Did anyone else get shocked by who President Eden really was? and by the Enclave? right from the start of the game i started to listen to Eden,
about how he and his dog would get themselves in all kinds of adventures, i of course did not think about how that fitted in with the timeline of wen the
grate war happened or not, and by the end i would feel all weak because i had let ''fictional propaganda about fictional things'' get a hold on me and i
was all for the Enclave and Eden, not to mention that Eden sounded kinda like Franklin Roosevelt too so i thought that they where the good guys, did
anyone else also fall for the propaganda in the game? and am i the only one who thinks that the Enclave is supposed to represent a broken government
in a broken country ?

Deep.

To be honest it, I kind of fell for it at one time too. I didn't think much of the Enclave my first playthrough, though. Started to realize who they were after the action at the purifier. Even after that Eden came across as the leader who had some sense of morals and common decency while Autumn was the stone-hearted murderer. Who would've guessed it was the other way around.

I didn't suspect anything until I heard the dog story, I knew that didn't fit in to the time line but I was expecting a brain in a jar or something along those lines, not a computer.

Well if it wasn't for all the John Phillips Souza tunes they played, I might have thought twice about whether to trust them or not. But they came across as far too militaristic and patriotic for me to ever take them seriously. I disliked them from the first time I left the Vault. Their messages were so obviously propaganda of the worst sort, I'm surprised anyone could have been fooled.

Yes, I had exactly that experience. I didn't automatically think the Enclave was bad. You have this reassuring voice on the radio saying how things need to get fixed up and the way they were before the war. I mean, at least someone sounds like they have a plan, right? And as you say, they actually could be considered the continuity government. AND have the resources to actually do some good.

I really wanted it to work out between me and the Enclave. This was in spite of Enlcave soldiers zapping at me with energy weapons whenever we met and setting their deathclaw pets on me. I definately tried everything to get our relationship to succeed.

Figured there was something fake about Eden though, as though he was modelling himself on the bygone presidents. All his quotes are borrowed from them, and his fireside chat style of talking and so on. That didn't make me think he was a computer or a brain in a jar, more that he was acting as he thought a US president should be.

I had the option of destroying Eden with the code I found in Autumn's room, but I didn't use it. I heard the Enclave base got destroyed while I was recovering from the purifier incident, so I suppoise Eden was destroyed with that. It was a shame it had to be that way. I miss listening to him on the radio as well.

Shambo, his plan consists of killing everything. Not just the ones he wants to target, everything. FEV is a biological weapon, a class of weapons already considered dangerous because of their unpredictability. And FEV itself has a sordid history of not doing what it was designed to do, and doing things it was not designed to do. Super mutants? Something went horridly wrong in V87 and Mariposa, otherwise we wouldn't have muties running wild in the CW and the Master. Also... Grayditch fire ants. Were meant to just become smaller. Didn't become smaller, and developed the ability to breathe fire.

And you don't think Eden is a threat to all life by wanting to release an antimutagen derived from FEV? Mutation, whether caused by FEV or occurring naturally, is an apparatus of evolution. Everything will eventually mutate eventually. That means everything will be subject to termination by this modified FEV eventually. An http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ApocalypseHow, slow and eventual.

I destroy him so he doesn't threaten all life on earth ever again.

I had a bad feeling about the Enclave before they showed up, because I know the mechanics of propaganda. But truth be told, I thought Eden was a man, spouting BS stories about himself. I was not expecting him to be a computer, but I thought it made perfect sense that he was.

The "Boy and his dog in rural Kentucky" stories, incidentally, were inspired by Abraham Lincoln's childhood: he grew up there with a dog by that name.

Well, when I first played Fallout 3, I was new to the series. So I didnt know ANYTHING about the game or its history. So when I first Enclave Radio, I thought 'wow, these guys are the government, our knights in shining armor, then after The Waters of Life and listening to GNR, I realized The Enclave were dirty thieving liars.

Wow, I can't believe all these people who were so easily fooled by the Enclave. This does not bode well for the future of Democracy.

Well it can be argued that our minds where not very well guarded because after all, we where playing a video game but
yes it does make you wonder if you would have been as easily fooled in real life :violin:

The militaristic music and too cute fireside chats should have been a dead give away. I had them pretty much pegged as soon as I crawled out of the Vault. Everything about their radio broadcasts seemed fake and contrived, I didn't trust them right from the beginning of the game. How anyone could have been taken in by them is beyond me.

well i think that the developers didn't want it to be obvious so maybe that has something to do with it :shrug:

No, I'm pretty sure they did try and make it obvious. Their radio broadcasts are nothing more than blatant and cliche propaganda.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Eden when I met him, I thought at first it was some kind of trap to lead me into a room for some brainwashing for the purifyer code or something like that. The propaganda and also knowing the BOS were friendly was a good indicator the enclave weren't going to be nice.



I really hope it's a role play thing, or I blame the game devs for creating the start of a real life Enclave!!

When I first heard this "Eden" fellow proclaiming himself president over the airwaves, I imagined that he'd just turn out to be some lone hokerr with access to some broadcast equipment and delusions of grandeur, who'd just decided to declare himself president. I still like this idea better than the supercomputer-reality.

