Post-Apocalyptia: Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 4 - A Sense of Place

Post-Apocalyptia: Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 4 - A Sense of Place

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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

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.)

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.

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.

Post-Apocalyptia: Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 3 - Bits and Pieces

Post-Apocalyptia: Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 3

Bits and Pieces

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

We're back and talking about three great works in one of my favourite genres! Before we conclude, here's some stray thoughts that don't fit anywhere else. Together though, they kind of do.

The supernatural

When I started playing Metro, I was briefly surprised by the prominence of an unexpected supernatural element. It doesn't jar, in fact it's enmeshed in the world extremely well, and in a manner that contributes to the plot and atmosphere. But you wouldn't normally think to go that direction in a post-apocalyptic story. You might think that the seriousness of the subject matter would funnel you towards “realism,” and Fallout, after all, didn't really have anything like th—oh, wait, Fallout had ghouls and Super Mutants.

Oddly, none of the properties is satisfied to bank on interest in the post-Apocalypse alone; all three decide to introduce a supernatural element to the proceedings.

Fragile features robots and woodland creatures as enemies, but also contains plenty of supernatural enemies, such as ethereal jellyfish. More significantly, of course, is the Glass Cage, whose entire premise is on technology unavailable in the real world. The impact of this decision is very large, given what it allows the creators to do with the story, as only a select few humans are spared, and they're located far from one another. Seto also encounters several ghosts, one of whom is his main companion throughout the adventure. Another is the main antagonist, and others impede his path in various ways. There's even an old woman who projects the residual self-image of a small child. Many more appear as weak enemies, including banshee-like foes and little kids playing hide-and-go-seek. It's unclear what causes someone to linger after death, but it wasn't the failed human instrumentality attempt per se, otherwise there would be millions of them stalking the streets of Toukyou, rather than a few dozen.

It's hard to say what's behind this interest in blending the serious and supernatural, but it may be to make technology a little more mysterious. We use it in our everyday lives, our dependence upon it increasing by the second, so we tend to assume we have a pretty good handle on it, and yet in these stories it has nearly destroyed us. By introducing unpredictable effects, the creators point out how little we really understand about our own technology, and, indeed, the world around us.

The place of technology

What's the most important piece of technology you're going to need to survive the post-Apocalypse? Your trusty gun, right? Of course not, don't be daft.

"Millions...perhaps even billions, died because science
 outpaced man's restraint!"

By far the most valuable technology is anything that can help you grow or acquire food or water. Even Fallout knows this. Tons of major characters devote their lives to seeking out powerful relics of the Old World. The Brotherhood of Steel, a neo-knightly order of technophiles, jealously hoards its knowledge, even placing the value of its retrieval over that of human life (“After all, everyone knows how to make another human, but the secrets to making a P94 Plasma Rifle are all but lost”). Despite warnings from some members, the Brotherhood gets so wrapped up in locating bombs and weapons schematics that it neglects more useful technologies like aeration or securing the safety of the populace. This difference of opinion tears apart one chapter and nearly destroys another. Plus, the whole plot of Fallout 1 is kicked off when your Vault's Water Chip fails, threatening to leave its residents without potable drinking water and forcing the Overseer to open the Vault early so that you can go look for one.

Metro takes this to a whole new level. Sure, people value weapons maybe a little more than they should, but they focus on the fundamentals of survival, tracking down or reinventing the most primitive, unsexy technologies available. We're talking water purification. Gardening. Domestication. That kind of stuff. They don't talk about it, but I imagine electric sewing machines fetch an outrageous price. And don't forget medicine! Some medical textbooks have survived in Fallout, but in Metro we only ever see two infirmaries in all of Metro, one at Polis in Last Light, and one in I forget where in 2034. I'm sure I don't have to explain why doctors would be highly valued. The gaudiest stations in the series are described as having medical facilities, hot running water, and adequate lighting.

The antagonist in Fragile believed that technology would solve the world's problems, but instead it nearly ended it. And all the everyday technology that once made life possible now sits unused and decaying. Surely the writers don't mean to suggest that we need to get some global genocide happening pronto, but they may be trying to tell us that we'd do well to get back to nature from time to time. Technology makes our lives possible, but it can also end them. A sickle can sustain life, or it can kill, depending how it is used. In these stories, we used the bounties available to us to destroy ourselves. Hell, you could even argue that we're doing that today, with problems like global warming. Some creators may even have had this is in mind when making the games. Nuclear bombs as a stand-in for global warming – well, the latter is slower and less exciting, but just as deadly. And just as avoidable.

What is the place of technology in our world – and in theirs? What technologies should these people pursue – and what should we? These stories are not necessarily anti-technology, but they do seem to warn against its misuse.

