I’m Thankful for Fallout

There are plenty of reasons to be thankless this holiday season. I’m drowning in debt, I’m slightly overweight (by ‘slightly overweight’ I mean, ‘fat’), my girlfriend hates me, and my friends and family use me as a punchline for all of their bad jokes around the dinner table. Happy Thanksgiving…

Personal inequities aside, I open the newspaper — actually Twitter — only to read that the most energetic/fun/liberating city in the world was sucker-punched by cheap-shot artist cave-dwellers. New York, DC, London, Madrid, Boston, and now Paris. Paris…Really? The world is officially going to hell.

Before you call me a pessimist, I truly am thankful for something. I’m not all doom and gloom. I am thankful…for Fallout 4.

Growing up in South Boston, I’ve witnessed the plethora of movies, television series, and documentaries. Hollywood can’t get enough of the rough/tough Boston underworld and unique accent…aaaaand the 25% tax break that Massachusetts hands out for filming here.

Now the most popular video game, potentially of all-time, is set in Beantown. (Instead of looking up true statistics about video game popularity, I just read an article about how Pornhub’s website traffic went down by 10% on Fallout’s launch date…all the numbers I need.)

I’m thankful for Fallout’s release for 3 reasons. First, the game is incredibly fun and time consuming — meaning, I spend less time getting sh!t on by my friends/family/girlfriend, and more time enjoying quiet time…quiet time being shooting ghouls and raiders and launching mini nukes at super mutants. Shhhh, quiet time, Shhhh. Second, Bethesda hit the nail on the head when creating the map of Boston. I obviously made a b-line to South Boston and put canons atop of Castle Island, which I can call for regardless of where I am at in the city. (For you Southie fans, they even came up with a mini hot dog stand to represent Sullies, and also implemented the walkway around the Sugar Bowl. Hilarious.) Third, I’m thankful that I got the roadmap for a post-apocalyptic Boston. The world isn’t getting any safer, and that’s putting it mildly. At some point, we all might find ourselves in a Fallout shelter that freezes us for 200+ years only to wake up and have our family stolen and the world around us is run by Ghouls, Supermutants, and the occasional life-size scorpion. It really might happen…

So, when sh!t hits the fan, and we’re all sent back to the stone age, just remember everything Bethesda taught you in Fallout 4 and you will be fine!

Cheat sheet: find a working line German Shepherd that automatically obeys your orders and kills people for you, befriend a Robot with a trench coat that will help you find your family, search through everyone’s home for random stuff and put it in your gigantic backpack that allows you to carry 300 items (might be tough to find a backpack that big…) and put cannons on top of Castle Island.

Greg Shuman, Contributing Writer, GamerDuel