Amazon’sFalloutTV series got anew trailerlast week, and it looked and sounded a whole lot likeBethesda’sRPGs. You had the blue-and-yellow Vault-Tec jumpsuits, a Vault Boy bobblehead, and the Brotherhood of Steel’s ominous floating fortress. But, most importantly, there was golden oldies pop music to tie it all together, with the familiar warble of The Ink Spots’ 1941 title “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire” soundtracking the trailer.
That song has been included in every Bethesda Fallout game, likely because its ambling guitar perfectly sums up the wandering adventure of an open-world game, while its crooning vocals sound unmistakably old-timey. ‘80s synths may go in and out of style, but you don’t hear new songs that sound anything like “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire” on the radio. It sonically sums up the series’ retrofuturist ambitions.
It has me thinking about why it is that retrofuturism resonates so strongly in video games. It’s not like it’s been featured in as many games as straightforward sci-fi or fantasy, but the games that do take that approach have lived on in players’ imaginations like few others. Fallout and BioShock, are the biggest examples, with settings that capture the hearts of players in the same way that BioWare or Larian’s characters do. When I think aboutBioShock, I don’t think about Andrew Ryan or Frank Fontaine; I think about the experience of wandering Rapture. I don’t even like BioShock: Infinite, butthe introduction to Columbiais as evocative an opening hour as any I’ve encountered.
There are other examples that I wouldn’t exactly categorize as retrofuturist, but still share some aesthetic and thematic DNA.Prey’s Talos 1, for example, is a gorgeous art deco space station whose architecture gets more modern as it extends outward from its central lobby.Cyberpunk 2077doesn’t really get talked about in this way; we mostly just think about its world as futuristic. But Night City’s aesthetics are far more inspired by the ‘80s and ‘90s than anything on the rack today.
In that game’s case, this largely has to do with the origins of cyberpunk as a genre. Blade Runner, a proto-cyberpunk work that has become the urtext of the genre, was made in 1982 and, for many cyberpunk fans, is still seen as the genre’s definitive aesthetic realization. The neon signage and billboards, the rain and steam, the synthy Vangelis score, the noir tone — it set so many of the hallmarks that the genre still adheres to today. And I think Cyberpunk 2077 going back to this well is a helpful indicator of why retrofuturism is popular.
The future is exciting. That’s where the new technology is. That’s where you go to get hoverboards and cybernetic implants and flying cars. But it’s also uncertain. Anything can happen and, depending on what time in history you call the present, the expectation for what the future holds may be scarier than it is promising. That’s certainly how I feel about the actual future right now. But the past feels safe. When we see an aesthetic or hear music that reminds us of our childhood, or maybe of the kind of stuff our grandparents liked, it feels comfortable.
This is what retrofuturism offers: the advancement of the future couched in the cozy nostalgia of the past.