Sex and sexuality

Fahrenheit, an ass-kicking woman from F4

In Fallout, conventional racism has given way to an equally insidious prejudice towards the irradiated, nigh-immortal ghouls. Sexism, however, has all but been obliterated. Oh, you still have the odd old-fashioned gender roles type cropping up here and there, but for the most part, except as it pertains to whether or not you want to sleep with somebody, sex and gender are a bit of a non-issue. When your camp is assaulted by raiders, nobody cares what's between your legs – they only care how well you can fight. (The exception to this is Caesar's Legion, in which women are childbearers and caregivers and literally nothing else, but even this is more part of Caesar's ruthless division of labour than actual sexism – the same as how his veteran soldiers are never the first into battle not as some kind of privilege, but because it's more effective to hold them in relief until the enemy is already fatigued from fighting the grunts.)

On a related topic, homosexuality in the world of Fallout is a-ok. There's only one instance where I can remember it being frowned upon, and only because it was among a group of isolationists who felt that it was their peoples' duty to procreate lest they all die out, so it was more of a practical issue than actual bigotry. Basically you're free to bang whoever you want; I always play a woman and try to be as slutty as possible, and everybody's fine with it, and they give equally few fucks if you're a blushing virgin. Which is partly down to freedom of player choice, but there are plenty of non-hetero relationships between NPCs as well. It makes total sense that people would have more pressing issues on their minds than who's sleeping with whom, but there's also the fact that danger is a powerful aphrodesiac, and Post-Apocalyptia is nothing if not dangerous. Biology drives them to panic procreate, and perhaps they also realise that every chance at a good hard pounding may be their last, so they pretty much just take whatever they can get, whenever they can get it.

Also, Fragile features a totally out of nowhere boy-on-boy kiss, in a game from a country not exactly noted for its social progressivism, so wrap your head around that one.

Ammunition

As described above in the section on economics, both Fallout and Metro feature interesting substitutes for money. Metro uses pre-War AK-47 casings, now impossible to counterfeit. The underground inhabitants still make bullets, but they are vastly inferior to the industrial products manufactured for use by the actual military back when there was one.

Similarly, the people of Fallout use Nuka-Cola bottle caps as currency, as their veracity and scarcity are guaranteed because no one knows how to make them anymore. However, as soon as people started cobbling together a semblance of society once again, one of the first things they relearned how to make was high-quality weapons and ammunition. I think that says a lot.

(And by the way – in Mad Max, people don't ever figure out how to mass-produce ammunition, leading to the emphasis on melee combat.)

Glad you could join me for today's session! I've got one more point to make, so I hope I'll see you again next time.

Keep Reading

Nintendou has a new captain

Kimishima Tatsumi (君島達己)

Earlier this summer, the president of Nintendou fucking died. His name was Iwata Satoru, and while he wasn't necessarily the most beloved figure in the industry it certainly came as a shock. In the wake of this tragedy, Nintendou took the opportunity to reshuffle its upper-level management while considering his successor. Yesterdayish, the company released a statement naming Kimishima Tatsumi as the new head of the company.

Additionally, Miyamoto Shigeru has been the recipient of the newly created title of “Creative Fellow.” Head of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (formerly R&D1), ie the section of the company that actually makes the games, Miyamoto is responsible for Mario, Zelda, and other masterpieces. The new title seems to indicate more a recognition of his contributions to Nintendou than any change in his role within it. (Some fans expressed a desire for him to become president, which makes no sense. Miyamoto will never be president. Even if his creative skills were transferrable to the financial side of the company, if he became president he'd obviously no longer be making games.) Takeda Genyo, meanwhile, is now a Technology Fellow, seemingly the hardware equivalent to Miyamoto's software stuff. “Fellow” is a bit of a weird-ass ingredient to throw into a salad full of words like “Representative Director,” but oddly enough it kind of fits with Nintendou's style.

That said, Kimishima's appointment is the far more interesting and important part of the announcement. Beginning his career in banking, he joined The Pokemon Company in 2000. (Not to be confused with Game Freak, the development studio that actually makes most of the Pokemon games, The Pokemon Company is mainly concerned with marketing and licensing the franchise.) He then joined Nintendo of America for several years before coming back to Japan, where he was responsibly for various businessy aspects of Nintendou, like Human Resources and the always nebulous “General Affairs.” Clearly the experience and the skillset is there; the question now is how he will stack up to Iwata.

