Left-wing Bias in Bethesda's Fallout Products

[DarkCorp]

If folks can go full retard and assume the U.S. is a police state, America, as a den of evil corporatists and MURRICA, (you know who you are), then its perfectly fair to go just as full retard and claim the UK is an Orwellian nightmare.

If there are repubtards and MURRICANS, then there are libtards and clueless, bleeding hearts that have no sense.

 

[Earth]

I'm just not sure there is any kind of left-wing bias in Bethesda games. I always thought there was more of a right-wing bias, what with the Christian elements, Dad reciting the Bible in Fallout 3 and that being the basis for the Lone Wanderer's heroic journey (well, as heroic as Fallout 3's quest debatably is) and at the end it felt like a battle between democratic freedom-loving America (objectified in LP) vs Nazis, rather than a battle between one xenophobic elitist group against another. Would've been more interesting (not to mention more fun) if it was the Enclave who had LP at the end of Fallout 3 and not the BOS. There's a dramatic irony to LP being used against the Enclave but it would've been more left-wing for the player to fight against the giant corporate-built/military applied/anti-communist propaganda spewing robot rather than with it.

This only seems to be solidified by the backstory of the Sole Survivor of Fallout 4, where the male character is actually specifically stated to be a veteran (for all we know he was the guy who executed the person in Canada (I think it was Canada, maybe Alaska) in the Fallout intro. Bethesda (at least, from what I've seen. Haven't played the game) doesn't seem to imply at any point that the protagonist might have committed some pretty nasty shit during his time at war, so Bethesda seems to take either a pretty neutral view of the military or possibly a condoning one.

Left-wing bias in the original Fallouts and New Vegas maybe. In Bethesda? I'm not sure. Characters saying, "Fight the good fight" or whatever means nothing. Anyone from Thatcher to Lenin might have said something like that at some point. Bethesda are either pretty apolitical or, in my opinion anyway, have some right-wing connotations in their writing.

I'm not sure what else there is to say really. Haven't put that much thought into it in for either camp. Now I guess we should all start throwing mud at each other right? Because internet?

 

[DVL]

Just hearing some of the ideas here shows clear bias. The left is always the savior of the world while the right is all about baby murder. Repubs lie and fearmonger but dems always tell the truth.

As I've said, I don't have a tribal affiliation with liberals.
If somebody storms out of the thread going, "Oh you liberals." What am I supposed to think?
And no, I don't think liberals always tell the truth.

If folks can go full retard and assume the U.S. is a police state, America, as a den of evil corporatists and MURRICA, (you know who you are), then its perfectly fair to go just as full retard and claim the UK is an Orwellian nightmare.

Yeah? And there are plenty of conservatives who think that America is a den of evil corporatists?
I don't think anybody can claim otherwise with a straight face.

If there are repubtards and MURRICANS, then there are libtards and clueless, bleeding hearts that have no sense.

I think it says a lot that the most malicious stereotype of liberals is that they're bleeding hearts with no sense as opposed to malicious assholes with no sense.
Earth already pointed this out. What service is it to characterize your own political camp as somebody who thinks his rivals are what . . . too compassionate for their own good?
Seriously?
I've stopped believing that most Republicans are anything but closeted reactionary bigots for that exact reason.
Yes. It is unfair. It is sweeping. No, I'm not a person who is charitable to others on his best day.

 

[DVL]

I'm just not sure there is any kind of left-wing bias in Bethesda games. I always thought there was more of a right-wing bias, what with the Christian elements, Dad reciting the Bible in Fallout 3 and that being the basis for the Lone Wanderer's heroic journey (well, as heroic as Fallout 3's quest debatably is) and at the end it felt like a battle between democratic freedom-loving America (objectified in LP) vs Nazis, rather than a battle between one xenophobic elitist group against another. Would've been more interesting (not to mention more fun) if it was the Enclave who had LP at the end of Fallout 3 and not the BOS. There's a dramatic irony to LP being used against the Enclave but it would've been more left-wing for the player to fight against the giant corporate-built/military applied/anti-communist propaganda spewing robot rather than with it.

Nah, Bethesda is just really shallow.
Quoting Scripture. Any kind of Scripture, is completely fucking irrelevant to anybody who isn't raised to consider your Scripture profound.
Christians do it all the time because they are raised to assume there's more wisdom and literary pedigree in it to be had in it than actually exists.

