I Think The Way The President In 2 And Horrigan Talk About "muties" Sells The Threat A Lot More Because

I think the way the president in 2 and Horrigan talk about "muties" sells the threat a lot more because there's a cognitive dissonance there that feels so real among bigoted treatment marginalized groups today. They don't really make sense, but they believe these things unwaveringly, and have committed a number of unspeakable atrocities based on nothing more than a hollow understanding of the world around them. Sure the Enclave in 3 talk about mutants needing to die, but it feels like a reiteration of "the strong must survive, the weak must die" that characterizes like 98% of Bethesda game factions, not like a bias informed by centuries of isolation and propoganda.

At this rate I might be the one who hates fun but I've been thinking about it and I hate how the enclave has been "mutated" (hoho) into what it is now in modern fallout products. There was something legitimately intimidating and different about them in 2, something that made their threat to all life as you knew it very tangible. I hope that's even remotely coherent

in fo2 they felt like an army of americans committing an organized genocide. they waxed philosophical in mixed company but laughed cruelly amongst themselves. they could not abide the existence of life that was not subordinate to them. they were distinctly republican patriots who owned slaves. now they're too nebulous to directly threaten rightists' worldview, by design.

in complete fairness, there's shit in the margins of fallout 3 about them detaining, scanning, and incinerating crowds of survivors, and John Henry Eden is, in concept, a satire of republican stagnancy. the thematic read is still technically functional as of 76, but it's so timidly executed that Impressively Unironic Enclave Roleplayers are easily the most notable 76 subculture.

please understand they took a softer approach so they could sell more variants of the fascist enclave hat in the atom shop. please understand there was no other way

If between what is happening in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Palestine, England and Venezuela you are still talking about the fucking US presidential election like maybe get some fucking perspective

I still feel there's room to dislike Maximus on the axes of his misogyny and fascism. For his misogyny I think he falls into the pretty common camp of characters not intended to be sexist but end up being so due to writers having sexist beliefs. Like I said, very common and not enough for me to dislike a character on his own, usually. The fascism and desire for power are things he's seized at every opportunity, and only entertains relaxing on that when he's around Lucy and quite far into the story. I don't have a problem with characters helping others out of fascism, but ever since they met, the amount of time for Lucy to reflect on or express her emotions was drastically reduced, and her competency fell through the floor so that Maximus could save her like 3 times. I desperately want him to become a more fleshed-out character with more than a fridge for a backstory, I suppose I'm just worried about collapsing her plot into his for a "she can fix him" arc because that's literally what we see in the last few episodes. I hope they give a reasonable amount of time to flesh out these characters and see the plot organically build, I am kind of nervous given how short and concise all corporate media is today. I do also agree that a substantial amount of the hate on his character has to be racially based because I've seen Fallout fans widely adore the most horrendous characters.

"maximus is a future villain!" wrong. maximus is autistic and bad under pressure and has yet to pass a single speech check

I kinda really hate the way Myron is treated like a funny/quirky, albeit annoying and egotistical, little group member. Even if you don't specifically get the encounter where he takes advantage of you, it seems highly likely that that still goes on regardless, especially with his position of power and environment. Obviously the main onus is on the writers for making a predator child, one of the many disgusting aspects of 2 that made me stop playing and almost not come back. Still, I wish there were more people acknowledging his heinous-ness because I feel like, exclusively based on his public perception, I'd have a wildly different mental concept of his character than what he actually is.

If anybody hasn't played a character in Fallout 4 that's mostly vulnerable and largely relies on companions to do the work, I'd highly recommend it. I downloaded an unlimited companion mod, used Codsworth, Ada, and Curie at the same time (in her robot form), and kept adjusting them with the workbench to fit the level of struggle I wanted to have with combat encounters (going straight OP automatrons gets boring quick). It's been fun thinking so hard about where I need to take cover, keeping an exit route in mind, and how I should position myself amongst my companions. It's very immersing, especially with damage mods to make enemies less tanky (and maybe to make them hit harder depending on the desired difficulty).

I feel like viewing the Commonwealth residents through the lens of extreme suspicion and deception goes a long way in making the game enjoyable, but ultimately the fact that only 5 to 10 NPCs in the game really give you actual substance means you'll be using that suspicion to basically write the characters for yourself, extrapolating on the vague details of pretty much everyone's life. Also Fallout does seem to constantly criticize old world America, but often the criticisms only apply to America and not to systems that sustained America and would inherently cause the same issues in practice. Mostly I see the issue with the BoS and NCR. They describe both with overall good goals that are hindered by corrupt people or incompetent leadership, and find it important to repeatedly let you know this. I think the concept of a state that sources its goods from slavery and exploitation, let's people die of starvation and thirst, and incarcerates people on mass due to a set of prejudiced values wasn't evil enough for the writers when making pre-war America, and thus they focused on the most egregious crimes our government has committed as well as fictionalized ones. I think it's because the writers enjoy the concept of a liberal democracy where law and order holds the society together and people of a certain class make decisions for others (so long as the ruling class sometimes makes decisions to benefit the ones being ruled). I understand NV criticizes NCR's imperialist expansion but only insofar as it objectively screws people over both materially and personally, the act of imperialism is not what is being criticized imo, but rather abrupt imperialism that doesn't provide adequate compensation to those affected. That's what the NCR would be if it fixed all the issues the game criticizes, a nationalist, imperialist force that adequately compensates those it steps over to make a better world. Same with the BoS, really the only criticisms they hold for BoS is to not randomly shoot people on sight and to share sometimes which, to me, does not feel like a disavowal of their western, hegemonic dogma, but rather just their militarism.

Todd Howard’s brain is equal parts American idolatry, stupidity, and a pathological need to lie