Iwata Satoru (岩田聡)

On the one hand, Iwata clearly had a deep and abiding love of games, believed in his company, and at one point appeared willing to take the fall for lacklustre WiiU sales. He took steps to make himself appear relatable and accessible to his company's fandom, such as through Nintendo Direct, where he “directly” addressed fans (customers) regarding current products and issues. On the other hand, this also gave some the impression that he was weak and simpering, and while “Please Understand” was a stupid, lazy meme, it did represent many people's dissatisfaction with the direction Nintendou was taking. Meanwhile, Iwata presided over one of the weakest periods in the company's history, financially and artistically. If you want to be charitable you can acknowledge that he was facing varied challenges the best way he knew how, and that shouldering the entire blame on one person is absurd, but you can't deny his responsibility for the disappointment.

In contrast to Iwata's attitude, I see one particular sentiment floating around the Internet regarding Kimishima: “He's a businessman, not a gamer.” There's a few things to unpack there. First of all, there's no doubt that Iwata was a gamer, but in the sense that he lead a huge business, how exactly was he not a businessman? I guess the answer would be that he was not a skilled businessman, or that his attitude towards the business was insufficiently businesslike. Except, the implication seems to be that having a gamer leading a games company is good and would naturally lead to high-quality products, while a businessman will bring us soulles cash-ins.

Sure, having a passion for your industry and its products can potentially be a tremendous asset. One way to put it is that as the head of a games company, you are in a position to create the kind of games that you would want to play. Individual tastes and all that, but you can be reasonably sure that a certain proportion of consumers will nod right along with you, and that whatever you make, it will at least have artistic conviction. You may also be better equipped to read the currents of popular feeling; how often have we heard the complaint about company executives being out of touch?

However, I am of the opinion that business acumen is also extremely valuable to have when conducting business. It's also wrong to say that a lack of personal interest necessarily equates to a lack of understanding. Suppose I got hired at P&G tomorrow. As it stands, I do not feel any deep emotion for household cleaning products, but if it were my job to know about them, you can bet that for the next few weeks I would be spending every waking moment learning. I would learn exactly which chemical compounds are most effective at scouring stains from carpet and the thought process that goes into Mrs MacMillan's purchasing decisions when she's at the grocery store. Naturally, games, which are art rather than science, are that much more dependent on instinct, but it's not like market analysis has never steered anybody into a bad business decision, anyway.

Personally, I'm intrigued. I never got as down on Nintendou as a lot of people did, because Mario and Zelda are just so much fun. Still, I feel as though shaking things up like this could really reinvigorate the company. Surely the gravity of his position is not lost on Kimishima. In Shadowrun, Nintendou would be an A-ranked corporation at least, and it is no small fixture of Japanese culture both at home and internationally. Hopefully we get at least a few good games out of it.

Post-Apocalyptia: Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 2 - Themes

Post-Apocalyptia: Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 2

Themes

Part 1

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Post-Apocalyptia is an interesting setting for a variety of reasons. Wish fulfillment is definitely part of it. We may not really want to live off maggots and live in constant fear of violent death, but from time to time we all wish we could leave our obligations behind in exchange for something more adventurous. It's the same appeal we see in the Wild West or outlaw biker gangs. But it's also a great place to tell a story, because it pushes our characters so hard and asks so many interesting questions in the process. Does morality change in this situation? What level of depravity is acceptable in exchange for survival? To what extent are we culpable for the sins of others? And should we be trying to restore what we've lost, or build something new? These questions and others pervade a post-Apocalyptic setting, intentionally or not.

Decay/Atmosphere

I remember doing the Fallout: New Vegas quest “That Lucky Old Sun,” named after a song from the 50's. The quest has nothing really to do with the sun – it concerns the activation of an orbital laser cannon – but the name made me stop and actually look up at the sun, shining down on my character (a hot young Chinese girl). And I remember thinking, how incredible is it that even when the world has been all but destroyed and virtually nothing looks as it once did, the sun beating down on this Mojave desert is the same one that shone on the face of human civilization 200 years ago. The sun observed humanity's self-destruction from afar - safely, and indifferently.

In Metro, much discussion is given to the ultimate fate of humanity, whether the last scraps of it subsist in the Moscow Metro or if other pockets remain elsewhere, whether we will ever be able to reclaim the surface, or if we will be forced to live down there forever, or yet again if we will simply die out within a couple of generations, once there's nothing left to scavenge and our subterranean farms go fallow. Meanwhile, for all its politics and gunfights, the underlying story of Metro is that of the dark ones, an offshoot of human beings seemingly made for our war-scorched earth. They are telepathic, unaffected by radiation or extreme temperatures, and difficult to kill. We're out, they're in. They want to help, if only we'd let them, but even if we die out completely, the earth abideth forever, and our passing from it will be only one chapter in its long, long chronicle.

