Spectre Writes

so from cursory observation the bizarre discourse that seems to have crystallized about the Fallout TV Show is those nasty hateful new vegas fans have no media literacy and just can't let people enjoy things and like

1. what an insane guy to make up to be mad at
   and
2. christ, "fandom" is fucked up.

I don't think it's meaningful to apply a "modern" adjective to the fandom in this case, cuz I think it's always kinda been like this back to the star trek tos days, but there might be something to how audiences for Stuff in general have exploded in the last couple decades. videogames are a colossal industry not because a videogame made in 2023 is necessarily better and therefore more successful than one made in 1993, it's just the market has expanded. but anyways

I see a lot of the "let people enjoy things" stuff- as a veteran hater in the era of forums especially- and it's revealing of such a... insecurity, I think I might be so bold as to call it, in Fandom. there's a lot of fandom-as-brand that's especially revealed by long-running videogame franchises, like Fallout and Halo, that even beyond the complex production process with their "original creators" have been sold off as a franchise to other studios and other people. often, these franchises become very different to what they were originally as they are expanded to new audiences by new creators. still, to a lot of people, the Brand is what they are a fan of. attacks on the brand, especially by people who are supposedly part of the fandom in-group, are unacceptable. how can a fellow loyalist betray the brand in this manner?

I like to complain about stuff if it sucks. complaining identifies what is useless or detrimental and seeks to cut it away. it is therapeutic, satisfying in itself, but it is also a whetstone, making both the complainer and what is complained about sharper in the act. this is the hater's wisdom.

this sort of Fandom Tension really just asks: why do you like something? on a surface level I like Fallout because I was exposed to it early, yes, but I also had a VHS of Gallavants (1984). I actually played a lot of fallout 3 when it came out, but it didn't last, because it lacked that lasting element that was what I actually liked about fallout beyond the things I remembered like the mascot and power armor helmet design. that element arose again in new vegas- the existence of ideas within the game's world and systems, the concept that the creators even bothered to ask "why would things in the game world be this way?" there's actually a popular mod that combines new vegas and fallout 3, and I never understood how players that chose it could withstand the fundamental narrative and thematic whiplash between "this empire's reach for resources exceeds its grasp" and "go get some 200 year old consumer goods from the shelves of this grocery store filled with arbitrary murderers". like, I don't need that. I can eat dog food, but I choose not to. fallouts 1, 2, and new vegas have at times a separate fandom because they represent a distinctly separate vision from what fallout has become under Bethesda's pen.

to their credit, Bethesda did, to a degree, recognize their vision for Fallout was irreconcilable with what had come before them, which is why the whole West Coast / East Coast thing came about. bethesda played over there in the east, and let the original stuff and the stuff following its legacy exist over there in the west. bethesda took up all the signs of Fallout- names and aesthetics like the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave, Deathclaws, vaults, the mascot guy- and discarded their meanings, using them to create the wacky sheet metal and environmental storytelling skeletons theme park world Fallout has become synonymous with.

the Fallout TV Show has become such a lightning rod for Poster Controversy because it is breaking the ancient pact of the two coasts. it takes Bethesda stuff, the focus on recognizable "remember this?" signs over a deeper meaning, and places it firmly in the realm of guys who'll talk to you about supply lines. beyond the issue of retcons- which do exist beyond a single ambiguous date- a clash has been forced between two kinds of Fan. do you like something because of recognizable symbols, or because of what those symbols were used to represent?

the really saucy thing is this likely wasn't at all intentional by Bethesda as an entity, because I don't think even their head writers really care that much. from what I can see, bethesda as a company was fairly hands-off, and most of this might be coming from the westworld guy who's the actual writer I think. and that's interesting. the broadly popular "vault suits and bobbleheads and stuff from the games, you recognize that, right?" perspective has conquered the way of the logistics freaks who'll seek out the NCR sharecropper guy to listen to him talk about how post-nuclear nevada civilization manages food and water. unlike caesar's whole bit about hegelian dialectics, I don't think we're getting a synthesis on this one

aka how to critique the Fallout TV show without being a lore nerd or arguing that Bethesda is just somehow worse at making video games.

