I know blogs are supposed to be short and to the point, but as my last post alluded to, I am presenting a paper on Fallout 3 and the use of consumables in the game and Metaculture as explained by Greg Urban at BGSU’s Battleground States conference tomorrow. This is just a draft, a starting point, but I believe that the use of Nuka-Cola in the game redefines and moves the cultural significance inherit in the classic Coca-Cola bottle to a new end.
It's Explosive!
The Fallout series of video games builds upon familiar corporate logos and cultural icons from the real world to create a familiar landscape in a post-nuclear war-torn America in a not so distant future. These made up logos, including “Cram” and “Nuka Cola,” were originally created in the first game and have since been used in various sequels and spinoffs. Adapting the ideas of metaculture used by Greg Urban, I will discuss the use of consumables in the Fallout series, in particular “Nuka-Cola” and the building of a new use for well-known pop culture image from the real world, given new meaning in an apocalyptic landscape.
In Fallout 3, the player takes on the role of the “Vault Dweller,” a protagonist who has literally been living in a hole in the ground in the form of Vault 101. This Vault, one of hundreds, protected individuals from an all out nuclear war between China and the United States in the year 2077. The aftermath of this war has left the United States a barren wasteland filled with mutated wildlife and bloodthirsty survivors in a not-too-distant future setting. The player traverses the scorched landscape of the “D.C. Wasteland” in hopes of finding his father, who has ventured out into the world for unknown reasons. During the course of his adventure, the player gains experience from interactions with in game non-playable characters (NPCs), acquiring new and stronger forms of armor and weapons, and building up skill sectors ranging from lock picking to speech abilities. The player also collects consumables to help regain health while they travel throughout the charred landscape. Many of the consumables in the game mock real world items like Spam, Hostess Fruit Cakes and most notably Coca-Cola. The in game’s consumable, Nuka-Cola, is found throughout the series, where it has been presented as a fictional version of Coke that is the key to quests and the creation of future do-it-yourself survival weapons.
Nuka-Cola: Generation Atom
In relation to Urban’s ideas on Metaculture, the creation of the Nuka-Cola brand in the game series Fallout is a new idea of an American product that not only parodies the real world but participates in a microcyclicity – where the absence of the former product works as a motivating factor to re-create it (Urban, 230). As Urban points out, “Newness itself depends on microcyclicity, as the old durable object loses its value. That value- if culture is to move through the world- must be carried over into a new object, one that does not look exactly like the old one,” (Urban, 231). The use of the image of Coca-Cola as “Nuka-Cola,” by both Interplay and later Bethesda in their Fallout games incorporates an old and relatively universal image into a new sphere. Used as a consumable, the image of the classic Coca-Cola bottle brings back an image of a world that once was, in the context of a post-nuclear landscape, where survival outweighs the consumer image of the drink. The bottle is reintroduced and recreated as an artifact- one that replenishes health for the player’s character, but also as an image of the world of the past.
Many of the interactions with NPC’s within the landscape of the Capital Wastes come in the form of missions and side-quests that the player can decide to complete or not. Many of these quests help to build the character’s “Karma” which, either good or bad, will affect the final outcome of the game itself. While there are many missions that are vital to finishing the overarching storyline of the game- where the “Vault Dweller” of Vault 101 finally finds his father and vanquishes the evils of The Enclave (a near fascist remnant of the militant American political Right), many of the quests are secondary and scattered throughout the virtual miles of the wasteland. In one particular apocalyptic shanty town called Girdershade, the vault dweller is introduced to Sierra Petrovita, a Nuka-Cola fanatic who has created her own museum to enshrine the remnants of Nuka-Cola merchandise that she owns. The player will be able to take a tour of her relics and she will talk about some of the history of the company and their drink Nuka-Cola. Sierra will then ask the player if he/she can run an errand for her- a new type of Nuka-Cola, Nuka-Cola Quantum, was in production before the beginning of the “Great War” of 2077. Since the bombs fell as it was being shipped to destinations throughout the D.C. area, it has become a rarity 200 years after the initial nuclear attack. The drink differs from its “normal” counterpart in that it has a mild radioactive isotope added to the mixture of the drink, which, according to in game information, made the drinker’s urine glow (The Vault).