Marcus, an intelligent Super Mutant

Funny enough, Fallout actually makes kind of the same point, twice over. In this case, however, it's only fringe groups who believe that the newtypes have inherited the wasteland. Ghouls are humans who have received large amounts of radiation and become zombie-like due to their symptoms. In Van Buren, there was going to be a character named Dr Willem Clark, a ghoul who claimed that, as radiation was the source of ghoulification, ghouls were the natural successors to their frail human ancestors. One day, he claimed, he and his people would strike out from their isolated fortress, the Reservation, and claim the Southwest (if not all of America) for themselves, and as ghouls can potentially live for hundreds of years, they were willing to endure slow progress. Similarly, the ultimate plot of Fallout 1 centres on the Master and his army of Super Mutants, humans who have been mutated by the Forced Evolutionary Virus. Like ghouls, they are immune to radiation (though unlike ghouls, they are not healed by it), and they are furthermore huge, fast, and incredibly strong, capable of wielding weapons such as miniguns and Super Sledges with ease. Indeed, they are already the masters of much of the American wasteland, such as the ruins of Washington DC, where they are more or less the dominant force. On the other hand, many Super Mutants have had their intellects dulled to animalistic levels, and the store-brand humans' main advantage over them is superior training and small unit tactics.

Source

Fragile seems to be driving towards exactly the same point as Metro: We should absolutely struggle to survive, but it also wouldn't hurt to occasionally remember that we may not be as important as we think. I never felt this more strongly than when Seto saw the northern lights in Fragile. Of course, they're beautiful, a wonder of nature; but even if civilization was destroyed, wouldn't they still be beautiful, regardless of whether there was anyone there to observe that beauty? On the other hand, if there's no one there to observe something's beauty, what's the point? There's a similar scene at the end of the dam level, where the camera pulls back to reveal the nature that has grown up around the abandoned dam, which, by the way, put a stopper in a natural wonder in the first place. The dam is still fully functional, too, constantly generating power for a population that is no longer there to use it. Like if you made dinner for five, but no one was hungry. And let us not forget the moon, which, like that lucky old sun, looks on from above. This theme of nature reclamation, of course, pervades nearly every second of Fragile.

Besides that, we have the “everyday life” angle. I appreciate that in the Metro 2033 novel, the national pastime seems to be sitting around sharing stories – news from other parts of the metro, rumours embellished by each successive purveyor, or just a personal anecdote from five years back when you were living an another station and apprenticing with an ironworker. It works really well, because with little else in the way of entertainment, and most information being exchanged by word of mouth, that's how people really would spend a sizeable chunk of their time.

In your travels through the world of Fallout, you will frequently meet with communities struggling for survival, and can offer your assistance if you wish. For instance, a typical quest line might involve the breakdown of a town's water purifier, and possible solutions might be to either help fix it, or negotiate a trade relationship with a neighbour. But for the most part, you yourself do not have to contend with any such issues – you are capable of days if not months without sleep, don't have to worry about biological trivialities like food, and can repair massive internal hemorrhaging with a 200-year-old first aid kit you found in a burnt-out house. Although Metro does an excellent job of making you really feel the constant danger of sudden, violent death, if you look at similar real-world situations like impoverished nations or the Old West, a slow descent into disease and malnourishment is far more likely than a quick and dramatic end. But in Fallout, anything that doesn't kill you outright is of little concern.

Of course, we accept these quirks in the name of fun. New Vegas, however, introduced “Hardcore Mode,” in which you really do have to pay attention to your bodily needs. The healing system is more complex, and some injuries can be tended only by a trained doctor. You have a hunger and thirst metre, creating the interesting dynamic where you may be forced to drink irradiated toilet water and risk radiation poisoning later in order to stave off immediate death by dehydration. In the normal game ammunition is weightless, allowing you to carry hundreds of rounds for weapons you don't even have, but Hardcore Mode forces you to pack more carefully, selecting only the equipment you will need for the mission at hand. Suddenly all of your decisions take on greater weight. Certainly you can't fault anybody who just wants the freedom to explore a compelling and detailed world without worrying about finicky irritants, but the light sim aspects of Hardcore Mode really clinch the post-Apocalyptic atmosphere for a lot of players.

The other two utilise their atmosphere to great effect, but Fragile lives and dies on it. That is, if you stripped away the details, Fallout would still be a top-knotch open-ended RPG, and Metro would be an ok FPS (and the Metro novels would still be good Hero's Journeys). On the other hand, Fragile, taken at its fundamentals, really isn't much of a game. Without the ancillary trappings, you're just running around aimlessly and occasionally hitting things with sticks. The art direction and slowly building pathos take that and make it compelling.

