Is Fallout supposed to make you think about society? I’d argue that, at its best, it is, with capitalism being an obvious candidate to explore, given the mainline series’ unflinchingly corporate American atomic age-inspired setting and the whole resource war that led up to the bombs being dropped. Though, according to co-creator Tim Cain, that isn’t the central crux of Fallout theme-wise.
The veteran developer has said as much in a comment (thanks, PC Gamer) on the latest video posted to his YouTube channel – which I’d definitely reccomend checking to pretty much anyone who’s interested in games and how they get made – as part of a response to a fan asking for his thoughts on reading Fallout “as a critique on capitalist/corporative greed (Vault-Tec and others) and on excessive militarization”.
“Critique of capitalism was never the point of Fallout,” Cain wrote, “In fact, the game went out of its way to mention that other countries like China were also behaving terribly. If anything, Fallout is a comment that war is inevitable given basic human nature.” So yep, the whole war never changes line that, rather ironically, is more of a corporate slogan than anything else nowadays.
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