Editorials
[Best of 2018] How ‘Fallout 76’ Became the Franchise’s First True Horror Game
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
After five games over the span of 21 years, the Fallout series has established itself as one of the best post-apocalyptic sci-fi RPGs out there. Given its setting and the fact that the end of the world is arguably the most popular setting in horror and science fiction, it isn’t surprising that Fallout touches on the horror genre quite often.
It’s not like you’d expect a game about journeying through a nuclear wasteland to be filled with sunshine and roses, but Fallout has always surprised gamers with unexpectedly dark sense of humor, truly terrifying storylines, locations, and creatures. Yet, no one describes the series as part of the horror genre, probably because of the not-scary-at-all music and generally bright landscapes.
That all changed with Bethesda’s newest entry in the franchise, the online RPG Fallout 76. With the general consensus being that the game is kind of a messy experience that doesn’t justify the sacrifices it makes, I’m here to argue why what is considered to be the game’s worst mistake is actually its biggest blessing.
One of the biggest complaints about Fallout 76 is that the lack of NPCs takes away the dramatic weight of the story. Indeed, the lack of NPCs to talk to means you no longer have quests where you can actually make decisions and gain or lose karma points. Gone are the days where you would suffer over having to decide whether to nuke an entire town or not, as you have no one to talk to or to judge you. Instead, the only voices you ever hear in Appalachia are those from other players, robots, and holotape-recordings of long-dead quest givers.
No NPCs and the lack of companions means you have absolutely no one to walk to in Fallout 76. Sure, the whole idea is to have human players replace the NPCs, but the servers have a 24-player size limit and the biggest map size in the franchise, making the experience feel more like The Road than New Vegas. It’s quite an isolating experience, one that leaves you completely vulnerable to the hundreds of creatures that can and will kill you at any moment. From the moment you step out of your vault, you are thrown into the harsh and deadly Appalachia region. Unlike previous games in the franchise, there are no towns with NPCs to protect you, no Brotherhood with laser rifles to kill the super mutants chasing you. You are on your own. Appalachia truly feels like a desolated nuclear wasteland, and because it’s open world, it becomes too easy to wander off from a quest and end up in a radscorpion’s nest with nothing but a simple pipe-gun and a board as your weapons.
The other big change in Fallout 76 is the emphasis on survival, in the form of a thirst and hunger meter that you must fill. I don’t know about you, but I rarely worry about my radiation levels while playing a Fallout game. I completely forget about it until I’m 75% radiation or so. But with the addition of hunger and thirst, I’m constantly worrying about keeping my character well. It’s a small thing, as you don’t really suffer that much if your hunger levels go down, but it’s an added worry to an already stressful and scary experience. Having to resort to eating raw radroach meat is about the worst thing I’ve done in this game, but it was either that or starve. For added role-playing, I found the “Cannibal” perk to be both fun and creepy, as I can simply walk up to a dead moleman, super mutant, or ghoul and eat their raw flesh. It never fails to creep the real players around me.
Confession time. Despite me writing for a horror website, I am quite easily scared. I had to watch a “let’s play” video of Alien Isolation on mute just to find out how the story ended because I was too afraid to continue. Likewise, I’ve always loved the Fallout games, but the mere sight of a radroach coming straight towards me – or even worse, a Deathclaw – terrifies me as much as any “proper” horror game. But at least I could always pause the game when I got overwhelmed by a group of super mutants or ghouls, not in Fallout 76. Because this is an online game, there’s no pausing, nothing to stop the waves of attackers coming your way, and you can’t use VATS to take a short break and strategize. One mistake and you’re done for. You’re along to fend off against the harsh and endless landscape of post-apocalyptic West Virginia.
Speaking of West Virginia, one of Fallout 76’s greatest strengths is in the way it takes West Virginia mythology into the world of the game, making for some of the most horrifying creatures in the history of the franchise. Are ghouls and zombie-like scorched not scary enough for you? How about a Wendigo? Just like the scorched, a wendigo is a human that was mutated by radiation, except looking like a cross between Slenderman and Gollum. Think mutated dogs and two-headed cows are cute? How about a giant rabid sloth, or a headless juggernaut with hands like maces? Fallout 76 makes encountering each new creature a ghastly and surprising experience, as you never know what new creature will jump at you with enough strength to kill you with one punch. I’ve played about 60 hours of the game and I feel like I haven’t encountered even 25% of the game’s creatures.
Then there’s Mothman. Fallout 76 brilliantly teases the existence of this mythological creature throughout the map, as you constantly find churches where the entire congregations appear to have been sacrificed in some dark ritual, with candles forming a circle around the altar, where statues of demon-like beings are clearly being worshiped. In my time exploring Appalachia, I’ve found more cult gatherings than I’ve found Power Armor. But that’s not enough, during one of my travels, I suddenly spotted a set of bright eyes observing me from a distance. Big, bright, red eyes are the only notice you get that the enigmatic Mothman has found you. I jumped and nearly fell off my couch once I realized what was in front of me, yet the Mothman didn’t do anything. Reports from other players range from being killed by the half-man-half-moth god, to receiving a blessing by the creature before it takes off. Whatever your encounter ends up as, there’s no denying the sense of dread that looms over this enigmatic insect.
Fallout 76 may not have a time-pressing story with impactful decisions, and it may get lonely out there in the wasteland. But it only serves to make this the first horror experience in the franchise, as for the first time you actually feel like you are in a post-apocalyptic and hopeless land full of dangers. Honestly, I never knew how much I wanted this in a Fallout game.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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