Categorizing Morality Systems Through the Lens of Fallout

The paper examines how morality systems in the canonical Fallout CRPG series track a player character's moral persona, focusing on how in-game actions shift moral alignment and how non-player characters respond to that alignment. Its scope covers the five canon titles: Fallout (1997), Fallout 2 (1998), Fallout 3 (2005), Fallout: New Vegas (2010), and Fallout 4 (2015), with spin-offs and Fallout 76 excluded due to its lack of NPCs. Prior scholarship has largely concentrated on player experience and moral reflection, with Fallout 3 the most frequently studied entry; this work instead analyzes how the games themselves model moral weight.

The authors trace the series' evolution from Fallout's single-axis General Reputation and Reputation Titles, through Fallout 2's town-based reputations, Fallout 3's universal karma (which eliminated reputation titles), and New Vegas's two-dimensional Fame and Infamy system tracked per faction and town, to Fallout 4's companion-only Affinity. Their central argument is that New Vegas offers the most comprehensive and nuanced morality system in the series. Because it tracks good and evil separately, deeds do not cancel one another out, and its per-group tracking reflects the reality that different social circles hold different values.

To evaluate these mechanisms, the paper proposes six categories: moral axes, scope, dissemination, perception, granularity, and NPC reaction, each with contrasting design options. Applying this framework, the authors find that New Vegas's double-axis system, the social-circle reputations of Fallout 2 and New Vegas, and Fallout 4's affinity-based companion reactions are the most detailed implementations. The series generally falls short on witness-dependent dissemination and semi-private perception. The authors conclude that combining affinity systems with reputation-based reactions would yield morality systems that are more nuanced, consistent, and immersive.