Post-Apocalyptia:
Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 4 - A Sense of Place
Part 4
In the final part of this
long-ass series, we're going to tackle the main point I was going to
structure it around, back when I was envisioning a single post of
maybe a thousand words. As I played through these games and read
through the Metro books, it occurred to me that, sometimes without
even meaning to, each one in some way embodied its country of origin.
Yeah, every work of art is the result of a certain person living in a
particular place at a particular time, and could have turned out
radically different with but a nudge. But I still contend that
Fallout is uniquely American, Metro is uniquely Russian, and Fragile
is uniquely Japanese. I will now explain!
A
sense of place
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| The town of Goodneighbour from F4 |
One
of the coolest thing about Fallout is that everything in its world is
based on the state of the world in the 1950's. Communism is still
regarded as the greatest threat to world peace, although
it's now China rather than the Soviet Union, or was right up until it and
the United States wiped each other out. The science, too, seems to be
based on what was generally understood back then, so wasteland
denizens find radiation poisoning fairly inconsequential; it's true
that they have spent generations building up resistance, and it's
natural for any wasteland doctor to be well-trained in the matter of
curing radiation poisoning, but on top of that, radiation was once
thought to be far less dangerous than we now know it is, allowing
your character to shrug off a dose of rads that would be fatal in our
universe. Regarding the retro-futuristic laser guns, the physical
appearance of alien grays, the focus on nuclear power to the
detriment of computer development, and other relics, we can see that
Fallout basically looks like how people of the 1950s imagined the
future.
And
it follows culturally, as well. Like any truly great work, Fallout
draws inspiration from all manner of sources, but the little details
of people's everyday lives, particularly as they were before the
Great War, is clearly based on classic Americana: the attitude that
America is Best and would only keep getting better, that the worst
was over and it was only a matter of time before technology solved
all of humanity's problems. I think that's probably an exaggeration
of the American mentality of the time, but just comparing their media
with our modern media it's pretty clear that we're a lot more jaded
now. Well, considering how that worked out in the world of Fallout,
you might be able to draw some interesting parallels with our own
disillusionment...but anyway, the point is, the series could not have
been made anywhere else but America, or more accurately, it would
look very different if it had been. That is, it wouldn't be Fallout.
Fallout
is as American as cultural imperialism or gross ignorance. F3 takes
place in Washington, DC, for Christ's sake. It's not just window
dressing, either. The theme of what
is America and how do we find it runs thick throughout the main
storyline. The Enclave, the remnants of the American government,
still claims to hold jurisdiction over the original borders of the
United States, but in reality, they're fooling themselves, as their
authority has long since been supplanted by new governments such as
the New California Republic, the state of independent Las Vegas, and
small groups of humans long cut off from civilization who have
reverted to tribalism. Hell, even the military swore off its corrupt
parent and reformulated itself into a neo-knightly order, the Brotherhood of Steel. But while
the United States may be gone, America
and the values it believed it stood for may still be hiding somewhere
out there in the wastes. Ulysses, a tribal whose people were
forcefully absorbed into the expansionist Caesar's Legion, stumbled
upon an old US flag and decided to dedicate his life to resurrecting
the country, and while I think it's a fool's errand, I can't help but
admire his principles.
And while Ulysses's story is the
only one that's fleshed out properly, others aspire to rebuild the
United States as well. The Enclave's Colonel Autumn wishes to restore
it because he believes in the righteousness of the cause, and is
willing to go to despicable lengths to achieve this goal. Part of
this entails wiping out all mutated beings in the Capital Wasteland
and presumably the rest of America after that, but everybody
has been affected by radiation at this point, so his plan seeks only
to garner his organization a greater share of nothing. Van Buren and
Fallout Tactics both introduce us to AI protocols designed to take
effect should the worst happen, but both go terribly wrong.
Metro, too, derives a sense of
place from its set pieces. It does a good job of painting the city
overhead as a sort of Necropolis, frequented only by well-equipped
adventurers and the sometimes literal ghosts of its former
inhabitants. And, at least in Metro 2033, it's encased in ice and
snow, which, you know, tracks with my understanding of Russia.