Sierra sends you on a mission to find 30 bottles of Nuka-Cola Quantum that are scattered around the wasteland. In doing so, Sierra will pay you 40 caps for each bottle and give you schematics for the creation of the Nuka Grenade: a do-it-yourself wasteland weapon that incorporates the use of the soda in a high powered explosive (“Fallout 3: The Nuka Cola Challenge”). After leaving her shack, the only other inhabitant of Girdershade, Ronald Laren, will confront you with a similar task: if you bring the 30 bottles of Quantum to him instead, he will pay you the same price for the bottles (double if spoken to correctly) to help him to try and sleep with Sierra. In helping Ronald rather than Sierra, you lose the ability to obtain the Nuka-Grenade schematic and lose Karma, but are given the chance to watch Ronald try to seduce Sierra, which is misread completely by the Nuka-Cola enthusiast (Fallout 3).
I've got the last of the Quantum Sierra!
In this quest presented by Sierra, we are presented with multiple uses of soda in a future landscape. Nuka-Cola is a remnant that is being re-imagined by Sierra, given a new meaning that differs from that of the original beverage. To Sierra, the drink is more than just a beverage- it is a product of lore. Sierra is able to from her own memory recite the history of the Nuka-Cola brand, has tattered memorabilia of the brand strewn throughout her shack, and is (apparently) only concerned with the consumption of the family of carbonation drinks created before the war and widely available throughout the United States. She not only knows the traditional ways of consuming the beverage (giving the player an “ice cold” Nuka-Cola from her fridge) but also subversive and new ways of consuming it that reorganizes its meaning in new ways. Not only does she present the chance to help her obtain the rare Quantum flavor, but will also teach you a way to survive in a wasteland ripe with Slavers, Raiders and Deathclaws (oh my!) in the form of the “Nuka-Grenade.”
Pictured: Carbonated Death.
After the quest is over, and you have acquired any more of the “Quantums” that are hidden in the D.C. Wastes, Sierra will even help you by “cooking” another consumable- a Mississippi Quantum Pie- by combining other in-game items including Vodka and Flour (The Vault). The usages of the drink in these ways are reminiscent of subversive ways that Coca-Cola has been used. In “Contemporary Legends and Popular Culture: ‘It’s the Real Thing,’” Paul Smith presents a sequential model of events of the creation of an item in popular culture (Smith, 321). With Coca-Cola, after the creation of the actual formula we then see duplication of the product for sales and marketing to a larger audience. With the sale of the item then, we see official and unofficial uses of the product. While the drink itself has become a part of many different cooking recipes, the bottle itself, when made of glass, has been used as a base for rioters; both as a Molotov cocktail and as a glass bottle to hurl at opposing forces (often riot police or military groups) (Smith, 335). Not only is the bottle used throughout the game, but the currency in this world is based around bottle caps. The reuse and reimagining of this commodity not only for warfare, to heal characters, and to pay for rounds of ammunition and other essentials for survival gives new meaning to the iconic Coca-Cola bottle. It simultaneously pays homage and takes a jab at the soft drink as a remnant of the wasteland that can be found throughout the Fallout universe.
Urban uses the example of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota to explain the idea of newness and this microcyclicity- in becoming old; it has inspired the creation of new monuments across the U.S., including the unfinished Crazy Horse Monument (231). This new creation of mountain-based monuments carries on the culture already “locked up” in the existing monument: from the way the mountain is blasted with dynamite to the way that the area is cleared of rubble at day’s end. While the sculpture itself is drastically different from that of the presidents on the face of Rushmore, the way that it is being sculpted and created resembles that of the creators of the original inspiration for the Crazy Horse monument.