'old world blues' is a theme more powerful today than 15 years ago. the idea that new societies of the post-apocalypse are stuck recreating the past that destroyed itself, a capitalist realism that imagined the end of the world, lived through it, and still cannot stop imagining capitalism. it's an important theme in 1 & 2 (the Master cannot create his new world with the tools of the old, the villain in 2 is the President of the United States), and the explicit thesis of New Vegas.

in New Vegas we're presented a false dichotomy between the democracy of the NCR, and the autocracy of the Legion. we experience the world initially mired in the NCR's failings. we see its carceral system, we see its imperialist expansion, we see its corruption that would have doomed a war necessary to its survival without player intervention. so we are primed to be open to its seeming alternative, the Legion, and? they're awful. caesar is shallow, he uses misconstructed philosophy to justify a fascist state that still suffers old world blues and will collapse when he dies, which he will without player intervention.

what about mr house? he promises progress, to combine the capitalist and autocratic 'strengths' of the other major factions but progress for who? he's dependent on the NCR to survive, and again doomed without player intervention.

he's a comparison point, the Legion is a comparison point. that capitalism and autocracy aren't strengths but weaknesses. the NCR's capitalism has concentrated power in the few, whose interests are diminishing its promised liberties and stretching it too thin. the Legion's autocracy makes it dependent on caesar, who is a "dead man walking."

we are sadly missing an important piece. yes, the game was supposed to have more Legion content but neither the game nor we need that to critique them. what is really missing is the Followers of the Apocalypse main quest. this group of anarchists and socialists that work to spread knowledge and new ideas in the wasteland, such as the sharecropping co-operative we can find in Freeside.

without this piece our ultimate answer is to surrender to tactically siding with the NCR, help its better qualities shine through. it's voting for Labour/Democrats even though they're worse every election, it's not satisfying and it was never supposed to be. the game becomes very explicit about this in its DLCs, with Lonesome Road offering to wipe the slate clean as a desperate attempt to stop these ideas.

and this is actually a fair critique of the game, it drives us to answer it never provides and due to how these games are made, could never provide. there was never going to be a New Vegas 2 where the NCR collapses due to internal systemic pressures and the fallout (ha) of the Legion's collapse where social and military revolution from the Followers presents itself as the option to progress the wasteland.

New Vegas also isn't pure. it incorporates much of the tonal shift and worldbuilding that Bethesda presented in Fallout 3. in 1 & 2 the 50s atompunk retrofuturism was dead, and the cultures of the wasteland (esp Tribals, see 2's T-51 cover art) were distinct as that old world was lost to them. in New Vegas the pre-war culture lives on, we shoot super mutants as Mr (New) Vegas tells us that our spurs go jingle, jangle, jingle. but, to its credit, these becomes strengths as incorporated into its thesis and, to Bethesda's credit, none of these initial changes and visual evolutions were incompatible with Old Fallout.

these Fallout games are about sociological storytelling. it constructs a world to make us re-examine our own. it isn't the post-apocalypse anymore, it's the post-post. even as each game pulls us to the frontier it'ss undeniable that society has reasserted itself.

in New Vegas we see only remnants of the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave, whose ideologies have both lost to history, not just the player. there is no coming back for them because there is no post-apocalypse anymore.

or is there?

Bethesda is interesting in mythic storytelling. the struggle of good over evil with dramatic climaxes and character-driven personal stakes. even though this conflicts with some of their sandbox design, they are still rather good at expressing power and experiencing fantasy.

but i don't think it's Fallout, or rather, was Fallout. and Bethesda's attempts to translate its design onto Old Fallout form the weakpoints of their games. instead, their games, their Fallout, is better when they stop attempted to replicate things and focus on their transformation of the setting:

• Fallout 3 replicated the karma system but has limited, poor moral choices. its skill system encourages save-scumming and removes failure as an interesting choice. its usage of the old factions (Enclave, Super Mutants, Bos) feel hollow.
• Fallout 4 removes these systems. its dialogue and RPG mechanics are simple but focused on providing an effective power-fantasy romp through a world that focuses on the cool of Fallout's visuals while minimising the critique and storytelling that was embedded in them.
• Fallout 76 attempted to focus solely on the [Combat > Loot > Build] loop that is the core of Fallout 4.

each of these is a more confident expression of Bethesda design, this media is enjoyable when it removes 'Old Fallout' but it also loses what interests me about Fallout to begin with.