As a professor who teaches about media anolysis, I'd agree: The developers expected this to be taken as blatant propaganda from the first time you hear it. The fact that patriotic, feel-good messages are being played as you wander through a decimated wasteland was meant to be taken as ironic, not reassuring.

But again, as a professor who teaches about media interpretation and persuasion, I feel I should add that just because it was meant to be obvious does not mean it was obvious for all players. I could see how the implications might be lost on players in cultures where the signifiers of "disingenuous patriotism" aren't as culturally recognized. I could also see how many of my own college students would be likely to miss such implications, as only very few of them have any experience consuming art, literature, or historical documentary. It disappoints me when they routinely miss such interpretations I consider obvious, but then again, it's my job to make sure they leave my class with the ability to interpret such things. I wonder whether FO3 provides an accessible introduction to such concepts so that players unfamiliar with such tropes will recognize them when they show up in other art and entertainment.

Especially when you consider the content of some of the messages. Like the one about rebuilding all the schools and reinstating all the educational programs from before the war. Hello, don't you think you'd better rebuild the country first, and restore law and order, so that it can actually afford to have these types of things in place? It's one thing to have some pie in the sky goal, but yet another to take it seriously in the face of the devastation that the ordinary person has to dig him/herself out of in order to simply survive.

What's most amazing is how incredibly clumsy the Enclave really was. After the endless radio broadcasts making them seem like friends and saviors of the wasteland, they just charge in terrorizing everyone and killing innocents. Had Eden or Autumn had any intelligence at all, they would have taken a far different tack: instead of sending armed killers to the purifier, they would have sent scientists. They would have used their resources to locate a GECK, and delivered it safe and sound to the purifier. Rather than threaten James, they would have tried to earn his trust (and quietly eliminated him if and when they realized it was impossible). They would have done many of the same things that the Brotherhood of Steel was doing, though more effectively (I doubt the super mutants would have been able to do much against vertibirds). By the time it was over, the people would have been only too glad to have them in charge.

When I first played Fallout 3, I already had some basic knowledge about the storyline of the original classic Fallout games. Therefore I already know that the Enclave are a group of genocidal Fascist when I first listened to their radio broadcast. Part of me hoped that they have seen the error in their ways and has changed since Fallout 2. But another part of me known that the Enclave cannot really be redeemed at that point.

I didn't expect President Eden to be a super computer. I thought that it would be just like in Fallout 2 in which the president is an actual person.

I was kind of hoping that there is an option for you to convince Eden that he is mistaken. He will then order the remaining Enclave forces in the DC area to stand down. After all, if you can convince him to kill himself why can't you tell him to surrender?

Part of me wonders if there is a correlations between real life views (political, moral, military, etc...) and who thought the Enclave were the legit government and who didn't....
Another part screams "DON'T FLAME ME!!!!"

Hard to say. I'm pretty conservative, but I'm opposed to the Enclave because of their methods, not their ultimate vision. Eden's plan involved large-scale genocide, and Autumn... anyone who murders an innocent person just to make a point cannot be trusted in a position of power. However, the rebuilding of society, the protection of children, and the elimination of raiders/slavers/super mutants... no arguments here.

I actually think that Eden's "fireside chats" were brilliantly conceived. People living in a hellish, meaningless existence in a wasteland where "kill or be killed" is the rule rather than the exception... they need hope, they need comfort. Eden provided them with that. It's a little like what Knock-knock said about "Vault-Boy's Book of Jokes". Pretty lame, but comforting for all that. That's why I'm puzzled at how Eden, after his very clever opening gambit, suddenly resorted to Gestapo tactics, undoing everything he (or it) set out to do.

He may have reached self-awareness, but he was AI after all, might even have been corrupted. As for Autumn, we see how he goes from loyal dog to deserter, making his own little group, and doing his own thing. We could venture to say he's a changed man. Also, he's not like Eden, he's a no BS type of guy, and we saw that, by what he did to Janice. He's not the type to lie, maybe kill, but not lie.

What he said in the ending dialogue opened my eyes. (You need a decent speech skill though). He spills the beans on his plans. I usually let him live. (But kill him when he turns his back for that sweet overcoat.)

I let him walk away if I can, simply because by the time I get there, I've pretty much had my fill of killing people for awhile. But after what he did to Janice, I don't feel too bad about snuffing him.

As for Eden, it just seems odd that he plays on the wastelanders' desires and fears so superbly, but then shifts from "winning hearts and minds" to "kill everything that isn't wearing Enclave armor".

I barely listen to the Enclave because of the great music playing over at Galaxy News Radio.

And obviously the whole 'running around with my dog before the war' would point you into the right direction of his existence (unless you assumed he was some crazy man living in a run down shack, but once you got to the point where you saw the first Enclave, I'd think you'd begin to piece it together, that it was a big operation).

I wasn't surprised at all that he wasn't human. I was surprised though, that the Enclave were the bad guys (because I have never played a Fallout game before this, so I had no background knowledge).