Fallout 3

The pervasive, almost crushing cynicism we've come to expect from the world of Fallout has in the past been relieved only by winking gallows humor and silly easter eggs...small comfort in this supremely bleak vision of the future. But the developers of Fallout 3 have done something remarkable: They've dared to give the world a soul. The objective of the game is to bring hope to all people of the wastes not by thwarting an evil plot but by aiding a good one.

The defining masterstroke was to set the game in the ruins of Washington D.C., amid all the unmistakable symbols of what we believe is right and good about this country. Naturally the spectres of corruption are evoked as well, perfectly framing the moral tension that has always been at the heart of Fallout.

The National Mall is a warzone excavated and fortified with bunkers for trench warfare. The Capitol Building is a battleground between mutants and mercenaries, fittingly. But from the crumbling National Archives the Declaration of Independence, Magna Carta and Bill of Rights can be retrieved and preserved. Lincoln-related artifacts as well as the replica Apollo 11 Lunar Module can be recovered from the Smithsonian museums. The Lincoln Memorial is sacred ground for freed slaves who hope to literally make a new home there. The Jefferson Memorial has been converted into a massive water purification machine, promising a better future for all who live in the wastes. The Washington Monument, the tallest and most iconic structure in the city, is a rallying point for the Brotherhood of Steel (who headquarter in the Pentagon) and a broadcast tower for Galaxy News Radio's message of hope and freedom. Only the White House, a rather less revered symbol of the sitting rather than past presidents, has been completely obliterated by a tactical warhead. In a touching show of respect by the game designers Arlington National Cemetary is an untroubled location free of enemies, quests, or other objectives. Perhaps in the same spirit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is omitted altogether. Instead there is the fictitious Anchorage War Memorial commemorating the perhaps-not-ignoble campaign to reclaim Alaska from Chinese aggression.

I knew the exact moment the game won me over. The moment when I truly felt back in the wastes again. Not long after emerging from Vault 101 I came upon the roofless but upright shape of a barn and its attendant silo. It was sunset, the rusted sheet metal wrapping the barren silo gleamed like warm embers. Inside I climbed the leaning stairs to the hay loft. An undisturbed skeleton sat before a wooden table, facedown between outspread elbows and a hunting rifle fallen to the floor. On the table was a ham radio with microphone. I turned it on and the skeleton and I listened to the hiss as the sun sank. No signal.

The wasteland is a decayed portrait of Americana. The governing features are civil infrastructure — broken roads, fallen highway pylons, looming bridges, vanishing railroad tracks, trainyards, sewage and water treatment plants, caged power stations, radio towers, high tension wires stretched between steel scarecrows into the distance — as is correct for a country so aware of how it built itself. The life once supported is well represented by scattered gas stations, auto garages, diners, playgrounds, campgrounds, baseball diamonds, drive-in movie theaters, and modest steepled churches with adjoining graveyards. Our nation's pasttime in fact features prominently, both in President Eden's nostalgic radio broadcasts and in the baseballs, gloves, bats and caps that can be found to the exclusion of all other sports paraphernalia. Children's toys are everywhere. While the previous games have often seemed to parody the idyllic America of the 1950s the landscape this time is rendered in such affectionate detail as to make the relentless devastation nothing short of heartbreaking.

Whatever the cause of the Great War it is clear that the game developers still believe in the essential goodness of our democracy, and are for that reason all the more critical of its failings.