Many find Fallout 3 similar to Philip K. Dick's 'The Penultimate Truth'
by David Hinkle 
{ Jun 15th 2009 at 2:44PM } 
Of course, if one wants to say that Bethesda plagiarized The Penultimate Truth, then one must look to previous titles in the Fallout series, as well. Vaults were featured in previous games, and upon exiting these vaults, hubs of civilization were also found among what was thought to be a post-apocalyptic barren wasteland. So does that mean Interplay plagiarized The Penultimate Truth or that, perhaps, the idea isn't entirely unique in the first place?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
waves @ Jun 15th 2009 2:49PM
Dr. Strangelove sez hai.
Dy-lon @ Jun 15th 2009 4:34PM
Resident Evil and Dead Rising were rip-offs of Night of the Living Dead (and subsequent sequels). God of War rips off greek mythology in general. Guitar Hero ripped off Guitar Freaks, which ripped off Air Guitar (the original rhythm game). DDR ripped off DANCING, DJ Hero and Scratch are ripoffs of BeatMania. Oh yeah and who fucking cares? You mean Fallout isnt the first story ever to deal with the nuclear apocalypse? Say it isnt so! Oh yeah sarcasm aside, thanks Joystiq for the reading tip. I do enjoy a good book.
Cr4sh Dummy @ Jun 15th 2009 6:56PM
That movie kicked so much ass!
"Mein Führer! I can walk!"
DBuck_Eye @ Jun 15th 2009 7:45PM
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room.
WMain00 @ Jun 15th 2009 2:50PM
Where others dared to dream, Philip K. Dick got there first.
And yes, I'd imagine there is some loose references and basis of the Penultimate Truth to the Fallout series. Doesn't make it any less of a game. In fact probably makes it a better game considering how amazing Philip K. Dick books are.
Swagman @ Jun 15th 2009 5:51PM
I don't know. Quite a few of the ideas in Penultimate Truth, can be found strewn across the first two seasons of Star Trek: TOS (1963/1964). Most of the scripts from the first couple of years of the show, were culled from a multitude of sci-fi writers.
I just think it is one of those things where an idea's time had truly come, and several people were writing about it.
And if you want to get real technical, the idea for the dual society living above and below ground (ie. Vault Dweller/Wastelander), goes all the way back to the origin of the Morelocks and Eloi, in H.G. Wells' 'Time Machine" (1895), and it's initial film adaptation in 1960. Also from Wells' novella, we get the first treatment ever of the concept of the "dying Earth", a concept somewhat misused in a lot of modern sci-fi as post-apocalyptic Earth (of course this misinterpretation could be a direct result of changes made to the original story, for the purposes of the 1960 film adaptation. Plus we see freaked out genetic mutations/evolution (I believe) for the first time as well, in the form of the Eloi and the Morelocks.
I think that it bears saying, that there really is no such thing as an original idea. These are the first times many of these concepts have been seen in science fiction, however, I am sure if anyone bothered to do the research, even many of these ideas were old when Wells' wrote about them, and can be traced back to older ideas of underworld/underclass conflicts with overworld/overclass society. And there lies a concept as old as humanity, from the moment the first human realized how to exploit another . . . or the first human realized he was being exploited by another.
No new ideas. Just halfway new ways at looking at old ideas.
Professor Lario @ Jun 15th 2009 2:50PM
If we decide Interplay plagiarized "The Ultimate Truth," every high-fantasy game in the last few decades plagiarized Tolkien and a few others like him.
squeehunter @ Jun 15th 2009 7:22PM
After reading the summary of the book, (and I'm not trying to defend Interplay or Bethesda) the only real similarity I can find is that the president in both cases are [spoiler alert] actually computers pretending like humans. Hinding underground is just something you'd expect to do during a war that wipes out civilization and I'm not sure if sending someone out to get a fake pancraes had anything to do with having to leave your vault get a waterchip. You have to look at WHY each of these things are done and once that's over, you might realize that the motivation for the similar events are completely unrelated. Similar situations are undoubtedly going to have people taking similar actions.
AoE @ Jun 16th 2009 10:33PM
"every high-fantasy game, book and movie in the last few decades plagiarized Tolkien."
FIFY. Basically, ever modern fantasy thing you can think of either comes directly from Tolkien's work, or was heavily inspired by it.
