Avoid China-bashing

[TheEmissary]

Just create a fictional nation or supra-national entity and place the blame towards that. That is kind of how Battlefield 2142 and few other games handled a similar situation. Or you could just use what ever you feel works for the story and not worry about it. At some point people are going to find something to be offended and its hard to know what it will be.

I think the better approach would be have different and possibly conflicting historical accounts of what happened. Let the player decide who is telling the truth. You could have groups believe wildly different things and harbor resentments based on that.

[Ekaros]

Will there be much patriotism left if everyone who lived before event are dead? Fallout 3 had ghouls and remnants of government. But general population? I believe their loyalty would be with local community, it's mainly about what people can relate to and what they are indoctrinated to.

There can be certain reminiscent, but patriotism not anymore.

Too bad Finland doesn't have nukes, St. Petersburg is close... ;D

[rudel_dietrich]

Hmm how to increase sales in China?

Let your Ranger party have the option of being practitioners of Falun Gong and have a side quest where you get to free Tibet.

[Josh Finney]

Avoid China bashing? How about this? Why don't we leave the over wrought political correctness at door. China is fair game for the WL2 developers, just like the rest of the nations of the world.

[Drool]

Well, it's more that China was a nobody in the first, and if we're building on the first's lore, there's no need to even mention China.

[BlackGauntlet]

Well, it's more that China was a nobody in the first, and if we're building on the first's lore, there's no need to even mention China.

True. The only mention should be that they are just a supportive ally of USSR and nothing else.

And I distinctly remember something in WL that said, "nobody knew who press the button first and it does not matter now" or similar. Basically, it was an "exchange of arms" and both the USA & USSR are equally at fault for causing a worldwide nuclear winter. So, no one to blame actually.

Thus, there really is no "demonizing" or "bashing" of any country. Just a very simplified, albeit very real, possibility of the 80s Cold War. There was every reason to push that BRB (big red button) but no one was insane enough to do it first in OUR reality.

P. S. Some of the biggest fans of Wasteland are Russian.

[Woolfe]

Well, it's more that China was a nobody in the first, and if we're building on the first's lore, there's no need to even mention China.

True. The only mention should be that they are just a supportive ally of USSR and nothing else.

And I distinctly remember something in WL that said, "nobody knew who press the button first and it does not matter now" or similar. Basically, it was an "exchange of arms" and both the USA & USSR are equally at fault for causing a worldwide nuclear winter. So, no one to blame actually.

Thus, there really is no "demonizing" or "bashing" of any country. Just a very simplified, albeit very real, possibility of the 80s Cold War. There was every reason to push that BRB (big red button) but no one was insane enough to do it first in OUR reality.

P. S. Some of the biggest fans of Wasteland are Russian.

It would be better to say Nato and the Soviet Bloc. USA and USSR weren't the only nations with Nukes. Just the biggest

[Lanatir]

Great. Just great. So, in the end the blame will be on us germans again. OP, chill out. This is a FICTIONAL game. Asides from the fact that China wasnt even mentioned in the whole WL1 except from being able to play as chinese, they could and should use anything that makes the story better.

[SockMan]

The only real-world reason not to have China bashing is so that the game is less likely to be banned in China. Otherwise, I fully expect Wasteland 2 to not be concerned about political correctness no matter who the antagonist factions are.

[AWAC]

No China Bashing stupid idea. Wasteland and ALL the Fallouts have borrowed most or maybe all of their ideas (knowingly or unknowingly) from the book A boy and his Dog and its compendium and the book was full of China bashing! I won't repeat what I read.

[BlackGauntlet]

No China Bashing stupid idea.

Wha...?

Wasteland and ALL the Fallouts have borrowed most or maybe all of their ideas (knowingly or unknowingly) from the book A boy and his Dog and its compendium and the book was full of China bashing!

Double wha...?

I won't repeat what I read.

Thank you for your comments. Goodbye.

[GodComplex]

I'm not sure why China would even play into the scenario. Aside from the whole communist thing which we Americans hate only slightly less than minorities(sarcasm). So unless you want some sort of enclave of crazy people talking about the Reds and their commie mind control devices, how would China or any other non North American country other than Russia even play into the game?

[Rzarkrusz Rowa]

I'm not sure why China would even play into the scenario. Aside from the whole communist thing which we Americans hate only slightly less than minorities(sarcasm).

What does hatred of communism have to do with hatred of minorities?

[GodComplex]

Because there is no reason to hate either. Also, the people who tend to fear the spread of communism tend to be prepared for the uprising of the dark folk. It's a dig at the xenophobia of 'real' Americans.

[Vryheid]

I didn't see any Americans get up in arms about the American Government being the main villains in Fallout 2... why would any Chinese care about a fictionalized future China in Wasteland 2? As long as the devs don't get into cultural stereotypes, there's room for some pseudo-political lore here.

[Son of Max]

If they hold to the original storyline, it shouldn't be a problem as The Soviet Union, People's Republic of China and United States (and many, many, many other countries) were wiped from the face of the earth in World War 3, 100+ years before this game takes place.

Besides, with a desert crawling with mutant monsters, bandits, warlords (please let there be warlords, PLEASE LET THERE BE WARLORDS!) and (I'm just guessing here) no real international communication (as we would know it, y'know, because most countries are gone and all) will leave the characters in this world precious little time to contemplate (or even if they did, give a crap about) what's going on in China or [insert country name here].

[Keaton]

No politics please, and if then only as some kind of background noise.
One of the reasons I don't like Fallout New Vegas that much is that there was too much boring, tiresome politics in it.
I want a game world where the prewar events don't matter and all the survivors have their own little agendas (with as few overarching plot relevance as possible). And I want them generally to be ignorant and have very little knowledge about the prewar world. Instead I want them to tell all kinds of funny superstitious legends about the past and the reasons why things are the way they are. And please, no working governments and menacing evil rogue country like in New Vegas, I hate that bullshit. Postnuclear settings are for anarchy only, maybe with one big bad but even that isn't really necessary.

[Leif]

While we certainly shouldn't demonize China it'd be silly to not include them in the geopolitics building up to the nuclear conflagration.

[Comrade Nightmare]

Just don't make things black n' white by portraying americans as some sort of capitalist knights in shining armor fighting for freedom and Amerookah and making Chinese look like the big evil red machine lurking across the ocean.

[etix]

china was just stupid peon in Wasteland
in F1 and F2 china was main prewar enemy... and still a fucking PEON that nobody who played a game felt anything about, truth is that china in fallout = hungry nonamed peasants that were forced to attack usa to not starve to death (cause of lack of resources) - anyone mad enough to show me *how wrong* i am?

the only thing that got *bashed* in both series is ... UNITED STATES OF AMERICA which is especially visible in Fallout series - unethic experiments on humans, overwhelming corruption, backdoor politics, becoming a police/military state closed to outside world and on top of that directly putting remnants of actual government as main villain of the game - and guess what nobody ever whined about that, even more, ppl loved that setting

as a side note, russians would actually LOVE if u portray ussr as this big bad aggressive guy with nasty nuclear arsenal and *suicidal domination* goals, which will perfectly fit in the world if it takes places not long after armageddon cause survivors would remember who was their enemy and who *caused* nuclear war (you realize that there are much much more people that falls to its countrys propaganda than the ones who sees through it and knows its both side fault... i mean srsly it should go without even being mentioned)