Fallout Setting Editorial, Part Two

After arguing that a Boston setting doesn’t fit the Fallout series in its first piece, the California Literary Review’s videogame blog doubles the editorial dose with a second write-up. It consists of a series of suggestion for an alternative location for the unannounced, but doubtlessly upcoming, Fallout 4.

Here’s an excerpt:

NEW ORLEANS!

Picking a particular point in The South to use is tricky. While Fallout 3 was set in Washington, D.C., meaning it was on the southern side of the Mason-Dixon line, Columbia isn’t really representative of what most conceive of as (The South). To differentiate it further, you have to make like Inception and go deeper. So, like in Live and Let Die, we go from one (New) to another, from the York to the Orleans!

Unlike other parts of (The South), the outsider’s (read: Northerner’s) image of Louisiana isn’t all racism and hillbillies in a bog filled with as much Southern animosity as moonshine. Thanks to N’awlins, it’s also wild parties, delicious spicy food, Dixieland Jazz, and outrageously revealing costumes on loose women enjoying the aforementioned. There’s plenty of potential for diverse locations deep marshes filled irradiated swamp water juxtaposed against the flaring laser-lights of a neo french quarter new monsters giant, exploding, mutant craw fish, (and Gators again) and even a new currency Mardi Gras beads of course!

Cajun and Creole culture would make fine replacements for that (unique personality) of the Southwest I mentioned last time, while the Voodoo traditions supply the requisite (kooky mysticism). Voodoo in Fallout would be especially interesting, thanks to all the (zombies) walking around in the form of Ghouls. Of course, there’s the touchy issue of post-Katrina New Orleans being used as virtual site of total devastation, but A) it was done already in Infamous 2, and B) Fallout 3 showed a completely destroyed Washington D.C. once you do that, what more you could do to offend people, I mean seriously.

The major problem is Point Lookout, which already covered much of this ground (er, marsh), right down to the steamboats and inbred antagonists. While setting a complete game here and embracing the entirety of the region’s diversity would offset this, it still seems like more time should pass before people would regard a Fallout: Swamp Thing as anything other than a greatly expanded side story. However, that seems to be the popular opinion of New Vegas, so I guess it really comes down to how it’s handled. It would just have to have one hell of a plot to convince Bethesda, methinks.

So with the chances of a swampland mystery dashed against the hard reality of marketable differentiation, it’s time to Go West My Boy! Go west!

Driving along in the Highwayman, we continue out of the deltas and the marshes along the I-10, dodging gunfire from drunken ghouls after skipping out on a bar tab.

It isn’t long before we head right in to where the stars at night, are big and bright . . .