i've spent most of my life trying to get into the fallout franchise to no avail it's not that there's anything i find bad about the fallout games i just found it easier to sink hundreds of hours into the fantasy worlds of oblivion and skyrim rather than the dreary apocalyptic wastelands of the fallout games that's part of the reason why i have avoided doing videos on these legendary games for so long that and the fact that bethesda rpgs tend to be so long unfortunately i don't have as much time nowadays to dedicate hundreds of hours to
one game yet it had become harder and harder to ignore the people who have been requesting analyses of the fallout games for the past three years so i concocted a plan i figured i would start with the fallout game that everybody tends to agree is the best fallout new vegas then i would put out a post on my community page asking my audience which areas and characters i should gravitate to as i leveled up this would help me get through the game quicker without missing out on anything i made that post and i received almost
200 responses out of all those comments the most common request was for me to do a video on joshua graham from the honest hearts dlc joshua graham is no doubt fascinating the structure of his moral compass and the all-consuming fire of his inner rage are awe-inspiring but as many of the fallout fans watching this no doubt have guessed thanks to the title of this video he is not the subject i wish to analyze today i will do a video on joshua graham soon but i gotta admit for me graham pales in comparison to another character
that is tangentially related to him the person i refer to is the only fallout character who as of yet has made me feel the true existential horror that would follow a nuclear exchange the actions and behaviors this character exhibits in the face of the apocalypse are horrifyingly human but at the same time they demonstrate a strength of will that feels almost super human this character's successes and failures in the aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse inspired hours of existential contemplation on my part i never knew the fallout franchise was capable of inspiring this level of philosophical
rumination and i certainly didn't expect it to come from a character that you never even meet the character i refer to is randall clark randall clark's story is communicated to us almost entirely through terminal entries though there are a few npcs that reference him like waking cloud and the tribe of sorrows their knowledge of the true randall clark has been contaminated by time and their desire to elevate him to a deity for them distinguishing between the real randall and the myth is like trying to distinguish between the real jesus christ and the myth it's impossible
thankfully we the audience can distinguish between the two thanks to the terminal entries after reading them i can see why myth and fact would get confused i will now attempt to elucidate who the real randall was and why i believe he is the most compelling character in fallout new vegas randall clark was born on february 5th 2053. the only knowledge we have of his life before the bombs fell was that he served in the armed forces and that he loved camping he would be out in the wild for days on end randall's job and hobby
caused him to be away from his wife charlotte and his son alex for extended periods much to their dismay charlotte would express her dissatisfaction with randall's frequent absences but this did little if anything to shift his priorities on october 23rd 2077 randall was returning from a camping trip when his truck suddenly stopped he deduced that because the truck in the other lane beside him stopped as well that the worst had finally happened nuclear war had begun a minute later a nuke hit salt lake city utah which was roughly an hour away from where randall was
there was a bright flash which left the old couple in the truck beside randall blinded luckily for randall his back was turned when it happened before randall sought shelter he saw to the newly blinded couple he set them up against the car in such a way that they could hold each other randall promised them he would go get help but what the old couple could not see was the rifle that was aimed at their heads one bullet flew through both their temples randall figured this would be much preferable to the scalding torment that awaited them
if they had remained alive randall discovered the nearby fallen rock cave luckily for him the united states geographical survey had set up camping there they vacated the area likely because they wanted to run home to their families and be with them in their final moments this left randall with a lot of equipment and food which would help him survive for the next several weeks they also left behind a terminal which randall used to not only document his experiences in the cave but also the mental anguish he experienced when contemplating the fate of his wife and
child in his second entry dated october 29th 2077 randall said the following you told me stop running off to the wild man belongs with his family you were right you were right you were right you were right wasn't there to hold you and my boy died without me never touch you or him again should shoot myself what i deserve can't maybe soon there are two paradoxical elements that are prevalent throughout randall's writings one element is randall's constant contemplation of suicide and the other is randall's incomparable talent for survival his body is driven to find the
