Does Fallout wants to kill it's own 50-ish atmosphere?

[ErzhanJoeArmstrong]

I've finished the game and saw rest of the endings also, but the Institute was the most logical decision by comparing to other ones, imo. So i'm here listening Inon Zur's Science & Secrecy and thinking, does it feel like devs want to give us something different than we've seen usual before? I wouldn't mind such decision for a change myself, it was kinda predictable from the start. I mean, the game was set in 2287, if the series moves further away, then there less atmosphere left from a Great War... and the Institute proves that.

[Moraelin]

Hmm, well, I don't think Fallout was ever supposed to be strictly speaking a world stuck in the 50's-60's, but rather SF as they imagined it in the 50's and 60's. I mean, technically it always had more technologically advanced stuff than the 50's and 60's ever had, such as laser weapons, power armour, fusion power, etc. It's more like just within the constraints of how the people imagined the future back then, than what they already had back then. Just IMHO.

 

And the synths aren't really newer than that. In fact the whole thing seems pretty blatantly rooted in Karel Capek's "Rossum's Universal Robots", from IIRC 1920 or so. It's the first use of the word robot, the play that actually coined that term. So technically before anyone imagined the later lumbering metal brutes, the first meaning of the word robot was precisely some manufactured and exploited humanoids.

[SayinNuthin]

Hmm, well, I don't think Fallout was ever supposed to be strictly speaking a world stuck in the 50's-60's, but rather SF as they imagined it in the 50's and 60's. I mean, technically it always had more technologically advanced stuff than the 50's and 60's ever had, such as laser weapons, power armour, fusion power, etc. It's more like just within the constraints of how the people imagined the future back then, than what they already had back then. Just IMHO.

 

And the synths aren't really newer than that. In fact the whole thing seems pretty blatantly rooted in Karel Capek's "Rossum's Universal Robots", from IIRC 1920 or so. It's the first use of the word robot, the play that actually coined that term. So technically before anyone imagined the later lumbering metal brutes, the first meaning of the word robot was precisely some manufactured and exploited humanoids.

 

Have you read this?

 

The Gernback Continuum By William Gibson,

 

Gibson brilliantly evokes the 'future that didn't happen' and on which which the Fallout (pre-war) world is based.

[Moraelin]

Can't say I've read that particular one, but I don't think it was ever stated that it's based specifically on that one.

[SayinNuthin]

Can't say I've read that particular one, but I don't think it was ever stated that it's based specifically on that one.

 

I doubt it was, specifically, but Gibson's story was part of a hugely influential anthology in the early 1980s and I cant help but feel that the guys at Interplay found Gibson's 'lost future' concept too good to pass up on.

 

All the stories in the Mirrorshades anthology were groundbreaking at the time.

Edited December 23, 2015 by SayinNuthin

[nonoodles]

does it feel like devs want to give us something different than we've seen usual before? I wouldn't mind such decision for a change myself, it was kinda predictable from the start. I mean, the game was set in 2287, if the series moves further away, then there less atmosphere left from a Great War... and the Institute proves that.

 

I was wondering this myself, that despite clear allusions to the 50's (like Nick Valentine's hard-boiled detective) the overall visual style was kind of subtly seguing into something else. Away from raygun gothic into, idk, dieselatompunkishness? They can't recycle the same retrofuturistic design approach forever, I guess, though I would be sad to see it go. Could simply be the absence of a green/orangey brown tint making me think this.

[Moraelin]

I don't think it's much newer than the 50's-60's, though. At the very least the 60's already had the concept of perfectly human looking robots in SF. Presumably because one thing that was easier for the costume department than a clunky metal suit for a human, was NOT to make a metal suit for that human. See, for example Ruk, or Mudd's whole planet of fembots, in Star Trek: The Original Series. And that's mid-60's.

