This game is absolutely fucking vile. Sickening manufacturing consent for what would only shortly after happen in Bolivia. Systematically dismantling an entire country run completely by the "cartels" the current administration likes to fearmonger so much about. The actual people of Bolivia are dehumanized; never talked to or about. One mission has you heading into a school, filled with children, to interrogate a teacher related to a target. Students sit in their desks as you, a CIA agent, point guns around, ready to shoot as the chaos of the open world format ensures you are in danger at every moment. Everyone who worked on this should be ashamed, absolutely ashamed.

Fallout 4 is feverishly obsessed with the past, fetishizing the post-war American lifestyle to the point of nausea. Around every corner is some sort of 1950's iconography presented as some mythical lost ancient glory. The series began as a brutal condemnation of 20th century consumerism, the first game's opening having the military execution of civilians sharing airspace with a commercial for a grossly overpriced nuclear powered car. Somewhere along the line, perhaps not somewhere as easily place-able as the Bethesda acquisition, The Fallout name has become a celebration of the cruelty, violence, and conquest that allowed Americans to partake in the vapid culture the franchise is now so tied to. This world feels dated but in all the worst ways.