I think giving Bethesda the benefit of the doubt that they had any intentioned political narrative at all is giving them too much credit.
The fact that they have this generically admirable All-American war hero as their protag in FO4 just shows that they're fish so deeply submerged in water that they have no concept of water. Or they're just actively pandering to their audience. Take your pick.

I should mention that I never viewed the BoS as particularly xenophobic or even religious. They're a community. A community with martial traditions and a lot more laser guns, but ultimately, they're more interested in serving their own than helping others.

 

[Earth]

I apologise for derailing the topic slightly to talk about the London allegory (it's just, as a Londoner, I've always thought it was a bit strange). Just wanted to quickly comment on it because I've noticed recently Americans seem more concerned about immigration in London than actual Londoners. I'm pretty sure I didn't attack anyone while saying it, but if anything I said came across as offensive. Sorry about that. This topic interests me and I'd like to hear more opinions on the subject.

But this is a Fallout discussion. Specifically about Bethesda's Fallout games and political biases we noticed when playing them. It'd be nice if we could try to discuss that subject without everyone suddenly getting defensive about their political beliefs.

 

[Crni Vuk]

If folks can go full retard and assume the U.S. is a police state, America, as a den of evil corporatists and MURRICA, (you know who you are), then its perfectly fair to go just as full retard and claim the UK is an Orwellian nightmare.

If there are repubtards and MURRICANS, then there are libtards and clueless, bleeding hearts that have no sense.

 

[Ben Soto]

Speaking as someone who considers himself a liberal but tends to side with Republicans and with a fairly Republican family, we don't hate Obama because he's a dumbocrat, but because of his actions. Obama does more harm than good. We're very anti-ObamaCare, anti-gun control, and not at all fans of his being "General Wait-And-See."

 

[DarkCorp]

Liberal policies are not always of sound economic sense. Trying to implement a universal healthcare system that takes care of 50 million (Canada) or 90 million UK, is foolish at best for a nation of 300 some million.

This is including the monumental shitstorm of fixing what I pointed out above with insurance.

Raising the damn minimum wage to $15-20 for a damn burger flipper, how in the hell is that remotely realistic without cries of more 'wealth redistribution'?

As Crni will attest, I am not arguing for its own sake, it's annoying when ANY side claims its the best one without considering all the facts. I have admitted I can be wrong, as I hope others here can admit.

Lastly, isolationism is a HUGE liberal policy. Let Putin run rampant, give Taiwan back to China and allow the Kims to run all over S. Korea. These are just a few of the monumental crappy decisions some liberals are all for.

Libs cry all the time that nations need help yet do not support violating national sovereignty. Whats the point of propping up a dictator? At the end of the days, it's all TALK. If that argument rings true for right wingers like supporting the Saudis then its just as bad of a choice for the lefties and their cries of, 'throw more humanitarian money at the dictator, the problems will go away'.

To fix a country, its best and brightest need to choose to STAY, in said country to make it better.

AGAIN, if anything, both sides have flaws and its much better to work across the aisle rather than accept dogma without question.

Contrary to what a comedian like George Carlin thinks, not every damn thing wrong with this nation can be blamed on the right. Yet many (not all), liberals treat the words of a damned comic like it was scripture.

 

[DVL]

Speaking as someone who considers himself a liberal but tends to side with Republicans and with a fairly Republican family, we don't hate Obama because he's a dumbocrat, but because of his actions. Obama does more harm than good. We're very anti-ObamaCare, anti-gun control, and not at all fans of his being "General Wait-And-See."

You can be Democratic president and it can be okay to second guess your religion and your citizenship. That's normal now.
It's not actually problem if Obama were actually a Muslim, until conservatives decided to make it a problem.
The rules are not at all the same for liberals as it is for conservatives.
I guarantee you, a liberal does any of these things and you will be all over him like white on rice for being rude and disrespectful.
You just called Obama a dumbocrat. And the Republican party actually tried to make "Obamacare" a personal insult. And there are Republicans who didn't want Obamacare to succeed, not just because of any ideological reason, but because they've outright stated that they don't want it to make him look good.

If you are a conservative, you can be a war criminal. You can lie as a false pretext to war. You can expose the identities of CIA agents from your own goddamn country. And you will not be punished in any way.
If you're a Democrat you can lie about sleeping with the intern and be impeached for it. And even if you haven't actually done anything wrong, you will be constantly plagued with doubts that you're not really a natural American citizen.

That's the double-standard in the political discourse.