 

But again, see some 20's pictures of Capek's play that coined the word "robot" in the first place. It's pretty much the robot version of blackface. Well, metal-face in that case. Presumably BECAUSE it's supposed to be a very thinly veiled alegory for human workers and the direction capitalism was taking at the time, as the world was sliding towards the great depression: increasingly more and more hours, for less and less pay, with some apologists already pretty much condemning anyone who couldn't just live on bread and water. Rossum's Universal Robots was pretty much just extrapolating that trend to its logical conclusion, which was pretty much slavery. Capek just invented some synthetic manufactured "human LIKE" workers, if you will, who were those robots (i.e., workers) and exploited to the extreme, to make that point. The analogy between the institute and that dystopia isn't all that thinly veiled, IMHO, and we're talking about something written in 1920. Not to mention something that was the first meaning of robot, before the clunky metal suits overtook it as a concept.

 

Mind you, I'm not anti-capitalism myself, but in the 20's, well, that kinda slide into slavery is what it looked like to a lot of people. Especially in Europe, as it had been much harder hit by the war, and was quite ahead it the slide towards a jolly good great depression. And the "robots" were supposed to drive THAT point home.

 

So in a sense, just like with the minutemen, one could also say that FO4 is actually going BACK in time with its theme.

[Talwyn224]

The visual design of the Institute borrows heavily from the 1960's movie "Brave New World" -

 

Here is an example;

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WdZFEEQHsqQ/USkS_l_LNdI/AAAAAAAAIos/VAb4RmSOQkE/s1600/Brave+New+World+clone-drones.jpg

[nonoodles]

Visually, the Institute was like Logan's Run + Gattaca if it was less brown + generic cool sciencey place in any sci fi show squeezed through Trek. I was kind of expecting Jenny Agutter to pop up in all her neo-Greco skimpy mini peplos glory.

 

http://i.imgur.com/prrJaWu.jpg

 

:laugh:

 

Well yeah, if you take the premise of the Institute's goal at face value, it would lead to an even worse dystopia where nobody recognises it as a dystopia because they are all synths....but I have a dreadful time trying to comprehend that goal in the first place. Replacing humankind with synths is just...I don't even have the words to express how preposterous and idiotic this sounds. Pourquoi? Why? What does this absurdity achieve?

 

To be honest, throughout the main quest, there was this nagging feeling that I was playing the wrong story and the Brotherhood should be the primary antagonist while the Institute could be a more neutral faction that you could influence for the better (if playing a good character), eventually getting them to come out of their shell to cooperate with the unwashed masses aboveground (good ending). Or be subsumed under the BOS (bad ending). Maybe it's my pro-science leanings or a general tiredness with the 'scientist = evil' trope. I'd have to return to the game to dig out more info about this but really, the entire MQ is hanging by a very flimsy premise.

 

edit TL;DR delete the whole 'missing kid' plot and everything comes out right.

[Aintiarna]

Well yeah, if you take the premise of the Institute's goal at face value, it would lead to an even worse dystopia where nobody recognises it as a dystopia because they are all synths....but I have a dreadful time trying to comprehend that goal in the first place. Replacing humankind with synths is just...I don't even have the words to express how preposterous and idiotic this sounds. Pourquoi? Why? What does this absurdity achieve?

 

They're just soldiers. The Institute is small and populated by people who wouldn't last five minutes in post-apocalyptia. If the Institute wishes to be the future of mankind, it has to exert its influence beyond a hole in the ground. The only way it can achieve that is through technology and synth soldiers in particular. Obviously, gen 3 synths are a step too far and some of them seem to realise this. But without synths of any kind, they'd just be stuck in their bunker like the BOS in New Vegas, scared to interact with the Commonwealth. The loading screens suggest that they did at one point try to help the Commonwealth with their technology, but it wasn't received very well. I get the impression at this point that most of them see the surface and its inhabitants as largely disposable as far their long term goals are concerned. It's somewhat understandable given their prolonged isolation from each other and all the reports they must be getting from the surface, even if it may seem inhumane to our modern western sensibilities. It's remarkable what humans will support being done to other humans they don't know personally, provided they don't have to do it themselves.