Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Fallout In the Midwest!

I wasn’t really sure what to write a Super Nerd Sunday about this week. I’ve been stressed and caught up with my coast to coast move, and while I’m used to banking short stories for the weeks leading up to times like these I’ve been so overwhelmed that I haven’t been able to digest any of my gaming experiences. But I have had a chance to dabble with Old World Blues, Fallout: New Vegas’ latest expansion (a full treatment is forthcoming, but so far the thumb is way up), and it’s made me consider a lot about the landscape of America.

See, the New Vegas expansions mostly just play with the idea of how the world has changed in other locations after the bombs fell. A remote part of California, the Zion Valley park in Utah, wherever the fuck Big Mountain is (Wyoming, maybe?): all of these places feature new takes on just what has become of the world with unique personalities emerging from them, completely distinct from the Mojave’s. And driving across the northern edge of the United States lengthwise, you get to see a lot of landscape that looks like it would be untouched by the apocalypse.

High desert country, sparsely populated, dots the eastern edge of Oregon and Washington. Passing through you’ll catch sight of abandoned mines and ramshackle farmsteads, the last vestiges of someone’s dream of subsistence a century ago. All of this set against a bleak, sparsely populated backdrop of surreal beauty and harsh serenity. I’m sure most normal people just drive through these areas and appreciate the pristine nature and the amazing vistas provided at every twist and turn. But I cannot help but look at the wooded hills of Montana, its high plains filled with verdant grass, flowing with clean water our present self-destructive industrials has not yet devastated, and wonder what the end of the world, more specifically Fallout’s end of the world, would look like here.

I know Fallout one and two sort of explored this concept already, and Fallout 3 ostensibly did the same thing New Vegas did for the DC area. But there’s something far more evocative about the approach Fallout: New Vegas takes to exploring various landscapes. Even within the game, each town and place has a very distinct feel. I’d be hard pressed to really notice the difference between the Red Rider factory and the Corvega factory in Fallout 3, but even the H&H Tool Factory, a throwaway building I imagine most people never saw in New Vegas, had its own unique personality and a story that tied directly into the mythos of New Vegas.

After my drive through the Indian reservations of Southern Montana and Northern South Dakota my interest is especially piqued. These tragic places of poverty existing against a backdrop of staggering natural beauty paired with the clusters of entitled civilization bordering them just to the north and south, populated mostly by white people stuck in flyspeck towns, set a backdrop for a future conflict in my head. And it seems perfect for the Fallout setting. Does an older, better way, if somewhat tragic in origin and not always as terrible and effective as our modern methods, win out? Or does the inevitable march of progress without concern for its direction win out, material wealth and excess outdoing quiet isolationism?

The Northwest and Midwest of the United States seems like such a perfect place to examine the social experiments that Fallout revels in, it seems like a total loss that it hasn’t been examined yet. We already know what the somewhat less than urban capital of Fallout 3’s world would look like, what the Mojave desert and its already scattered bastions of civilization might grow into. The first two Fallouts even gave us an image, granted a pixilated one, of the American West Coast (except for the part north of Corvalis which, most people from California will agree, is pretty much unimportant unless you’re trying to shoot a film on the cheap). But we’ve never considered the Midwest in anything more than a passing fashion.

People from the coasts tend to ignore the Midwest. But the Midwest has given us so much: the Hmong-American cultural identity, Leinenkugel’s Honeyweisse, Barack Obama’s political career, awareness of Lutefisk and Bob Dillon. In all seriousness, the Midwest is a ubiquitous place to outsiders, but people who know its landscapes, both cultural and physical, know it to be a rich landscape for storytelling. Many of our most interesting authors hail from the Midwest, write with a Midwestern perspective and tell Midwestern stories. More than just Dillon has emerged from the Midwestern musical scene, and while American Movie made a spirited mockery of the Midwestern spirit of film making it also told a uniquely Midwestern story, just like Twin Peaks and Juno did.

The Midwest is more than just fertile ground for storytelling. It’s a part of the American culture and landscape, a unique feature of our nation. And it’s rarely given its due. Fallout is the perfect venue for revealing the true heart of the Midwest. Before Fallout: New Vegas rolled around I didn’t give a shit about Las Vegas. One night passing through and I was done and gone (to be fair, I don’t find casinos that interesting – ditto goes for Fallout: New Vegas). But New Vegas showed me how much more there was to Nevada and Vegas itself. By casting the city in the light of a struggling place riddled with violent crime and corruption instead of a monolithic capital of corruption with relatively little violent crime for its deeply entrenched perfidious institutions it drew me into Las Vegas’ unique culture and made me care about the story it had to tell.

There are even hints in New Vegas about Montana retaining a thriving culture. I’d just like to see that play out. The scale is big, certainly. Much bigger than anything else we could consider. But I could totally see a game centered around Missoula being incredibly interesting. Or Bozeman. Or Butte, or Billings. Any of Montana’s quaint, unique and yet somehow constant cities littering the I-90. Expansions could investigate reservations, Wyoming and the horror that is the Idaho border. I’ve even got a title for that last one: Allen’s Heart. It’s about a robot heart encased in stone in the ruins of Couer D’Alene. I’d like to look for in 2012. Work with me here, Zenimax.

My point, belabored as it may be, is that Fallout is great at bringing places I never really cared for to the forefront of my imagination and my daily thoughts. And that the Midwest is just itching for that treatment. In that, or in any video game. Aside from Puzzle Agent, which already nailed Northern Minnesota but good.