The Tepid Take

We all fall into lockdown habits. Creating an abundance of toast out of grieving bread, polishing the proverbial pearl with almost arthritic hands. One of my habits is circular, self-indulgent: considering the nature of these habits. How we spend our time away from the world as we knew it. How we choose to grieve the lives we can no longer live. Allow me to attempt a soliloquy, then, as that’s all speeches can be now, aiming to offer the impossibility of a novel conception of the pandemic that has been thought so thoroughly and so openly throughout the magical aether of cyberspace. I am going to argue that we are incapable of benefitting from isolation in the same way that we could before this era of late capitalism, or above all, consumerism, kicked into force. And I am going to open with some ill-advised satire. The article opens with a reference to a book or authority, symbolically flagging the greater intellectual cache that qualifies the writer to deliver on some absurdly

Obsidian Games had struck gold. They would tie up, with the utmost subtlety, the link between their new IP – The Outer Worlds, released in the November games rush of 2019 – and the postmodern classic Fallout: New Vegas. It would be mentioned in the publicity but it wouldn’t be pushed . “The team that brought you…” and little more. A piecemeal callout to Bethesda and then, mouths shut tight. In the wake of Fallout 76 and increasingly low expectations for their space-faring Skyrim-alike Starfield, Bethesda were in hot water, and it was exactly the right time for Obsidian to crawl out of the woodwork and bum-rush the big boys. The Outer Worlds was destined to be the western RPG that western RPG fans had been waiting for ever since western RPG Fallout: New Vegas set a new standard for branching gameplay, thoughtful motif, worldbuilding expertise and western RPG-ing generally. The Outer Worlds would pay homage to that tradition while issuing the long-distance telegram of a middle fing