I wanted to make a thread to discuss the moral, life, or societal lessons that Fallout games have made you realize, whether meaning to or not.

For those of you not in the know, the early stages of Fallout 2, you come across a small town known as "The Den." Home to a large amount of drug addicts and a branch of the exclusively lucrative (lucratively exclusive?) "Slaver's Guild." I'm sure you can guess how they earn their income, so I'll describe them with an abrupt, but vaguely accurate, "it's not a race thing, I promise." If you decide to join the guild after talking to its leader, Metzger, you can go on slave runs to gather slaves, obviously. But human rights violations aside, after a few slave runs, you will be unable to undertake more and further conversing with Metzger will prompt him to say "Oh, look who's here. You think you're special or something? Speak up or get the f%$# out."

Ignoring the blunt profanity that is a staple of the series, I began to think about what he, a fictional character represented by barely distinguishable pixels on a screen, had said. Fallout 2 had cranked my head back and force fed me humble pie. The man holding the plate? One of the most likely of any non-demon to be voted Ambassador of Hell. Which he would wear like a badge of honor, as evidenced by making all new initiates of his guild receive a Slaver Tattoo. Metzger had made me realize a harsh truth that I am not special, I'm not the "One," at least not to the outside world.

The only people in the Fallout 2 universe that recognize your character as anything more than tomorrow's obituary are your home village family, which is the equivalent of your parents telling you that you are a special snowflake. Forunately, good ol' Metzger is there to tell me that the world is a snowstorm and there will always be snowflakes better than me -- even if someone is unique, they are not inherently special.

Although, in hindsight, he probably wasn't intending on teaching that lesson, he was probably just being a dike.