wow.. just.. wow

I do think its funny that virtually everybody in the higher echelons of the slavers and antislavers is black.


ALso, why are all the ghouls white with weird New Yorker accents?

Maybe there's a hidden in plain sight racist message there, that only white people can withstand the transformation.

[/sarcasm]

Woah, anyone else having trouble figuring out what the first post means? Obviously he wants to say something but is so afraid of stepping outside the bounds of political correctness that he makes it like a riddle. Im no good with riddles.

He's probably implying that he's a bit of a racial supremacist himself (or a "racialist" as they call themselves) and he doesn't like the way the media, fallout 3 included, considers racism a negative phenomenon.

I dont think everything you said about the Ghouls in the game getting picked on or racial comments or whatever are true , Because

If you had just stepped out of 101 and seen a Ghoul i doubt you would be like

"Oh hey gob i was just gonna have a tea party care to join?"

I think anyone would be freaked out and sterotypical towards a ghoul because no one really knows who they are because its always shoot on sight and look it in that view you would be scared by something you didnt know and that looked scary.

EDIT: Spelling mistakes

I think this really says it all - the original poster had to really be Looking for it to see it.

IMHO there is no racism present in any form that could be construed as inappropriate in Fallout 3.

Given that we are in America, if there had been blatant and inappropriate racism put into the game, there would have been a Huge backlash against Bethesda. It doesn't take very much these days to touch of a firestorm of criticism - and we really don't need to try and find racism where it does not exist. I am not surprised that someone tried to pull the racist card, but I also get angry when people do it in situations where there is clearly no racism present.

Ridiculous notion that Fallout 3 is racist - just ridiculous.

Well there now, I wouldnt say that...

Nobody can talk about race these days. Either you skirt around the issue, dropping hints or you just dont bring it up at all. I for one would be very racist against ghouls and am not afraid to admit it. Them and their skullheadfaces.

Probably makes us commie race deniers.


Very well, he is saying that this game puts black people in the position of noble heroes with all the bad guys being nasty imperialist white guys, as per the Hollywood bias of affirmative action in making blacks seem like they're always the good guys and the whites are always evil, as we see in films like The Birth of a Nation.

Oh. Kinda like how in the movies the terrorists are always traced back to some evil white dude looking out over the city he's trying to destroy from the penthouse of the building he owns.

In a perfect world ones race or color or religious affiliation or looks or... would not matter. We would all see one another as equals. I am not sure however where this world would exist. I can't imagine there is one spot in society where people do not judge others based upon how we look or how much money we have or what we believe. Such a place does not exist in this world and I am quite sure of that.

For someone making a movie or a game (especially a rpg) in an alternate world without including the human reactions to such differences and judgments would remove the human elements of the movie or game. FO3 is supposed to represent an alternate timeline of this world and one in which horrible events have occurred. It is only realistic to include common human reactions to such things as racism.

What should come from this is the lesson that just because someone is different does not mean they are a lesser being. Rather than being angry that it exists in this game we should be glad that it presents it in a way to make one question their own prejudices and why they treat others differently because of looks or size or color or differences. I applaud this game for urging us to realize that looks are only skin deep and that inside us all lives a person who has the same needs and desires and feelings that we do. FO3 does not take place in a perfect world and was meant to examine human frailties and it did a fine job of it.

i ignor messages social or otherwise that appear in books, movies, games. i just do.

anyway bethesda is a business and to sell the most games they have to include both sixes and all the races. so there are some black nasty types. good i got tied of just killing whites. i am not a racist or sixist. i don't care about the race or six of those i kill.

The only blatant racism I see in the game is with Ghouls - which as pointed out are not really a race.

I think the OP is reading things into the game that don't exist. In fact there is a suprising amount of non-racism in the game.

Some have pointed out that since the Chinese were the ones that devastated the DC area, then there might be racism against asians. but there isn't.