Of course the biggest difference between Fragile and the other two is that in Fragile, nothing was destroyed – it simply began to erode in the sudden absence of humanity. Moscow's Ostankino Tower had its top blown off, but Toukyou Tower stands intact. Fragile's degradation process was much slower, and, really, almost even sadder than sudden violent erasure. For inspiration, the developers looked to photographs of 廃墟 haikyo, meaning “ruins,” but used here to refer to abandoned train stations and amusement parks that Japanese urban explorers sometimes seek out and document. Give it a Google and you'll turn up stuff like this:

Unsettling, eh? The weird part is, you actually kind of get used to it. The sight of the ruined world is arresting at first, but while you never stop noticing it, you do start accepting that this is just the way things are now.

I think it also says something that in Fragile, of the two electronic friends Seto meets – PF and Kurou – both perish by the end of the game, whereas the flesh-and-blood characters not only fight to survive, but even live on as ghosts, long after their bodies have died.

Nostalgia/The Old World

From time to time when stopping at a campfire to rest and record his progress, Seto will find some small object from when the world was whole. This is accompanied by a few lines of monologue from the person who used it, and while the process is a little forced, they do make some poignant observations, such as the cup that once held hot tea on a cold winter's day, and cold, refreshing tea on a hot summer's day. You know – the little things that we never think about, that we take for granted because we don't live in a post-nuclear apocalypse. Yet.

Likewise, Artyom remarks on what a pity it is that humanity managed to accidentally destroy almost everything it had worked for up to that point. Having been born less than a year before the bombs dropped, he remembers nothing of the old world and can evaluate it as an observer. Anytime he encounters a relic of what now seems to be the Golden Age of civilization, he mourns its passing. Encountering the burned-out hulls of train cars, he almost finds it hard to believe that these machines could carry a person across Moscow in a matter of hours, when his own journey takes weeks or months. When he looks across the shattered landscape at what remains of Ostankino Tower, his thrill of awe is immediately followed by a pang of remorse that nothing of this scale will ever be built, ever again.

Ulysses

Most of the inhabitants of Fallout, however, are remarkably well-adjusted to their condition, being far enough removed from the Great War and what was lost in its wake that they feel no particular attachment to it. Indeed, everything that came before it is regarded as merely another stage of history (or what's survived of it; Abraham Washington will inform you that the Declaration of Independence was signed by the Second Judgmental Congress and taken to Britain by plane). Some, however, have managed to develop a yearning for the good old days that borders on obsession. These aren't generally ghouls, either, who would at least have a reason to miss the world they once inhabited, but rather people who have never even seen it with their own eyes. The condition has come to be called “Old World Blues,” and there's a whole New Vegas DLC on that theme that goes by that very name. In most cases, the afflicted fail to even understand what they're trying to restore, and end up getting bogged down in unimportant details like the kind of technology that was being used at the time. One character, however, who gives himself the name Ulysses – after Ulysses S. Grant, not the James Joyce novel – discovers a United States flag, latches on to it, and never lets go. This is not because he is unduly fascinated with the object, however, but because he understands all too well the power of symbols, and he believes in what the United States was supposed to stand for. To him, even the Enclave (which up until its destruction claimed to be the legitimate American government in recluse) is a betrayal of the American spirit, as it has perverted the ideals on which it thrived and twisted them towards petty personal concerns. His goal, though pointless and impossible, is noble.

Society and commerce

In Metro, the people everyone looked to for guidance were not the political elite or even military commanders but the station employees. Train operators are especially sought after, because they know the territory and, in the words of the novel, do not panic the moment they have to disembark and enter a dark tunnel.

Both Metro and Fallout have a surprisingly good grasp of economics, as well. Personally I think it's totally possible for the local currency to remain in use, but it makes just as much sense for it to fall without the presence of government to guarantee its value. In the case of Fallout, people start using the metal caps off Nuka-Cola bottles, which seems kind of silly and indulgent but actually makes perfect sense: The technology to manufacture them has been basically lost, which not only makes them difficult to counterfeit, but insulates them against inflation as well. The denizens of the Moscow metro end up using old AK-47 bullet casings for exactly the same reason.

Unexpectedly, both settings even demonstrate a basic understanding of the principle that capitalism inevitably leads to inequality. Fallout 3 has the inexplicable Tenpenny Tower, a low-rise apartment building somehow spared bombardment and currently inhabited only by affluent, non-mutated humans. Well, the nearby population of non-feral ghouls wants in, but the titular Tenpenny doesn't trust those sometimes literally two-faced no-goodniks. There's not only an obvious racism allegory, but a classist one as well. So you have the option to side with Tenpenny and tell the ghouls to piss off, in which case, congratulations on being an asshole. Alternately, you can convince him to give them a chance. The ghouls will move in, and, despite a few rough jolts, the new and old residents will overcome their differences and start to build a future together. For a couple of weeks anyway, at which point the ghouls will prove all of Tenpenny's fears well-founded and murder everybody in the Tower on some flimsy pretext. Tenpenny was a bad man, but not all of his tenants were. So, congratluations on being an asshole.

