I was watching a video on the recent achievements in the Tetris community, and my mom came up and watched over my shoulder for a bit. There was a moment in the video where the narrator was talking about the moment Blue Scuti reached the game's killscreen for the first time. Years of effort, countless hours of practice, chasing something that people thought was literally impossible for decades, and then he fucking does it. This is a seriously cool and inspiring story, right?
"Does he get paid for that? You can't spend that much time on something if you're not getting paid."
Are you telling me you literally can't imagine wanting to do something just to do it? That you can only imagine spending effort if it's to chase a cash prize or a wage? That you can't imagine the desire to just... be the best at something, or achieve something before anyone else? I love that woman but a lifetime of being in the system has burned out a critical part of her brain - she can't imagine having a job and not spending all of your free time sucking up to management for a promotion, she is exactly the person all of the "hustle grindset" bullshit influencers and motivational speakers try to turn you into, and i swear to god if she hadn't worked for the government her whole life she would have gotten in on the ground floor of an MLM and made a shitzillion dollars.
It's so fucking depressing.
That sounds really cool.
I've got a half-baked Fallout: Seattle setting, based on the idea that the rebuilding of society is coming along and international trade is starting up again, making port cities like Seattle major points of conflict. You've got the NCR coming from the south, the Commonwealth (Canada edition) coming from the East, and from across the sea the newly-reconstituted USSR and PRC, all while Seattle itself is basically a city-state run by its own city council.
The major theme is historical materialism. Seattle has more or less a "Merchant Republic" economy that's been ruled by a handful of landowning families for the past century, but the concentration of Capital occurring in the city as multiple railroads have been connected to it and the ports are being rebuilt is causing that to change.
Some of the "old powers" have read an economics textbook or two, and are trying to get ahead of the change by willingly converting to a corporate structure, some resist it, California, the Commonwealth and the USSR are trying to coax the city into joining with them officially, the "tribals" in the region are trying to defend the pastoral lifestyles they've created for themselves against the settlers in a repeat of history, the vaults in the region are little micronations of their own who might side with anyone or noone.
As for the Seattle City Council, they would prefer to remain independent, but actually doing that is basically impossible without at least one of the four major powers backing them, as both the Soviets and the Californians are willing to use military force if necessary to take the city (the game's bad ending is both of them trying this at the same time and the city getting nuked during the fighting). When the trailer says "war never changes" it shows an NCR flag in the foreground and a USSR flag in the background, implying that the war in this case is the cold war.
Also there are ten people all claiming to be Elvis, who was saved from the bombs by aliens and has returned to Earth. The player can go on a very long quest to figure out which one is the real one, which is randomly determined when you press "new game", and if you successfully figure out the real one and invest in his comeback tour you make a stupid amount of money.