Fallout mod makers tend to be radical communists who see no hope in liberal democracy.
en.wikipedia.org
Seeing everybody left of Lenin as a fascist is also becoming popular again. The widespread belief that the Social Democrats were equivalent to the Nazis contributed to the rise of Hitler as it divided the left and made everybody think leftists were unhinged extremists. Not exactly healthy.
Ah, that makes sense even more. Especially when the NCR in FNV is an openly capitalist state (both Caesar and Chief Hanlon complain that rich folks like Brahmin Barons have a lot of pull with the government) so it makes sense that leftist modders would portray them as the kind of evildoers who shoot their own men and hunt former heroes down.
What is it with people's obsession with radical communism, anyways? It's the Team Rocket of politics. Everywhere they tried it, it failed, and things either became a horrible, ungodly mess, or they had to revert back to partial capitalism to survive. You'd think people would stop after an entire century of people trying out that idea and horribly failing to the point where millions died.
Well, considering how many leftists are signing on with radical communism, maybe leftists today are unhinged extremists. Anyone to the right of Karl Marx is automatically targeted as a Nazi, that kind of shows how leftists are psychologically unstable. Especially when these dolts blame the way America was going for the nuclear war in Fallout. Instead of, you know, China running out of oil and waging war on America, then launching nukes when the Americans kicked them out of Alaska and began counter-invading them?
No wonder we got those Frontier devs who whined about how joining the Enclave is a "fascist power fantasy" for "Trump supporters". If most of them veer to the left of Lenin, then of course they'd think that way.
Fallout's politics really aren't that deep either and it's just as funny watching these spergs clamoring on about how super political it is when it's just their blind confirmation bias and general retarded interpretations of the lore. They think they're hot shit because they read the fallout wiki or watched shoddycast's storyteller.
To be fair, the first two Fallout games were slanted slightly to the left. Especially Fallout 2, where the Enclave is a parody of American patriotism and militarism, while right-wing NCR folks are painted with the same brush as the evil Enclave:
"Shaken by the assassination of Vice-President Carlson, right-wing elements seize control of the Congress and set the New California Republic on a path to military rule. Eventually the survivors of the Enclave found a new home in the ranks of the NCR."
-FO2 "bad ending" for the NCR
No wonder why I felt something wrong with the first two FO games that I didn't sense in New Vegas or the Bethesda games. The Frontier devs and the other left-leaning Fallout fans did have to get it from someplace, after all.
I do love how FNV reverses this, though. The "good" ending for Fallout 2 and the NCR has them expanding:
"Your help with Vault 15 launched the New California Republic's push to civilize its neighbors. Though there were many more obstacles to overcome, the NCR now had a foothold into the northern wastes."
Then FNV comes along and says that the NCR's expansion really screwed them over as it stretched them too thin, and the fact that they weren't a military state meant that they couldn't protect their trade routes or territory as well as the Legion can.
"They try to put their stake in everything they see. Nobody's dick's that long, not even Long Dick Johnson, and he had a fucking long dick. Thus, the name. So NCR, tries to hold on to everything. They can't, because it's too big for them to get their arms around. They can't guard the roads, they can't put a line of troops around the Mojave... it's just greed that makes the heads back West even try. Aside from the people in the towns, it's the soldiers that suffer for it most. Ever seen NCR troops asked to go after gangs at three-to-one odds? That bear flag doesn't make them bulletproof. And when those gangs were caused by NCR in the first place, like the Powder Gangers? Caesar on a crutch, don't get me started there."
-Rose of Sharon Cassidy, Fallout: New Vegas
It kinda goes to show that maybe, they should have become a military state before expanding. Then maybe they'd be able to defend their expansions and their territory, and you wouldn't have problems like Caesar's Legion because Edward Sallow would just be some NCR peon paying homage to the militaristic government of the NCR without becoming Caesar.
FNV also tried to portray the Enclave in a different light, with sympathetic characters like the Remnants and Arcade. Not to mention they also had smart fascists and capitalists like Caesar and Robert Edwin House. If they were written with the same kind of brush as the FO2 writers did, House and Caesar would be parodies of fascism and capitalism, while expanding without militarism would be portrayed as a good thing for the liberal NCR.
Well, if liking the Enclave is a fascist, right-wing power fantasy, that kind of explains why they're loved by many fans. People like to play as the bad guys, they also like patriotism in video games, so a bad guy faction that's extremely patriotic will get a lot of fans. It's quite funny how that's probably not what the FO2 devs intended, but it's where the fanbase eventually wound up. They made the Enclave as a parody of everything bad about American patriotism, it ended up being the most popular faction in Fallout outside of the Brotherhood of Steel.
It made him just much more unlikeable and looking like an edgelord. He literally looks like some dork trying to pull off a Cyberpunk cosplay.
That's further confirmed by the fact that he uses Enclave eyebots to heal himself and repair his stuff during the battle. Which makes him more of a pussy who relies on technology instead of a man who can win a stand-up fight.
Which is why nonstop sperging about The Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout 4 is so funny.
Yeah why would they want to kill the synths off, is it because they're genocidal fascists or the fact they're a byproduct of a faction playing god and doing ethically dubious things with their creations such as slave labor, infiltration, or espionage?
Mostly because the Brotherhood doesn't like it when A) someone does technology better than them, and B) someone makes a piece of new tech that far outstrips the limits for society the Brotherhood desires. Those outsiders are only supposed to be primitive savages, dammit!
So no, I don't see the Brotherhood as genocidal fascists. Nor do I see them as good guys who are trying to stop a faction from playing God. In the end, all the Institute did was make clones of people, which is nowhere near as dangerous as activating a three-story robot that chucks nukes at the enemy. The Brotherhood is doing what they're doing because of the same reasons that Father Elijah didn't want outsiders to get their hands on technology: they want to keep it all to themselves, and keep the rest of the outside to a lower level of tech which would make them easier to control or keep down from the POV of the Brotherhood. To call them fascist is to imply that they're actually trying to build a state, which they're not. They're just techno-bandits who want to keep all the world's tech for themselves. They would rather see all the tech be destroyed rather than for it to be handed out to others.