The OP seems to be making the point that all blacks are portrayed positively and whites negatively. But clearly there are counter examples. Obviously Sheriff Sims and Hannibal (the guy helping freed slaves) is positive, and other examples like the Megaton Doc, or Star Paladin Cross or Three Dog. But then there are negative examples. The Slavers Eulogy Jones and Grouse (the guy with the Mezmatron) are black. In rivet city the merchants in A Quick Fix, and Potomac attire are black but not very positive role models. Etc.

And the same can be said for whites. Some very good ones (Dad) and some very bad ones (Mr. Burke).

And in my game the unnamed badguys (ie Raiders) have a good balance of races.

I really think the OP is seeing what he or she is looking for in the game, not what is.

I don't think the OP was complaining about in-universe racism, he seemd to be complaining about alledged racism on the part of the developers in assigning characterisation.


That's kind of even worse. "I have no agenda to pursue; I just kill anybody".

Umm, well I sure did not see any of that other than there were no American Indians in the game which sort of made me wonder what happened to us.

There are no actual Indians or Arabs or Jews in the game either. I think the devs just went for the 4 races that Americans woul recognise. Although I'm still trying to work out exactly what a "Hispanic" is.

Or indeed a "Caucasian" and "Asian". Perhaps the only positive discrimination is that African Americans are the only ones in the game with a recognised ethnicity.

This is probably the point where we're reading to much into design choices. And if the developers are anything like me, they assign character race mostly at random. Hmm, need a few more elves here...

i always wondered about that too. i think it's a bit of an oversight by the devs, whether or not it was intentional i do not know.

Yeah, well in my mind they are all safe in Alaska so it's not a huge problem.

Safe and Alaska don't really go together in Fallout. Maybe they all joined the Tribals?



Now I come to think of it, Vance looks kind of Indian. I keep calling him Dr Suresh.

I think you are making something out of nothing just chill out and play the game

I will take as true others observation that the good/bad -- white/black thing is appropriately "randomly" distributed - I have not played the whole game and have not run a statistic to say for sure. Such a statistic would also be hard to compile. You'd want to weight in the main story line characters more than the side-quests which many players may miss. And other factors.

My opinion is that no choices are truly "random". In advertising and web page design and in media - it is all HEAVILY pre-calculated, there are boxes to tick! A web page will want to guide you in how to interact with it and how to use whatever feature it is they are implementing. It is not a random selection of buttons on a screen. In mnay cases you are indeed being brainwashed to think and act in a particular way and any attempts to request something out of the ordinary are met with derision, eg "I want a print button, why isn't there one?" - and the answer is "you are meant to interact with the web pages, not to take a hardcopy, so we will make it hard/impossible for you to print".

Similar rules apply to my kids school books illustrations and choice of character names. Eg "Salim has 5 pounds and Ibrahim has 3". Having 50% Muslim names in a 95% Christian country's school books is strange to say the least. Same applies to races.

This is called "positive discrimination". We can also call it brainwashing or whatever, especially when applied to kids.

I am saying all this trying to prove that it is not "random". There may and may not be a message to be given, but I do not believe it is random, to the contrary I believe there has been a lot of thought and meetings and arguments about the choices they made.

Just thinking the same

Ghouls.. kill em
Mutants.. kill em
wastlanders that beg/steal.. enslave them
anybody that gets it my way.. i kill em'

they ALL bleed RED

I think the OP's point is that there is kind of a political agenda by Betheda, in portraying Blacks as honorable and Whites as dishonorable. At least that's what seemed clear to me from the post.

I don't think that is true at all, and his examples seemed weak to me, but that seemed to be be what he's implying. Not that there is explicit racism in the game.

There is however alot of non-racial sterotyping in the game. Some of which can be offensive to some.



I don't think Super Mutants bleed red.

Yes

You're a horrible horrible person




They're ghouls now

They get treated the same as they did except now they're called zombies