Games

Fallout 3 tracks for a couple reasons. I was gonna object to it, because for me the canon ending is when you activate the water purifier and clean the Potomac river, giving free clean water to the Wasteland. However, the evil ending is to add the Enclave's FEV (Forced Evolution Virus) to the purifier, which kills any mutant, ghoul, mutated creature, and a lot of humans who have invisible impurities. The Enclave is basically the ultra conservatives.

There is also a slaver faction you can join. You will need to enslave (or kill) their first target, a sniper called Arkansas, in order to get in, and there's an achievement tied into doing so (collecting all the Bobbleheads, the slaver leader has the one that increases your bartering skill or charisma, I forget which, and you can freely take it and any of them without offending anyone). Getting past Arkansas in any way is also tied to a major side quest, so you'll want to deal with him one way or another. (You can also just run through the area he's sniping, but you also have to watch out for landmines.) Anyway, once you enslave all four of the people they want you to, the leader tells you he has a very particular client and he wants the youngest girl you can find. You find her in a town where turning 12 (or 13?) means you're exiled, so it's a town of children. The youngest girl is called Bumble, and she trusts you immediately. It's implied that the client is a Trump/Epstein type but it's never spelled out, and a few fans deny that's what's going on (e.g. "maybe they want her small hands to work on electronics") but the whole thing feels extremely perverted.

The game also deals with themes of racism and bigotry, mostly to non-feral ghouls (people affected by radiation and mutated). There's a quest where you find an apartment tower besieged by non-feral ghouls who just want a safe place to stay, but the people inside don't want ghouls as neighbors, so they hire you to kill all the ghouls. If you do so, the wasteland's talk radio DJ, Three Dog, will hound you about it for the rest of the game. The alternative is to disable security and let the ghouls take the place by force. This will also get you on Three Dog's shit list (as it should). There's a way to broker a peace by appealing to the merchants of the faction, and this seems like a good ending... until the ghouls just kill the residents anyway, and guess who Three Dog blames for it. Yep, you're the asshole no matter what you do, unless you ignore the quest entirely. (You will need to go in for one of those bobbleheads, though. One of the merchants has one.) Fun fact, also related to this place. The first town you come to, Megaton, has an undetonated atomic bomb in the middle of town. An emissary of the leader of the human/merchant faction wants you to detonate the bomb. This gives you a penthouse in their tower. He also has a quest where he wants you to assassinate several non-feral ghouls, but to satisfy him, you have to shoot them in the head.

If you're a conservative, there's a lot to love about Fallout 3.

It's still one of my favourite games, as a progressive.