I'm reading comments on a news article about Gitmo and I'm shaking my head.
If you think that you should close Gitmo, that's just liberals being unable to be tough on terror. Nobody will say it's a failure in American foreign policy. Nobody says we should've found an above-board method of holding custody of terrorists inside the States. Congress had the time to make this work, whatever else Obama does. If you're a conservative, I don't think that's a failure you can or should embrace as your own. But plenty of conservatives will. And they will hold anybody that say otherwise in contempt for weakness. "Bleeding heart" is just code for, "I have contempt for any perceived weakness on your part."

It betrays a meanspirited sense of superiority that masquerades under the guise of being "tough."

Whether you actually agree with that or not as a conservative, you can't pretend that the flag you're waving isn't tarnished.

 

[Walpknut]

Man, you american right wing dudes really love jump to conclussions and are quick to get mad. That's why the world ended in Fallout!

It's pretty hilarious how personal you guys are taking to people disagreeing with the OP.... Most of us aren't even from the US either...

Please leave this kind of shit on another one of those threads that Sander eventually vats.


Also, did you know that Obama has bombed more people with drones than Bush? Do you want even more bombings? How is he "general wait and see"? Pretty disturbing stuff. Most people outside of the US actually criticizes the fact that Obama won a Peace Nobel Prize while exerting much more strict and overreaching war plans than Bush... but I am not goign to dwell on that. Tons of tribalism involved in this "wing fight!" Go make a political thread on the regular discussion forum...

 

[Ben Soto]

I don't want more bombings, I want a full on assault. Wars can't be won from the sidelines. A bunch of bombs ain't going to take care of a bigger problem. When there's a wasp hive in your home, you don't use a fly swatter. You call an exterminator, or in this case, the Army.

 

[Walpknut]

Yay, Invasions and war!



Pretty easy to demand such things when it's not YOUR country the one being invaded.

 

[PossibleCabbage]

I mean, if blowing up the middle east for the past 300 years hasn't sorted out the region, the only solution is to blow it up some more.

Let's just ignore that what ISIS wants (they said so in their glossy english language magazine) is boots on the ground, because military action leads to increased tension between the Muslim World and the West which helps their recruiting. After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it's not like they didn't just come out and say that what they wanted is the elimination of places where Muslims and non-Muslims tolerate each other ("the grey zone"). Terrorism writ large is, after all, geopolitical judo, and using your opponent's weight against them is really the only hope that you have when you're massively outgunned to begin with.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I mean, if blowing up the middle east for the past 300 years hasn't sorted out the region, the only solution is to blow it up some more.

Let's just ignore that what ISIS wants (they said so in their glossy english language magazine) is boots on the ground, because military action leads to increased tension between the Muslim World and the West which helps their recruiting. After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it's not like they didn't just come out and say that what they wanted is the elimination of places where Muslims and non-Muslims tolerate each other ("the grey zone"). Terrorism writ large is, after all, geopolitical judo, and using your opponent's weight against them is really the only hope that you have when you're massively outgunned to begin with.

While what Terrorists do is terrible and unforgivable... our county's policy there is any better. They bomb and kill... well so does our military!

 

[peadar87]

Seeing as we are already waaaaayyyy off topic, my own personal opinion is that we need boots on the ground.

We should never have pulled out of Iraq before the country was stabilised.
We could possibly have negotiated a peaceful settlement with Hussein.
We shoudn't have removed Mossadeq.
We shouldn't have gotten into bed with the Saudis and propped them up for oil.
We shouldn't have stood idly by while Israel illegally annexed more and more Palestinian territory.
We shouldn't have enforced Skyes-Picot on the Middle East.

It goes on and on. And now we have an enemy who cannot be negotiated with, and whose purpose isn't to hang onto power, to gain wealth, or to live in peace. their purpose is to destroy the West and everything we claim to stand for.

We need boots on the ground to completely and utterly destroy them. We need to do this with local allies who are trustworthy and virtuous, not just some random terrorist group who hate the same people that we do. We need to make sure that civilian casualties are kept to a minimum, and those who recklessly endanger civilians are seen to face the full force of the law. Lots of good men will die, and we need to hold the politicians who needlessly got us cornered in this situation to account at the ballot box.

And once we've done that we need to make the commitment to stay in the region for the next 50 years if needs be. Pump in money. Build schools, hospitals, sports fields, mosques. If extremists blow them up, we rebuild them. We don't repeat our past mistakes. We don't give fuel to terrorists. We don't give the people of the Middle East legitimate reasons to hate us.