With this in mind, I would argue that the “creation” of the Nuka-Cola brand in the Fallout series carries on the memory of the Coca-Cola brand not only in image but in the fake back story of its creation presented to the player by Sierra in Girdershade. The image that has been created for the game resembles the classic Coca-Cola bottle while the quest “The Nuka-Cola Challenge” itself is homage to the “Pepsi Challenge” advertisement campaign created by Pepsi Co (The Vault). In its creation, it has newness that the former version lacked- healing players, an explosive device and bartering item. The “Quantum” version of the beverage is also a leap back into the known- this flavor of drink is clearly a reference to any of the variations on the original Coke recipe. “Quantum,” with its +10 to Radiation, +20 to Action Points and the addition of one bottle cap when consumed could easily be any of the variations Coca-Cola brand: Diet, Zero or even the ill-fated New Coke.
While the player first encounters Nuka-Cola Quantum in Fallout 3, other versions of the drink have been found in earlier games. In Fallout Tactics the player is introduced to Cherry Nuka-Cola, Classic Nuka-Cola, Fusion Nuka-Cola and Yellow Nuka-Cola (in an apocalyptic future setting, I’m sure you can figure out what this truly is) (The Vault). In the most recent game- Fallout: New Vegas– the player is introduced to new variations of the drink, each with their own distinct effect on the player’s in-game counterpart. Nuka-Cola Quartz, for instance, gives the player Low-Light vision, +6 health points for twenty seconds and +9 to radiation when consumed (Fallout: New Vegas).
With that in mind, Urban states that while the redefining of a cultural object helps to bring a newness to an old object, the incorporation of these items in quick succession can lose the original cultural significance.
“If new things appear in too quick of a succession, if they come to form a feverish phantasmagoria, the idea of newness gives rise to the sense that, as in the case of the ephemeron, there is nothing to hold onto. A prior stable sensible object cannot be recaptured from the stream of apparently new objects that bombard the senses—even though strands of immaterial culture pass through them and become intelligible […] Even the durable cultural object immediately recedes into the past, slips away from us, because it is so rapidly replaced by new ones, which, to be sure, carry over the cultural learning embodied in the earlier object, but which also leave the sense—if not the intellect—unable to grasp the motion of culture through the continuous recreation of palpably similar objects” (Urban, 231-232).
I argue, then, that while the different variations of the Nuka-Cola items in the Fallout series helps to further redefine the image of Coca-Cola in a fictionalized setting, the multiple variations of the drink in the two most recent games in the series- Fallout 3 and New Vegas– redefine the consumable so fast that the identification of the original is lost upon those who are now, with Fallout 3 or New Vegas, just learning about the game and the identification of the consumable beverage in game. In New Vegas in particular the usage of Nuka-Cola as a key consumable item in the game takes a backseat to the introduction of Sunset Sarsaparilla, a root-beer type consumable that also replenishes the player’s health in the same way that Nuka-Cola did in earlier episodes in the series (Fallout: New Vegas).
Its...erm...not Nuka-Cola...FUUUUUU-!
The introduction of this new consumable undermines the new creations of Nuka-Cola in New Vegas and also takes away from some of the cultural significance already imbedded in the other drink consumable presented in the game. While it too may be a redefinition of the Coca-Cola image it lacks the real world counterpart that gamers the world over are able to identify with. Where other consumables such as “Cram” or “Dandy Boy Apples” may lovingly riff on Hostess Snack Cakes or Spam, respectively, there is no clear real world relationship to the sarsaparilla presented in the game. The creation of the new drink lacks any real world counter-part and goes against the presentation of the Nuka Cola brand throughout the rest of the game series. While the canon of the game explains the occurrence of the drink in the “Mojave Wastelands,” where New Vegas is set, it does not bring with it the cultural significance to create any new type of “newness” from an older artifact.
