{"id":26811,"date":"2025-04-23T13:28:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T01:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=26811"},"modified":"2025-04-25T04:46:02","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T16:46:02","slug":"beer-in-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/04\/23\/beer-in-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Here, 252 years from now \u2014 and other unreal places I’ve had a beer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Screenshot<\/a>
The Washington Monument in 2277 \u2014 at least according to Fallout 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ever since reading an excellent travelogue through, and review of, all the bars in The Witcher 3<\/em><\/a>,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> I’ve been taking better notes about the beer I find when I play games. It’s the same impulse that leads me to document the relevant clues in the crossword<\/a>; where and how beer shows up can tell us something about its place in the wider culture. And since moving to Washington D.C., I’ve had occasional flashbacks to the Fallout<\/em> games<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 the first one I played is set here, so let’s start with that and then compare and contrast a few others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In Fallout 3<\/em> (2008) \u2014 and indeed the two earlier games \u2014 beer is just Beer, not further specified. It has a minor in-game effect when you drink it,<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and along with similarly-generic whiskey and wine (etc<\/em>.) it’s just another part of the fabric of the Wasteland, the retro-futuristic post-nuclear-war 23rd Century U.S.A. in which the games are set. Most players will soon stumble into Moriarty’s Saloon and find a few other bars along the way, but they’re pretty basic in their design, with little to style them as distinct from other shops \u2014 which admittedly fits the cobbled-together nature of making do after the bombs. Fallout: New Vegas<\/em> (2010) is much the same, but added a little Easter egg<\/a> in the form of an out-of-the-way shack where someone had been brewing Strategic Nuclear Moose, a nod to the strongest beer in the world when the game was developed, BrewDog’s Tactical Nuclear Penguin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n