Just gonna leave this here

Metro is quieter on this point, but it's significant that the most powerful faction in the Moscow Metro got that way by commandeering the Ring Line, which allowed them to impose tariffs and thus become a huge economic power, relatively speaking. This in turn allowed them to bolster their military, and after a stalemate war with the Red Line, they sat as the virtually unchallenged masters of the Metro. Life in the Hansa (named after some European history thingy that I'm not really familiar with) is on a totally different level from other parts of the Metro; the lights are brighter, the food is better, and everyone is happier. Yeah, they're still basically destitute by our standards, but its citizens enjoy luxuries unavailable to almost anyone else, such as reliable electricity and hot water. No other force in the Metro is as effective. Christianity is reduced to a tiny fringe religion, Communism (the Red Line) focusses on ideologically significant but impractical physical holdings, and nationalism (the Fourth Reich) gains only a tiny, insular territory of a mere three stations that is very dangerous to trespass but poses no credible threat even to its neighbours, rather like the modern DPRK. The guys who decided early on that money was the number one priority, though? Oh, boy!

In Fragile, of course, it's a moot point, because there is no society, on account of there being no people. Seto can buy stuff from a travelling merchant, but that's more of a gameplay mechanic than anything worth reading into. It is notable, however, that all the humans who meet each other both instinctively seek each other out, and are instinctively distrustful of each other. Wouldn't you? And in a way, this actually underscores the main theme of the game: Loneliness, and the “fragility” of human relationships. After all, it is human beings' limited, imperfect means of communication that led the central antagonist to search for a means to human instrumentality, and, in fact, you find out at the end that he personally felt alienated from society, which viewed his eccentricity as worthy of derision and ostracism. He sought not only to alleviate his own pain, but that of anyone who has ever experienced the torture of being misunderstood, who wants to fit in, but can't, whatever they may say about not needing anybody. (I could make a point here about how this message, borne on a very Japanese, otakuish game, might speak to Fragile's target audience, but that might be a little too close for comfort.)

Funny enough, the fact that people always come up with some form of currency backs up claims by John Locke. Or they would, if they were real. You knew what I meant. So Locke, he says, suppose we only ever relied on the barter system. A quart of milk to fix a flat tire or whatever. Well, some people would still end up having more than they need. They would start to value things with no practical purpose – majestic Hercules beetles, let's say. They'd start trading legitimately valuable items like wool for Hercules beetles just because the little guys are the only ones who understand them. But nobody else has any use for them, right? Wrong. If the rich guy has more than he needs of everything, and he'll accept Hercules beetles as payment, then there's little reason for me not to accept Hercules beetles as payment as well, because I can turn around and sell them to the rich guy. Suddenly, we're all using Hercules beetles as a unit of exchange amongst ourselves, knowing their value is backed by the rich guy who wants them so bad, and we come to see that we haven't created something like money – we have actually created money. So, Locke says, money is inevitable.

Now you may notice that the way I describe things, the emergence of money is dependent on at least one person being significantly better off than your average Joe (or Ivan, or Tarou). Well, Locke says that this is inevitable too, and so does Marx. Except that Locke says this is because some people are naturally harder workers than others, and will sooner or later reach a position where they can start paying people to work for them, while still skimming off a profit for themselves, at which point they're commanding a labour force so large that they are now managers. Whereas Marx says that it is inevitable for complicated economic reasons that boil down to employees adding value to the object they work, and the employer keeping that value for themselves, without actually working for it. Marx was a horrible idiot of a philosopher but a brilliant economist and I'd love to delve into this further but you know what, “Marxist economics in post-Apocalyptic settings” could be a whole book. Suffice to say that economic powerhouses like Tenpenny or the Hanse are not at all far-fetched.

I hope you enjoyed Part 2 of this series. It was a little heavy, but it's pretty interesting stuff. Next time, we'll clean up a few mental bits and pieces that fell out while I was writing the rest of this series.

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Post-Apocalyptia: Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 1 - Introduction

Post-Apocalyptia: Fragile, Metro, and Fallout, Part 1

Introduction

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

What would you do if the world ended tomorrow?

What can you make? What skills do you have? Can you sew? Are you trained in first aid? Good at hunting? Can you fill out document requisitions in tripli – oh, wait, no.

To whom would you offer those skills? Your friends and family? A hardened corps of survivalists? Go it alone? Settle down in a frontier boomtown where you can trade meat for a new shirt or sex for some potatoes?

Would you lie to survive? Steal? Kill? Betray a friend or benefactor? Are some things more important than survival? Would you rather debase yourself and survive like a rat, or die with a shred of dignity? Would your moral code change to reflect your new circumstances, or is morality immutable? What should you try to accomplish? And what should humanity?

