Discussing
Fallout 4 and Religion After the Bomb

What might the absence of religion in Fallout 4 say about our current cultural imagination?

Agree! FYI: as late as Webster's Seventh Collegiate Dictionary, the primary meaning of "decimate" is "to select and then kill one out of every ten."

Religion is rarely represented in video games in a way that is compelling. Frankly, this may say less about trends in our culture than about what developers do to create a certain feel to a world, or what they feel they should or should not do in order to target the largest number of potential users. The subset of active gamers in the population likely leans towards something like a kind of agnosticism -- from the chats I've seen, that's not atheism, just secularism. Developers need to cater to consumer expectations, or expect a financial flop. Gamers are very young, and often ignorant of the various religious traditions. Marketing a religion to them in a game is nearly impossible. But the absence of religion in Fallout is no more indicative of future trends than the presence of the Force in The Old Republic: TOR does not indicate a future Jedi religion, nor the increase in magical thinking. I might suggest that a similar line of thought holds true here.

In Reply to intotheclarities.com (comment #27740)
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Hi! I very much agree with you about the character of gaming culture in general, and I certainly agree that game-makers make games that appeal to their target markets. That's actually precisely why I find this game interesting. It tells us what a large number of people value and dream about. When religion is absent from a fantasy world, it tells us more about the creators and target audience than it does about any reality.

To that end, I don't read Fallout 4 as a prediction of the future or even an indication of where gaming culture is going. I have no idea (or very little--prognostication is not one of my strengths) what a real post-apocalyptic future would look like (although I'm quite certain the world of Fallout 4 would *not* be what it would be like). So I do agree with your comment that this game isn't any more predictive of anything than the Force in a Star Wars game.

That having been said, there *are* proven ways of integrating religious themes into creative work in a way that a secular-minded gamer wouldn't really be likely to complain about. Fallout 3 has these themes--very muted, but they're there. And I do think it's interesting that someone would create a future without religion in a scenario that--if it had any degree of correspondence to our reality--would almost certainly result in some kind of explicitly religious response.

Thanks for the response! Good food for thought.

In Reply to billwald (comment #27738)
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Thanks! I probably should have chosen another word--I meant it in the cliched, common use of the term, rather than the ancient Roman military discipline sense. But I shouldn't use cliches. Replace "decimated" with "largely destroyed" or some such thing.

Actually there is a church to the right of the main town spawn point that accepts all religions, not just the Children of Atoms.

I think it's a combination of many things. intotheclarities made a good point as well as the fact that Christians would be upset if their religion was posed in any negative light.

If there was a nuclear fallout there would most likely be reversion to tendencies exhibited in the medieval age; look it up, it's documented. People would separate into groups and though it sounds very upsetting from a Christian perspective, Christians would be one of the groups that would commit crimes to gain power, influence, control, and order. If they did not exhibit control through physical dominance, they would be destroyed themselves by another group. But if we put a Christian man in the game forcing you to convert or die, as has happen many, many times throughout history (colonizations or Americas, Europe, Middle East, China, etc.) or have a Christian man attempting to kill you because of what you believe in, or because he needs your resources for his group, people would go insane. It would be a huge controversy.

Naturally, of course, if the game was in good taste, it would show the nice parts of Christianity that Christians love the religion for, like worship, spirituality, giving, donations, etc. But people don't want to see both sides of the coin, they want to see just the nice part; not everyone can handle the other side. People use video games to get away from their lives and bringing that real controversy into a game is a little bit too close for them.

Fallout is not devoid of religion at all.

-There's a chapel in the biggest city that is being run by a good man who is looking for meaning in life and decided to open a place for people to find faith (No bibles survived the bombs it seems, so they have to figure things out on their own.) It's pretty humbling to see it. Your character can even sit in the pews and pray there. (You also get a temporary leveling bonus if you do.)

-Plenty of ruined churches in the game with skeletons inside (Which means many of those people chose to spend their last moments in church when the bombs fell.)

-One of the main factions in the game is based out of a old church. And it's not a coincidence that they're the one group dedicated to freeing synths/slaves (reminiscent of historical christian abolitionists.)

Previous Fallout games had even more religious overtones. Fallout:New Vegas had an entire DLC where you helped a missionary and a repentant slaver protect some post-apocalyptic tribes-people.