The Best Fictional Dystopia Isn’t In A Movie, It’s A Video Game
Fallout gives fans the best dystopia because from one project to the next, you never know what to expect.
Dystopian storytelling, particularly of the post-apocalyptic variety, is so widespread it’s arguably as widespread as older genres like fantasy, science fiction, and horror. The best, most entertaining dystopia is found in the Fallout video games published by Bethesda because with each new project, the franchise finds amazing ways to use its already established lore to create brand new ingenious, unexpected, and often darkly hilarious stories. In other words, with Fallout, you never know what to expect.
Fallout presents us with an alternate history in which the technology and style of the United States went in the kinds of directions predicted in the 1939 New York World’s Fair — with the music seemingly never getting past the 1950s — until everything comes to an explosive end with the thermonuclear exchange of the Sino-American War. The games take place in the centuries following the war, with the former U.S.A. filled with long-lived radioactive zombies, Hulk-sized super mutants, super-sized beasts of all types, cannibals, cults, androids disguised as humans (who often don’t know they’re androids), raiders, runaway robots, aliens, and at least one very well-intentioned dude who won’t stop bothering you about a settlement that needs your help.
That list, of course, could be a whole lot longer which has a lot to do with why the best dystopia stories come from Fallout. Each game will bring back certain bad guys and NPCs — super mutants and zombies will almost always play a role, for example — but then the writers always find a new way to spin the post-apocalypse, usually based on whatever region the game is based in. My favorite example comes from 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas, when your hero meets The Kings: an NPC faction of Elvis Presley impersonators based in the former Las Vegas.
Boston’s always been known as a college town, which is why one of the chief antagonists of 2015’s Fallout 4 is The Institute — a community of scientists living below what was once M.I.T. who seem to have made all the scientific advances they need to bring civilization back, but refuse to share it. The most ruthless villains of Fallout: New Vegas are Caesar’s Legion, and their “Caesar” bears a striking resemblance to Frank Sinatra.
This brings me to another reason why the best dystopia fiction is found in Fallout — because not only do you not know who to expect to show up from game to game, but even when you’re re-introduced to old friends/foes, you don’t know which they’ll be this time around.
Serving as a perfect example is the Brotherhood of Steel. Whenever they first show up in a Fallout game, it feels like the cavalry has arrived. They usually have more interest in helping out both your hero and innocent civilians than your average Fallout NPC, and in their power armor they all look like they just stepped out of a Warhammer 40,000 session. Indeed, in 2008’s game-changing Fallout 3, you can’t finish the main storyline without the Brotherhood backing you up.
But part of what makes this great, if not the best, dystopian storytelling is that the Brotherhood’s status as friend or foe is never really clear. They’re suspicious of anyone outside the Brotherhood, are prejudiced against sentient zombies and synthetics, and trying to convince them they might have common goals with factions like The Institute, or The Railroad is completely futile.
We don’t know yet when the Fallout TV series is going to premiere on Amazon Prime Video, but when it does, we can only hope it can live up to this fantastic game franchise.