I love post-Apocalyptic fiction. Like cyberpunk, it combines high-pitched action with compelling philosophy. For whatever reason, three that stand out to me are the Fallout series, the Metro series, and the game Fragile (known as Fragile Dreams in the English translation). I was reading, playing and thinking about all of them around roughly the same time, and suddenly it all came together. Maybe it's a little strange that of all the post-Apocalyptic fiction in the entire world, I should draw a connection between these three in particular, but it somehow makes sense in my mind. The clincher is that each has a different country of origin, and appears to be among the best that country has to offer, so we can imagine that they represent each country's perspective on the genre. And since one of those countries is Japan, it luckily fits with my Japan-themed blog.

This series will explore some of the issues these works raise, comparing and contrasting their responses. If the fact that we're 308 words in and still doing the introduction hasn't given it away, I'll warn you now that this is going to be a dense, lengthy treatise. I'm still going to try to make it fun though, so if I haven't lost you yet, I think it's going to be a great ride.

Spoilers are unavoidable, but I will do my best to avoid major ones.

I hope this topic is as exciting for you as it is for me! Let's get started. In this first post, we will introduce the three franchises we'll be discussing.

Plot and Backstory

A Veteran Ranger of the New California Republic

Fallout takes place in the future, but not our future; history diverged directly after World War II. Instead of computers, science turned most of its attention towards the nuclear. Though weaponry was the obvious point, nuclear power made rapid strides, soon bound in reactors small enough to power a car, a suit of power armour, or even a rifle. This was all very nice until 2077, when, for reasons lost to history, the United States and China unloaded their missiles on each other. In a matter of hours, the two greatest civilizations on earth were destroyed, and possibly so too was the rest of the world; there's no way to know. The immediate damage was catastrophic and the long-term effects just as deadly, but pockets of humanity persisted through quick thinking or flukes of geography. Others took shelter in massive Vaults, supposedly designed to house a thousand residents until it was safe to emerge (though their true purpose was very different). Some Vaults re-opened just a few years later, others remained locked for a century or more, at which point Vault dwellers emerged into an unrecognizable world. The technology is a combination of Used Future and whatever can be cobbled together from any random materials at hand. In the new order, it's hard to say which is more dangerous: The environment, the mutated wildlife...or the survivors.

A heavy assault squad from the Fourth Reich braces
 for an attack by the communist Red Line faction

The world of Metro suffered a similar nuclear event in 2013, only this time people took shelter in the Moscow Metro, either fleeing there when they heard the sirens or having the good fortune to be commuting when it happened. The world above is now uninhabitable, the pollution making it impossible to traverse without a gas mask, and the monsters making it inadvisable to do so without heavy weaponry. By 2033, outside threats are legion, resources are drying up, and yet all we want to do is fight and kill each other. On top of this, inexplicable supernatural forces run through the length and breadth of the Metro, and we are fast approaching a pivotal point in history that may decide whether the human race continues to scrabble onward or is extinguished once and for all.

The mysterious girl gazes at the moon

Fragile's apocalypse is a little more fantastical. Intriguingly, it came about from efforts to end war and misunderstanding. Using an invention called the Glass Cage, a mad scientist planned to form a psychic link between all human beings – similar to the “human instrumentality” concept in Evangelion. In this case, a single young girl, imprisoned in the Glass Cage, was to act as the conduit for all human thought and emotion, disseminated instantly across the world. Language, the scientist claimed, is insufficient for true understanding (an interesting point, and one that I also touched on in the Evangelion post), so this was the only true solution. But the results didn't mete out the theory, as instead of ushering in a golden age, the activation of the Glass Cage instantly killed nearly every human on earth. The plot concerns a handful of survivors and their need for human contact.

In exactly 10 words

Fallout: Wander the wastes and kill everyone – or don't.

Metro: Life underground, the cost of hubris, and agony of survival.

Fragile: The haunting beauty of what's left behind. Also, hitting things.

The coolest part

Fragile – The art direction. The small number of other characters to interact with forces the game to show, not tell.

Fallout – Besides the oddly appropriate mix of camp and dead seriousness, the ability to take sides. Nearly every major mission allows you to do the total opposite of what you're asked to do; if contracted to kill someone in a typical mission, you could instead warn them off, extract a bribe in exchange for letting them go, or even join forces against their enemy.

Metro – Daily life in the Metro. Fallout lets you visit shantytowns and whatnot, but Metro does a far better job of depicting the desperation, boredom, and sheer ingenuity that would really be in the offing in a situation like this.

A brief release history

This section is going to feel a little like filler, but I think it's important to do a quick rundown of the franchises we'll be dealing with, just to make sure we all know what the hell we're talking about.