The Nuka-Cola Company’s presence in the Fallout series may have started as a friendly jab at consumerism by video game creators, but has evolved into a cultural item in its own right. Not only is it an in-game item but much like cosplayers playing out their favorite fictional hero, Nuka-Cola has been brought into the real world though promotional tie-ins, such as the giveaway of Nuka-Cola at 2008’s E-3 Gaming Expo in preparation of the launch of Fallout 3 (The Vault). The image has transcended both the Coca-Cola franchise and the game world and has been reproduced by fans and promoters- again recreating the meaning behind the original text of Nuka-Cola and giving it a physical form.
Classic!
This interpretation of Nuka-Cola in culture by fans of the Fallout series presents a new way of looking at video game consumables and how they affect those who play video games. The items in game are not only a central part to the storyline, but are reproduced for the fan’s own use. Much like a tattoo of the Triforce from Zelda, tennis balls made to resemble Poke-Balls from Pokemon or recreations of Cloud’s Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII– the Nuka-Cola brand has been re-imagined again and turned into a new cultural product with the introduction of the item into the real world. It has moved away from a punny joke on nuclear warfare and soda to a key part of a person’s experience in playing a video game.
I would also argue that the Nuka-Cola consumable has been decoded in new ways since its original inception in the original Fallout game. In looking at “Encoding and Decoding” by Stuart Hall, we can make the argument that while the game developers put the item in the game as a consumable made to resemble the Coca-Cola bottle, it has been interpreted by fans in new and innovative ways (Hall, 123-125). Even as the series grew, and the drink was presented as a PR stunt to prepare for the latest installment, the drink is shown in various mediums in fan art for the Fallout franchise. While it still may hold up as a joke about the post-war, nuclear winter setting of the games, it could be interpreted as a comment on consumerism and capitalist business practices. Throughout Fallout 3, empty bottles of Nuka Cola can be found strewn throughout the wasteland, often under foot, by the player. While these empty bottles can be used in crafting survivalist weaponry (or even sold) the mass amount of Nuka-Cola machines and bottles in sewers, subway stations and abandoned malls represents a rampant consumerism of soft drinks that has survived 200 years after a nuclear war- where the bottles can still be found in abundance.
The use of Nuka-Cola in the Fallout franchise is a reinvention of the image of the Coca-Cola bottle that represents the remnants of a long lost society. But this interpretation of the Coke image has not only stayed within the boundaries of a consumable in the game- it has also been recreated in its own right as a pop culture text by fans of the series. In relation to Urbans ideas on metaculture, then, I believe that the use of consumables in the Fallout franchise is not only done for fun by the game developers but also bounds the game to a pseudo-reality, where the United States fell not only because of nuclear war, but also because of consumerism, the remnants of which will outlive those who may have originally envisioned it.
Works Cited
Fallout 3. “Video Game.” Bethesda Studios. Last Retrieved: 23 Feb 2011
Fallout: New Vegas. “Video Game.” Obsidian Entertainment. Last
Retrieved: 23 Feb. 2011.
“Fallout 3: The Nuka Cola Challenge.” YouTube. Web. 23 Feb 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSaXAT0cvlA
Hall, Stuart. “Encoding and Decoding.” Popular Culture: Production and Consumption.
Ed. C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
Print.
“Nuka-Cola.” The Vault: Fallout Wiki. Web. 23 Feb 2011.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Nuka-Cola
“Nuka-Cola Quantum.” The Vault: Fallout Wiki. N.p., 23 Feb. 2011. Web. 23 Feb 2011.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Nuka-Cola_Quantum
Smith, Paul. “Contemporary Legends and Popular Culture: ‘It’s the Real Thing.” Popular
Culture Theory and Methodology. Ed. Harold E. Hinds, Marylin Motz, and Angela
M.S. Nelson. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Print.
Urban, Greg. Metaculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 228-235. Print.
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