I somehow feel like there's
something uniquely Russian, and Moscovite, about Metro's metro. The
defining feature is that the Moscow Metro was explicitly designed
during Soviet times to double as a massive nuclear shelter. It is so
much deeper underground than similar systems for this exact reason.
It also has its share of legends owing to this, most notably D6, an
even deeper, most likely fictional secret line that supposedly
connects important points of interest such as the Kremlin and the
national theatre, should high-ranking political executives ever need
to be evacuated while at a function. And I only say “most likely”
fictional because it's totally absurd, but a) it would make perfect
sense, and b) if anybody could keep a construction project of that
magnitude a secret, it's the Soviet government. By the way, Metro
2035 was first published in Metro, a free magazine distributed
only in the Moscow Metro. I was just thought that was amusing, and kind of brilliant marketing.
The character of each station is
evoked beautifully, whether it's a local station with a handful of
tents scattered across the platform or a relative metropolis built
throughout the shell of a former transport hub. From what I can tell,
each station was realised by a different architect rather than a team
of city planners, giving each one a distinct flavour (here's a sample). The creator
might have slapped some ornate columns or controversial murals up in
there. Even those that were the result of a Soviet-era relentless
pursuit of function over form end up being unusual simply by
comparison to their neighbours. The result is a series of stations
that stand as works of art – or maybe the entire Metro is one big
work of art. (Oddly enough, thanks to constantly referring to the
maps while reading the books, I now feel like I know Moscow's public
transit system better than some places I've actually lived in.)
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| Polis |
Much of this beauty has been lost
by 2033, but history is a continuum, and new traits have popped up to
replace the old ones. Some stations have had their art preserved, to the
ambivalence or even derision of those who pass through them, where
others have come to stand for something else entirely, like the city
of Polis, a conglomeration of four different stations now dedicated
to the preservation of knowledge and nobility. And, generally, the
reason for the evolution of a particular spot is clearly explained,
and somehow rooted in its past.
There is also the fact that
Ghlukovsky wrote Metro 2033 as a veiled evaluation of Russian
society. Knowing this, the portrayals of, say, the Hanseatic
money-grubbers, Communists driven mad by ideology, and exaggeratedly naiive and illogical Christians, suddenly seem a little less
gratuitous. And the Nazis aren't really Nazis, but anti-immigration
conservatives and racists. Maybe some characters and their
motivations could do with a little more nuance, but at least it makes
sense as an allegory. Dissecting all of modern Russian culture would
be a mammoth task, but the author brings it down to a manageable
scale. The Metro is a microcosm of Russia itself.
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| F3's Meresti Station, where, if I recall correctly, your character murders a troublesome journalist by pushing her into the path of an oncoming train. |
Of course, other cities certainly
have their own metros, so could you do a Metro-alike in another city?
Sure! In fact, the wider Metro universe includes books set in
locations like St Petersburg, elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and even
as far afield as London, which is, after all, known for “the Tube.”
Paris and New York come to mind as well. For that matter, both
Fragile and Fallout 3 spend significant spaces of time in their
cities' subway systems! (Shinjuku Eki is a major location in Fragile,
and in F3 much of DC's streets are impassable due to rubble, making
many downtown areas accessible only through the subway tunnels.)
Vancouver might not work, since a SkyTrain station is a little less
insulated, but you get the picture.
Speaking of Fragile's subway, the
first real level takes place within Shinjuku Eki, famously the
largest and busiest in all of Japan. Except, of course, that it's now
deserted, save for a smattering of wild dogs and other monsters. Not
saying that train travel is unique to life in Japan, but it's
definitely an inextricable part of it, and one of the things I
noticed most when I did my high school exchange.