Fallout 2 cover art

Fallout is a series of mainly PC games going back to 1997, when the first installment came out. Next year, Interplay published the sequel, Fallout 2. Fallout 3, however, did not come out until 2008, after Bethesda purchased the rights. Bethesda subsidiary Obsidian developed a sequel, Fallout: New Vegas, released in 2010, and Fallout 4 was released in 2015. These five games comprise the U-canon of the Fallout franchise, but there are two others considered to be “broad strokes canon.” The first is the original version of Fallout 3 developed around 2000 by Black Isle Studios, known coloquially by its working title, Van Buren; if you hear people talking about the “real” Fallout 3, this is what they mean. There is also a game called Fallout Tactics that lies in this same category, as well as a couple of other titles that are non-canon and which we won't be taking into consideration. Many of the games take place decades apart, with a 116-year difference between Fallout 1 and Fallout: New Vegas, so the world's history has developed along with the franchise's.

Metro: Last Light cover art

Russian author Dmitri Glukhovsky first published the novel Metro 2033 in 2005. In 2009, he released a sequel, Metro 2034, which takes place in the same universe but features mostly different characters. Metro 2033 was adapted into a video game a year later, published by THQ and developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games; a direct sequel to that game, Metro: Last Light, was released in 2013. Glukhovsky wrote the story for Last Light, and in the process found he had more ideas than could be contained in a game, so he took the plot, added to it, and wrote Metro 2035 for 2015. So, yes, 2035 is a direct sequel to 2033, but it's also a book based on a game that was a sequel to a game based on a book. Brilliantly, it was also first serialized in a newspaper that is only sold within the Moscow Metro.

Fragile cover art

Fragile is a video game developed by tri-Crescendo and published by Bandai Namco, released in 2009 for the Wii. So that one's easy.

(This information accurate to 2015. More stuff may have been released depending when you're reading this. I'm sure not updating the post every single time something new comes out.)

Gameplay

Fragile is arguably the simplest game we're looking at here, but only because the focus is on exploration above all else. Actually, the main mechanic is just stalking around the ruins of train stations and hotels, waving your flashlight at things (in a nice touch, the Wii remote is your flashlight, so you just point where you want to look, allowing you to survey your surroundings on the fly). There is some amount of combat, rather more than I would have liked, actually, but it's pretty crude. Your character carries a weapon in his left hand at all times, and it can be either a melee or distance weapon, and is basically anything he can find on the ground, like a stick, or a slingshot, or a bug-catching net. They have various properties, such as power and durability, and you can perform a Spin Attack-like charged strike, but it boils down to running up to something and whacking it. It's hardly a deep combat system, but perhaps that was intentional, as it's also rather easy, allowing the player to focus on the visual experience.

Fallout is notable for its extreme open-endedness in regards to problem-solving. If called upon to get past a guard in order to enter a building, you could simply murder him, but you could also bribe him, intimidate him, trick him into thinking you're his boss's boss, pickpocket his key, or find an alternate entrance, to name one example. The RPG elements aren't terribly robust, but they're strong enough to add some interest, as you gain new skills, equipment, and selectable “Perks” (for example, one Perk improves your shooting and another makes you more popular with the opposite sex...or, if you prefer, the same sex, or both!)

Metro is a first-person shooter. There is a heavy emphasis on stealth; although you can attempt to outgun your enemies, you are liable to become overwhelmed, and sneaking through an area without leaving any sign that you were ever there is far more satisfying. From time to time you'll holster your weapon to scurry around a town, interacting with the townsfolk and buying supplies for the next leg of your journey.

Characters

Seto and his companion Sai

Fragile casts you in the role of a 15-year-old boy named Seto. He was born into the post-Apocalypse and has lived his entire life with his grandfather in a stellar observatory, but when his grandfather passes away he is forced out into the world. Though understandably rather naiive, he is also both friendly and brave.

Artyom

Metro puts you in the shoes of Artyom, who lives in a small backwater station of zero interest to outsiders. Although Artyom's character arc is fairly simple, it is kind of fun to observe through the course of the two games. About 21 in 2033, he is sheltered and inexperienced, and can see no resolution with the dark ones except violence. In the sequel, however, he has become a skilled soldier for a major faction, and ends up on something of a quest to rectify his mistakes of the previous story.

Fallout 4's character creation

Fallout is, um...it's a little more complicated, because there are so many installments. Plus, your thinking and behaviour are thoroughly up to you, so it's hard to say what is or isn't true about the Fallout protagonists. However, each one has a definite overarching goal. It'll quickly recede into the background in the face of the reams of other plotlines and assorted distractions, but you never quite forget it's there.

That about wraps it up for the introduction. Next time we'll actually dig into the meat of the subject, as we discuss some of the major themes of these works.

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