it'd be interesting to see Enclave elite units of some sort get all up in jingoism. Or at least have the flag more displayed. In both Fallout 2 and 3, they wear ugly brutal militaristic body armor. Which is totally understandable and practical. But maybe they could have more patriotic-looking units, something like this perhaps?

Rifts_Chaos_Earth_RPG_2003.jpg
 
Enclave is like fascist germany.
That's why they praise more about their emblem, than american flag etc. (which is still used, but you know)
 
Nodder said:
It wouldn't be very practical as camo, but it'd be interesting to see Enclave elite units of some sort get all up in jingoism.
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They probably didn't use red, white and blue armor because it wouldn't be as intimidating as black metal armor.
 
While the Enclave did saw itself as the legitimate successor to the United States, they were never obsessed about symbols to the degree of what we saw for example in the Bioshock series.
They weren't 'ultra patriots' and bringing up subjects like the founding fathers or other icons of American history/culture.

What you propose to me is to make them even more ridiculous, basically becoming human versions of Liberty Prime.
 
Well, it's a style thing. The bad guys in Bioshock Infinite were based on turn of the century Nativist types. Shouldn't the Enclave have a stronger influence based on '50s Americana? But then since it's a stylistic choice, I can understand if the makers of Fallout declined to make the Enclave appear too jingoistic. It's just there feels a slight disconnect between the Enclave representing the final legacy of the American Empire, and their uniforms, etc. looking fairly drab.
 
Nodder said:
Well, it's a style thing. The bad guys in Bioshock Infinite were based on turn of the century Nativist types. Shouldn't the Enclave have a stronger influence based on '50s Americana? But then since it's a stylistic choice, I can understand if the makers of Fallout declined to make the Enclave appear too jingoistic. It's just there feels a slight disconnect between the Enclave representing the final legacy of the American Empire, and their uniforms, etc. looking fairly drab.
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American military uniforms are fairly drab, and they were during the 1950s, too.

But really, I don't think there's a disconnect at all. Given that it's been centuries since the fall of the US, the Enclave would not have any direct knowledge of the cultural tropes of Pre-War America. In spite of their pretensions, they aren't actually a Pre-War US government.

There's a historical precedent for this; look at the Holy Roman Empire, for example. To legitimize itself, it adopted the name and some of the iconography/titles of the old Roman Empire, but it's not like they were running around wearing togas and sandals, worshiping Roman gods, or using Roman style military equipment. As Voltaire put it, the Holy Roman Empire "was not Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire." It's the same with the Enclave. The American flag, and titles like "President" are just old symbols to them, convenient ones to rally around because they give both some semblance of legitimacy and an organizational framework to their movement.
 
I'm not sure what you would expect them to do? There's a joke in the US military, "never go full hooah" hooah being an ambigious word that can mean anything from "hello" to "fuck yeah" to "you fucking retard of higher rank that I can't call you out on your bullshit."

The enclave feel they're directly decent from the original American government and claim they are the continuation of the united states. The Nazis and Mussolini did much the same thing with the Roman history, but they didn't adopt Roman banners and wear segmented armor or hold gladiatorial matches.

Mostly what we see are the soldiers of the Enclave who aren't blind to the situation, they aren't "full hooah" even though they believe in the Enclave. The very few civilians we do see are pretty hopelessly "Murican" except those in the know.
 
Ah-Teen said:
The Nazis and Mussolini did much the same thing with the Roman history, but they didn't adopt Roman banners and wear segmented armor or hold gladiatorial matches.
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Roman banner:

o9mttd.jpg


Nazi banner:

334508o.jpg


And there's the oh so cute WW2 German Nazi Luftschutz Helmet which emulates helmets worn by gladiators:

2hztieu.jpg


:roll:
 
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Uniforms has never really been that over the top, AKA, BS: Infinite.

If you look at the civil war, the uniforms at straight blue or grey. WW1 uniforms are olive drab and progress to more browns during WW2. The revolutionary minutemen or continental army was the only time I had seen RWB as a major color scheme.

BS Infinite was a satirical look at turn of the century America and its fascination with race, social darwanism with a bit of modern murrica thrown in. Whats enlightening is that the Nazis learned a whole lot of racism courtesy of the eugenics movement that really took off in the U.S.

Reality is, on average, mundane and boring. That's why we have games and movies that show us fantastical and crazy ass things that we don't see everyday.

PS: That War Machine look reminds of all the veteran mobiles that sport a thousand flags when all they ever needed was one.
 
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The American aesthetic probably ended up a bit dulled down after two centuries of living exclusively in steel grey bunkers, anyway. If it helps, The Enclave emblem stamped on all their armor and weapons is a direct successor to the thirteen stars of the American Commonwealth Flag, with the Enclave "E" presumably standing in for the commonwealth of Columbia. That's about as jingoistic as any army has gotten since the turn of the 18th century as far as battlefield dress goes.
 
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alec said:
Ah-Teen said:
The Nazis and Mussolini did much the same thing with the Roman history, but they didn't adopt Roman banners and wear segmented armor or hold gladiatorial matches.
Click to expand...

Roman banner:

o9mttd.jpg


Nazi banner:

334508o.jpg


And there's the oh so cute WW2 German Nazi Luftschutz Helmet which emulates helmets worn by gladiators:

2hztieu.jpg


:roll:
Click to expand...

Yeah, so you're saying that the Enclave SHOULD have decorated their armor in red/white stripes with stars.
 
No, I didn't say anything like that at all. In fact my post only contained the words 'Nazi Banner', 'Roman banner' and 'And there's the oh so cute WW2 German Nazi Luftschutz Helmet which emulates helmets worn by gladiators', so you are either hallucinating or just misreading. You can check the original post. That post was me rectifying what Ah-Teen had posted before.

Jesus... :roll:
 
I'm more surprised and disappointed that they didn't look more like established U.S. Army units. The Enclave's entire esthetic is too comically evil; while discussing the artwork and themes of Fallout, the first thing my mother responded to was the advanced power armor looking "malicious." Is it any wonder Bethesda made them 2-dimensional?
 
Haha, FO3's spiky robot Enclave actually made the original look pretty realistic when directly compared.
 
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