What if the Enclave are the good guys?
“What the hell are you saying?”
What if the Enclave are the GOOD guys in Fallout 3?
I know what you're thinking.
“But Austin,” you say, “What about--”
Okay. Sure. You have a point. And you’re not going to catch me arguing in favor of
Eugenics. I’ve seen how that story ends. But let’s put that aside for a second and
just take a look at the world that we live in in Fallout 3, and to an extent the entire
franchise. You grow up in a vault--a hardy relic of the
Pre-War era. Safe. Secure. Regimented. Everything from when and where you sleep, to what you
eat, to your job, clothes, and technology you use is predestined and controlled by the
all-powerful, ever-watchful Overseer. Safety, but at the expense of Liberty. Safety, but
at the expense of Liberty. Nice, but it would make for a very boring
game.
Oh. Well. Shit. Anyway. The game begins, the system fails,
and you’re thrust into the Post-Nuclear Wasteland, and it’s…
FUCKING. UNHINGED.
There’s dirt. Raiders. Super Mutants. People living on a boat that is clearly going to
evaporate into powder in five years, the sun, fucking ZOMBIES, zombie BEARS, and unbelievable,
unprecedented levels of freedom on a level we’ve not seen since a time predating the
Age of Agriculture, except NOW there’s shotguns and nuclear bombs you can launch from a slingshot
on your SHOULDER. Sure, you may die at any moment when a Super
Mutant Behemoth decides to play golf with your asshole. But that’s the price you pay
for total freedom--anarchy at the cost of safety.
Philosophy majors and the few of you who payed attention in High School Government probably
know where this is going by now, and you’re right--we’re about to talk about Hobbes
and Rousseau. Thomas Hobbes believed that a long time ago
we all lived in a hellish landscape of selfish, brutish monsters, and those monsters were
us--we took what we wanted when we could, and suffered people taking what they wanted
from us--might was the only law of the land, and this was the way things were. He called
it the “State of Nature.” In order to protect ourselves against stronger bullies
who would kill us for our stuff, we grouped together, agreed to some basic rules, at the
expense of total freedom. He called that arrangement the “social contract.”
Like, “Dear Everybody else, I will not steal, rape, or murder. I guess
maybe I’ll pay taxes for roads and stuff, too. Everybody else, you agree in return to
follow these rules, and to stop other people from not following them.
Signed, Austin.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau came later and was like “Hey, um, yeah, but what if instead of the
‘State of Nature’ being awful it was awesome and we just had sex all the time and then
people who were jealous were like ‘No! You can’t do what you want! I want to control
EVERYTHING.’ And now we all live under the dictarial thumb of the oppression of the masses,
man! The Social Contract is a Sham!” But what does this have to do with Fallout?
Or the Enclave? While here in the real world we’re doomed to argue about the reality
of state of nature until our species inevitably goes extinct, Fallout has already done the
homework--in their world at least. When the bombs dropped on October 23, 2077, the big
“reset” button was pressed on Human Society, and Nature was returned to its original state--the
State of Nature. And which does it more resemble: idyllic and awesome, like Rousseau thought
it would be? Or more like Hobbes: a shitty bad place where the strong do what they can
and the weak suffer what they must?
“What the hell does this have to do with the Enclave? Eden wanted to put a modified
strain of the Forced Evolutionary Virus into Project Purity and wipe out every ‘non human
mutant’ from the Capital Wasteland.” Yeah, but the Enclave isn’t lead by John
Henry Eden in Fallout 3-- It’s lead by Colonel Augustus Autumn--when you’re in the Enclave
Base, Raven Rock, and Colonel Autumn says “oh, shit, the President’s lost his mind,
do what I say” who do the Enclave Soldiers follow? It’s not Eden. It’s Colonel Autumn.
And all Colonel Autumn wants to do is seize Project Purity and use it to lend weight to
the authority of the Enclave and start forming a functioning, centralized government again--using
WATER to enforce the social contract. And sure, of course Autumn was planning on
killing you! People who survive in the Shitty Wilderness of the Wasteland are only able
to really do so by murder-bludgeoning everyone in the vicinity to death with a lead pipe
like Mad Max in the beginning of Fury Road. Outsiders who haven’t been socialized are
a liability. And he was right! You, as the Lone Wanderer goes on to utterly mess up his
plans, either by putting a bullet in his brainpan or by the world’s most disappointing speech
check. And then there’s the--
BROTHERHOOD. OF. STEEL. THey take control of Project Purity, inefficiently
try to distribute water to the scattered inhabitants of the Wasteland--for FREE, with NO support
or sacrifices from local citizens. And the system is exploited by snake oil salesman,
religious fanatics, and violent criminals. And the entire expansion campaign, Broken
Steel, is just the Brotherhood of Steel charging through the Wasteland, ragemurdering remnant
Enclave with their giant Toy Robot--an Enclave that they think is essentially neutered until
they Nuke Liberty Prime from Orbit. “Hey. What’s your fucking point?”
Right. Fallout builds its entire narrative structure exploring the balance between order
and chaos, the social contract and the state of nature--upon this premise, it asserts that
the State of Nature is the Hobbsian one where everything is awful and it’s just big people
punching small people for their bottle of Nuka Cola. The logical solution to the Hobbsian
State of Nature is the Social Contract, where we all band together as a group and give up
our freedoms to Nuka Grenade our neighbor in the face for being annoying in order to
keep him from shoving rusty spikes up my fingernails for pocket change. The Enclave, as the most
technologically advanced faction with the most access to education and materials are
a totally suited (although not exclusive) candidate to spearhead such a thing under
the banner of Project Purity--clean water for all, at the price of not shooting your
neighbor in the skull--instead, the Brotherhood of Steel murderdeaths everybody in order to
preserve the status quo, a status quo that only seems to benefit them, and then proceeds
to REINFORCE that status quo by taking their Big Bad Robot and punching the weak Enclave
remnant in the face. It’s a Rousseuian response to a Hobbsian problem. Sure, the Enclave isn’t
perfect--but extreme-as-hell times call for extreme-as-hell solutions. The first laws
in our world weren’t “you go to jail for a year and then you’re on probation.”
They cut off your hands or beat you to death with rocks. The Enclave is awful, but maybe,
just maybe, they’re the Government the Wasteland Deserves. Thanks for watching.