I’ve played Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas more than any other game. Three playthroughs of each at around 50 hours apiece — yeah, I’ve spent some serious time in the DC and Mojave Wastelands. There’s so much to love: The VATS system is a perfect blend of real-time and turn-based combat. The characters are intriguing and (often) multifaceted. The storylines provoke laughter and heartbreak.

There is something unconsciously unnerving about these games, however, and I’ve always had trouble putting my finger on it. Obviously many things about the wastelands are unnerving: glowing radioactive ghouls, hard-to-kill mirelurks, homicidal super mutants, and every manner of depraved behavior you can imagine. But there’s something else.

During my most recent odyssey through the Mojave, I think I figured it out. The wastelands of Fallout are awash in false fronts — facades — which reveal the hideous, desperate desire of decimated people trying to convince everyone else (and, ultimately, themselves) of a reality they can’t quite achieve.

(It should go without saying that spoilers abound in the following sections. However, most of the New Vegas bits are short and don’t reveal much.)

Duck And Cover

The most striking symbol of fraudulent existence is also the most pervasive: The ubiquity of products, advertising, furniture, clothing, music, and artifacts from 1950s US culture. Despite the horrible death and destruction of The Great War, the plucky can-do spirit of Leave It To Beaver still wafts through the ruined homes and businesses of Fallout. The suburban loveliness of pre-war clothing and the quaint ads for Nuka-Cola clash vividly with the radioactive water and shambling mounds of decay which people must confront in their daily post-apocalyptic lives.

The 1950s facade is a double fraud, because the tranquil placidity of that era was completely manufactured by Madison Avenue and the nascent public relations industry. (As Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon once put it, the US burns with “Nostalgia for an Age that Never Existed“.) Sure, the US was riding high after its success in WWII, and our economy was thriving mightily. But it was also a time of severe racial tension; social repression of women, gays, and lesbians; and existential dread connected to the blossoming Cold War.

Nuclear weapons were, naturally, a part of this dread, and what was the US government’s advice to the nervous child? Hide under your desk!

In fact, the 1950s aura is actually a triple fraud. Why? Because The Great War of nuclear holocaust took place in 2077, a full 100 years after the era of Father Knows Best and Marilyn Monroe. This means that in the divergent world of the Fallout games, people in the US reverted back to a retro nostalgic culture mimicking the absurd simplicity of a long-gone epoch. (Fortunately, in the post-milennium version we’ve got robots and digitally-protected vaults to keep us safe.)

Once the Lone Wanderer leaves Vault 101 in Fallout 3 (for most of us, this was our first experience in the Fallout world), we’re presented with another striking facade, in the form of the “Scenic Overlook” sign. It takes some hardcore self-deception to consider this grey-green crater of death and despair scenic.

Tranquility Lane

The absurdity of the 1950s facade comes into full view during the virtual-reality section of Fallout 3. Remember when that psychopathic German doctor took the form of a little girl and tried to convince you to stab people to death? Because he was bored? Of course, the environs of Tranquility Lane are fraudulent, even in the simulation — one man is cheating on his wife, and the neighborhood lives in fear of a child serial killer. Still, Dr. Braun’s twisted games repaint the sepia-toned suburb with a shock of blood.

The calm affluence of Tranquility Lane is what gives this episode its chilling power. We wouldn’t be nearly so nervous about committing acts of violence in a run-down slum, or out in the wasteland itself. By juxtaposing our soothed visions of domestic harmony with the vicious violence of Braun’s adventures (and our own complicity, if we choose to wield the Pint-Sized Slasher’s mask and knife), Fallout 3 uses cognitive dissonance to masterful effect.

Another example shows up in the tiny town of Andale, where we meet two serene families living impossibly unexciting lives. Of course we realize right away that things are not right here, but it’s more from the shocking contrast than anything else — it’s simply not plausible that anyone could have such happy, uncomplicated lives in this apocalyptic hellhole. A bit of digging and we learn about the incestuous futures planned for each family’s child; soon we come face to face with the gruesome “strange meat” hidden in secret refrigerators. Slowly the facade drips away and we smell the rotting corpses of truth.

Compare the horrors of Andale with the unpretentious honesty of New Vegas’ Cannibal Johnson. (Don’t worry, he barely shows up in the game, so it’s not much of a spoiler.) Yeah, he cut out a raider’s heart and took a bite. Big deal. It’s shocking, but nothing like the lunatics in Andale.