So yes, I'm in favour of military action. I'm not in favour of knee-jerk airstrikes just to be seen to do something. All that is going to do is create widows, orphans and martyrs. It is wrong on both a moral and a practical level.

You can't boil down such a complex issue as this to a simple "rednecks versus libtards" dichotomy. Everyone sees things in far too tribal, black and white a manner, when in reality, things are far more nuanced.

Anyway, with regards to the OP, to me as a leftie, big-state social democrat, Fallout seems pretty balanced in its outlook, leaning towards the liberal/libertarian side of things, while acknowledging that other solutions aren't necessarily evil, and when it gives you a choice, showing credible pros and cons to the decision you make.

 

[Earth]

Nah, Bethesda is just really shallow.
Quoting Scripture. Any kind of Scripture, is completely fucking irrelevant to anybody who isn't raised to consider your Scripture profound.
Christians do it all the time because they are raised to assume there's more wisdom and literary pedigree in it to be had in it than actually exists.

I think giving Bethesda the benefit of the doubt that they had any intentioned political narrative at all is giving them too much credit.
The fact that they have this generically admirable All-American war hero as their protag in FO4 just shows that they're fish so deeply submerged in water that they have no concept of water. Or they're just actively pandering to their audience. Take your pick.

Heh, I agree. I am having to jump over plenty of hurdles to say that Bethesda is saying anything even remotely political. The games are so filled with clichés and crap we've seen before. For god's sake, their "innovative" move in Skyrim was to add dragons. Oh boy, never seen those in a fantasy game before. It is interesting to note that they chose a generic "All-American war hero" for Fallout 4 though. I'm gonna go with the target audience idea. This game is marketed to fans of FPS's. The most popular FPS's are war-themed (Call of Duty, Battlefield, whatever else (I'm not a big expert on popular FPS's) so it makes sense that they'd try to make the most awesomest badass backstory ever.

I'm trying to figure out what it is about Bethesda's writing that makes me feel there is a political bias to it. Now that I've given it a bit more thought though, I don't think there is any "right-wing" or "left-wing" thing to it. I think it is that Bethesda (or at least Emil and the other writers) have an accepted world view of good and bad. Pro-democracy, pro-capitalist, anti-racist, pro-individual freedom, pro-family. It's all very safe and very bland. I think it's more that they don't want to challenge or upset their target audience more than anything. You're not going to see diverse viewpoints analysed seriously by Bethesda at any point like you do in New Vegas. In New Vegas one of my favourite lines is "a polite society is an armed society" but I never felt like there was a judgement being made on this viewpoint one way or another. It's a character's viewpoint, not necessarily other character's or the developer's. But it's treated with respect. I recall there was that nice article written by that Mormon guy, saying how New Vegas is one of the few places in modern media that doesn't place any judgement on his religion. If Bethesda had Mormon characters they'd be presented as overly-religious annoying idiots. Not necessarily because they believe that but because that's the popular perception of Mormons so it's a cheap joke. Same with anarchists, communists, gun-nuts, racists, hippies, Fascists, Nazis, junkies and whatever other sidelined groups there are in American culture. All of them will be ridiculed in some way because they don't fit the public norm, but at the same time none of them are particularly toxic groups of debate that will cause people to start twittering profusely.

It's sad that the moment I say that we should keep the discussion specifically on the politics of Bethesda's Fallout games, everyone immediately continues bitching at each other about welfare systems and the war in the middle east. How are these things relevant to the discussion? The closest I can think of that relates to these topics is the similarity between Caesar's Legion and IS. Sadly, that's not a Bethesda game, so again, irrelevant to the discussion. Sigh. The moment politics is mentioned in any discussion on the internet, no matter what it is, people can't keep their politics in their pocket.

 

[Trash of the Den]

I really don't like this thread at all. No offense to the OP or anyone here. But I think threads like this undermine the purpose of sharing ideas about fallout and gaming in general. Threads like these are purposely made (to no fault of the op) to go off topic because as soon as you bring politics into gaming the discussion no longer is directed at gaming. It instead goes into a political debate. This thread really has no point to it but to find out who's a lefty and who's a right, It also instigates flame wars and poke at peoples political affiliations. I personally try to stay away from politics because it brings out the worst in people.

But what does Fallout have anything too do with ISIS Terrorists, left-wing/right-wing politics anyways? Nothing. What does Bethesda's political affiliations have anything too do with the fallout franchise and lore? Nothing. Fallout is about post America from the 17th, 18th and 19 century with a futuristic post 1950's idea behind it were people are trying to carve out an existence to survive in a post apocalyptic world.

