Recommended Thing of the Month: Fallout 4
October 23, 2077. Another peaceful day begins in the small community of Sanctuary Hills. All the recent troubles in America - rampant unemployment, paranoia over communism and a recent curfew in nearby Boston- seem so far away as you sip your coffee and watch the morning news, your spouse at your side and your trusty new Mr Handy caring for the needs of your infant son Shaun. It almost feels like paradise - but it is not to last. The sirens blare, the newscaster stammers as he reads new reports of nuclear detonations all along the west coast - and more bombs headed inland. One week before Halloween, the world ends. 210 years later, you emerge from cryostasis in Vault 111, on a desperate search for the man who kidnapped your child while you watched helpless, and who murdered your partner.
And yet, despite how desperate my apparent need to find my son, I still haven't properly started the main quest, with my current 'Sole Survivor'. I have done it once, with a previous character, but I am very indecisive. The main reason I restart so often is 'what would have happened if I had done *this* instead?' - usually as part of a decision I made several in-game days ago and so have no pre-decision saves left to go back to. Though I think another reason is I enjoy the character creation part, and seeing the Fallout world before the bombs fell - even if it is confined to your own home for the most part, and what little you see as you flee to the vault.
I love the whole Fallout universe, to be honest. I love to read all the terminal entries, and learn all I can about 'the world before', a universe that deviates from ours after WWII. Instead of discovering miniaturisation, science instead focused on nuclear power. By the time the bombs fell, the world was a bit of a mish-mash of technology - lazer rifles and plasma pistols being used by power armour-clad soldiers who would return home to a loving housewife to eat preservative-laden foods in front of a black-and-white CRT television.
Scrounging through the ruins of the metropolitan area can be heartbreaking too - I remember in Fallout 3 entering a bedroom in a house to find two skeletons on the bed embracing each other. I can't help but imagine how terrified these people would have been, because unlike the people of the West Coast, they had warning. They knew what was coming and there was nothing they could do to save themselves. And, when you read enough of the lore and discover it was an American who launched the first nuke, you can't help but hate what happened to the world, the decadence and corruption that lead to the war.
And comparing that to the real world, to how we overuse oil and coal and ignore all the possibilities of solar power and wind power because the 'turbines are ugly', I can't help but be scared that that is what we're headed for,
