Fallout: week 1

As in: Design , Game Journal , Games , Science Fiction

I just started playing Fallout, the "post-nuclear role playing game" in the vein of Balder's Gate—though I don't know if I'll pick up any group-mates. I haven't played much of it so far, but I'd like to comment a bit on the interface and the opening sequence.

The game opens with a sequence meant to evoke a sort-of nostalgic future. A television in a blasted-out building displays an advertisement for "Vault 13", an under-mountain refuge from atomic war. Then it shows an add for a new car, a "Cryslus." Both ads look like they're straight from the fifties. They use stylized drawings of Dennis-the-Menace-like figures and the car has fins like a classic automobile. At the same time, they evoke the 'prosperous future' the fifties imagined, by adding to the mix an advertisement for a robot and by charging 199,999 for the car.

The interface for the game, similarly, has the look of an old-school science fiction film. Rather than using a digital display like we might expect today, Fallout builds its futuristic machinery from buttons and dials. These clanking, clicking buttons mimic the fifties sci-fi feel, but they also give a tangibility to the game's experience. I've long thought that buttons, levers, and dials make machines feel more 'real' because their very nature (as analog devices) links them physically to the objects they're measuring, or at least it seems to.

These stylistic choices give Fallout the curious effect of being a science-fiction game about the future as conceived by the past. The 1950s-era looks give the game an air of whimsey that offsets the disturbing storyline. I'm keen to see whether these whimsical elements will continue to pop-up throughout the game, or if the dark tone set by the narrative (The future of Earth is a wasteland in the wake of a worldwide atomic war.) will override. The best outcome, I think, would be a mix of the two.

American Flagg!

As in: Comics , Hobarthy , Science Fiction

I'm a bit late getting this comic up, but this was the comic I found in the bins during my random search. I must admit--I've heard of this before and was pretty excited about finding it. Nonetheless, I've scanned a few panels for the Rose Hobarth project:

Leaping Lizards!

As in: Comics , Hobarthy , Science Fiction

Month 3:

This title is your standard Western adventure story, but with alien reptiles as the heroes. Hence, Interplanetary Lizards of the Texas Plains.

I didn't find a sub-story in this one to arrange here, but there are lots of amusing panels. Check 'em out:

1:	2:
3:
Do Gauchos really pee on cacti? Lucas wasn't stealing from Streetcar, but from IPLotTP. In a classic sign that a writer isn't confident in his artist, the narrator box tells us what the picture obviously shows. I find the last panel of this part really funny. The authors constantly give the old man lines like this, to make him seem more "Western", I guess. At one point he says "Don't forget all that stuff I teached ya." 'Teached'? I like the overhead shot. The contrast between the top panel and the bottom one in the quality of the art show that this guy would be really good drawing landscapes and backgrounds with a partner to draw the action. Also, this is one of several places the authors use "Yikes", which makes me laugh.	4:

Posted by briley at 9:45 AM

Now there's an idea!

As in: Media , Science Fiction , The Living Dead

Enterprising screenwriters take note: premise for a zombie movie:

But university officials say all that's not true. They had no role in acquiring the bodies, they're receiving no money. In fact, they never heard of this body show until contacted by the I-Team. We've learned that Perner was able to get bodies meant for medical research and teaching from a factory in Nanjing, China. It worries San Francisco supervisors that these bodies are now on display on Nob Hill. (link)

Given the American tendency (if subconscious) toward racism and xenophobia, the idea of bodies from another country (particularly China, echoing the subtle strain of "yellow menace" we've been hearing in the media of late) "destined for medical research" being used in this sort of exhibit seems the perfect audience-appeal conceit for the release of a government funded T-virus or Z virus. The bodies, infected with this nasty experimental virus, are stolen and improperly plasticized by unscrupulous museum exhibitors. Dripping, infecting, and zombie-based chaos ensues. Audiences flock to the theater.

Why we're afraid of robots

As in: Science Fiction

One of my favorite SF themes is that "technology is going to kill us," part of what Bukatman suggests is the conservative undercurrent that drives SF. Behold the dangers Dorothy faced:

Brewster Rockit Copyright 2005 Tim Rickard

To continue the theme from previous posts—what do we do with this in class? Is this the rhetoric of Chicken Little? As SF and "real life" get closer and closer, the novels about VR games driving people to murder ride the same airwaves as congressional hearings about videogame violence.