Dreaming of Zion: The American West as Place or Process in Fallout: New Vegas’s Honest Hearts DLC

Document Type

Blog

Publication Date

6-3-2020

Publication Title

First Person Scholar

First page number:

1

Last page number:

4

Abstract

As a Western set in a post-apocalyptic Mohave, Fallout: New Vegas demonstrates that the big questions that drive Western history are durable and malleable enough to survive even the (fictional) nuclear demise of the United States itself. The fourth iteration of the Fallout franchise is set approximately 200 years after a civilization-ending nuclear war but is valuable for teachers of American history because several major themes of real-life Western historiography are embedded in it. In fact, as I will demonstrate in this essay, the game, and particularly the Honest Hearts DLC, can be used to not just demonstrate, but to allow students to feel why the questions that underlay the study of Western history have real resonance.

Keywords

Video game; Fallout New Vegas; DLC; Honest Hearts; American West; Western history; Zion National Park

Disciplines

Art and Design | Arts and Humanities | Game Design

Language

English


Search your library

Share

COinS