The NPC writing didn’t just foul up the immersion, it also fiddled unpleasantly with the game’s approach to morality. In
“Fun and loathing in Las Vegas Washington D.C.”, Ben Abraham identifies a tension between the portrayal of certain characters and the feel of the game. In his opinion, Mr. Burke comes across as a very cartoonish, moustache-twirling villain that is inappropriate in the context of the gritty, realistic game world. The game seems to make judgments about characters, sometimes without asking the real questions.
I express a similar complaint in
“There’s nothing in it for you”, arguing that the game doesn’t provide the NPCs
or the player with reasons to be evil beyond sheer insanity. In particular, the relative abundance of supplies in the Wasteland seems to defeat the feeling of desperation that might make an attractive core for such a personal narrative. Shamus Young had similar problems with Mr. Burke’s quest, as he describes in
“The Power of the Atom”, where he critiques the flimsy writing behind what may be
Fallout 3’s most affecting visual sequence. David Wildgoose, in contrast, found that the information he dug up on Megaton’s citizens from Moriarty’s computer, painting them as “sleazy losers”,
helped him see Burke’s side of it. For me, the chief reason for evil comes not from any of the writing, but rather from the V.A.T.S. system. In
“Power’s joy and sorrow” I opine that the system presents killing as an empowering pleasure, and in that way makes a case
for war.