After exploring a platform and
concourse, the stage moves farther underground, to the 地下商店街
chikashoutengai,
literally “underground shopping district.” I have no idea if
they have these in countries other than Japan (surely China and Korea
at the very least?), but I love these places. Narrow, crowded, and
confusing, in another post I said that navigating them is like trying
to play Pac-Man in first-person. The steet-like halls are lined with
restaurants, clothing stores, all kinds of stuff really. The shops
are densely packed and it's impossible to find what you're looking
for. You might think that they cater to people in transit, but that's
not true at all. Actually, it's just that their accessibility makes
them terribly convenient. It's not uncommon for someone to head for a
major station just to shop, then head on home. I've always
loved train stations because they are the intersection of so many
lives, shared alone; chikashoutengai are all of that PLUS the
socializing of a mall. The energy is infectious, and I always end up
leaving with that feeling you get when haven't accomplished anything
of any great consequence, but you have experienced a slice of life.
But even if these aren't found
elsewhere in the world, they are all over Japan. So, sure, Shinjuku
Eki puts in an appearance, but it could be replaced with any other
major station in Japan with little impact; for the most part, the
city of Toukyou does not assert herself. The exception here is
Toukyou Tower, an omnipresent neon presence off in the distance, not
to mention your ultimate goal and the site of the final battle. It
demands your attention when you first leave the observatory, it
frames the background when Ren first appears, and whenever you
venture indoors, almost forgetting about it, it's the first thing you
notice when you reemerge, slowly but surely drawing closer.
Does it say anything that Fragile
includes an amusement park level? Probably nothing significant about
Japanese society, but the fact that the developers picked this as a
stock setting (alongside the more universal train stations and
hotels) might. I could be wrong, but I feel like not a lot of
Westerners would.
For what it's worth, the choice
of art style is undeniably Japanese. I mean come on now, it's
freaking anime. If you were deliberately trying to make something
Japanese and you picked an anime art style, people would tell you it was too on the nose. Flat cells,
detailed textures, bright colours, exaggerated features – yup,
that's Japanese animation.
And then there's the themes.
Whether or not I'm right about the global warming angle, we have the
scenes of nature to go off of. There's the northern lights scene we
talked about earlier, visible through a smogless sky, and of course
the hotel, slowly being reclaimed by the forest. The moon, as
beautiful as it is cold and implacable. No less a person than
Miyazaki Hayao has based many of his works on environmental themes,
and he's regarded as one of the finest creators in Japan. Plus,
what's the overriding emotion throughout the game? Loneliness.
Various characters complain of the pain. Humanity is nearly destroyed
in trying to eliminate it forever. Seto loses one person after
another until he finally finds one who sticks around. Even the player
may share in his distress, wandering a hostile environment without
company. To paraphrase Hitching Rides With Buddha: “In the West, people fear irrelevance; in Japan, people fear loneliness.”
As with Fallout and America, I
have to conclude that Fragile could not be made anywhere other than
Japan – or that if it had been, it wouldn't be
Fragile as we know it.
(Additionally, I resisted
watching the Mad Max movies until after I'd completed this post,
because I didn't want to be influenced except by the works I was
actually writing about. There were a few reasons for this, number one
being that the Mad Max game hadn't come out yet, and I thought I'd
keep things consistent by following the gaming thread. Three is also
a nice number. But more significantly, while I'm far from an expert
on Russian or American culture, I know next to nothing about
Australian culture. I've since watched the films and can safely say
that – unsurprisingly, since it invented half the tropes
that Fallout, Metro, and Fragile are drawing on – Mad Max would
have been a good fit for this series, so expect an update eventually.)
Conclusion
By now it's probably pretty clear
why I play these games and read this books (and watch these movies,
and...), and why I wrote this post: I love thinking about this stuff.
That, to me, is the real heart of philosophy: Taking extraordinary
situations or seemingly impractical thought experiments, and finding
a way to relate it to your real life. By asking us to confront
questions about technology, the place of humanity, and what you the
reader would be capable of in exceptional circumstances,
Post-Apocalyptic fiction not only succeeds in provoking contemplation
but delivers it in an entertaining package to boot.
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