Yet, in a narrative where you’re obligated to be as amoral as The Man with No Name, it’s near impossible to be judgemental about her predicament. Here, you have a companion who follows you everywhere and mentions needing a drink on a regular basis. Rarely is there any weighty discussion for it, and when it’s done, as with Alan Wake’s substance abuse, it’s through hidden meaning or interpretive dialogue. Simply put, Cass is a functioning alcoholic.Īddiction is still somewhat a taboo in videogames. Where Bonnie succeeds because of her world-weary father however, Cass is the modern day Calamity Jane, due to her taking on her missing patriarch’s role. Both women are surrounded by male figureheads, and to survive the land, they’ve had to toughen up. In this regard, there’s a similarity to RDR ’s Bonnie MacFarlane. With Cass, her masculinity has increased not because of the player/protagonist bond, but because of the Mojave Wasteland. Very few female companions break the mould with the more interesting undertone archetypes, like Ashley Williams ( Mass Effect ) or Chie Satonaka ( Persona 4 ). The more masculine the male protagonist becomes, the more women have to match the levels of testosterone.
These are archetypes created through the medium’s objectives. Videogames tend to have women in two camps – the damsel in distress or the battle hardened vixen. While Raul is entertaining enough, a legend now reduced to being your Tonto, the fascination with Cass revolves around her ambiguous femininity. So, it’s unsurprising that Cass is probably the first potential companion you meet, dressed like a cowgirl, shotgun holstered on her back and drowning her sorrows in a trading outpost’s watering hole. Both characters are more concerned with old world values than overgrown killer ants Raul is particularly haunted by his gunslinger past, while Cass struggles to keep her family business afloat. New Vegas does so admirably with Rose of Sharon Cassidy and Raul Tejada. To make such a concept work, you need believable characters to sell the core principles. Yet, if you replaced the science-fiction with the aesthetics of the late 1800’s, New Vegas is not that far removed from any Western regularly screened on daytime television. Radioactive reptiles, malfunctioning robots, The Road Warrior gangs and the restarting of modern day politics in a medieval world make it more ‘Weird’ than ‘Wild’ out West.
If Red Dead Redemption is a love letter to Unforgiven and The Proposition, then Fallout: New Vegas must be an ode to 50’s epics like The Searchers, by way of barmy cult classics Battle Beyond The Stars and Ice Pirates.įallout is fantastical with its post-apocalyptic setting, to say the least.
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