New Fallout exists in a post-apocalyptic stasis, akin to the medieval stasis of the Elder Scrolls. the world is forced to exist in a state that allows Bethesda's sandbox to operate, that allows the Brotherhood of Steel to exist, and which provides them opponents (e.g the Institute, and new Enclave and Vault-Tec) that allows them to remain as heroes.

the Fallout TV show is the logical outcome of these progressive changes. it has literally returned the West Coast to the post-apocalypse and removed the elements dissident to Bethesda's vision of this IP, which has now existed for longer and is now far more popular than Old Fallout.

and none of it is unentertaining, but that is also all it is to me. i don't remember Fallout 4 because i cared for its world, its characters, its story. i remember shooting people in cool, Harley-Davidson T-60 power armour and looting stuff so i could build cool bases. i did that for 100 hours, and then i moved on. i never moved on from New Vegas, and so have a lot of people hoping for a sequel that was simply never going to come.

in the TV show the Brotherhood of Steel has become the dominant faction of the West Coat again, and is given a symbolic victory over the NCR that had destroyed them. the NCR which has collapsed not because of its systemic issues, but because it was an obstacle to an individual antagonist controlling his family. Vault-Tec is presented not as an example of how capitalism will self-destruct in the pursuit of profit, but as present villains with a masterplan to control the new world. if Bethesda hadn't used the Enclave in 3, this would be the Enclave.

Bethesda Fallout does not understand, or does not care, about the original themes and functions of the ideas and world it has inherited. and, finally, with perhaps a bitter sense of relief, the Fallout TV show has unequivocally dispelled the fiction that Fallout is now anything more than a fun, atompunk, post-apocalypse themepark for us to play in.

and i just think that's kind of sad. if you've read this post then you probably already agree with me, but most people don't. this TV show is Fallout, it presents the cultivated, corporate identity of this series to millions of new fans who will never care about Old Fallout.

so let's move on instead. none of the creative forces behind Old Fallout are coming back nor should they. Josh Sawyer is too busy being a weird little dude about medieval german manuscript fonts and it's perfect. love Old Fallout, but find something new. that's what New Vegas was about after all, wasn't it?

syke. bitching about bethesda fallout speedround:

• none of Bethesda's attempts to make the Brotherhood of Steel morally complex again (like Maxson being an anti-synth douche, or Knights being dicks to squires in the TV show) are fucking good at all.

• Mr House having explicit knowledge that Vault-Tec will end the world undermines the story of a billionaire unable to let go of the power he held in the old world, of someone so delusional about his importance that he fails to see how powerless he really is.

• the 'Fall of Shady Sands' occurring before New Vegas, and then being nuked after i suppose, and causing all society to vanish is ludicrous. the NCR is 100 years old. the Boneyard (Los Angeles, which is in the show) has weapons factories, all its money is printed there, it has a university. there's New Reno, and San Fran, and Vault City. none of this would disappear in only 10-15 years are you fucking kidding me.

• also why is the Fallout 4 theme playing when we see the NCR flag. why is any music dramatic music playing at all, Lucy doesn't remember jackshit about living in Shady Sands. this should mean nothing to her.

• where the fuck did the Brotherhood of Steel get an airship from. was it the East Coast? cos that never comes up. that at least would be a reason for their return from oblivion. god i fucking hate the T-60. it's shiny and cool, and not an ugly piece of shit like the T-51.

• what the hell happened to Vegas?! there's nothing there, no sprawling ruins outside the walls that should have been reclaimed, no sign of life at all. has it all just collapsed. what was the fucking point of keeping New Vegas canon if all of this shit is gone?

• respectively, Vault-Tec's plan is dumb and attempting to present it as evil and devious and clever is also dumb.

• WHY IS THIS SHOW NOT JUST SET ON THE EAST COAST THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS SHOW THAT REQUIRED THEM TO BUTCHER THE WEST COAST.

• Starfield btw, i just want to highlight that Bethesda vision of an optimistic NASApunk future in the stars has its shining beacon of civilisation be a megacorp-run city-state with cops that have automatic weapons patrolling its streets. Todd Howard has no fucking vision.

• also i ain't giving any fucking respect or money to Bethesda after what they've done to trans workers, fuck no.

• the creation club. yes that's the entire point.

i am going to watch Fallout season 2 like i watched Game of Thrones season 8, as this dead horse that Daddy Todd has pulled the raw organs out and is smearing on the walls asking me if i think the picture is pretty. and i guess it is but i really liked riding that horse ya know.