Lunastra78 (PSN: lunastra78) @ Jun 15th 2009 2:52PM
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45909000/jpg/_45909582_badartists.jpg
Singular Trap @ Jun 15th 2009 2:55PM
You could also make the argument that Brendan Fraser's movie "Blast From the Past" ripped off Philip K. Dick. But who cares?
j.howlett @ Jun 15th 2009 3:05PM
i thought of that movie to, i also want to read the book
elprogramer @ Jun 15th 2009 2:57PM
Wow, life after an atomic holocaust, how innovative and exciting. Here I was, thinking we'd all perish and die, but then Dick published his book and suddenly survival was a possibility.
*rolls eyes*
Andrew @ Jun 15th 2009 2:59PM
Or maybe they both got the idea from real world cold war era paranoia.
vidGuy @ Jun 15th 2009 3:03PM
Shakespeare plagiarized most of his work, and about 98% of everything since has copied him. Meh.
The Mother of Sprinkles @ Jun 15th 2009 3:04PM
Once upon a time there was a war...
This was no ordinary war; this was a nuclear war (the baddest type of war in the world)...
This meant that many people died and those who survived stayed in underground shelters, where they would spend the rest of their lives reproducing to recover the human race's population.
^^^ An extract from my upcoming novel- The Life of A Generic Man Living in a Nuclear Wasteland in an unspecified era of time.
WREturns @ Jun 15th 2009 3:34PM
I think you should title it, "The Reproducinator".
el serpiente @ Jun 15th 2009 3:04PM
Everyone steals from Philip K. Dick. Even if they don't know it.
Duke @ Jun 15th 2009 3:21PM
Hell, I got the guy's wallet in my desk!
WREturns @ Jun 15th 2009 3:36PM
I don't know about you, but I haven't stolen dick from Phillip K.
Blah @ Jun 15th 2009 4:12PM
how else are we expected to receive bad karma. It would be a waste to not steal from him especially with level 100 pickpocket.
Scott @ Jun 15th 2009 3:42PM
Why must we look at the earlier fallouts? Since they're all approximately the same, what would that prove? That Interplay plagiarized 3 times? It's not like any of these games pre-date the 1960's and can fling a "Oh yeah? well you copied us!" out there.
However, if they only copied portions of the premise, I don't think anyone will be getting sued. Well, or EVERYONE will be getting sued...because premise-copying happens constantly.
F1: Basu Gasu Bakuhatsu @ Jun 15th 2009 3:11PM
Fallout pulls from a lot of different sources. From Mad Max to Doctor Strangelove.
Trying not to spam but you can check it out here:http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Wiki
Quiggy @ Jun 15th 2009 3:41PM
It's cool, you're not spamming if it's relevant to the conversation.
ENHANCE YOUR MAN SAUSAGE WITH V14GR4!!
EHuntington @ Jun 15th 2009 3:14PM
Did the poster even read 'The Penultimate Truth'? "Vault" similarities aside, they're really not that comparable. I suppose if you only read the book jacket or peruse through the wikipedia entry you can conclude they're similar, but if you read the book I think you'll come to a different conclusion. Besides that, what's this "news" story about? The author even comments on the bottom how it's the general background of Fallout that shares coincidences, not Fallout 3's story specifically. And! Instead of backing up the claim with evidence, he just makes an allusion to spoilers. What's the point of the article?
WiNG [XBL&Steam: WiNGSPANTT] from lifeinagame.com @ Jun 15th 2009 3:14PM
Just as a little nugget of knowledge:
"Penultimate" means "second to last"
It's a really useful word for those special moments you want to sound pretentious. An example would be using it to guess the penultimate song in a Top 10 countdown.
zodduska @ Jun 15th 2009 3:23PM
But in a top ten countdown last is number one.. so which is penultimate, number two or eight?
zodduska @ Jun 15th 2009 3:24PM
ugh, I mean two or nine.. gotta love no edits.
WiNG [XBL&Steam: WiNGSPANTT] from lifeinagame.com @ Jun 15th 2009 3:31PM
It would usually be #2.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 *2* 1
el serpiente @ Jun 15th 2009 3:40PM
The Penultimate is what I have in my pants.
zodduska @ Jun 15th 2009 3:14PM
Did you guys miss "A Post-Apocalyptic Film Festival"?
http://static.bethsoft.com/blog/Fallout_Film_Fest.jpg
OAKside @ Jun 15th 2009 3:15PM
Yay slow news days...
