Why thank God for the apocalypse? Because it gives me something to write about that isn’t Aria. Not that I dislike writing about Aria, but it has a way of possessing me via dark, indefinable magics and forcing me to serve its needs. It’s an unforgiving master. And I haven’t even watched the second or third seasons yet.

On second thought, I suppose it’s inappropriate to muse on Aria in a post which is, to some degree, about Fallout 3. The Capital Wasteland is most assuredly no place for gondolas. Hell, it’s no place for human beings, and that’s part of what makes it such a compelling setting, at least for me. If, like me, you find a certain creepiness in isolation, in abandoned radio loops and vast, empty spaces, in “towns” populated by two or three or four people, Fallout 3 will do horrible things to your sanity. Horrible, awesome things. Which, coincidentally, brings us back to our good buddy Steve Gaynor. The three-way parallel he draws is simple:

Literature excels at exploring the internal (psychological, subjective) aspects of a character’s personal experiences and memories.

Film excels at conveying narrative via a precisely authored sequence of meaningful moments in time.

And video games excel at fostering the experience of being in a particular place via direct inhabitation of an autonomous agent.

Oversimplification this may be, but Gaynor raises an interesting question: how are we to account for the idea of setting in video games? As much as it’s “the place where they are,” as in, say, a novel, it can also become “the place where I am,” and few games have made that idea more evident to me than Fallout 3.

Before we get into Fallout 3 and setting specifically, though, I want to lay some groundwork — and by “some,” I mean a lot, and in the disorganized spirit of exploratory writing, so now would be a good time to pour yourself a glass of your favorite hard liquor.