Oddly enough the point of Fallout was apparently (according to Tim Cain) never meant to be “capitalism bad” but rather “war bad”.
Of course any contemporary critique of war doesn’t work without a critique of capitalism so that of course ended up being a feature of the games regardless of intention.
Tim Cain was just one dude in a team full of creators, and they all frequently disagreed about various aspects -see the whole ghoul thing and if FEV was supposed to be a necessary component (it would make more sense since Ghouls in Fallout 1 were a bit more rare and mainly just focused on Necropolis/Vault 12/Bakersfield - even Fallout 2 had all ghouls claim heritage to the ghoul exodus post-destruction of Necropolis by the Master)
Tim Cain claiming “his” work to be an anti-capitalist masterpiece is also not conductive to his career (especially when the franchise is under the wings of Bethesda and Amazon)
The Followers of the Apocalypse who are portrayed as allies against the master, are explicitly stated to be anarcho-communists, so somebody on that creative team likely was not a fan of capitalism.
Oddly enough the point of Fallout was apparently (according to Tim Cain) never meant to be “capitalism bad” but rather “war bad”.
Of course any contemporary critique of war doesn’t work without a critique of capitalism so that of course ended up being a feature of the games regardless of intention.
Tim Cain was just one dude in a team full of creators, and they all frequently disagreed about various aspects -see the whole ghoul thing and if FEV was supposed to be a necessary component (it would make more sense since Ghouls in Fallout 1 were a bit more rare and mainly just focused on Necropolis/Vault 12/Bakersfield - even Fallout 2 had all ghouls claim heritage to the ghoul exodus post-destruction of Necropolis by the Master)
Tim Cain claiming “his” work to be an anti-capitalist masterpiece is also not conductive to his career (especially when the franchise is under the wings of Bethesda and Amazon)
The Followers of the Apocalypse who are portrayed as allies against the master, are explicitly stated to be anarcho-communists, so somebody on that creative team likely was not a fan of capitalism.
Where are they explicitly stated to be anarcho-communists? This is the first I’m hearing of it.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/an-archive-of-josh-sawyers-formspring-from-april-2010-through-march-2013-over-1-mb-of-text.128571/
Tim Cain stopped contributing to the story after the first game so a lot of what he says about the franchise can be taken with a grain of salt.