Spot the Looney

Speaking of crazy people, Fallout presents us with a panorama of supposedly insane individuals who turn out to know more than most. We can’t escape Tranquility Lane, for example, until we meet Old Lady Dithers, the mentally ill lady who describes the failsafe computer.

New Vegas provides even more examples. (Some minor spoilers here.) The town of Novac features a curious character named No-bark Noonan, who rants about communist ghosts and molerat men who want to steal his beard. But if you listen carefully, he can also be a source for good information. (Alas, I didn’t figure this out until my third playthrough.)

Elsewhere in the Mojave, we find two unusual super-mutants with delusional identities. Without revealing too much, we can just say that Tabitha and Lily are amusing examples of people teetering on the brink of lunacy. And yet their stories, once fully explored, reveal a touching — even tender — honesty.

Dreaming of Electric Sheep

An interesting subset of the crazy-but-not-actually-crazy person in Fallout is the robot who is pretending to be human. When trying to abscond with the Declaration of Independence, for example, we meet a robot convinced he is the US revolution-era politician Button Gwinnett. Taking his facade to absurd lengths, he will salute when he believes you are Thomas Jefferson, and asks you to “give my regards to Sally“, a reference to another facade, wherein Mr. Jefferson adulterously fathered six children with one of his slaves.

Elsewhere in the DC waste, we find Harkness, the so-called “Replicated Man” — the most sophisticated android ever created. Unit A3-21 is so committed to being human that he rejects the truth until we present him with proof, or else allow his creators to unlock memories he had hidden away in his data banks.

And then of course there’s President Eden. We hear him constantly during Fallout 3, as his Enclave eyebots broadcast his intimate “fireside chat“-style messages to everyone and no one. Once we come face to face with the man, however, we’re struck by the utter absurdity of conversing with a talking computer screen. (It took me almost a minute during my first playthrough to realize that I wasn’t looking for a humanoid character and that I should engage the machine in conversation.) While Eden doesn’t actually aspire to be human, he relies on the facade of inevitable impression, using his amalgam of presidential histories to create a persona designed for maximum voter appeal.

(New Vegas spoiler alert! This paragraph only.) On the flip side we have Mr. House, a mysterious but supremely powerful individual who runs the New Vegas strip with his Securitron robots. (These are facades in themselves, as they present televised images of police officers and cowboys.) His imposing face leers from huge television screens, his voice steely and potent with resolve. He is omniscient, and he shows up everywhere he needs to be. (This turns super creepy when you grant him access later in the game to NCR mainframes and he shows up in places he’s never been seen before.) But pry your way behind the scenes and you’ll find a hideously shriveled wisp of a man, rasping in a tiny whisper as he begs for death.

The Luxury of Lies

Early in Fallout 3, we find the lovely — and shockingly clean — Tenpenny Tower standing proudly over the desolation of its surroundings. Upscale shops in the lobby, clean water in the bathrooms. What is going on here? Just a peaceful oasis of splendor built by a man who wants to set off a nuclear bomb for sport. Help him out and you can live there, too.

Indeed, it’s almost a certainty in the Fallout wastelands: The nicer the place, the more homicidal and bloodthirsty the inhabitants are likely to be. The town of Megaton is a dump, but it’s got lots of real nice folks living there. Honoré de Balzac once said: “The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.” This certainly appears to be the case in Tenpenny Tower.

A similar facade of death and pain awaits in the New Vegas casino known as Ultra-Luxe. (Billboard pictured above.) The best-dressed characters you’re likely to meet gather together in the form of The White Glove Society, a most exclusive club indeed. Top hats and stylish evening gowns, when only the finest will do. Just don’t ask too many questions.

And So On..

This theme continues over and over throughout the games — The “Republic of Dave“, where freedom of speech is punishable by execution; the fake reports pursued by Sergeant Reyes in New Vegas; the kids of Big Town who act grown up just because they’re too old for Little Lamplight. But it’s late and I think I’ve made my point.

Two final notes on the theme of facade. The first concerns the VATS combat system. We might consider it a form of fraud, in that it freezes time and allows us a deliberate precision that humans can never achieve. We become calculating killing machines when we use it, even more powerful than those boring standard FPS heroes who must aim in real time.

And finally, it’s possible to consider the Fallout 3 reboot experience as a facade of its own, insofar as it presents itself (though not explicitly) as a first journey into the nuclear wasteland. But of course four games preceded it, and many gamers were anticipating the new developments of story and theme, as much as gameplay mechanics. If nothing else, that little 3 in the title is yet another reminder that in the wastedlands of Fallout, there’s always more to explore and one should never trust what meets the eye.

Also, war never changes.

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