Fallout gay
Oh Fallout…
I have so many opinions about you – and not all of them are totally positive. Hell, some of them are just downright negative. But even I have to admit that you are an iconic franchise. You took the gaming world by storm, introduced the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (strength, perception, endurance, charisma, agility, and luck) system, and provided a much needed escape from the fantastical fantasy worlds of other RPGs of the age (okay, Wasteland did it first). Your characters contain always been interesting, your lore has always been a delightful mixture of zany and serious – you’re a great franchise.
I’ve already spoken in length about my experience with Fallout. Novel Vegas played a very big part in how I feel about queerness in gaming. It shaped a lot of my very staunch opinions about the subject. After all, here was a reasonably large title that included some mostly-decent queer stuff. To this day, I can’t find one queer gamer who wasn’t pleasantly surprised to the spot bespectacled Arcade Gannon was not only gay, but definitely interested. Not to mention every other character.
And it doesn’t stop there!
A lot of the majo
Fallout Isn’t Gay Enough
Things are going well for the Fallout show. Fans and critics alike seem to be pleased with it, and while it hasn’t officially been renewed yet, the producers are already talking about season 2. But there’s a problem, something many hadn’t considered, but the brave folks at Pride.com are bringing this issue to the forefront so we can think of what’s really important: Fallout isn’t gay enough. I grasp, I know… why even bother watching it now? I’m sorry to acquire ruined your anticipation, but isn’t it worthwhile to know beforehand so you don’t waste your hour on some boring display that doesn’t have celebration flags and characters who mention how gay they are in every conversation? You’re welcome, America.
According to Pride.com, “Textual queerness is only fleetingly on screen and none of the main characters — at least so far — have explored a queer romance.” I don’t know what “textual queerness” is, and when I looked it up, I couldn’t find it mentioned anywhere else, with none of the permutations of the phrase seeming to fit the context Pride.com uses it in, so I assume it was made up on the spot to make this whining sound more thoughtful than it
Whenever we think about LGBT history within Fallout, our minds always seem to go straight to Fallout 2. After all, we’ve talked about it quite a few times and how it was one of the first instances of gay marriage in video games. It would be hard not to talk or even reflect about it with a reputation like that.
But there were still steps made towards LGBT representation in Fallout 1 (known as just Fallout, but we’ve used 1 here to make it obvious we’re not talking about the series), steps that were important during the year of 1997.
As fans of the games will understand, you play the role of a vault dweller and can choose to play either as a man or a chick. While sexuality doesn’t perform a huge role in this game, you are able to have sex with sex workers, as well as a scant other NPCs.
Unfortunately, homosexual male players get the short end of the stick in this game. They are able to flirt with one male NPC, a guard who stands at the entrance of the Brotherhood of Steel, but the guard will not be interested. The only ‘good’ thing about this is that the guard also rebuffs female players too.
Female players, much like they did during Fire Emblem T Fallout 2 was released in 1998, a time where diversity was not as celebrated as it is today. Since it’s free, Fallout 3, Fallout: Recent Vegas and Fallout 4 have been released into the world, and with them, a string of LGBT characters – from Arcade Gannon to Piper Wright – that we all know and love. These characters have shaped players in many different ways, but it was Impact 2 that paved the way for a main attraction in-game that has since been included in games like Fire Emblem, Dragon Age, and Fable: lgbtq+ marriage. Same-sex marriage in the US officially was legalized 17 years later. To say that Fallout 2 was ahead of the curve is possibly the biggest understatement of the year. In mid July, original blueprints of The Sims were released by programmer and artist Don Hopkins. These blueprints included the fiasco of Maxis firing a gay programmer for including LGBT content as easter eggs, as well as Hopkins retain thoughts on the partnership design being ‘heterosexist and monosexist’. When I sent over my questions to Chris Avellone, one of the designers for Fallout 2, the question of whether anyone at Inky Isle Studios .