best mode of survival in every circumstance but his mind yearns for the sweet embrace of death these opposite elements this all-consuming desire to both survive and die radiates off of randall's short simple and succinct sentences it infects the audience with the same opposing wills tearing them into two just as it did randle the ever-present despair does make his survival all the more impressive just as the darkest rooms make a single light source shine brighter when he talks of mopping up condensation on the walls and ringing into bottles just so he has something to drink i
could vividly imagine how satisfying it was for randall's thirst to be quenched when he spoke about eating fresh banana yucca or prickly pear instead of food out of a can i felt an intense satisfaction that i've never received from any meal but despite the heightened positive feeling that comes when contrasted with randall's despair the despair always wins out no matter how impressive randall's feats of survival are none of them will assuage the guilt he feels for mistreating his family in one entry randall recounts a scavenging trip back to his home in salt lake city never
found our house didn't even find a street what wasn't a crater was scorched clean want to believe it was fast a flash both of you vaporized lies to make me feel better i'll never know which part of city got hit first northeast and you both died in a blink farther away and you burned alive screaming or the blast broken glass and bits of brick and wood splinters shredding you like hamburger look at it coward and listen don't turn away face it if you've been brave lucky man you would have found a spot and blown your
brains out but not you you took your time walking back made a shopping trip out of it scrounger in real life circumstances there would be greater hope of moving beyond the guilt randall could surround himself with people who want the best for him access resources to help him cope with the grief but he is all alone driven only by his biological programming which forbids suicide even when there seems to be a reprieve from the loneliness a glimmer of something anything that would make life in the apocalypse an enjoyable or at least bearable prospect the darkness
always seeps through for randall in the year 2095 at the age of 42 randall spotted a caravan of mexicans walking nearby though they seemed harmless more of a pacifist tribe than raiders randall kept his distance after all one can never be too careful in the apocalypse for two months randall would survey their behavior until one day a man named jose broke his leg while chasing a big horn though jose screamed for help he was too far away from the camp for anybody to hear him randall did not want to reveal his existence to the tribe
but he did not want jose to die needlessly as a personal compromise randall tried to impersonate jose's scream while closer to the tribe's campground he drew members of the tribe to jose's location all while keeping his existence unknown they retrieved jose but unfortunately his leg had succumbed to infection unless he got some antibiotics he would likely die randall left a bottle of antibiotics on a rock nearby which luckily saved jose randle should have taken a sense of pride in saving this man's life but what ruined this good deed for him was the tribe's thanking of
god for giving them the antibiotics quote they thanked god of course as though that [ __ ] saw fit to burn the world but still cared enough to leave some medicine on a rock regardless of the truth of this statement some of you might say that this was needless nihilism obscuring the greater importance of randall's humanitarianism i wonder if your tune will change when i tell you the ultimate fate of this tribe the following year the mexicans were ambushed by hundreds of men and women wearing vaults 22 jumpsuits they killed all the men and almost
all the women by the time they were done there were only two women and five children left alive though randall made serious preparations to save the remainder of the tribe his efforts were in vain two days after their capture the vault 22 dwellers ate the women and children the brutality of the vault dwellers stirred something within randall i imagine he thought of the god that the mexicans worshipped and how he was nowhere to be found during this incident just as he was nowhere to be found when the bombs fell or when his wife and child
perished in fiery agony without a god to unleash his righteous fury upon he used the vault dwellers as an adequate replacement for over a year randall systematically eliminated all of the vault 22 dwellers he gave specific details of his violent killings in his terminal entries he mentioned going so far as to cannibalize their flesh to maintain his strength i sat back in my chair after reading this entry and tried to imagine randall's state of mind when he was doing this we could conveniently condemn randall's sadism and cannibalism but put yourself in his shoes with the
mexican tribe he had his only positive form of human contact in roughly 20 years it was minimal contact granted but contact nonetheless contact that is indispensable for the health insanity of a human being to have that removed so swiftly and with such brutality would i think motivate almost any man especially an isolated and disturbed man to retaliate with equally violent cruelty in the apocalypse there is no civilization that will maintain a system of laws and ideals one that will discourage moral degeneracy in the apocalypse you only have the choice to survive or choice to die
