Fallout 76 has received a lot of criticism, not all of it unfairly dished out. However, most of these have been aimed at Bethesda’s business decisions – the microtransactions, the bag debacle, the decision to not add any NPCs. Less talked about is the fact that Fallout 76 (especially with its massive Wastelanders update) is responsible for the slow death of Fallout’s biting satire.
Fallout has a long history of satire and political commentary. The intro to the original Fallout opens up with a war reel, alternating between nationalistic propaganda slogans and wartime footage of American soldiers in power armor executing civilians in the street. It then switches to commercials for luxury cars and servant robots. The camera pans out from the TV screen that these clips are playing on, revealing the desolated nuclear wasteland. The following narration makes the meaning of this symbolism obvious – war is fought over the resources needed to produce luxuries for the wealthy, and America is a gleeful participant in this destruction.
This intro essentially sets the tone in Fallout for years to come. Themes involving corporate greed and American nationalism often finds its way into the main plot of the series. The villains in Fallout 2 and 3 are the Enclave, the remnants of the American government itself. One possible antagonist in New Vegas is Mr. House, the corporate autocrat of the robotics company RobCo. In addition, every pre-war corporation (that players learn about through terminals and holotapes) was engaged in massive mistreatment of their workers.
Fallout also has a strong anti-eugenics stance. The villains of the games are often eugenicists, obsessed with the idea of “purity” free of radiation. The Enclave is obsessed with maintaining pure genetics, and in Fallout 3 even tries to create a virus to kill mutants, ghouls, and anyone who was born in the wasteland. Even the iconic super mutants started out as a failed eugenics project, an attempt by the Master to create a race that was superior to humanity. Time and time again, Fallout establishes that eugenics is cruel, authoritarian, and doomed to fail.
It is awkward, then, that Fallout 76 centers around a eugenics project as a hope for humanity. It can be hard to tell (since it is unlike how Fallout presents eugenics in any other games), but Vault 76 is indeed a eugenics project too. It’s framed as noble, selecting the “best and brightest” to rebuild society. Handpicking desirable traits from human populations is eugenics, but you wouldn’t know it from playing Fallout 76.
Most vaults in Fallout are subject to horrifying scientific experiments, with a few serving as a control group. Vault-Tec, the creator of these vaults, is the ultimate example of evil corporations. In 76, on the other hand, Vault-Tec becomes the savior of humanity. Vault 76 is seen as a perfectly fine – even successful – community, and the vault dwellers only leave because someone needs to re-establish civilization.
The question that Fallout 76 neither asks nor answers is this: who would be acceptable to cull in order to create the perfect population of rebuilders? Even ignoring how closely eugenics is historically tied to racism and assuming that Vault 76 is a race-neutral eugenics program (something that could not be created in practice, either today or in the nationalistic world of pre-war Fallout), who’s left? Are people who are physically disabled excluded? People with mental illnesses? Poor people with no formal education?
Fallout 76 actually does answer the last question. One quest in the game involves following the Overseer of Vault 76, learning her story through holotapes. While she was enrolled at Vault-Tec’s college in Morgantown, her fiancé was a working-class miner. He would not have qualified as Vault 76’s “best and brightest” so she broke off her engagement to get into Vault 76 rather than Fallout 3’s Vault 101. This is presented as tragic but necessary, and the Overseer sees the vault dwellers as a positive result of Vault 76.
Fallout 76 says what earlier entries from the series criticized and says it without irony or parody. The massive Wastelanders update, which adds NPCs to the game, is even worse. The Overseer returns, continuing her role as the player’s mentor, this time in person rather than through notes and holotapes. Her goal here is to break into the secret Vault 79, which houses the United States’ entire store of gold bullion.
Unlike in Fallout: New Vegas, this vault heist is not a search for treasure that ultimately ends with a lesson about letting go of the past. It’s almost the opposite – the Overseer wants to use the gold to establish a hard money system and create a new government. If the player questions the Overseers plan, she tells them that currency gives “the control to bring order” and that “The American government, built on the American dollar, GAVE you your freedom.”
A lot of the worldbuilding in Fallout 76 has arguably progressive elements. There’s a backdrop of pro-union sentiment, since mining companies destroyed large parts of Appalachia and tried to replace all their employees with robots. Still, worldbuilding can be ignored. This is part of Wastelanders’ main quest, it is spoken by a trusted authority figure, and it says in no uncertain terms, “America is good, control is good, capitalism is not to be questioned.”
Fallout 76 is not the only game that fails to critique nationalism and greed at times; Fallout 4’s protagonist being a noble war hero is a far cry from army soldiers shooting civilians in the street. Still, Fallout 76 and the Wastelanders update are so blatant at undermining the satire the series was once known for, that it will be hard to take them seriously in the future.