Crimson_Ryan @ Jun 15th 2009 3:18PM
It was(if anything) inspired by it.
Just like how Hideo Kojima is inspired by several movies, and leaves homages to them throughout the game. Did he plagurise the works of those movies? No, merely inspired by them.
Hal and Dave is a good example.
Sly [PSN SniperChameleon] @ Jun 15th 2009 3:39PM
your comment about kojima was made more interesting by your kojima avatar.
ronniedobbs @ Jun 15th 2009 6:08PM
Go watch Escape from New York and From Russia With Love, then tell me this Kojima guy isn't a dirty thief.
Hedgeson @ Jun 15th 2009 7:24PM
I don't think he's a thief. He even aknowledges his sources. Thieves don't admit their sources.
In MGS2, I think Solid Snake uses the alias Plisken, no?
Brazell @ Jun 15th 2009 3:24PM
The Fallout series has never shied away from borrowing elements from other stories with a similar background, and it does it well. Hello... "Dogmeat," is blatantly from Mad Max 2 (/The Road Warrior), considering in FO2, he follows you if you wear a black leather Jacket.
There are tons of references to other movies, books (There's a mission straight out of Lovecraft in FO3), lore, games, everything. It does so on purpose and it does it really well, paying almage to the other stories, not ripping them off.
Not to mention, there are a dozens and dozens of books, movies, TV shows, and so on, based on the "1950s bomb shelter" scenario. I mean, didn't we all fall in love with Brendan Frazier's pop-fifties Naivete in "Blast From the Past" !?
WREturns @ Jun 15th 2009 3:35PM
I know I did!
Robert Maynard @ Jun 16th 2009 12:34AM
"Oh my lucky stars -- a Negro!"
CynicalStrike @ Jun 16th 2009 10:05AM
Also, the quest "The Replicated Man" is very Dickian. The idea of an android believing itself to be human is a key concept in several PKD stories (allegorical to from Cold War paranoia/the McCarthy witch hunts etc), most obviously in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The title of the quest probably comes from Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man" though.
I really don't think there is any issue of plagiarism though, there's a difference between plagiarism and homage.
Geist @ Jun 15th 2009 3:28PM
Okay reading the wikipedia entry, all I can see the similarities in are vaults and a pseudo-fake president. Everything else is different. I mean, the book has a time-travelling Cherokee or something. I really don't think the two can be called 'similar'.
Jimbo @ Jun 15th 2009 3:34PM
Funny, someone on reddit pointed this out the other day.
http://marriedtohitler.com/2009/06/11/3/
It's a lot less superficial than LOL UNDERGROUND GUY NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST.
LaughingTarget @ Jun 15th 2009 4:13PM
That stretches a bit. Sure, the identity of the president is the same, but it stops there. No one is rebelling against the claimed government, the Enclave invades the wasteland. There wasn't an uprising in Vault 101, Dad left to finish a his life work and the Overseer went nuts and wants you dead, plus roaches infested the place. The experiments are back with Fallout 1, and the first two games were parodies of the post-apocalyptic genre, so that was expected (besides, Bethesda got Penny Arcade to make a story, that gives you a clue to the universe).
LaughingTarget @ Jun 15th 2009 7:03PM
P.S. - That's the same effing link as above.
tenor77 @ Jun 15th 2009 3:34PM
We're all influenced by anything we've ever seen heard or read. Star Wars was influenced quite a bit by Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, but would you say it plagarized those fictions?
zodduska @ Jun 15th 2009 3:57PM
No, it plagiarized Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress"
tenor77 @ Jun 15th 2009 4:43PM
Most people actually say Tolkien
michael @ Jun 15th 2009 6:17PM
@zodduska: Here's the ironic part. Star War not only became a pop culture in USA, but also in Japan. A lot of Japanese love Star War. I don't hear any Japanese saying Star War is a rip-off or it's a American bastardrization of Samurai.
Douche Bigalow @ Jun 15th 2009 3:38PM
I love how any realistic concern (fear of nuclear war during the Cold War, worry about terrorism when incidents are reported almost every day, et cetera) is now dismissed as 'paranoia' and 'fear-mongering' by our lovely post-modern 'intellectuals'.
As for the Philip K. Dick story - let me guess, did it involve people using drugs?
OnToGloryReturns @ Jun 15th 2009 7:18PM
Blah, blah, liberals, left, blah, blah, blah.
People like you are why the republican party is now a footnote in America.