and for randall the latter became too tempting a few days after randall thought he killed all of the vault dwellers he encountered one remaining survivor caught in one of his bear traps it was a woman he was ready to kill her for her affiliation but the crying made him stay his weapon he released her from the bear trap and nursed her back to health he made the right decision and it's not just because she saw the vault dwellers just as randall saw them evil people children of the devil he made the right decision because he
would eventually fall in love with sylvie and find the companionship that he so desperately needed his choice to survive would finally be properly rewarded but this happiness would last no more than four years sylvie became pregnant with randall's child and during childbirth both sylvie and the child would perish due to complications just like what happened with the mexican tribe randall's grip on sanity was taken within an instant this was the final straw on march 5th 2101 randall wrote i think i can finally do it blow my [ __ ] brains out all over this goddamn
cave he couldn't do it he tried he tried for 23 more years often using greater and greater amounts of alcohol to lower his inhibitions maybe just maybe if he drank the right amount he could do it but he never did from the time sylvie and the child died to when randall eventually died there is only one notable event in randall's life that we are aware of one year before randall died he discovered a group of 24 children they settled in roughly the same spot that the mexicans did 30 years ago randall was unable to deduce
much about the children at first except that they spoke english and that they escaped from a place called the school ran by a fearsome figure known as the principal for nine months from april 21 23 to january 2124 randall would watch over these children though he never directly interacted with them he decided to make his presence known to them by leaving them books supplies and notes of encouragement in these notes he told the children to read and to learn and to make the most of their new home i tell them i'm giving them zion as
a gift to make up for all the sorrows of their lives so far and all the sorrows man has visited on man i tell them to be kind to each other and modest i tell them never to hurt each other but that if someone else comes along and tries to hurt them to strike back with righteous anger stuff like that i signed every note the father because just because less than a week before randall died he left final parting notes to the children he said something kind about each of the children what makes each one
special told them the father was pleased by their kind natures and that it would be up to them to handle things on their own from now on that he would be silent but still watching and still caring sure this was a lie just like it was a lie when randall said to charlotte alex and sylvie that he would be with them forever but to quote randall he wouldn't go back and unsay either thing if he could on randall's last day alive he reflected on whether or not his life had a point the only thing he
could deduce amongst all the failure and tragedy was that he was to keep the faces of charlotte alex and sylvie in his mind as long as he could and there wasn't a day that he didn't do that their memory the love that their faces kindled from within was so precious to randall that he chose to go on living simply because he wanted one person to remember them despite all the pain that that love that memory conferred it kept them alive in his heart randall died at the age of 71 lying down on a mountain looking
up at the sky was it all worth it was the help he offered those children at the age of 71 worth 70 years of failure and suffering i will say this i reference to jesus at the beginning of this video and how it was difficult to distinguish between the historical man and the myth one could argue that the myth of jesus to whatever extent he was a myth cropped up around the historical jesus because he had a profound impact on people's lives when he was alive maybe jesus was of such value to his followers that
they could only describe his words and actions in mythical supernatural terms that certainly was the case for the children that grew up with the quote-unquote father the children and their descendants were so enchanted by what the father did for them that he became the central deity of their newly burgeoning tribe they even named their tribe the sorrows referencing the word sorrow from the notes that randall left for them those acts of love and kindness were literally divine some might say that making randall out to be a supernatural being that watched over the sorrows does a
disservice to his legacy granted you could make that argument with perfect utility but i think you can also make the argument that the grandiosity of the myth does do service to randall's love though randall is a fictional character and though you never meet him in game i will treasure his memory anytime i feel the same level of despair that he felt i will remember his acts of kindness though randall's actions were simple and would be nothing more than plain niceties to us there's always the chance that they can have a profound impact on someone's life
like they had on the children i want to stay alive in the off chance that that could happen i just like you and everybody else watching this video have the capacity to be like randall [Music] you