While it doesn't bother me directly. Calling people "reptards, libtards, demtards, socialist idiots, capitalist pigs" could be insulting to other people here. It's also kind of childish and juvenile. And while most people here are just having a intellectual discussion I've never seen a political thread in my 20 years of using the internet ever go smoothly. Someone eventually will get mad. This thread will eventually get bombed by a new user or someone who is emotionally sensitive about this stuff.

I don't care what political ideology's people have. All I care about is people who are nice, caring, intelligent and have something meaningful to share about fallout, or gaming. If you want to talk about politics go to a political forum or go on youtube. There is millions of people talking about politics and gaming on youtube.

Much love from Canada
Cheers,
-Trash

 

[Khannis]

I really don't like this thread at all. No offense to the OP or anyone here. But I think threads like this undermine the purpose of sharing ideas about fallout and gaming in general. Threads like these are purposely made (to not fault of the op) to go off topic because as soon as you bring politics into gaming the discussion no longer is directed at gaming. It instead goes into a political debate. This thread really has no point to it but to find out who's a lefty and who's a right, It also instigates flame wars and poke at peoples political affiliations. I personally try to stay away from politics because it brings out the worst in people.

But what does Fallout have anything too do with ISIS Terrorists, left-wing/right-wing politics anyways? Nothing. What does Bethesda's political affiliations have anything too do with the fallout franchise and lore? Nothing. Fallout is about post America from the 17th, 18th and 19 century with a futuristic post 1950's idea behind it were people are trying to carve out an existence to survive in a post apocalyptic world.

While it doesn't bother me directly. Calling people "reptards, libtards, demtards, socialist idiots, capitalist pigs" could be insulting to other people here. It's also kind of childish and juvenile. And while most people here are just having a intellectual discussion I've never seen a political thread in my 20 years of using the internet ever go smoothly. Someone eventually will get mad. This thread will eventually get bombed by a new user or someone who is emotionally sensitive about this stuff.

I don't care what political ideology's people have. All I care about is people who are nice, caring, intelligent and have something meaningful to share about fallout, or gaming. If you want to talk about politics go to a political forum or go on youtube. There is millions of people talking about politics and gaming on youtube.

Much love from Canada
Cheers,
-Trash

Amen, brother.

Although I do have to say that the "MOAR BOMBZ!!1!" guys are always funny. In the words of a wise man:

"When they do it to us, we call it terrorism; When we do it to them, we call it collateral damage".

 

[Trash of the Den]

I really don't like this thread at all. No offense to the OP or anyone here. But I think threads like this undermine the purpose of sharing ideas about fallout and gaming in general. Threads like these are purposely made (to not fault of the op) to go off topic because as soon as you bring politics into gaming the discussion no longer is directed at gaming. It instead goes into a political debate. This thread really has no point to it but to find out who's a lefty and who's a right, It also instigates flame wars and poke at peoples political affiliations. I personally try to stay away from politics because it brings out the worst in people.

But what does Fallout have anything too do with ISIS Terrorists, left-wing/right-wing politics anyways? Nothing. What does Bethesda's political affiliations have anything too do with the fallout franchise and lore? Nothing. Fallout is about post America from the 17th, 18th and 19 century with a futuristic post 1950's idea behind it were people are trying to carve out an existence to survive in a post apocalyptic world.

While it doesn't bother me directly. Calling people "reptards, libtards, demtards, socialist idiots, capitalist pigs" could be insulting to other people here. It's also kind of childish and juvenile. And while most people here are just having a intellectual discussion I've never seen a political thread in my 20 years of using the internet ever go smoothly. Someone eventually will get mad. This thread will eventually get bombed by a new user or someone who is emotionally sensitive about this stuff.

I don't care what political ideology's people have. All I care about is people who are nice, caring, intelligent and have something meaningful to share about fallout, or gaming. If you want to talk about politics go to a political forum or go on youtube. There is millions of people talking about politics and gaming on youtube.

Much love from Canada
Cheers,
-Trash

Amen, brother.

Although I do have to say that the "MOAR BOMBZ!!1!" guys are always funny. In the words of a wise man:

"When they do it to us, we call it terrorism; When we do it to them, we call it collateral damage".

Thanks very much brother. Much love from Canada!

 

[Walpknut]

"Before the country was stabilised"....My god, you people actually drink your own Kool Aid...